Long Odds by M.P. Strayer
After
They sat around the fire, three Israelite foot soldiers slightly drunk, passing a skin of wine between them.
“Some champion,” said the first.
“Think you coulda took him?” said the second, smiling.
“That ain’t what I’m sayin,” said the first. “That what I said?” He gestured for the skin and it was placed into his hands. The dry cracked blood dappling his hands shone dully in the firelight. He raised the spout to his lips and squeezed the bladder’s sides. He drank. “I’m just sayin,” he said, passing the skin, “the brute was big, all right, but he lacked for a set of whiskers, didn’t he? One lucky shot was all it took.”
“No such thing as a lucky shot,” said the third. “Everyone’s an expert in hindsight.”
“Shit,” said the first. “How’d you think it was gonna go then?”
“Thought the kid was dead, of course. Who in their right mind thought anything else? I was as surprised as you were when the dust settled. Even the crows were quiet.”
“A shepherd,” said the first, shaking his head.
The wine went round.
“Tell you what though,” he said. “The big fella mighta had a glass jaw, but that kid’s got ice in his veins. Couldn’t believe how calm he looked. Staring that bastard down like it was any other day. I still say it was luck, but luck or no the kid’s hands must’ve been steady. That monster had even the king shook. But not the kid. Craziest thing I ever saw.”
“How you think ol’ Saul’s feeling right about now?” asked the second. He looked off to the east as if to mark the lights of the city where the king had gone, but there were only the pale grass slopes of the hills and the shapes of the oaks and terebinth trees standing here and there in dark little groves. “I was him I’d have a lot to think about. If I let a boy barely old enough to shave fight my battle for me… I’d be downright embarrassed, I think.”
“Can’t judge the king too harshly,” said the third. He had the wineskin and he raised it up, tilted back his head and drank. He lowered the skin and smacked his lips. “I heard the brute’s challenge same as him. Same as you. How many days did we listen to that big bastard runnin his mouth? It was humiliating. But I’ll tell you right now and I ain’t ashamed to say it—there’s not a force in Heaven or Earth coulda got me to climb down that hill by my own self and stand across from that man. So I can’t blame the king if he wasn’t too keen on the idea neither. It was suicide.”
“Not for the kid,” said the first.
“No,” said the third. “Not for him.”
They were quiet. The summer night was cool and the air smelled of dew and woodsmoke. At a nearby fire they could hear the refrains of a crudely improvised paean of the day’s triumphs and the answering calls and drunken laughter of the soldiers and faraway whirling up out of the folds of the rolling land like the voices of pleading souls the yips and cries of valley jackals reveling among the remains of the massacred Philistines befouling the great Shaaraim Road all the way to the gates of Ekron.
They listened. After a time the first said: “They’ll be singing songs about the kid ‘fore the night’s through. Either of you catch his name?”
“Nope,” said the second.
“Wasn’t close enough,” said the third.
“Shit,” said the first. “Well, whoever he was: he’s gonna be somethin someday. Mark my words. Kid’s got ice in his veins. Ice. Craziest thing I ever saw.”
Mismatch at the Valley of Elah
Saul was frustrated. He stood at the edge of the slope he claimed, looking out over the valley to the invading army waiting in ranks on the far hill, a knot of shame and hate convulsing in his chest. At his back his own soldiers were likewise assembling, falling into lines with a murmuring chink of leather and scuff of sandaled feet. He watched the sun rising behind him disseminate into a thousand broken suns across the bronze shields and breastplates of the foreign horde opposing him, feeling that bitter knot in his chest flex as, towering over the others of his race, the great scourge approached the front.
His name was Goliath. He was a warrior from the city of Gath in Canaan and he stood head and shoulders above the points of the helmets of his comrades. He came down the hillside to the valley floor in a series of huge purposeful strides (his heavy, armored legs flashing as they swung), cupped a hand to his brow and squinted up at the watching Israelites swathed in silhouette along the eastern ridge.
He was looking for Saul. The Philistine crossed into the soft blue twilight that yet lay upon the basin and stopped about halfway between the two hills. He stood there loosely as he had done now every morning forty mornings straight, butting the shaft of his spear in the sand and looking up at them expectantly, looking for Saul, seeking out the king’s eyes and finding them and sneering his vast pugnacious sneer. Bearded savage! Saul fulminated. Uncircumcised brute! If there are such monstrosities, he thought, as exist in the pantheon of stone gods the heathen worship, then surely this creature is one of their offspring.
Goliath brought his hand to his mouth and bellowed: “Well Saul? What’s it gonna be?” his deep voice thundering into the sky like a rift torn through the very air.
The king’s skin hackled. He did not respond. He could feel his men behind him, like a heat sizzling in the nerves in the back of his neck; could feel the stain of cowardice spreading its tendrils across his honor as immutably as he did the blunt certitude that if he were to face the Philistine in combat he would die. He was quiet, glowering down at that scarred cocksure visage in the valley floor with eyes that were like dark stars of bottomless hate.
How he hated him!
Goliath’s voice boomed again:
“Saul, baby. How long we gonna do this for, huh? You can’t avoid me forever!”
That was the hell of it. The armies stood at an impasse, locked in a tenuous stalemate on their two hills, each knowing that to move first meant abandonment of the high ground and exposure and death in the valley. Goliath had come up with a solution—only it wasn’t a solution at all, because Saul didn’t believe he could best the cretin in a duel and he didn’t think there was anyone in the whole of his kingdom who could. Goliath was like war made flesh. He was a dragon. In a way, Saul even admired the Philistine’s unspeakable audacity; he admired him even as he was terrified of him; and his admiration, his envy of Goliath’s aplomb, was like a whetstone to the sharp edges of his fear and hate.
“Saul, Saul, Saul baby!” Goliath boomed. “What are we doing? Fight me and we can end this war right now. Think of your soldiers, man. Think of their lives! Who knows…you might even win!”
There came a tittering of laughter from the Philistines.
From the Israelite ranks one of the new recruits had had enough of waiting. He stepped forward, brandishing his spear:
“Cowards! Hide behind a single man! You’re all shit! Hear? Heathen dogs!”
There was a cheer from his countrymen. The Philistines rattled their glinting weapons and banged their shields and began to yell.
Goliath, smirking, arched a brow at the young Israelite where he stood posed on the ridge with his polearm in the air.
“You talk brave, boy,” he said. “Why don’t you come on down and show us how it’s done?”
The hoplite gawked. His mouth shut. He glanced quickly down at Goliath, gulped, then sank back into the lines.
Saul gritted his teeth.
Far back from where the king stood, David son of Jesse hunkered with his brothers at the rear of the Israelite army. He was the youngest of his clan and had not been conscripted to fight for Saul. He was a slender, willow-limbed shepherd boy of seventeen. He was slim, but his arms and legs—which bore a lattice of scars from his encounters with leopards and brown bears, striped hyenas and vicious bat-eared wolves—were strong and quick, and his reflexes were fast. He could run long distances without tiring and his skin was deeply tanned from his years of walking in the Bethlehemite hills, tending his flock in the glare of the scorching sun. His brown eyes were clear, restless, and behind them, at the core of who he was, there burned a tremendous inchoate yearning for greatness begging to be expressed, which he was aware of but could not explain and which he believed—with that certain hubris so often the affliction of the adolescent—made him different from everyone he knew.
He was there at the behest of his father, who wanted news of the war but was too enfeebled to complete the journey to the lines himself. He’d come bearing a knapsack of roasted grain and loaves of unleavened bread and he was in the act of conferring these alms to his brothers when he heard Goliath’s voice.
The boy grew still. It was the voice from his dream. It was the voice of the lion. He felt a sudden shiver of frisson down his spine and a sensation of ineffability, as of a sail, once limp and without meaning, becoming not only flushed with wind but turning in the direction of a heading, of being conveyed down a path, surged through him like a pulse. He stood unconsciously and craned his face to the west. When he spoke his voice sounded alien to his ears.
“Who is that?”
“Goliath,” answered Ellab, his cheeks stuffed with bread.
“Champion of the Philistines,” said Shammah. “He’s issued a challenge to our whole army, King Saul included. Says if any of us can beat him in a fight it’ll decide the war.”
“No one will fight him?” David asked.
“You wouldn’t be surprised if you saw him,” Ellab said. “They don’t make em any bigger. Uglier neither…where ya goin?”
David had turned and started off toward the front. He didn’t answer. He walked into the rank and file and was swallowed from sight.
Ellab shrugged and continued eating.
David walked. He advanced steadily, without faltering, threading the lines like a figure in a dream. In his left hand he carried a thin oak stave; over his shoulder and across his chest was draped his shepherd’s pouch. Against his right hip, tucked into the rope cinched around his waist, was a leather sling. The hoplites surrounding him paid the boy no attention. He walked. He could smell the heady musk of the men’s sweat as he slipped between them, feel the tension of their bodies and the warmth of the sun soaking into his skin. He could hear his heart pumping and the roil and clench of his bowels. He was apprehensive but he was not afraid. He walked, and he let that thrumming dream-feel—You are he—guide him, and he did not question it.
“C’mon, cowards!” boomed
(the lion)
Goliath’s voice. “C’mon, let’s have a fight—” and David stepped forward out of the vanguard.
The valley and the armies facing off across it were quiet. David gazed down at the basin floor, seeing the massive grinning figure in bronze there for the first time, and then to his right, where he saw the commander of the king’s army in helm and breastplate. Presently the commander, a man named Abner and cousin to the king, approached along the ridge, wagging his spear before him, shouting: “Get back fool! This is a warzone! What’s wrong with you?”
“Doesn’t look like a warzone to me. And from where I stand it seems you’re the ones being made fools of. Have you no pride?”
Abner halted in his tracks as abruptly as if he’d been struck. “What… What did you just say?”
“I’ll fight the giant,” said David, the words leaving his mouth before he even knew he was going to say them. It was as if someone else was speaking through him. “He doesn’t scare me.”
A gasp of breath and mutter of disbelief from the Israelites; Abner stood eyeing the boy as if trying to discern whether or not he was mad (shepherds could go a little daft, after all). David felt a hand on his shoulder and faced round to see the king’s grim, benighted eyes staring levelly into his.
“What is it you want?” Saul said.
“I’ll fight Goliath,” David said.
“No,” Saul said.
“The boy’s crazy,” Abner spoke to himself in a tone of marvel.
“I’m not crazy,” David said (though he wasn’t sure if this was true; he had no idea what was happening. He felt out of control). “And I’m not afraid. I can beat this guy.”
“You really are crazy if yonder Philistine doesn’t scare you,” Saul said. “Goliath is a famous warrior, renowned across Canaan for his savagery in battle. How old are you, son?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen. And what have you done in that time to give you such confidence? By your staff and your garb I assume you’re a shepherd of some sort…tell me. Do you have much experience in combat, out in the hills walking with your lambs?”
“Not with men,” David said. His gaze fell to the giant, waiting below. The Philistine was staring up at him, sneering and keloided beneath his spiring bronze helmet, the upper torso of his scaled bronze armor effulgent now in a slant of sun. His sword was sheathed at his hip and his huge bronze javelin rested in the crook of his shoulder. David looked back at Saul, and what the king beheld there abiding in the depths of the boy’s luminous eyes frightened him truly in much the same way as did Goliath and he recoiled. “Not men,” David said. “But I’ve gone up against every hungry animal this country has to offer and I’m still here…what’s a Philistine next to a starving bear?”
There was something mocking in the boy’s voice, in the little upturns at the corners of his hairless lips, that was not lost on Saul. All at once he wanted the kid away from him. So be it, he thought. Sweating, he broke from David’s gaze, looked at Abner and said: “Round up some armor. You should be able to find something that’ll fit him. And fetch a weapon.”
“Sir—” Abner said.
"Now."
“There’s no need,” David said, and before either the king or his commander could say anything more he stepped over the ridge and descended the slope.
They watched him go.
“Sir,” Abner said. “My king…what if he loses?”
Behind them, a tide of excitement and curious babbling sounded constantly from the ranks:
“What’s happening?”
“Just a kid…”
“He’s actually gonna do it…the kid’s gonna fight Goliath!”
He would show them all. At the base of the slope David crouched and scrutinized the valley floor intently. He knew what he was looking for and found it straightaway. In the rainy season this channel flooded, and everywhere now among the spars of grass and wildflowers he spied smooth round stones as in the bed of a creek. He began to pluck these up and place them into his pouch. If asked, he could not have said what he was doing there nor why, only that he was driven to it by an imperative he could neither reason with nor articulate. It was similar to what he felt when inspired to sing his poems to his flock (the only one’s who’d listen), but also very different. If there was grace in this feeling it was the kinetic grace of a stalking carnivore, and it was dangerous. He felt voltaic. Stooping in the cool valley shade, probing through the blades of grass for rocks, he heard again the voice from his dream—You feel a call to greatness but don’t know what—and again he had that strange, exhilarating sensation of being borne, as if his movements were not wholly his own. All his life he’d been underestimated. He would prove his merit here today. Never again would he be treated as the runt of the litter, left to caretake for a sick old man while his brothers rode off to glory. Never again would he be ignored.
Goliath, watching all the while, frowned. When the boy stood and resumed his approach, Goliath understood that this was to be his opponent and his perplexity flared into contempt. He shouted up at Saul: “What’s this? Saul? I challenge you to a fight and you send a baby in your place?”
David stopped with about twenty yards between them, and yes: the Philistine was big. It was now the shepherd experienced his only moment of doubt and it shot through him like a draught of bad water. Chilly sweat sprang across his brow. His throat went dry. What was coming would happen fast. He knew what he had to do, and under ordinary circumstances could, and had—but these weren’t ordinary circumstances, and that was not an ordinary man. He would have only one chance—two at most. If he failed he would be cut down.
His heart was like a frantic bird trapped in his chest. But his hands were still.
Goliath growled: “Get out of here, boy. I ain’t fighting no kid. Go home to your mommy.”
“Do you concede?” David asked.
“Cute,” Goliath growled. “Run along now. This ain’t a nursery.”
David didn’t move.
Saul stood with his toes gripping to the lip of the ridge, looking down.
The Philistines chortled and jeered.
“Fight me or concede,” David said.
“I’m warning you kid,” Goliath said, taking up his spear. “I’ll water these hills with your blood.”
“I accept,” David said.
Goliath stepped forward. David dropped to a knee. As he did he set down his staff, removed his sling from his waistband and swiftly ratcheted one of the stones he’d collected into its leather pocket. Goliath came on. The shepherd rose. Goliath charged and David whirled the sling in his hand, whirling it above his head. Faster and faster. Goliath came on and David swung the sling round and then he let go one of its tails and the stone cupped within flew. It beamed across the space between them like a bolt of lightning and struck the giant square between his eyes with a meaty thock! Goliath pitched to the earth.
Silence from the watchers. David, as if possessed, sprinted forward. When he got to where Goliath had fallen he seized the hilt of the Philistine’s sword and drew it out and then he kicked his helmet away and knotted a fist in the sweaty coils of Goliath’s dense black hair. He lifted the dripping head so that he looked into Goliath’s lost and fluttering eyes with their capillaries shattered and the glaze of death already spreading over them and he slashed the blade into the man’s stubbled throat. When he was done he straightened and turned round holding high for all to see the giant’s great and severed head. The bearded mouth slack and hanging open, the flaccid face and neck stump pouring blood. The eyes half-lidded, sightless crescents gleaming white.
Panic spread among the Philistines. Their ranks began to mill and shout and back away, jostling against each other where they stood bunched and stunned like a herd of frightened horses. Saul knew an opportunity when he saw one and drew his sword and raised it, crying out: “To battle!” The Israelites charged. They surged like a stampede, an avalanche. They raced down the hillside and across the valley, splitting round David who stood in a daze looking at Goliath’s corpse and then rejoining once they were past and surging up the far slope. Hooting and yelling and they fell upon the Philistines and slaughtered them without mercy and the Philistines turned and fled. David remained as he was long after the armies had gone, staring down at the mutilated body with the dust of the Israelites’ charge closing slowly over him and Goliath’s blood saturating the sand beneath his feet.
Dawn of a Giant Slayer
He was sitting in the shade of a terebinth tree, sitting in the dirt with his back to the trunk and playing a melody on his harp when he heard a rustling in the tall grass ahead of him.
He stood. It was day and the sky was blue and empty and the tall grass stretched in a yellow haze beneath the sun as far as he could see. The rustling came again, and now David could see the tops of the shoots of grass ahead shivering and swaying. Something was coming towards him through the grass. He reached for his sling but it wasn’t there. He looked round for his staff but couldn’t find it. He held his harp cocked at his shoulder as if he thought to use it as a weapon and the lion stepped out of the swale.
A huge tawny lion with a dark brown mane and wry amber eyes. The forking veins and marbled muscles of its forelegs rippling and popping beneath the golden grain of its fur as they flexed and lifted and set back down again. It was so big its emergence seemed unending, and when it was clear of the grass it sat in the dirt with its long tufted tail swishing behind it, regarding David calmly where he stood terrified with his harp poised.
The lion spoke.
You are he, it said.
Its voice was like a peal of thunder. David was so caught off-guard he couldn’t reply.
You feel a call to greatness but don’t know what, the lion said. I will be your path.
What? David managed, blinking.
You’ll know me when you see me, the lion said. I don’t have to explain myself to you.
But—
You’ll know me, the lion said. It raised a paw to its muzzle and gave it a lick. You will touch my mind and I will crumble. Out of the eater comes not meat but gold.
What? David said. I don’t understand…
But as he watched the lion’s head began to turn on its neck, revolving until its chin pointed at the sky and its mane hung to the earth, and then with a burst of blood the head dislodged and thudded to the dirt. Blood sprayed and the body, upright for a moment more, teetered and collapsed to its side. The ribcage began to pulse, and then distend, and then balloon, and then it split and David saw a bloody sword rise up from the gape and stand there as if planted in the lion’s flesh. Dangling from the sword’s hilt was a golden crown.
As soon as David saw the crown he knew it was meant for him. He stepped forward and took it into his hands. Holding it, he felt a power such as he’d never imagined rushing through him. He became incandescent. It was as if he’d been sublimated into a nova of shining sunlight, and he placed the golden crown atop his head…
He woke in the dark wet with sweat, the sensation of having been ignited still humming in his skin. A dream. Only a dream. He sat up. He was in his hut, a simple hut of mud and stone he shared with his father, lying on a bed of grass in the semi-dark. There was light there, but it was not the light of morning (though he sensed that dawn was not far off), rather the light of a low fire, and looking toward it he saw the old man squatting beside the dull orange flames, turning loaves of bread set in the clay before the coals with a stick.
He sat there, feeling the remnants of the dream fade inside him. The feeling faded, but would not diminish entirely. You feel a call to greatness but don’t know what... He looked out the hut’s open doorway, to the cold stars he could see there winking in the morning dark over the hills.
When the old man saw that the boy was awake, he rasped: “I want you to go to the front today.”
“But the herd—”
“Never mind the herd,” the old man said. “I have some things for your brothers. Bread and grain. Bring back news of the war. I’ll take care of the sheep.”
It was dark yet when he set out. He walked west toward the lines in the pre-dawn cool, in the dewy fragrance of the waking flowers, walking with his staff, the heavy knapsack slung about his shoulders. The first wan light that preceded sunrise was at play across the face of the sky. David felt very fine.
Hitching the sack about his shoulders, he began to run.