In that moment when I lowered my bow, it was as if I had stepped outside the battle. Perhaps I watched as the angels did, removed and distant but holding the ability to see far more than the men who were embroiled in the fight. My hazy vision made me disbelieve what was before me. We had slaughtered the men who had come to defend themselves, along with the travelers in their blue cloaks, men from Moab who had journeyed here to trade spices and dried fruit. There were no acacia branches to burn in their honor, therefore their spirits would not wish to leave their bodies. I was pained to know they would be trapped in a netherworld, far from the Iron Mountain, for no other men would rise from the blood that had been spilled, blood that was as red as ours until it pooled blackly in the earth.
The night had become a dream. The battle now was to force myself to wake from what was before me, for beyond the piles of dead men was something far more terrible than the corpses of warriors. Our men had begun to kill the women who ran from the houses. It was impossible, we did not believe in such cruelty, yet I knew it was true because I heard the voices of the slaughtered. Theirs were the screams of women, and yet there was worse still. Beneath those screams, I heard the cries of children. When I spied Amram, he became a part of the dream, changing before me into a demon, his face a demon’s face, his deeds a demon’s doings.
Our leader had said there were to be no slaves taken. I had understood this to mean we would let the women and children be, but that was not how warfare was practiced in this sorrowful world. The dog was going mad, yelping and barking, distraught as no beast should be. I held him around the back of his neck and bade him stay, breaking my nails on his rough fur. I felt maddened, as he was, by the sights before me and the wild death calls of the innocent. I nearly leapt in, but on our enemies’ behalf, against my own people. I had the urge to fight the men I’d come here with, my brethren. Confused amid the rising bloodshed, I suddenly had no idea why we believed we had the right to take what these people had, other than the fact that we wanted it and assumed we were entitled to what belonged to others, as the robbers had once wanted me and my mother and all we possessed.
I stood there, encircled by the destruction, escaping my own death by the grace of God. I no longer cared to fight, nor had I the stomach for it. I closed my eyes and waited for Mal’ach ha-Mavet to come for me, as he was meant to do when my mother and I were sent into the wilderness. Perhaps I was never intended to live past that day when Eleazar’s wife disposed of us and had been wrong to elude my fate.
I would never know if the Angel of Death meant to approach on this night of battle, for the Man from the Valley gripped me by my cloak and pulled me after him, out of Death’s grasp. Eran and I went with him, even though I could barely breathe, my heart heavy inside me, beating much too fast. I bit my lip until there was more blood to come, until it was my own. I wanted the taste of it. I deserved it.
The warrior led me to a ridge where the haze of the evening had dissipated. He had many wounds from this battle, but he paid no attention to them, just as he made no mention of the fact that I wept. We could see the massacre from here. The houses in the village were made of stone; soon they would be emptied completely. Everything these people owned would belong to us. I took off my helmet and my bloodstained cloak. I understood now that the Man from the Valley had told me not to go because he had known what might happen. He would not murder women and children and refused to see their blood shed. He’d known I was a woman, yet he’d said nothing. He’d known what his commander wanted of him, yet he’d done God’s bidding instead.
Of all who were before me, he was the only one I wished to stand beside.
THEY LET the donkeys live, heaping them with the possessions that now belonged to us, the ginger and pepper, the gourds and leeks, all manner of wine and oil and wheat, small amounts of gold, earrings and rings taken from homes and from corpses, heaps of precious cinnamon, lamps, stacks of weaponry. They took the goats and the sheep and killed the chickens. They filled leather containers with water and cheese. Everything smelled like blood.
I went back to the village to gather my arrows. They were easy to find among the slaughtered, a field of red lilies I had left behind. All I needed was to pluck them one by one from the chests and backs of the fallen. I took nothing else. While others gathered the rings from cold fingers, the wine from the storerooms, I washed the blades of my arrows in a bowl of water taken from a rain barrel, reciting a prayer as I did so, entreating Adonai not to cause those who had died tonight to suffer any further torment, pleading for Him to keep them safe from the three gates of Gehennom, the valley of hell. I could not look into the faces of the slain women and children, but I began to search among the men from Moab for those I might know.