18
The Destroyer

I have come to the end of the terrors, Othniel. The worst was the last one.

A blood sun had set in the west, as it had so often over the past months. I was on duty in the palace, walking along the rooftop and enjoying the evening breeze that was finally blowing down the Nile after many days of hot, pregnant air. I tried to find some joy in the moment. I failed.

I had no knowledge of what the final plague would be, the one Moses said would release the Hebrews at last. After the nine that had come before, I couldn’t imagine anything could possibly be conjured that would change the mind of the king if nothing else had worked. Our land was devastated in every way, our gods humiliated and defeated, our proud people reduced to begging and searching for scraps.

I replaced the guard for the coming second watch and returned to my quarters. Sleep came to me quickly.

I dreamed the nightmare again, the very night the last plague came. I was on the boat again. The sails were black. Black was draped across it everywhere, as it always was.

But this time a man stood on the bow of the ship. He had immensely broad shoulders, the build of a warrior, and his face was hidden in shadow.

I wanted to approach him to see what his purpose was, for I knew even while I slept that the dream was different from what came before it. I sensed he was looking at me, though I could not see his eyes.

“Who are you?” I heard myself asking.

He said nothing. Did nothing. Only stood there. The water passed silently all around us as we sailed beneath the river.

Cold, deep fear crept into my soul. The figure did not move, did not say anything, but his presence made me feel such dread as nothing in my life to that point had ever made me feel.

He was death. He was the Destroyer.

I awoke, shivering. Puzzled.

The night was brilliant, I remember. I rose from my mat and looked out the window. It was the clearest night in a long time. The dream had disturbed me deeply. The silence of it. The menace of the man I had seen in shadow.

I went on the roof to cool off from my night sweat. I remember taking a pitcher of water with me as a refreshment while I watched the city twinkle in the night and tried to calm my nerves.

I took a long drink and then put the pitcher down. It was midnight. I could tell by the stars and the moon.

And then the moon disappeared, like someone had suddenly doused it as though it were a campfire. I squinted at the place where it had been. The stars still shone brightly, but the moon was gone.

No, I then realized, feeling my flesh shiver. Something was blocking it.

An outline emerged in the sky, a spreading mass of darkness. At first I thought another darkness plague was coming, but that did not make any sense.

Yet the darkness grew in the sky. Rather than swallow everything as before, the darkness instead stopped its spreading and took on a specific outline I had trouble recognizing at first. But when I did, I felt the last remaining fleck of courage I had after all that had befallen us shrivel away.

It was the outline of the man I had seen, the broad-shouldered warrior. He was as vast as the heavens and was moving toward us. The figure was so impossibly large, Othniel, that it could have picked up the palace itself and tossed it over the hills like a mere stone. And then I saw the outline of the sword of the ages, a sword greater than the mightiest storm that had ever rolled in from the east. The sword rose higher and higher, the Destroyer’s wrath growing eternally.

I recoiled as though the blade’s edge was about to come down on me, and indeed it did, all in a blinding rush. The sky became completely black. Wind erupted from every direction. Fire in the heavens, smoke, fury, wrath, sand stinging my face, the building shaking beneath me.

What was happening? What was happening?

Then all went still.

The moon reappeared. The stars resumed their watch, as if nothing had occurred at all.

Later, when we had the time to discuss our experiences, once we were gone from Egypt, I found out what had happened that night. Moses had told the Hebrews in Goshen to take the blood of the lamb and mark their doors, to prepare the meal with haste and to bake without leaven, and if they did these things, the Destroyer would pass over them.

These things you know. But I, in Memphis among the Egyptians, knew none of it. I stood on the roof of the palace and tried to grasp what had just happened and whether I had gone mad at last.

The night was perfectly quiet. And then it was not.

The rush of wind and fire, instant though it had been, had woken up the city. I listened to the masses stirring. I listened to the first cries of shock, then more, then more after that, then even more until there were wails of agony that cannot be imagined and that I must fail to describe adequately, for it was the sound of suffering most profound, Othniel, the sound I had heard in the nightmare, but far, far worse.

Women screaming.

And screaming.

And screaming.

My ears hurt, it was so loud. I was bewildered by it all. What had happened?

Inside the palace below and behind me I heard even more of it. Men were joining the cries. Weeping and panic-stricken wailing. What were they seeing?

I finally roused myself enough to run into the halls. I searched around for an hour and realized there were dead bodies everywhere. Children, adults, many bodies scattered around. Who had died? Why?

I finally made it to the king’s chambers.

He was there, bare-chested and covered in sweat, pacing back and forth, holding a limp form in his arms, the deepest tears of sorrow streaming down his face.

“My son! My son! My firstborn!”

I will confess to you now that much of that night is lost to me. I have closed it away. To pry into the depths of such despair and heartache does no man any good.

But you can know that Moses and Aaron were summoned that very night, and when they appeared before Pharaoh, the mighty Thutmose III, ruler of Egypt, they saw that the king’s eyes were filled with tears. “Go,” Thutmose choked out.

I found myself standing at the edge of the palace lagoon the morning after the Destroyer came. The king was swimming back and forth across it for his daily exercise. I noticed his stroke was more frenzied than normal. All of his movements were so.

Eventually, he exited the water and let the slaves dry him off.

“Was it the Hebrew god who came?”

I looked up and realized he was talking to me.

“I do not know, my king. Forgive me.”

The agony of the loss of his child hung on the king’s face. He had none of the proud air I’d known so well. His immortal life was in danger, for he had no other male heirs to inherit his line yet. When he was fully clothed again he gestured for me to follow him.

We walked along the corridors. The bodies of the royal household had been removed and were being embalmed in the temple.

Every firstborn child. That was the curse. The end of male lines all over the kingdom. The assurance that Seth would triumph and few would make it through the Duat.

As though hearing these thoughts, Pharaoh said, “This Yahweh has halted my line.” His voice was weak and broken. I could not help but think of the man I had once fought next to and how he no longer resembled him.

“He has shown power, my king” was the only thing I could think to say.

“I have ordered the Hebrews to leave. You will oversee their departure and report to me when they are gone.”

“Yes, great king.”

“And then perhaps we could go for a ride again when you return. Like the old days.”

He looked at me with a somber expression. I smiled slightly and bowed. “Of course, great king.”

He nodded, and I retreated away. If I had known that this was the last time we would ever speak together, perhaps I would have said something more meaningful. I did think to turn around, however, when I reached the end of the corridor.

The king was staring out over the ruined gardens of his palace, out over the Nile. Perhaps he was looking toward the old training grounds of our Red Scorpions, and thinking of that day of magnificent battle we had known together.

May the Lord forgive me, but I had sympathy for him in that moment.

But only a moment.

I went north to the land of Goshen where I encountered the hordes of Hebrews, going through the Egyptian homes and taking everything with them. All of the gold and anything else to plunder was gathered.

I had not spent time among them in their masses, but here was the most clamorous of sights.

You will know of most of this because it was written down by the scribes of Moses. I will not improve upon their account.

But it was this river of people, spread in every direction in their hundreds of thousands, like a herd of cattle that had been allowed to wander, that bade me to follow them. They ambled their way from the lush green land they had been dwelling in toward the vastness of the eastern deserts.

I trailed them for a while, and then I knew. I just understood. My destiny was to go with them. It was no longer behind me in the golden land.

Their god had captivated me. A powerful god was nothing new to us, but a powerful god with compassion? A god who would destroy and destroy again everything in the empire of the ages, just to protect the laughing little girl next to me, tugging a goat along? To bring her and her family out of bondage?

I had to know more. Was it true what Moses had said? Did this god accept others?

Whatever he was, and whatever he would do, I could no longer dwell in Egypt. Startled at how quickly I had come to this knowledge, I reined in the horses and took a moment to gaze behind me, toward the west. My last Egyptian sunset.

It was not Ra. Ra had been swallowed. This sun was a remnant, a mere process of light.

The gods I had known were no more.