The morning wore on, the sun beat down, and the dusty white road rippled ahead. For the first time, I wondered if Father had any idea what had happened to me. No one but Yanir, the boy with the sling, knew I had gone to the hidden well. And he might not tell, for fear of getting a beating.
At noon the troops rested under oak trees at the bottom of a gully. The creek was dry this time of year, but the soldiers had water skins. “Goliath” gave me water and a piece of bread.
While I chewed the bread, I thought that even if Yanir did not tell where I had gone, B’rinna knew I had taken a coal. And they would find the lamp missing from the niche in the wall. Galya, always quick to suspect some mischief from me, would guess before long where I had gone — where else in all Ramoth-Gilead would I need a lamp, in the blazing noonday sun? Soon, now, my father would catch up with the army, pay my ransom, and take me home. Even if he was too angry with me to come himself, he would send Dov with the ransom.
The afternoon seemed longer than the morning. Uphill and downhill went the King’s Way, like the same stretch of road over and over. From time to time I was seized with panic, so that I had to bite my lips to keep from screaming. But most of the time, I felt numb, almost forgetting why I was walking this road.
In a dull-minded way, I began to look forward to the crest of each hill. As I trudged up the slope, I became hotter and hotter, and sweat rolled down my neck and under my tunic. At the top, there would be just a moment when I could stretch out my arms and let the breeze blow through my tunic. Then I would start downhill again, into the heat and dust. Once in a while I caught sight of a village or a flock of sheep on a hillside.
Late in the afternoon, a few soldiers left the line of march. They caught up with their unit again when the troops stopped to camp for the night. Two of the other soldiers carried a whole sheep on a pole between them. Niv shoved ahead of him a boy a year or so older than me. The boy wore a tunic of undyed wool and a sleeveless sheepskin jacket.
“Ho!” called Niv, grinning. “Here is my captive, and here is our feast. Who is a lucky son of a jackal now?”
After tethering the boy to a tree, the men began to cut up the sheep. Niv handed me a water skin and motioned to the boy. He wanted me to wash his wounds.
I stared at the boy’s battered face and arms. He must have put up a good fight. Moistening a corner of my sash, I stepped up to the tree.
“Who are you?” he asked as I dabbed a cut over his eye. He moved his bruised lips slowly.
I began, “I am Adara, daughter of Calev ben Oved of Ramoth-Gilead, and I — ”
He interrupted me with a short laugh. “Are you really? Well, I am Ezra ben Nobody. And I’m going to be Ezra, son of trouble, when the master finds out I’ve lost a sheep.”
I did not think much of his manners, but it raised my spirits that he could make a joke about being captured. “I thought you already were in trouble,” I said.
As I sponged his scrapes clean, Ezra told me he was a shepherd from a village near Edrei. He jerked his head toward the northeast. This time of year, he had to take his sheep far up in the hills to find grazing. He had seen the Aramean army marching south a couple of days ago, and he had hoped they and the Israelites would all kill each other. But the soldiers had reappeared sooner than he expected. “If I had known, I would have driven the flock farther away from the road.”
“That is just the way I was thinking last night,” I said eagerly. “If I had known …” I told him how I had crept through the passage to the hidden well and watched the battle from the tunnel. Ezra listened without comment until I came to the part where I dashed out to seize the firebrand, as brave and proud as Queen Jezebel.
“Wait,” he interrupted. “You were safely hidden in the tunnel, watching the battle. Then, for no reason at all, you ran out right in front of the soldiers?”
“Not for no reason — I ran out to get the fire for my lamp,” I retorted. “I did not think there were any soldiers near the cave.”
Ezra looked me up and down, then shook his head. “It is a good thing your Abba will ransom you. You would never escape on your own. As for me, I will be long gone tomorrow morning when they break camp.”
His tone was insulting, but his talk of escape gave me hope. Was Ezra boasting to make himself feel better, or could he really escape? I leaned close to him, pretending to examine a bad scrape on his elbow. “Take me with you,” I whispered. “My father will reward you.”
The boy looked at me thoughtfully. “You remind me of my silliest young ewe, Hyssop. She has a habit of stumbling into a ravine and then expecting me to pull her out.”
His words stung, but I supposed it was his right to scold me before he helped me. Our chance to talk was over, for “Goliath” ordered me to the campfire to turn the spit. The soldiers who had captured Ezra made him lie down, still tethered to the tree, and tied his hands and feet. I watched from a distance, wondering what he thought about escaping now, but his face was expressionless.
The soldiers slept heavily that night, full of mutton. I kept waking and then dozing off again, each time noticing the past-full moon farther toward the west. I did not want to be sluggish with sleep, or to awake with a cry, if Ezra tapped me on the shoulder.
The last time I woke, as the moon was low in the sky, I thought I heard a strange sound. It was only “Goliath” snoring — or was it? I thought I caught something else, a quiet sawing, under cover of the snores. I raised my head and twisted to look at Ezra’s tree. He was still there, asleep as far as I could see.
But in the morning, Ezra was gone. Niv shouted and swore when he found the cut thongs on the ground under the captive’s tree. “Demons take the sneaking jackal’s whelp! Hadad curse him to the end of his days, may they be short and miserable!” Turning to the sentry, he roared, “What did you do, stuff yourself with meat and fall asleep on watch? We could have all had our throats cut.”
The other soldiers laughed. “If your whole head was cut off, Niv, you would not miss it much,” said “Goliath.” “The boy must have had a knife. Did you not search him?”
I bit my lip to keep from crying. Ezra could have cut my bonds, too, but he had left me to the mercies of these soldiers. After I had begged him to take me! After I had let him compare me to a silly ewe! I almost wished I had told Niv that his captive planned to escape.
During the second day’s journey, I saw a herd of cattle on a distant hill. Maybe that was Father’s herd, and maybe Josef, my second half brother, was there. But he might as well have been in Samaria, for any good he could do me.
I had tried to tell Ezra I was Adara, daughter of landowner and councilor Calev ben Oved. But I was almost beginning to think that did not matter. The soldiers cared nothing about who my father was.
Ezra had not been impressed with my high status, either. Indeed, he seemed to think I was a weak, soft, foolish girl who did not deserve to be rescued. Or maybe he just thought I would put him in more danger, if he tried to take me along. Maybe he was right.
I saw now that Yanir, too, must have thought of me as a foolish girl who might put him in danger. Would he be tempted to escape punishment by pretending he knew nothing of what happened to me? After all, no one had heard us talk about the passageway to the hidden well.
The day of the battle had been a confusing time, with so many extra women and children in the house and Father and Dov away at the walls. If Yanir did not tell what he knew, if no one recognized the coal I had taken and the missing lamp as clues, Father and the others might not think of the passageway to the well. They might get the idea that I had gone off on my own and that something had happened to me in the town. They might search Ramoth-Gilead for a long time.
Galya says that demons whisper horrible thoughts to those who lie awake in the dark of the night. But my demons whispered to me in broad daylight, tormenting me mile after mile.
That afternoon, we crossed the Yarmuk River at a ford. The Yarmuk was the border between Gilead and Bashan. Now I was outside my homeland, two days’ journey from my father’s house.