“You have good aim, little brother,” he said to me.
My heart was hitting against my chest. I was both afraid that he would know me and perhaps more frightened that he would not. I swallowed my words and nodded simply in reply. My hands shook because of his nearness to me, and my deceit. I felt at that moment I was so clearly a woman that I was announcing myself with every breath I took. But I was not recognized. He clapped me on the shoulder heartily and still did not feel how hard my heart was beating.
I couldn’t blame Amram for not recognizing me when I had taken such care to disguise myself. The old assassin had taught me that men never see what is right before their eyes. They look in corners and under rocks, but if you are standing in front of them, they will pass you by, believing you to be no more than an olive tree, a part of the landscape and nothing more. Bar Elhanan had learned this as he skulked through the courtyards of the Temple, searching out his enemies. Disappear into something, he instructed me. Become not what you are but what is around you. A stone, a shadow, one archer among many. Mice are unseen because they cloak themselves in the darkness so often that, when they do step out before you, they appear as shadows. A shadow is viewed with the mind, not the eye, he told me. That is how you convince those around you to see you as you wish to be seen.
I had taken to wearing the assassin’s cloak in the evenings when I walked with the dog. There were rock hyrax living in burrows, and the hoof marks of ibex traveling through, in search of the waterfalls nearby, the place where it was said King David once made his camp. It was there Moringa Peregrina, the orchid with pink-white blooms that appeared every spring, could be found. David is said to have written over three hundred songs, one for every day of the year. There were no orchids where I wandered; only scrubby myrrh grew on the limestone cliffs. I plucked some out and tucked it beneath my cloak, as women often do for the value of its fresh scent, making certain to avoid the sharp stems.
The others left me to myself, accepting my reserved demeanor, while they prepared for the battle to come, testing their weapons, drinking what little wine they had brought along to sustain them. I was not the only one who was withdrawn. There was another warrior who remained on the edges of camp, refusing to eat from the ibex I had brought down, choosing to fast instead. I stumbled upon him when I went off to relieve myself far from the camp, as I did every night. This warrior recoiled from human contact; he needed no comfort, no cloak to warm him, no brothers-at-arms.
The dog did not growl when we came upon the one they called the Man from the Valley, who wound his flesh with metal. Though this went against our laws, no one dared to condemn him for his savage ways. His white braids belied his youth and were so long they trailed down his back. The other warriors said that in battle God was able to lift him out of danger, grabbing on to his hair to keep him from harm. That was why he was able to walk into a raging conflict and walk back out again, when any other man would have been slain. His flesh was covered with scars, many untended and unhealed. The metal dug into his muscular arms and left bands of blue and purple wounds.
He was kneeling beside a thornbush when I came upon him, chanting the mourning song for the dead, holding on to the sharp branches that pierced his skin to cause himself more pain. I had never seen a man so open in his agony. I felt that I could weep at the sight of him; instead I ran away.
I grabbed Eran by his neck, and together we fled far from that place, racing as if we were horses. The dust rose up, and the hyrax in their burrows hid from us. The tawny owls rose into the air above the cliffs; rattailed bats shuddered up from the jujube trees in a cloud of flesh and wings, forsaking the orange fruit on the branches.
The next day the man I’d stumbled upon was staring at me. I knew that no warrior wished to fight alongside him, for he cared not at all for his own life. He wielded his ax and no other weapon, but that ax was said to be blessed and could not miss its target. I gazed away from him, not wishing to reveal my true nature, or in any way to set a light to the fire of his fearsome rage, said to be so violent and unquenchable his brethren whispered that he fought at the right hand of Gabriel, the fiercest of all angels.
That evening we prepared for the night raid. I’d been made dizzy with the heat and the weight of my own subterfuge, along with the heavy, silver-scaled armor. We stood in line for our share of water under the harshness of the fading sun. When I asked for a portion for my dog, the fellow in charge of our rations shook his head.
“He’ll have to drink the dirt,” I was told. “There’s not enough to give the beast his share.”
I went away, troubled. I shared the provisions I’d brought with my dog and had thrown him the bones of the ibex. Nahara’s father had taught me that you feed your horse before you feed yourself, but I had barely water enough for my own parched throat. I had come to be a warrior, now I found my greatest concern was a creature I had not wanted in the first place. As I was worrying over what I might do, the Man from the Valley approached. Again the dog failed to growl. The warrior put down his share of water in its cup. He nodded to Eran.