Under the guise of tightening the siege around the city we put up a new group of tents on the western side of the hill and built a corral to hold horses, all out of bowshot range. One of the tents, the largest, was where we started digging. Joshua provided hundreds of men. None of them were slaves; there were no slaves in the Israelite camp. The men worked willingly. Not without complaining, arguing, grumbling. But they dug, while Lukka and his Hittites, as the Israelites called them, supervised the work.
Getting rid of the dirt became an immediate problem. We filled the tent with baskets of it by day, then carried the baskets a mile or so from the city and dumped them in the dark of night.
Timbers to shore up the tunnel were another problem, since trees were so scarce in this rocky desert land. Teams of men were sent northward along the river, to the land called Galilee, where they bartered for wood among the villagers who lived by that lake.
The ground was not too difficult for the bronze and copper pickaxes we had, so long as we stayed above bedrock. The layer of easy soil was barely deep enough to dig a tunnel. Our diggers had to work flat on their bellies. Later, I knew, when we reached the foundations of the two outer retaining walls, we would have real troubles.
I spent the nights with Helen, each of us growing edgier as the time dragged slowly by. She wanted to get away from this place, to resume our southward trek to Egypt.
“Leave now, tonight, right now,” she exhorted me. “Just the two of us. They won’t bother trying to follow or bring us back. Lukka is handling the digging, that’s all they really want of you. We can get away!”
I stroked her golden hair, glowing in the pale light of the moon. “I can’t leave Lukka and his men. They trust me. And there’s no telling what Joshua would do if we ran off. He’s a fanatic. He might slaughter Lukka and the men once the tunnel is finished: sacrifice them to his god.”
“What of it? They will die one day, sooner or later. They are soldiers, they expect to be killed.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Orion, I’m afraid of this place. I’m afraid that the gods you visit will take you away from me forever.”
With a shake of my head I told her, “No. I promised you I would bring you to Egypt and that is what I will do. Only after that will I deal with the one I seek.”
“Then let us go to Egypt now! Forget Lukka and the others. Tell the gods to bring us to Egypt now, tonight!”
“I don’t tell the gods anything,” I said.
“Then let me speak with them. I am a queen, after all, and a daughter of Zeus himself. They will listen to me.”
“There are times,” I said, “when you speak like a spoiled little child who is so totally self-centered that she deserves a spanking.”
She knew when she had reached the limit of my patience. Winding her arms around my neck, she breathed, “I’ve never been spanked. You wouldn’t be so brutal to me, would you?”
“I might.”
“Couldn’t you think of some other punishment?” Her fingers traced down my spine. “Something that would give you more pleasure?”
I played the game. “What do you have in mind?”
She spent much of the night showing me.
Although Helen and I usually took our meals with Lukka and the men, at our own fire by our own tents, now and then Joshua or Ben-Jameen would invite me to have supper with them. Me, alone. They made it clear that women did not eat with the men. I declined most of these invitations, but out of politeness I accepted a few.
Joshua was always surrounded by the elders or priests, with plenty of servants and women bustling around his table. The talk was always of the destiny of the Children of Israel, and how their god rescued them from slavery in Egypt and promised them dominance over this land they called Canaan.
Ben-Jameen, his father, and brothers spoke of different things when I ate with them. The old man recalled his days of slavery in Egypt, laboring as a brickmaker for the king, whom he called pharaoh. Once I hinted that Joshua seemed like a fanatic to me. The old man smiled tolerantly.
“He lives in the shadow of Moses. It is not easy to bear the burden of leadership after the greatest leader of all men has gone on to join Abraham and Isaac.”
Ben-Jameen chimed in, “Joshua is trying to make an army out of a people who were slaves. He is trying to create discipline and courage where there has been little more than hunger and fear.”
I agreed that it took an extraordinary man to accomplish that. And I began looking at these Israelites with fresh eyes, afterward. Unlike the Achaians at Troy, who were the topmost level of a strictly hierarchical society, the warrior class, hereditary plunderers, the Israelites were an entire nation: men, women, children, flocks, tents, all their possessions, wandering through this sun-blasted land of rocks and mountains seeking a place of their own. They had no warrior class. The only special class I could see were the priests, and even they worked with their hands when they had to. I began to feel a new respect for them, and wondered if the promises of their god would ever be fulfilled.
Shortly after noon on the fourth day of the digging, Lukka came out of the big tent, squinted up painfully at the merciless sun, and walked toward me. As always, no matter heat or cold, he wore his leather harness and weapons. I knew that his coat of mail and his iron helmet were close to hand. Lukka was ready for battle at all times.
I was standing on a low rise, examining the distant wall of Jericho. Not a sign of activity. Not a sentry in sight. The city wavered in the heat haze as the sun blasted down on my bare shoulders and neck. I had stripped down to my kilt.
We had fired a few flaming arrows into the city that morning. Each day we made a small demonstration of force somewhere along the western wall, to make the city’s defenders believe that we were there probing for a weak spot. But in the noonday sun no one stirred. Or, hardly anyone.
Lukka was dripping sweat by the time he reached me. I had tuned my body to accommodate the heat, opening up the capillaries just under the skin and adjusting my body temperature. Like any human being, I needed water to stay alive. Unlike ordinary humans, I could keep the water in my vital systems for a much longer time; I sweated away only a small fraction of it.
“You must be part camel,” Lukka said, as I offered him the canteen I carried. He gulped at it thirstily.
“How goes the work?” I asked.
“We’ve reached the base of the outermost wall. I’ve given the workers some of our own iron spear points to attack the bricks. They’re as hard as stone.”
“How long will it take to break through?”
He shrugged his bare shoulders, making the leather harness creak slightly. “A day for each one. We could work the night through.”
“Let me see,” I said, striding toward the tent.
It was cooler under its shade, but the air inside the tent was close and confining. Dust hovered, thick enough to make me sneeze. Lukka ordered the workers to stop and leave the tunnel. I got down on my hands and knees, ducked into the darkness, and wormed my way forward.
The tunnel had been dug wide enough for two men to crawl through, side by side. Lukka went in with me, slightly behind. We carried no lights, but every dozen feet or so the workers had poked a reed-thin hole up through the ground’s surface. They provided air to breathe and a dim scattering of light that was barely enough to avert total darkness.
Quickly enough we came to the tunnel’s end: a blank facing of stone-hard bricks. Two short poles lay on the ground, each with an iron spear point lashed to it. The bricks were scratched and gouged.