SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

BOOK ONE: The Book of Ahab

One: The Night of Revolt in Tyre

A naked woman postured before the brazen statue.

Glowing torches made a carpet of fire below her across the wharf-side square as armed men shook their bronze spears and bellowed at her words. The torch-flames touched the metal helmets of the warriors, their shirts of chain-mail and the upper rims of their wooden shields where they were edged with copper. There was a madness in the salt air blowing in from the road-stead between the island palace of Tyre and its mainland city, and as men breathed deep of it, set their blood to boiling. 

"Baal-Melkart,” screamed the woman. The torches lifted, shaking. The soldiers roared an answer. 

"Baal-Melkart—hear us! Turn your eyes toward us, your worshipers Give us this night the victory over Phales!" 

"Victory over the tyrant. Victory over Phales!" 

The great god towered high above them all, its horned head almost in darkness where the torches failed to light it. Baal-Melkart sat upon a golden throne, high on a wagon of massive wooden beams and wooden wheels. The woman—young, with skin the color of dark cream, slim of waist and shapely of legs—threw back her mass of heavy black hair so that it tumbled below the twitching buttocks gleaming in the torchlight. Her arms went wide. Muscles tightened her sweat-wet flesh as she arched her back, proffering the swollen bowls of her heavy young breasts. 

“God of all! Father of our race, hear us!"

"Hear us," roared the men.

"Phales is evil in your eyes!”

"Evil! Evil!" 

"Touch our swords, our spears! Bless them with your godhood!” 

A thousand points rose into the night sky and were held there in the torchlight so that the jeweled eyes of the mighty Baal-Melkart might see and seeing, bless them with his own omnipotence. The girl stared up at the god, giving herself to its gaze, her loveliness covered neither by scarf nor veil. She was wanton, pagan, as she posed shamelessly, showing her god and any man who cared to look the secrets of her womanhood. 

High the image towered, of beaten gold inlaid with silver and lapis-lazuli, grim and silent, in the shape of a man with a great crown upon his horned head. It sat with strongly thewed legs apart, hands on its knees. It had been carved in realistic detail, so that it might indeed be said to hunger for the woman posing so lewdly before it. 

In the shadows of the docks that stretched outward into the harbor waters toward the rocky island that held the great stone palace of Phales, king of Tyre, three men pressed their backs against a wall. They were tall men and strong, being clad in mail-shirts and leather jerkins, with military boots on their feet. Each of them carried a long sword in a scabbard at a plain leather belt; over each shoulder, almost hidden beneath the folds of a brown wool cloak, was a small shield. 

“Saw you ever such a woman?" breathed the tallest of the three. His face was hard, with high cheekbones; a sparse black beard was trimmed close to the line of his jaw. His black eyes blazed with feral lights under down-pulled eyebrows; he seemed about to spring. 

The man who stood to his left was shorter, not so bulky through the shoulders. There was no hair on his face and he seemed younger than the others. His hands, where they clasped his belt, were white and their long fingers supple as snakes as he moved them continually in a steady motion over the leather. 

He said, "She is perfection, Ahab. Compared to her, my Ruth is like wheat after the thresher has beaten it flat.” 

"Well, didn't you come to Tyre to drop a few oats before your marriage?" rumbled the third man, not taking his eyes from the woman on the great dais that held the golden image. 

“But to arrive now—in the midst of a rebellion!" 

"You're too sensible, Rael," rasped Ahab. "This is the time to strike, when emotions are fever-hot and passions run like water in a spillway." 

“Aye, the women will be weak as newborn kittens," grunted the third man, who was almost as tall as Ahab but bulkier by far, with shoulders so wide they seemed grotesque. His hairy legs and long arms bulged with muscle. "They'll tumble to our pull like wool to the shearers' knives." 

Rael smiled thinly, almost envious of the sheer animal spirits of the heavier, stronger Jehu. He wished in his heart he could be more like him, but there was a sensitivity in him that was absent from his companions. He could admire the beauty of the naked woman posturing above them, yet be aware of his own inadequacy before it. Neither Ahab nor Jehu were so affected; they saw in the priestess only a woman with whom to slake their lusts. 

Ahab clamped a powerful band on his wrist. "Be ready, you two. They're breaking up—getting ready to cross the harbor." 

"Where Phales waits like a fly for the spider, helpless to escape. Ithobaal is a smart man. He lets his king hole up in the one spot from which there can be no running." 

Rael chuckled. "Always you see things with the eye of a soldier, Jehu. Is there no perception of beauty in your heart? To turn from the sight of a lovely girl to—well, to killing—smacks of an obtuseness which—" 

Jehu bellowed laughter and hugged the slighter man against him with an arm like the bole of a cedar. "Rael, you are answered out of your own words. You're a physician. You see in that shameless little tart a fine body full of health and vitality. Beauty, if you will, since that makes up beauty in your eyes." 

Even Ahab chuckled. "Each to his own. And now, since I am a prince in Israel, I think it's time I gave the orders. Jehu, Rael—be ready. The men are thinning out. They're starting across the mole. The girl will be alone with her god very soon, now." 

"Aye, she's done her work. She's roused the blood in them." "To kill," commented Rael. 

“To kill, to rape—they're brothers of a sort," snapped Jehu, still looking at the girl. "Frenzies which overtake a man in his blood heat." 

She was turning away from the statue to stare at the river of armed men flooding into the boats which would carry them across the harbor to the island palace of King Phales. Perspiration covered her slim body; her thick black hair was plastered to her smooth shoulders and upper arms; her jutting breasts rose and fell in rhythm to her labored breathing. In the light from the few remaining torches, thrust into copper holders around the brazen statue, she made a barbaric sight to the three men staring from the shadows. 

Ahab sighed and stood away from the wall, tugging his sword-belt around in front of him so the braided hilt of his long-sword was ready to his hand. He shook out his woolen cloak and slipped the shield from the thongs that held it suspended from his shoulders. 

"No," he said quickly, without looking behind him. 

They made a wedge of mailed flesh and muscle, striding forward. Most of the rebels were being rowed in boats across to the palace; only a few remained and these were gathered about a bronze arm, lifting its harness clamps and fastening them to the traces on small gray asses. In a moment greased hubs were creaking as the heavy ram began to move onto a flat barge. 

Ahab waited until the ram was gone. 

Then he moved swiftly, approaching the brazen statue, putting a hand on a painted ornament of the wheeled dais, drawing himself upward. His scabbard clanked against its chains; at its sound the woman turned to stare down at him. 

"You're no Phoenician," she said suddenly. 

Ahab grinned up at her. From this position he could look along her sleek thighs upward beyond her mounded belly to the thrusting breasts. Aie, she was a beauty! Lovelier by far than any girl in his father's palace at Samaria. Or at Jezreel either, for that matter. It was hard to breathe, staring up at her like this. 

"Not I,” he agreed lightly and renewed his climbing. 

There was no fear in her. She must have seen Rael and Jehu behind him, climbing also—like men pursuing a strange, impossible dream, the thought came to him—as they rose upward to lay hands on this Tyrian harlot. 

“Israelites," the girl said suddenly, and laughed. Her palms clapped together, imperiously. 

The great dais lurched forward, jerkily. It was a wide, broad wagon, that mighty pantechnicon, and inside it was a hollow space. There were men in that space, Ahab realized suddenly; slaves, brawny black men from Africa and bearded Hittites and Aramaeans—war prisoners—whose duty it was to transport the god from the Temple into this city square. Now they were taking it back to the Temple. 

The sudden movement of the dais shook his handholds loose. Desperately Ahab and his companions scrabbled for new grips. Pressed to the wood, they fought to keep from falling. 

The god-wagon was moving faster. Faster.

Ah, but—

Not toward the Temple! No!

Ahead of the swiftly rolling wagon was a stone wall.

Rael shouted and fell away, landing on a hip, rolling to avoid the mighty wooden wheel that towered high above him. At the same instant he saw Jehu flash past as he leaped. 

"Ahab! Jump!” he screamed. 

Ahab clung to the wooden dais, knowing his death was upon him. He could not climb fast enough to avoid the stone wall against which the heavy dais, weighted now by the golden image of Baal-Melkart, soon would crash. Nor could he jump safely from this angle as Jehu had jumped, far enough from the rotating hubs to avoid the crushing wheels. He was caught between wall and wood like a grain of wheat between millstone and grinding wheel. 

The breath rasped harsh in his throat but he never looked away from the girl bending above him and smiling cruelly. Her black eyes were alive with the lust to kill and her full red mouth twisted into a grotesque imitation of its former loveliness. Forgotten were her breasts and loins, forgotten the silken sheen of her soft flesh and the shapeliness of her thighs. All he could see were those eyes. 

He drowned in them, lost in their glistening wonder. It seemed he looked into depths of lust so evil that his skin crawled, not with disgust but with a strange, hot eagerness to know those depths of degradation, those nameless delights which this woman alone could give. She was too far above him to reach or he would have put a hand about her ankle and drawn her down to die beside him. 

Her laughter rose mockingly, as though she could see inside his eyes to his mind benumbed by the vision in her own. "You will never know, Israelite," she breathed. “You die—without knowing." 

The wall was at his back.

“Ahab! My prince!” 

The words rose up from the tortured throat of a man who would have given everything he owned to be where the prince of Israel now clung, inches from a grinding death. Rael stared with the horror clear to read in his eyes. Jehu was yanking out his iron sword, running to mount the dais from the side, shouting oaths. 

"Prince?” whispered the girl staring down at Ahab.

She cried out suddenly, rising and waving a hand. 

Feet slid. Men flung themselves on wooden brakes, to force and hold them against the wheels. There were torturous squeals of wood on wood and smoke came where the friction started tiny fires. 

The god-wagon slowed, lurched.

Ahab felt the stones at his back, biting in. The pressure was tremendous; it seemed that Baal-Melkart leaned his golden weight against him so that he could not breathe; his ribs bent and he expected to hear them snap. He was like a beetle crushed between the thumb and forefinger of a scholar. 

Held helpless, unable to keep his face from twisting in pain, he watched the girl kneel above him. "Who are you, Israelite? What is your name?" 

"Ahab, son of Omri. I am prince of Israel." 

She called down to the men in the dais hollow, "Back, draw it back. Release him. But—be easy. I don't want him hurt." She smiled at Ahab then and his senses reeled at the pleasure her smile gave to him. 

As the pantechnicon backed from the wall, Jehu and Rael ran between its timbers and the stone wall and began to climb. Their hands reached upward, caught Ahab under his arm. As he eased the strained muscles that held him to the joists, they lowered him to the cobbles. 

When they looked up, the girl was gone. 

They leaned Ahab against the wall of a dockside ware house that stared out over the harbor waters, letting him get his breath back. Rael was probing his deep chest-his mail shirt and leather jerkin lay on the street-with delicate finger tips, forehead furrowed in concentration. As his fingers moved, the tenseness went out of his muscles and his features eased their hardness. 

"No bones broken, for which give thanks to Yahweh." 

"I shall dedicate a dozen golden bowls for His worship, I swear it," he panted. The sweat stood out on his forehead, ran down into his eyes and along his ashen cheeks; the touch of death was still on Ahab. 

He leaned his head against the stone wall and drew deep breaths. Jehu took a corner of his cloak and wiped his face. Ahab opened his eyes and smiled wolfishly, showing even white teeth. 

"I will have that woman, that priestess," he breathed. 

"Some other time," Rael nodded, handing Ahab his garments. 

“This night, before the sun rises."

"Ahab, be reasonable.” protested Rael. 

"She thinks she has-beaten me. No woman can do that to me and not-suffer a little in consequence. Just give me a few minutes. I'm all right." 

Jehu said nothing. His eyes were occupied with the distant palace of Phales, who would be king of Tyre no longer after this night. From the open sea behind the palace ships were moving in, low pentecosters with catapults hurling fireballs and mighty stones. Across the harbor other boats, filled with men armed with bows and quivers of iron-tipped arrows, were firing steadily at the palace walls, sweeping them clean of life. The palace quays held spear-men drawing back to give the bronze ram room to swing; its hollow poundings at the brazen gate made a booming noise which echoed and re-echoed across this corner of the city. 

The rebels under Ithobaal would be a few hours at their fighting, Jehu knew. Phales would be unlikely to give up his crown without a battle to the death. If Ahab were intent on bedding a Phoenician harlot, the time to strike was now. His hand touched his sword-hilt, then fell away. 

"The temple will be well guarded," he growled. 

Ahab nodded. “I don't want the temple. I want a woman. There'll be ways to come at her. As a worshiper, if need be." 

Rael gasped at the suggested sacrilege, and was troubled. Although Ahab, like his father Omri, was no intimate of Yahweh as David and Solomon had been fifty years and more before, still he was heir to the throne of Israel. If word got out that Ahab had joined in the worship of Baal-Melkart, there would be trouble in Samaria, where the prophet Elijah was preaching these days. 

He was about to protest when Ahab pushed away from the wall to slip the mail shirt over his head. As he tied the strings of his leather jerkin, Ahab said, “You two can remain behind. When I'm done I'll find you at the inn where we're staying." 

Rael looked at Jehu, who shrugged. Rael said, “We won't desert you.” He would have stepped forward except that Jehu put a hand on his shoulder and held him. 

“Let him go. He wants to be alone with her. We'd only be in the way.” Jehu whispered so that only Rael might hear him; aloud he said to Ahab, “Go, then. I'll be busy myself this night. There's a serving wench at the inn who caught my eye earlier, when we were eating." 

Ahab nodded, smiling faintly. He turned and was soon lost in the shadows, with only the swaying motion of his cloak to show where he walked. In a moment he turned the corner and was gone. 

“If you think I'm going to ..." Rael began. 

Jehu silenced him with a fierce motion of his hairy hand. "Oh, we'll follow him, never fear. But let him go first, and alone. He came to Tyre for adventure, where he isn't known. Let him find it." 

"But a priestess of the god! Won't the Phoenicians think it's a sort of—well, sacrilege?” 

Jehu snorted, “Baal-Melkart is brother to Astarte, isn't he? And to the harlot goddess any sort of embrace is holy." 

Rael growled, “It's a funny kind of religion that makes sacred the most intimate relations between a man and woman." 

"It goes back a long time, Rael, this worship of Astarte. You find her everywhere. They call her Ishtar in Babylon and Assyria, Ashtoreth in Philistia. In Egypt she's known as Isis." 

"But why worship a harlot?" 

“It isn't a harlot they worship but the creative principle. As a physician, you should understand that.” 

"Oh! Life and the generative powers of a woman." 

"And of a man." Jehu's glance was sly. "If you'd lived a little instead of burying your face in scrolls and medical texts, you'd understand even better than I the theory behind it.” 

Rael grinned in embarrassment. "I understand the theory. Ever since man began to realize he was man, he realized that his safety and his comfort depended on having a lot of people in his tribe. As a result, that which gave him people—the phallus and the yoni—came to be sacred in his sight." He added wryly, "The theory I know, it's the practice that con fuses me." 

Jehu nudged him with an elbow. "Come on, it's time to go after him. But don't let him see you. Let him think he's completely on his own." 

They walked swiftly through the Phoenician night, cloaks up to shield their faces. Behind them the palace of King Phales began to glow with fire. 

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