Day of War Read Online Free Page A

jaw. Benaiah shrugged the shield straps off his back in order to move better and dove for the spear handle, landing on top of it, ripping it back out of the lion’s face.
    Jairas appeared again, still trying to hack at the animal’s hide. This time his aim went true, and he slid the tip of the sword into the lion’s flank. Benaiah hauled the spear up and shoved it into the bloody fur. It stopped against bone. He pulled it back and shoved it again, this time finding the soft underbelly in front of the rear leg.
    The lion spun in a circle, knocking Jairas over and pulling Benaiah back to the ground. Benaiah clung to the shaft as the lion triedto run away. The spearhead was now lodged in the rib cage — a killing blow, if Benaiah could hold on long enough.
    The lion turned and lashed out with its paw once more. Benaiah dodged it, yelling curses and pushing the spear as hard as he could. Every muscle in his arms burned with exhaustion.
    The animal snarled and slipped onto its side. It tried to stand again but couldn’t. A leg kicked several times as a spurt of dark blood erupted from the spear wound in its flank. It lashed at them again, weaker. It coughed blood from its lungs, along with the coppery smell of rotting flesh and blood. With a final swipe of its paw, it bit at the rocks and the earth before lying still.
    Benaiah let his face fall into the snow and released the spear shaft. The ice felt good against his eyelids. His face started to go numb against the snow, and he wished he could make that numbness permeate the rest of his body.
    He took several deep breaths, then stood and walked to the lion’s head. He prodded the remaining eye with his foot to ensure that it was dead. No response. Benaiah had once walked away from a kill only to be attacked from behind. He believed that these creatures were capable of hate. Satisfied that this one was dead, he looked around for his companions.
    Jairas was fumbling with a water pouch next to the still form of Haratha, trying to work the frantic energy out of his hands. Benaiah knelt next to them and put his finger on the boy’s neck. Haratha’s eyes blinked open when Benaiah touched him.
    Haratha’s scalp was ripped into divots from the fangs, and blood poured from the tears in his thigh. His chest was sliced into ribbons of skin, exposing the bones of the rib cage. The dull, white gleam of his exposed skull was slowly becoming soaked with blood. Haratha clenched his jaw stoically.
    “You come from hard Judah stock,” Benaiah encouraged him.
    Haratha smiled weakly.
    “I will carry him,” Benaiah said to Jairas, pulling out strips of cloth to bind the wound. “You carry my weapons. We only have an hour or so before he bleeds out.”
    Benaiah pulled a vial of olive oil from his pouch and poured it into Haratha’s cuts while the icy wind bit at them. He emptied salt into the cuts as well, causing Haratha to swoon from pain and shock. Benaiah slapped his face.
    Jairas held Haratha down while Benaiah wrapped the largest wounds with bandage cloth. He tightened a knot with a stick to cease the flow of blood, which was spurting gently onto the snow and forming a scarlet pool. Finally Benaiah sat back, exhausted, and watched Haratha’s blood fill the snow. He felt the cold numbing his mind and slowing his thoughts.
    “You have wounds as well,” Jairas said.
    Benaiah examined his arm, then felt his shoulders. “Not deep. I will wash them out. But not now. The boy will die if we don’t hurry.”
    “Your bow and arrows?” Jairas said, nodding to a spot nearby. The bow’s string had snapped when the lion pounced, along with the shafts of all of the arrows in the quiver.
    Benaiah cursed. The bow was among the prizes of his weaponry, brilliantly made from something called bamboo wood by a master craftsman from lands far to the east. It had cost him a tremendous amount of gold and considerable haggling with the wily merchant. His fellow warriors, especially the archers, could