Joshua Valiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim) Read Free

clutched his wounded arm.
    All ten of the warriors jerked their heads to see where the knife had come from.
    Two Anakim warriors stepped into the firelight. The one that threw the knife was about ten feet tall and about seven hundred pounds. The other was a foot higher, heavier, and with a manicured beard. They both had the fair skin and blondish red hair of the Anakim, and the doubly long necks of bulging muscle. But these two were a higher caste. Their necklaces were more gold than bones. They were rulers.
    “Lord Sheshai, lord Talmai!” blurted the captain of the unit.
    They all stood up and gave their militia salute of submission to their overlords. It was a fisted straight right arm thrust forward with a fisted left arm at a perpendicular angle jutting into the elbow of the straight arm. It was their salute to power, the only thing they held sacred as worshippers of Ba’al, the most high god of storm and power in the pantheon.
    The filet Anak im whimpered and groaned as he pulled the knife from his arm and sought to wrap the wound with a bandage.
    Sheshai and Talmai were commanders of the armed forces for the hill country region. And they were brothers of Ahiman, the fierce one.
    It was said of this mighty clan of Canaan, “Who can stand against the sons of Anak?” And of all these mighty giants, Ahiman was the most feared. He was twelve hundred pounds of brutal monstrosity. Because of this glorious reputation, the three brothers, Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai were often called by the honored name, “Sons of Arba,” their original forefather.
    The middle, Sheshai, was more of a politician, a cunning master of strategy and leadership. The youngest, Talmai, the one who threw the knife, was more aggressive and hot-tempered. He could explode with rage and everyone tried to avoid being the one to trigger it.
    Sheshai walked up to the hanging captives. He leaned in close to look at Joshua, then Caleb. He sniffed them, and muttered in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the realm, “Egyptian clothing. But you are not Egyptians. Habiru?”
    Habiru was the Canaanite term used of wandering tribes of mercenaries and troublemaking nomads. He had heard that an entire nation of Habiru had been released from slavery in Egypt and had been wandering in the desert. These Habiru may have been the very ones that his own people were looking for. It was a blood feud that went back generations.
    Sheshai noticed that Joshua was almost passed out because the blood had been rushing to his head. So he reached up and cut the rope hanging Joshua. He fell to the ground with a thud.
    Joshua began to come to his senses. He noticed he was not too far away from their pile of confiscated belongings, including their weapons.
    “Who are you, little rodent?” asked Sheshai in Akkadian again. “Where do you come from? What tribe or people?”
    But Joshua did not respond, so Sheshai repeated himself in Egyptian. It was one of the two dominant languages that everyone had to have some comprehension of or suffer economic disadvantage.
    Joshua was feigning semi-consciousness, strategizing how he could get to his knife in his pack to cut himself free. But his lashed feet and tied hands behind his back would not offer much in the way of opportunity.
    Then Sheshai looked at the unconscious mercenary. He said to the Captain, “Strange armor. I have not seen this before. What is this one?”
    The Captain replied, “We caught him by the Oaks of Mamre shortly after the Habiru. A loner. He was not a very skilled fighter.”
    But Sheshai stared at the creature with curiosity and said, “He could be a Hurrian or Hittite scout from Syria. I wish these Egyptians and Syrians would stop using our land as a playground for their control.”
    Sheshai lifted the mercenary’s head. He was a rather handsome dark haired muscular fellow. It seemed odd to Sheshai. But it did not matter because the mercenary was not breathing.
    “You idiots,” grumbled Sheshai. “This one is