Chapter 11
Obed’s Code ~ continued from Chapter 10 | A Wild Breed
Horse and Rider captured earth and sky at a gallop.
“Slow, my boy,” Rider whispered to his horse.
A young Obed appeared around the highland turn and stopped in front of the waystation for rest: he had ridden 150 miles, completed two routes and now was turning south to Jebus and Judah.
The wind was warm and blew the trees and bushes gently during the late afternoon. The sun dipped slightly in the bright sky.
Two old men sat in front of an old wooden table drinking mint tea and regularly drawing from a hookah pipe.
“Salama,” one of the old men said.
Obed dismounted, led his horse to a tethering post and dusted his long, black robe.
“Salama.”
“Many layers of dust,” the old man smiled.
“Many miles.” Obed took off his gloves.
He was a rider in Harrumbra’s service and could ride 1,600 miles in nine days along the paved roads and networks of the Assyrian empire.
“Come, drink.”
The old man beckoned him in.
Obed peered into the darkness of the waystation and heard voices inside. The barn had a large, dusty rug that covered the length of the squat floor. The room was full of horse saddles, rope and hitches hung on the walls.
He heard Balto’s loud laughter and the large man came toward the entrance dressed in black leather from head to toe. His belt was full of sharp knives.
Zarek cradled Hadad in a headlock and was dragging the man around while holding his mug of beer.
Obed stepped quickly into the darkened barn. Hadad released the other horseman.
“Obed,” Hadad said as he looked up and smiled.
Balto turned and spilled his beer.
“What?”
He went for his knife beneath his long robe.
“I still don’t have the silver owed,” he said smiling.
Obed threw up his hands as the others went over to him.
“Gentlemen.”
He slapped his gloves together and put them in his pocket.
“Beer,” Hadad called out to the station clerk.
The clerk, an old man in a gray robe and colorful headdress, moved slowly and drew beer into a mug. He sat it on the table and returned to his calculation of food and water needed for the next leg of the journey for each of the horsemen. He opened the leather binder and picked up his goose quill.
“Little man,” Balto said. “Always measuring.”
Obed put his hands on the old man.
“Budil, my old friend,” he smiled at the clerk. “King of the pages. How are the stores of grain and hay and barrels of beer?”
“Yes, the beer,” Zarek said as he downed his mug.
“All is well,” the station clerk said.
“Then another round for my friends,” Obed said as he slapped the small man on his back.
The leather-clad horsemen were without home or hearth and so they pushed and shoved each other over thousands of miles of hardship smoothed over by a few mugs of beer and talk of long-ago relationships.
“Where are you for?” Balto asked Rider.
“Jebus and Cairo,” Obed said.
He drank his mug of beer.
“Why?” Balto said, “We have no royal decrees or letter for them.”
Hadad played with his yellow headdress.
“A woman.”
He smiled and hit Zarek in the arm.
“The roads are not paved and they fight all the time,” Balto said.
He yawned in the small bit of light that fell through a broken window into the dust-filled station house.
“Roads not paved,” Zarek said. “You, child, go only where the roads are paved. Sweet child.”
He laughed and hit back at Hadad.
“I know why he travels there,” Hadad said.
“And?” Balto asked as he drank from his mug.
“He talks to his people, the Jews.”
Hadad poked back at Zarek.
“What?” Balto laughed. “He’s not a Jew; he is a horseman like us.”
“They fight the Philistines or the Jebusites, and if not them, they fight each other,” Balto said.
“They are my people,” Obed replied.
“You’re a horseman, one of the best,” Balto said as he drank his beer and said no more.
The day grew long and light disappeared from the window, throwing the small waystation into darkness.
The station clerk lit a lamp that threw shadows over the men and their lonely lives that had been swallowed up by the great and single mission to deliver the king’s message.
Obed had in his saddlebags a new royal decree, a deportation decree given to all governors: Those to be deported were chosen carefully for skills and abilities and sent to new regions where their talents were most needed. Scholars were directed to urban centers where their knowledge could be codified. Architects and builders were sent to build projects within the realm. Families were not split up and travelers were not sent in chains but rather were carried on wagons or horseback.
How strange, he thought, that these messages rule the land. He wiped his forehead.
“The outcasts carry the law.”
He pushed himself up from the table.
“Well, that is life.”
Another decree carried laws regarding women and property to all corners of the empire. Obed’s letter bags grew heavier as more lands were taken and more laws were needed to keep together the ebb and flow of daily life in the frontier.
Continue reading… Chapter 11 | The Way of the Horse
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