Short Story- THE SLING

David squinted at the conical piece of lead that Jeb held between his fingers. “Just the one?” he asked.
            Jeb nodded. “Just the one.”

            Encased in hammered brass, the bullet was only about an inch long and less than half as wide.

            “It’s so much smaller than I thought it’d be.”

            “It’ll do the trick.”

            David bit his lip. “I’d really hoped you’d have more.”

            “One’s enough.”

            “How close do I have to be?”

            “It depends on the sling you got.”

            David opened up the satchel at his side and pulled out the dark oil cloth that once held his father’s sword. The sword now hung at his side, and from the oil cloth David produced much stranger weapon: a long, rust-pitted handgun. David lifted the gun and held it out out in front of himself rather than setting it on the counter. He did not want to let it go.

            Jeb raised an eyebrow. “Thing’s in awful shape.”

            “It’s all I could find.”

            “You replace the grip yourself?”

            “Had to. It was just a metal frame when I found it.”

            “Will it even shoot?”

            David was growing impatient. “How would I know?”

            Jeb opened his palm. He waggled his fingers when David didn’t hand over the gun. David looked at him, his eyes untrusting. After a moment he surrendered the gun to the blacksmith. Jeb raised it in the air, looking down its sights and feeling its weight. He spun the cylinder. He pulled the trigger four times and felt the hammer click down on steel after each pull.

            “Still seems to function.” He gave the revolver back to David. “It’ll shoot the bullet, without a doubt. Go through any suit of armor just fine. Can’t say whether or not it’ll shoot straight, though. Not without a test fire.”

            David frowned. He took the revolver delicately, wrapped it back up, and placed it in his satchel.

            “You’ll have to get close,” Jeb said.

            “I’ll get close.”

            “Hate for you to miss the only shot you’ll ever get.”

            “I’ll get close. How much do you want for it?”

            Jeb turned the bullet over in his fingers. “Twenty shekels of gold.”

            “Twenty? You told me five last week.”

            “Making this brass was more of an ordeal than I thought, boy.”

            “That doesn’t justify—”

            “I could get into a lot of trouble for making this,” Jeb said. “The designs alone could get me stoned.”

            David scowled.

            Jeb smiled. “Surely Saul’s reward will more than make up for the little I ask.”

            David opened his purse strings and dumped the gold onto the counter. “Fine. Twenty.”

            Jeb scooped up the gold and tossed the bullet to David. He caught it and then held it up high, looking it over. It was so small. Smaller than an arrowhead. Smaller than a child’s marble. He hardly believed that such a thing could kill a man.

But who was he to doubt the power of the Travelers? He closed his palm around the bullet. He and his mother’s lives depended on that tiny piece of lead. He left the blacksmith.

The arrogant King had already started his daily tirade by the time that David arrived on the battlefield. David pushed his way through bronze shoulders and tall spears. He stopped behind the first row of men and looked between their shields to the killing fields that lay between the two armies. The previous day’s corpses baked under the unrelenting heat of the sun, pecked apart by buzzards and trampled by sandals and bare feet. David new that his father was out there somewhere, skeletonize from weeks of decay.

David stood up on his toes to peer over the shoulder of the man in front of him. He saw the King standing amongst the bodies, and he felt his heart burn. The King was a giant, towering over all men on either side of the killing field. The same sun that cooked his father’s corpse glittered off the King’s  immaculate armor. Every evening that armor was stained with the blood of David’s people, and every morning it came back to the field clean to be drenched again.

The faceplate of the King’s helm was open, showcasing his sagebrush beard and teeth the size of river stones. A legion of soldiers in shining armor stood behind him. They were silent while their King spoke. David wondered how they put up with the heat under all that metal.

“Another glorious day,” the King said, looking out at David and the hundreds who stood beside him. “And yet no one steps forward to face me. Is today the day that you’ve all chosen to die? On a glorious day like this? My challenge still stands. If one of you can defeat me in single combat, then I and those who follow me shall return to where we came. If no one surfaces to fight me once every morning and once every evening, however, we shall burn your city to the ground and do with your women what we please.” He gestured to the soldiers behind him. “It has been many weeks since my men have been with their own wives.”

The men beside David fidgeted, but none stepped forward.

The King laughed. “Don’t be shy, now. I’ve only killed seventy-nine of your warriors. Let’s make it a solid eighty this evening.”

David turned to his left as he heard a man speaking amongst his crowd. At first he thought that one of his fellows had volunteered, but he quickly found the source of the voice and saw that he was quite wrong. No one stepped forward. No one even took their eyes off the gargantuan King. And Saul, David’s own king, was moving through his ranks and trying to goad his soldiers into facing the giant.

“Think of your families!” Saul said as he moved from soldier to soldier. None of them would meet their king’s eyes, only staring out at the horrifying giant who ruled their enemies.

“If none of you fight, you’re all dead anyway!” Saul gestured to his men. “You must defend your homes. Defend your land! Defend Jehovah!”

David knew that the moral appeals would come first. The first few days, these cries for loyalty and country worked. But after the King had brutally slaughtered a dozen of their finest men, no one listened. David knew what would come next, and so he waited for Saul’s next move.

Saul looked around desperately, as if he was hoping to see some volunteer that he’d overlooked. In the silence that followed, David heard the giant King laugh.

Saul threw up a hand to grab the attention of his soldiers. “Fifty shekels!” he shouted. “Fifty shekels to the man who fells the giant!”

David almost laughed. Fifty shekels? The thirteenth through seventeenth men to die were each offered fifty shekels. No one would volunteer for such a paltry sum anymore. It was embarrassing to their people as a whole that Saul would even offer it.

Quiet followed.

The giant King bellowed. “No one? Is this the day, then? The day when my men and I trod over your mutilated corpses to take what we please from your land?”

“One hundred shekels!” Saul shouted. “One hundred shekels to the hero who steps forth to challenge the King!”

David raised his sword into the air, its tip barely poking above the heads of the soldiers around him.

“I will fight.”

Saul lowered his arm and looked around the crowd. Soldiers whispered and spun, looking for the source of the voice. David moved amongst the soldiers and made his way closer to Saul.

“I will face the King,” David said, stepping before Saul.

The hopeful expression that had briefly crossed Saul’s face vanished as he beheld the newest volunteer. Even King Saul, who himself was not an exceptionally tall man, was a head taller than this soldier standing before him. He looked David up and down. Mostly down.

“How old are you?” Saul said.

“Old enough.”

“The King is a giant, boy. Four cubits and a span.”

“Yes,” David said. “I’ve seen him.”

“You’ve not but a short sword.”

“I’ve enough, sir.”

Saul’s gaze narrowed, finding something upsetting in David’s tone, but he relented. “Alright. Fight him. At least you’ll buy us another evening.”

“Do you have the hundred shekels?”

Saul blinked. “What?”

“I won’t fight him unless you have the hundred shekels.”

“You impudent—” Saul stopped himself. He looked about and saw his soldiers watching him, waiting. He looked back at David. “Yes, yes, of course. If you somehow fell that tree of a man, then you have your reward.”

David said nothing and walked through the crowd to the killing field.

He stepped past the first row of soldiers and on to the torn and blood soaked earth between the two armies. Cast aside weapons and fragments of armor were scattered all about him. The giant King turned at his approach.

The King’s hedge-like brow furrowed as he looked upon the tiny man with his tiny sword. “This is it? This is the best you have to offer me, Israelites?” he said. “Do not mock me, Saul. Give me a warrior, not a boy.”

“I’m accepting your challenge,” David said. “And I’m going to kill you, Goliath.”

The King erupted in laughter. “He addresses me by my name. What audacity! If I gave you a stool you couldn’t even reach my gut. Your gods have cursed you with courage, boy.” The King drew the massive sword that hung at his hip and lowered the visor of his helm. “You’ll make a disappointing meal for the buzzards.”

As Goliath stepped forward and raised his sword, Daivd opened his satchel and pulled out the revolver and raised it into the air. The cylinder rotated as his finger tugged on the trigger, and the bullet that he’d paid a month’s wages for lined up with the eight inch barrel. The hammer struck down, and a blast of fire and thunder made both lines of soldiers flinch. A thread of smoke billowed out of the barrel and seemed to pass straight through Goliath’s helm. The King shuddered, and a cord of bright crimson streaked out of his forehead. He staggered back and forth for a moment, his giant eyes wide with confusion, and then he toppled forward on his face.

David’s ears rang, but he wasted no time in stepping onto Goliath’s back and hacking at his neck with the short sword. He obliterated the vertebrae in four swings, gripped the horns of the glittering helm and ripped the King’s head from his shoulders. He turned to the armored line of the Philistines, holding the dripping head of their ruler in his left hand and the revolver in his right.

The Philistines were frozen, their eyes locked on the gaping mouth of Goliath’s head. David raised the revolver to the crowd of soldiers.

“I am a god,” he shouted.

In five minutes the Philistines had cleared the valley, leaving the Israelites alone on the blood soaked battlefield. David had half-expected to return to his fellows amongst shouts of joy and congratulations, but he was not surprised to see only silent horror on their faces. They parted as David approached them, opening a path directly to King Saul.

Saul’s face was a mask of confusion. He looked at David, and then at the revolver in his right hand, and then the bleeding head of Goliath in his left. He returned his eyes to David.

“Jehovah has given you the strength to defeat the evil King,” Saul said. He threw up his hands in praise. “Jehovah has empowered you and saved us!”

“Your god had nothing to do with this,” David said. “Your god didn’t empower my father. He let him die out there, to be eaten by birds and trampled by the Philistines. Your god didn’t help anyone.”

Saul lifted a hand like he was going to hit David. “You watch what you’re saying, boy. There is no other explanation for what has transpired her.”

“I used the gifts that the Travelers gave us.”

A hushed gasp came over the soldiers and Saul recoiled.

“That is blasphemy,” he said. “How dare you invoke Their name in the land of Israel?”

David lifted the revolver and pointed it at Saul. The king shrieked and stumbled backwards, falling on his ass in the mud of the battlefield.

“I don’t care about anything you have to say,” David said. “Not a word of it. I killed your enemy. You give me my gold.”

Saul frantically tore open his purse and threw a fistful of gold at David with shaking hands. David looked at the coins at his feet, easily seeing more than a hundred shekels.

“Who are you?” Saul said faintly.

David lowered the revolver. “I am David, son of your slave, Jesse the Bethlehemite.”

Saul looked at the long, rusted machine in David’s hand. It was strange, alien, and unspeakably deadly. Even the mighty king Saul knew to fear the so-called ‘gifts’ that the Travelers had delivered to the people of Israel so many years ago.

“What do you know of… Them?” Saul said.

“The Travelers?”

Saul nodded.

“Only that They know a lot more than we do. And that They are far more powerful than your god, or any of the gods of the Philistines or anyone else.”

Saul watched David carefully, knowing full well that his soldiers were looking to their king for wisdom. They wanted to hear him reprimand the blasphemer, to sing the praises of Jehovah and glory at the power of the Israelites. But Saul only stared at David.

“Will They come back?” he said.

David tossed Goliath’s head to Saul. The fractured helm split like a melon as it hit the earth, spilling the skull’s contents over the king’s robes. David scooped up the gold at his feet and placed it in his purse, turning away.

“After what we did to Them? I doubt it.”