There is no question- Holofernes is, indeed, marching on Judah, and nestled as we are in a convenient mountain pass, Bethulia will surely be among the first of his targets. The scouts put the army at perhaps a month out, and so the city prepares itself for seige. The people are surprisingly calm- but then the Judaeans have a long history of being on the sharp end of an invader’s sword. They are reserves aplenty, and of course water is of no concern with the aquifers beneath the city. The walls are thick and the paths treacherous, and the Elders feel confident that Holofernes will decide it is easier to find an alternate route through the mountains than to waste resources on a city that can easily go for a year or more without a single person needing to leave its boundaries. I wish I shared their confidence, but I was there when Babylon was destroyed. This general is determined, ruthless, and clever. If there is a way to crack the nut of Bethulia, he will be the one to find it.
I considered briefly whether or not to spirit my ward to safety, perhaps out of Judah entirely, but dismissed the through almost as soon as it occurred. She will not leave her people without just cause, and she does not consider an invading army a just cause.
“There is no need for concern, Ku-Aya,” she told me this morning, apropos of nothing. I raised an eyebrow and she gave me a little smile. “I can see you running numbers in your head, calculating how long we can outlast a siege.”
“I was not,” I protested, although I was.
“Still,” she said. “Bethulia has been very faithful to the Law, so we need not fear the onslaught of any army. The God of gods has always protected us in such circumstances, so long as we remain in compliance with His will.”
“Mmph,” I said, but without quite as much skepticism as I might have shown three years ago. It is true that Bethulia seems remarkably well-insulated against the darker things of this world, but whether that’s due to divine intervention, or some strange, naturally occuring phenomena within the mountains- perhaps a mineral deposit?- eludes me. It is a question which requires further investigation and which, truth be told, it seems unlikely to find a proveable answer.
My ward simply laughed and returned to her sword forms, moving the blade smoothly from one dancer-like pose to the next. It seems to me that over these past few weeks she has become even more graceful, even more fast, and I have noticed her eating enormous quantities when we sup. These are all signs we are told to watch for in a Called Slayer, and it makes me wonder… but surely she herself would have said something, if she felt any different?
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