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this job, yet he feared the terrible consequences if he did return.
    Joshua straightened his shoulders and faced the assembled men. It seemed a lifetime ago that he and Manasseh had trained together like this, and he recalled how much he had hated his own military training. He removed his dagger from its sheath and repeated the words his instructors had once taught him. “Your point of entry is below your enemy’s rib cage, left-hand side. Put all your weight behind the knife, not just your arm muscles.” The straw crunched as Joshua plunged his knife into the dummy to demonstrate. “Stab in, then twist up to pierce—”
    Without warning, the terror-filled eyes of the young guard Joshua had stabbed to death reappeared in his mind. A shudder rocked through him. He released the knife as if it had just emerged from a forge, and stared at his hand as if expecting to see blood. The young soldiers watching him grew utterly still.
    He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded strangled when he spoke. “You twist up to … to pierce your enemy’s heart.” He gazed into the distance above their heads, afraid to look at them, afraid to see that they were the same age as the guard he had killed. The boy wouldn’t have died if Joshua had remembered to disarm him. Joshua struggled against narrowing air passages to draw a breath. The air wheezed through his lungs when he spoke.
    “Have any of you ever killed a man?” he asked, still gazing past them. “No, of course you haven’t…. It’s not—” Joshua shuddered again as he relived the moment that the second guard ran his sword through Maki’s body. “It’s … it’s not …”
    He closed his eyes. It was his fault that Maki had died. Joshua had blundered out of the house too soon. He had no memory of killing the second guard in retaliation, but he would never forget what the man’s body had looked like after he’d hacked him to death. “God forgive me,” he murmured. He felt the silent scrutiny of his men. He was their hero, the leader who had orchestrated their deliverance from Judah. His present behavior must appear strange to them. He cleared his throat again.
    “Killing a man isn’t the same as stabbing a sack of straw,” he said at last. “For one thing, there will be blood—more than you can imagine. And it’s warm…. It never occurred to me that blood would be so warm….”
    He had to get a hold of himself, get on with the exercises. He shook his head. “But when you’re in combat, you will either kill or be killed. You’ll do what you need to do.” He yanked his knife from the straw and slipped it into the sheath at his belt, angry with himself for sounding so apologetic. “Go ahead, start practicing.”
    Joshua stood back, still shaken, and watched the recruits attack the straw dummies. The familiar sounds transported him to Jerusalem, and for a moment he was training with General Benjamin again in the courtyard outside the palace. He recalled Manasseh’s steely concentration as he attacked the straw figures, the gleam of zeal in his eyes.
    “Whose face do you see on that straw man that makes you so eager to kill him?” Joshua had once asked him. Manasseh had glared at him without answering.
    Joshua had grimly endured his own military training, always eager to return to his academic studies. But Manasseh had reveled in their combat sessions, quickly surpassing Joshua in skill and speed. If they were to fight hand-to-hand now, if Joshua’s rage overpowered him again, he wondered which of them would win.
    “Joshua … Excuse me, Joshua?”
    He returned to the present with a jolt, surprised to see one of the city scribes standing in front of him. How long had the man been waiting?
    “I’m sorry. Did you need me for something?” Joshua asked.
    “The city elders want to speak with you right away. Can you come?”
    Joshua placed one of the older recruits in charge of the exercises and followed the scribe to the square where the elders