Love Amid the Ashes by Mesu Andrews Page A

now? Three-quarters of Job’s wealth had been swallowed up in a few moments. Worse than that, over a thousand of his servants had died tonight—mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. And how would they bury all the dead?
    Lightning flashed again, and Lotan bolted from Job’s arms, terror-stricken. At the same moment, bloodcurdling screams echoed through the canyon outside the courtyard. Job exchanged horrified glances with the men in the room, and all seemed to realize that some sort of attack was under way.
    “Elihu, get the weapons!” Job shouted. “Shobal, can you fight?”
    “Yes, Master Job!” The herdsman ran to barricade the courtyard door.
    “Lotan, you stay here with—” Job’s instructions were cut short by Sitis’s scream. He saw Atif, his defiant steward, stumble from the hallway, hands on his belly and blood on his hands.
    “Atif, my dear Atif.” Sitis was instantly on her feet and at her servant’s side.
    Elihu, who had been on his way to the weaponry closet, grabbed Atif under the arms and dragged him toward a table. Job, Shobal, and Lotan helped Elihu lift the old man onto a table, while Nogahla retrieved Atif’s keffiyeh from the floor. Job saw the steward’s gaping wound and stood paralyzed by fear.
    Dinah grabbed the black-and-white keffiyeh from Nogahla and pressed it against the wound. “Push the cloth firmly here to help stop the bleeding.”
    Atif groaned, and Sitis shoved Dinah away. “Stop! You’re hurting him.” She hovered over the old man. “It’s all right, Atif. You’re going to be all right.”
    Job watched Dinah back away, Nogahla’s arms waiting to console her, but he didn’t have time to assuage hurt feelings now. He could still hear a battle just outside his doors. “Atif, who did this?” he said, uncertain if his steward could even comprehend the question. “Atif, can you hear me?”
    “Master Job . . .” His voice sounded raspy, like spit in a flute. “Chaldeans, master. Three raiding parties. Taking camels. Killing the servants.”
    “Chaldeans?” Elihu gasped. Job looked into the young man’s pale face, and Elihu looked at Sitis. “When Ima sent word to Eliphaz in Teman, I joined a large caravan of Chaldeans that brought me to Uz tonight. I left them just moments ago. They seemed like common merchants.” Job watched the dawning horror on Elihu’s features. “How could the people I’ve ridden with for days be the same raiders that murdered your servants?”
    “It was your guide, Master Job.” Atif clutched at Job’s collar. “Your guide sent word to the Chaldeans that you would arrive tonight at sunset.” The old man cringed in agony. “I’m sorry, Master Job. You hired the guide on my word.” His eyes closed and he seemed to lose consciousness.
    “No!” Sitis cried. “Atif, don’t leave me!” She buried her head in his chest, mumbling her grief. “I have no father but you, no brother but you. Please, don’t leave me.”
    The old man’s eyes fluttered and his hand moved weakly to stroke Sitis’s cheek. In a whisper barely audible, he said, “You’ll be all right, child. Nada will care for you.” Turning to Job, he stilled his hand. “The camels are gone, servants gone—all gone.” Atif’s eyes froze in death’s stare, and he expelled the final rattling breath from his lungs.
    “Atif?” Sitis clutched wildly at his robe. “Atif! Atif!”
    Job stroked his wife’s back as she lay across the lifeless body of her lifetime friend and guardian.
    “Whom do I have but you and Nada?” She poured out the loneliness of her childhood, and her wailing crescendoed beyond bearable.
    But wait . . . Another keening voice, the same tone and pitch, emanated from the curved hallway and created an eerie duet.
    “Nada?” Job breathed the name, identifying with horror Sitis’s portly nursemaid, who emerged from the hall covered in fine red dust.
    Nada’s cries changed to shrieks, her eyes wild at the sight of Atif’s blood now