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"Why, Majesty?" she asked. Could it be he loved her?
"Because when you lose and the giant pulls your helmet off if he doesn't pull your head off with
it everyone will see who you really are. How would that makemelook? 'King David's such a coward,
he has to send a girl to fight his battles for him!' That's just thestartof what people will say." He slapped
the royal shield to emphasize his point.
Tirzah's face hardened. She whipped out Old Wolfbane and dropped something large and hard into the
sling. Though she'd had no opportunities to find a proper rock en route to the king's quarters there were
plenty of other bits of detritus littering the palace halls.Whizzz-ZING!went Old Wolfbane and
whizzz-CLANG!went the peach pit some sloppy guardsman had dropped on his lunch break.
It hit the king's shield dead center, lodging itself half an inch deep right between two of David's fingers.
His Majesty gaped at the still-vibrating pit, then looked at Tirzah. "Congratulations," he rasped. "You got
the job."
* * *
King David's armor covered a multitude of sins. No one who saw the small figure that came clanking out
of the palace and down to the city gate dreamed that beneath that breastplate were a pair of really
impressive breasts, nor that the helmet (with special false beard attachment) concealed a woman's face.
Luckily the concubine and her king were more or less of a height. Luckier still, David had never really
lost his high tenor voice, a range which overlapped nicely with Tirzah's deep, rich alto.
Tirzah's heart was beating wildly, but not with fear. If truth be told, she found the whole situation
incredibly exciting. At her belt she carried her faithful sling and a pouch of stones, specially selected for
their perfect balance of killing mass and aerodynamic capabilities. She knew she had the skill to bring the
giant down with one shot, and as for the beheading that must follow . . . Well, she'd chop those vertebrae
when she came to them.
The Philistine stepped forward at her approach, a spear the size of a weaver's beam in hand. Sunlight
glittered on a lavish though ill-tailored set of armor. Just such a helmet had saved Agamemnon's skull at
Troy, its heavy nasal and side pieces reducing Goliath's face to a pair of eyes peering through tiny slits
and a mass of wild black beard foaming out the bottom.
"At last!" the giant roared, pounding spear against shield. "Come, O king! Come and meet your death!"
"The Lord judge between thee and me who shall live and who shall die!" Tirzah shouted back, loading
her sling and gauging her shot. She felt silly spouting such highflown words, but she thought it was
something David would say.
The giant made the first move, drawing back one mighty arm, ready to fling the huge spear with all the
force of that towering body. For an instant as she stood there, staring with a mix of admiration and alarm
at those smooth, muscular arms, that warrior's grace, Tirzah was abruptly aware of the possibility that she
might not get out of this combat alive.
The realization froze her where she stood, making her a painfully easy target as the spear took flight,
accompanied by the Philistine's great war cry. That thunderous sound proved a blessing in disguise, for it
snapped Tirzah out of her perilous trance just as it shook the walls of Jerusalem. But it wasn't the mere
volume of that shout which did the trick. As King David would say about psalm-making,It's not just the
music, it's the words.
The word in this case being: "Whoopsie!"
Whoopsie indeed, for the giant's too-loose mail shirt belled out just enough to divert the spear's course.
It flew wild, landing a good ten feet off-target. The Israelites cheered, some for their "king," some for the
visible evidence of the Lord's favor, some just to taunt the Philistine.
"Hey, Goliath, you throw like agirl!" one wit in the crowd hollered.
"She sure does," Tirzah murmured. The giant's "Whoopsie!" was a sorcerer's eye-opening spell. Now
she saw that the Philistine's beard was as bad a fake as her own. To this evidence she added "Goliath's"
hairless limbs, the decidedly soprano timbre of her voice in that unguarded moment when the spear
misfired, and the fact that no male warrior would cry "Whoopsie" where the more traditional "$*?$#%!"
would suffice.
Tirzah wasn't the only one to add two and two. Dawn figuratively broke over Jerusalem.
"That's a woman under all that armor!" someone cried.
"Aye, not Goliath at all!" one of Saul's veterans piped up. He had been the first to swear, loudly and
vehemently, that the giant at the gateswasGoliath, but now that memory somehow eluded him. "I said it
from the start. Goliath was much taller, six cubits and a span. She's barely five cubits! But no one ever
listens to me."
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