JEPHTHAH’S arrival in Ammon was like a sudden tornado. It was with no warning, just like a windstorm.
The champion with his pack of a hundred and five pounced on Xarxus’s training camp in the hinterland of that quiet city. Then, swinging axes and swords in furious waves of slaughter, they sliced off heads in a gory massacre.
Those tigers went on slaying from that army base in Aroer onto the region around Mininth. And between those polar regions, they wasted 20 cities of Ammon laying in-between.
Yet the slayers weren’t satisfied with just 20 ruined towns. So they went on from Mininth, killing and wasting more settlements – as far as Abel Keramim.
Jephthah’s panthers were swift and wild. And not even Xarxus’s best could catch up with them in a counter.
Yes, those destroyers were so fast in what their blades wrought, that even rumours about it couldn’t reach the king’s castle before the killers got there.
Xarxus was caught unawares when that deadly horde came for him – when their leader crashed through his walls to get him.
The man tried to brace up to a fight. But he couldn’t help that cold shiver that ran down him. At the sight of that fighter called Slayer of Giants.
Jephthah stood in front of the unarmed king. For the Ammonite lord was down in a meeting with his captains over the coming battle, and only Manoh his deputy was armed enough to protect him.
The Israel commander came on Xarxus like the Grim Reaper does on man. And it was in his war room that he came for him.
Right at that moment the Dragon Tamer feared his end had come. He could tell his whole city had been made a pile of deads, if his chief foe could walk into his war chamber with no one to stop him at all.
No, Xarxus feared this was the end.
But still, he wouldn’t give in that easy.
Right there where Xarxus’s captains stood shaken and demoralized, his deputy roared a stirring order. ‘Protect your king! Protect your king!’
Then the captains rallied round their king and shielded him with their own lives. Yet it didn’t take Jephthah more than a moment to hack down the man’s defenses in a wild, angry kill.
Now he left that king of war without a man or an army. He left him to face the wrath of his sword alone.
In that small moment between life and death, Xarxus feared terribly and a cold sweat covered him. The man called terror felt terrified. So he stammered through his words.
‘This… this is no fair fight, coming into my country unannounced. We could end it in the battlefield, soldier to soldier.’
But Jephthah simply scoffed. ‘Like you announced to my countrymen when you invaded my city! Or like you waited for Israel to be armed before you struck with those battles!’
Then he spat on his ground. ‘Nothing is fair for you and me, you coward of a man!’
Right there, the Gilead lord drew out his heavy sword with both hands, then he leapt up high above that adversary and descended on him with the blade, slashing his head in one swing of the sword… from the crown down to the jaws.
A heavy surge of blood splashed off against the walls of that war room, as the monstrous foe of Israel collapsed to the ground a lifeless soul.
So then, the Slayer of Giant ended the giant terror disquieting the Land of Promise. And the winds of that news blew far and wide, as far as to the tents of Philistia.
Indeed, its violent gales shattered their tents and cabins, so much their men fled back to faraway dens.
But much as the giant monsters fled or even died, Jephthah was faced with one more foe to fight.
But that enemy was hard to end or cripple.
It was a kindred blood nobody sheds.
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