Kikanos Fell and Moses Broke the Snake Wall

Kikanos rode home under victory banners and found his own gates shut. From the road the new walls looked like pride. He told his officers the city must have raised them against Canaan while he was away fighting the East. He called up to the guards. The answer came cold. By order of Balaam, no one entered.

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The Capital That Locked Its King Out

Balaam had not waited. When Kikanos marched out, he left the prophet and the prophet's sons, Jannes and Jambres, to hold the capital. In the king's absence Balaam won the people, took the throne, and set his sons over the army. Two sides of the city rose higher in stone. A third side became a maze of canals fed from Ethiopia's river. On the fourth side, magic arts gathered snakes and scorpions until the ground itself became a living wall. No one left. No one entered.

Kikanos tried the gates and lost one hundred thirty men in the first skirmish. The next day he stood his troops on the far bank and sent thirty riders into the water. The current took them. Rafts followed. In the canals the water spun like mill wheels and dragged two hundred more under, twenty from each raft. On the third day he forced the snake side. The reptiles killed one hundred seventy. The king stopped charging and began a siege that lasted nine years.

Nine Years and a Dead King

Homes sat empty of husbands. Wives waited beyond the dust. The city would not open. Then Kikanos died in that long war's grief.

His men stood in the wilderness and counted their options out loud. Attack the city and many fall. Stay and starve while princes of Aram and the children of the East hear that the king is gone and rush them until no remnant remains. "Counsel us," they said to one another. "Let us set a king over us, and remain here besieging the city until it surrenders."

They needed a living command more than they needed another funeral.

A Refugee Took the Crown

Moses had fled Egypt after the hangman's reach failed. He had not come looking for a crown. The camp of Cush set him over them anyway. He was twenty-seven when the reign began, in the fifty-fifth year of Pharaoh's rule, the one hundred fifty-seventh year of Israel's stay in Egypt. The children of Cush loved him. On the seventh day they bowed and asked for counsel about the city that had stolen nine years of their lives.

Moses refused another frontal bloodbath. "If we fight as before the death of Kikanos, many will fall as before," he said. He promised them the city if they would obey a strange order. They answered as soldiers answer a commander they already trust. All that their lord commanded, they would do.

Storks Ate the Living Wall

The order went through the whole camp. Every man would go to the forest and bring a young stork in his hand. Anyone who refused would die, and the king would seize his goods. They climbed fir trees. They carried chicks home. They reared them until the birds grew strong and learned to dart as young hawks dart. Then Moses ordered three days of hunger. On the third day the men armed, mounted, and rode each with a starved stork toward the serpent wall.

"Send forth each man his young stork upon the serpents," Moses said. The birds dropped. Hunger did what ladders and rafts could not. Snakes vanished into beaks. The living wall broke. The army poured through the gap and took the city without losing a man. Balaam fled toward Egypt with his sons, the same line of sorcerers who would later stand against Moses in another court. The siege of nine years ended on wings and empty stomachs.

Adoniah Named the Wound

They crowned Moses in the place of Kikanos. They even set the dead king's widow, Adoniah, before him as queen. Moses remembered the oaths of Abraham and Isaac against wives from the lines of Ham and against Canaanite alliances. He ruled with justice and would not approach her as a husband. For forty years Cush feared him and loved him at once.

In the fortieth year Adoniah stood in the court and named the wound. He had not approached her. He had not served the gods of Cush. He was not of their flesh. Let Menacrus, son of Kikanos, reign.

By morning the nobles raised Menacrus. Moses left the throne that storks had won him and took the road that would later lead to Midian, a well, and a bush that burned. The snake wall was gone. The prophet who built it had already run. The king who starved birds to free a city walked away with empty hands and a name the world had not yet finished needing.