In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (22 page)

I
tilted my neck to look into his face. He had definitely gotten taller.

“How about that kiss in the moonlight?” he said in a seductive whisper.

I glanced at the sky. “There’s no moonlight.”

“An insignificant detail,” he insisted softly.

I looked him in the eye for a moment and then took a step back.

He took a step forward
, crowding me with his body. “I’m not that little kid anymore, Keturah.”

“An insignificant detail,” I said, wincing at the flicker of pain that passed through his eyes.

“What is this, then?” he asked. He held the stone I had given him in Manti, just a smooth stone I had taken from my bag on the spur of the moment. I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t meant anything by it.

He
had said it was a stone waiting to be slung. And he had given me a broken stone he had salvaged from the wreckage of a battle.

“
You still have the obsidian shard. I won’t believe you if you tell me you don’t.”

“
I do,” I said. I reached into the pouch in which I kept my slinging stones and felt for it. I had taken it out many times and fingered the rough edges. I withdrew it then and held it out on my hand for him to see. “But I told you that stone was not a promise.”

“
And you told Zeke you wouldn’t marry him.”

I shook my head.
“He didn’t ask me to marry him.”

He looked at me
doubtfully. “If he didn’t, then he is a bigger fool than I thought. Would you have said yes?”

“
I would have honored my brother if
he
had asked it of me. But no, Jarom, I would not have told Zeke yes. My heart is given elsewhere.”

He looked at me
with dawning understanding on his face.

“
I told you on the West Road, that first day you came back. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

“
I guess I thought you meant Zeke. I chose to ignore it.” He finally took a step away from me.

“
We all do that. Like I pretend you don’t have a girl in every city you’ve been stationed in.”

H
is brief grimace turned into a mischievous smile.

“
Please,” I said with teasing exasperation. “I’ve been in the army. I’ve known a thousand men like you.”

I saw the flicker of pain again.

As apology settled in my eyes, we heard the sudden and close call of the margay, and both our heads snapped toward the sound.

Th
e shrill call was a signal my brothers and I used to communicate, to spread warnings or to indicate we were close by and didn’t want an arrow in the neck when we came through the trees. Zeke and Jarom had long ago adopted it, and during my time in the army, my unit had adopted it as well.

We scanned the area thoroughly, b
ut though we watched for someone, nobody came through the trees.

We looked at each other.
A warning call then.

By silent agreement,
Jarom led out, and I dropped the pink flower I had been holding into the long meadow grasses as we slipped into the forest. Jarom had learned stealth from Kenai, whose skills I had learned to trust completely, and I followed him willingly toward the place from which the warning call had come. But when we got there, we didn’t find anyone.

“There!” I whispered and pointed
to the barely noticeable broken stem on a large evergreen leaf. It was an obvious trail and we would have to track it.

As we painstakingly followed the trail, which had been clearly set, we
circled around toward the West Road, but the trail ended several hundred paces short of it. We cast around in all directions, even behind us, but we couldn’t find the way to go in the coming darkness.

Frustrated,
I sounded the margay and we both waited in silence, listening for a return. After a moment, we heard it in the distance beyond the West Road. What was going on, and who was out there?

“
Run for the striplings,” I whispered. There were enough striplings in the village and the surrounding villages to form a small patrol.

“No.
I’m not leaving you here.”

“
Just go. I’ll move toward the margay’s call in case whoever it is needs help. You can run faster than me, and I can shoot better than you.”

He
snorted, but he turned and ran silently and swiftly back through the trees without another word.

That was one thing I did love about Jarom.
He never questioned my ability to fight, and as he had claimed that morning in Cumeni, he would never try to suppress it.

I turned to face the unknown.
I sent up a prayer and stepped into the falling darkness where the Lord led me.

I started toward the road, but I heard movement in the underbrush
, and I immediately dropped into it myself, years of training making it second nature. A heavy feeling came over me, and I had felt it so many times I knew what danger lay out there in the forest without having to see it for myself.

Lamanites.

It was dark enough by then that I felt safe rising to see what I would be facing. To anyone watching, I would appear to be a mere shadow in the dim forest.

Unfortunately, my enem
ies appeared to be merely shadows too. When I lifted my head above the level of the underbrush, I saw that there were a lot of them. I counted quickly. Probably fifty dark shadows floated through the gray twilight.

I couldn’t shoot them all.

I waited for them to pass. When I was about to make a move to pursue them, a thick hand clamped over my mouth.

“Kanina.”

The word was so quiet as to be almost indiscernible from the light brush of the breeze through the leaves. If there hadn’t been a hand over my mouth, I’d have thought I imagined it.

I gave a slight nod, indicating I would n
either struggle nor make noise. But when he moved his hand, I whispered one word.

His name
.

“You’ve had a busy day,” he said softly.

Was that jealousy? Anger? Had he been spying on me?

“So have you.
What’s going on? Where are those men going?”

“I fol
lowed them beyond the West Road. They were leaving, but they decided to return.”

“Where were they going?
Return for what?”

“Captives.”

I turned my head slightly. “Captives for what?”

“Women, Keturah!” he burst out harshly, like I was too dim to understand.
“Women and children,” he added more softly.

“But, how do you—
”

“I know what I heard.”

“I trust you.” I waited a moment. “Are you alone?”

“Are you?”
he shot back.

“Jarom left to get the others.”

He snorted. “Well, he can only warn them. I think the men are headed to your village.”

Mother.
Dinah. Cana. My heart dropped into my stomach. Isabel. Sarai. Chloe.

I jerked upright.
“We have to get there!”

“That goes without saying.”

I thought of his mother and wondered that we were still there having this conversation, one of us bitter, the other frantic, and both of us confused in very different ways.

“Follow me,” he said as he moved slowly into a crouching position.

When he was satisfied that all the men had passed us, he motioned me to follow him. We moved as quickly as we could through the dark forest. This wasn’t a new experience. We had done this many times together.

When we neared the village, I passed him and took the lead.
I knew Jarom had gotten here in time to warn the villagers because they weren’t in the village. I led Gideon toward the small stream in the little hollow deep in the forest behind Hemni and Dinah’s.

He stopped me with a touch on my arm and questioned me with his eyes.

“I trust you,” I said. “Do you trust me?”

He gave one decisive nod, and we continued on.

I sounded the margay as I approached and was relieved when I heard the immediate answer.

It was eerily familiar when I met Kalem near the stream to exchange information.
But this time, I allowed Gideon to do the talking while I looked around to make sure everyone I loved was there.

“Where is Isabel?” I broke in.

Kalem looked at us gravely. “She went alone to the tannery after the evening meal.”

Gideon and I glanced at each other.

“The boys have all gone to look for her.”

I hurried over to Hemni,
who had to turn away from Isabel in her hour of need, who was bound by his oath to resist the temptation to fight for his daughter.

Sometimes daughters had to do the fighting
for themselves.

“I will find her,” I vowed to him.

His eyes glittered in the moonlight with unshed tears. “I know you will,” he said. “You must. I could not bear to lose two daughters in one evening.”

We stared into each other’s eyes, and I knew that whether or not he agreed with the decision Zeke and I had
come to, he would support us in it.

I thought then of the fathers on the training ground so many years before.
How they had instructed their sons, given them all the knowledge they had, demonstrated the movements of the weapons, drawn diagrams in the dirt of the corn field. They had done everything short of taking a weapon into their own hands to provide their sons with all they would need to win the battles ahead.

And then the fathers had trusted their children and let them go.

I thought of my own father. We had been so young when he had given up his life, just little children. But had leaving us alone on this earth really been so different than what Hemni had done by taking that oath?

My father, the king, had sent us into the world with all he had to offer, with what he deemed to be of mos
t value to us in life’s battles—his testimony.

Mother h
ad given us his shields and weapons—the Holy Spirit, the word of God.

And faith.

As soon as Gideon and I were back in the trees I grabbed for his hand and pulled him to a stop.

“Let us send up a prayer,” I insisted.

My insistence wasn’t necessary for he dropped to his knees instantly. I followed him, and he uttered the words.

Then we were on our feet and running again.
We circumvented the village, choosing instead to run straight for the tannery. We heard calls and jeers before we arrived. They were so loud that even though I sounded the margay again, I was sure nobody heard it.

The light from the moon was dim, but the clouds moved then
, and Gideon and I were able to get a better look at what was happening.

The Lamanite men had bundles and pallets of things they had looted from the village and probably other surrounding settlements.
Perhaps there were even some captives, but it was much too dark to tell for sure. The bundles and captives would make their travel slow. They did not anticipate being followed.

They knew the people of Ammon would not contest them, but did they not know the sons of Ammon were home from the wars?

I was sure Jarom had been able to gather no more than ten men from the village
s. Gideon and I made twelve. The odds were not in our favor, but then, they never had been.

As the Lamanites started to depart with their stolen goods, it became quiet
at the tannery, and we could do nothing but watch. Gideon and I fell in behind the enemy. We followed them past the village and on toward the West Road.

Were they really so bold as to think they would march out of here
right on the main road?

We heard an owl and Gideon instantly pulled me to a stop next to a large
kuyche tree.

“No, that’s Kenai.
He uses the owl sometimes when the margay has been compromised.”

Gideon answered the call and w
e stayed where we were, standing so close we could feel each other’s breath. Slowly Gideon let his hand run down my slick hair from my crown to my shoulder. It seemed to be an absent-minded action because his every other sense was in use listening and seeing into the night.

But I knew that Gideon
did not do things absent-mindedly.

We heard the owl moments before Kenai appeared out of the darkness with Jarom, Zeke,
and my brothers. Muloki was with them and Mahonri and Jonas from the neighboring village of Antum. But I was surprised when Lamech, who scowled at me, and Enos, who gave me a subdued smile, emerged from the dark forest with a man who looked so much like Gideon—broad shoulders, chestnut colored hair that fell to his shoulders, inscrutable expression—they were surely brothers.