In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (7 page)

I drew back and looked up into his face.

“It’s your love for Zeke that pains me. I saw the way you looked at him, on the battlefield, when he was wounded.”

“You don’t want me to be with someone I love?”

He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”

But
I understood, except it wasn’t the thought of Gideon falling in love with another girl that I dreaded. He would simply not allow it of himself. It was the thought of Zeke falling in love with another girl that kept me awake nights. Despite his loyalty to me, he was smart and self-preserving, and I feared he would realize at last how different I was from what he truly wanted and give up on me entirely.

I couldn’t change who I was, not even for Zeke.
Perhaps God could change me, a small voice whispered in my heart, but another voice whispered that I shouldn’t have to change.

When my ankle was wrapped, Gideon carried me back toward camp.
Halfway back I pointed to my walking stick where it had clattered to the ground, and he lowered me so I could pick it up, but he continued to carry me. When we reached camp he knelt and placed me inside my tent. He looked at me plaintively for a moment and then cast a glance at the other boys in camp. They seemed to be ignoring us, so he crawled into the tent after me. I moved to make room for him.

Tender moments did not come easily for Gideon, but
when we were inside the tent, the tenor of his voice changed, as if perhaps he had rehearsed the words many times inside his head. Maybe I had known there was something he wanted to say and hadn’t yet said. Maybe I had known it at the river. Maybe that was why I had turned our conversation to his brothers.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I
had not tracked you that first day. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be in this situation with Zeke. It has caused you much heartache.” He took a breath. “I have caused you much heartache.”

I hated that he thought
so and that he felt guilt for it.

“My situation with Zeke is not your fault,” I said as I pulled the strap of my satchel over my head.
I set the satchel aside. “And if it wasn’t you, it would be someone else.”

He
studied me, his brows knit together. Then he said with sudden realization, “It’s not Lamech. It’s Jarom.”

I shrugged.

“Ket
urah.” His voice bore sympathy. “I think that might be worse on Zeke than if you loved me.”

The way he said it was almost a question.
Was it possible he did not know how I felt about him?

“If I felt the way about Jarom I feel about you, maybe.”

But he was right—it was bad.
I wanted to hurt Jarom about as much as I wanted to hurt Zeke, and that was about as much as I wanted to chop off my hand with my axe.

He nodded slowly.

The sun was setting outside. The light inside the tent was soft and beautiful but getting dimmer.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I sighed and rubbed at my tired eyes. “Hurt someone.”

“Kanina.
” Apology filled his tone. “I will not be the one to ask that of you—to ask you to go against something that was as good as done long ago.”

Was it as good as done?
Did I have a choice? Micah had said he would accept Gideon. But Gideon was too noble, too honorable. He was stepping down. Yielding.

Or he
was simply freeing himself so he could become Chief Captain of the Nephite armies.

“I’m
not the right man, Kanina.” He turned to look at me with the deepest regret in his black eyes. “Zeke is the one.”

I closed my eyes
and turned my face away. “That is not your choice to make.”

His voice was resolute when he said,
“I have made my choice.” He took ahold of my chin and turned my face back to his. He held my chin until I opened my eyes. Then he looked into my face and didn’t flinch from the pain he saw there. “Helaman has offered me a place in his personal guard after the wars are done, and I have accepted it.”

I
held his gaze, but I had never felt such a knot in my throat. “Then I accept it too.”

I leaned up on my knees and kissed him
lightly but with a growing desperation that embarrassed me and a finality that broke my heart. I lingered over his lips longer than I should have, my hands on his biceps, my thoughts going wild. I could not be without him. But he would not stay with me.

In a sudden wash of heat, a
balm soothed the rent between the pieces of my heart. A sweet feeling of love emanated from us and filled my tent. Was it telling me that what Gideon said was true, that he was not the right choice for me?

Or was it telling me what my heart told me, that Gideon was the only choice for me?
That loving him like this was a good thing?

I thought of
Gideon’s face the moment before Kenai and his men, sweaty from their long sprint, had reported the attack on Cumeni. He had just taken a bite of my warm corn cake. He had been grinning and telling me how grand Zarahemla was. He wanted to go there. The morning sun shone on his hair. I thought of the next moments, how the prisoners had thrown themselves upon the swords of their guards.

At the time,
I had thought how dishonorable it was for us to lose the prisoners we had charge of, to allow their escape. But Gideon had thought only how it freed us to go back to Cumeni and save our countrymen.

Gideon was freeing me to
go back and save my countryman, to do what had to be done, and he was essentially throwing himself upon the sword to do it.

Gideon
set me away from him and moved to leave the tent.

I clutched his arm.
“You would yield to your older brother?” I asked him quickly before he left.

He
didn’t turn to look at me again, but he answered, “Yes. And I will yield to Zeke.”

The next afternoon was overcast. We entered the land of Manti, and as we neared the city, we stayed close to the wilderness, circled, and prepared to set up camp in the trees.

Seth and Enos and their hundreds fell out
, and we camped in the rear near Teomner’s men.

“Well,” said Reb surveying the city
in the distance as he dropped his gear in the grass. “Don’t pound the stakes in tight.”

What he meant was that our camping
there was only for show. Our orders were simply to rest, but waiting for the Lamanites’ reaction to our presence would make resting difficult.

Still, we had all learned to sleep under difficult circumstances—soaking wet, cold, hungry,
hot, dehydrated, frightened. We were prepared. We were prepared to lay siege, we were prepared to retreat if it would lure the enemy out of the gates, and we were prepared to give battle.

N
o one knew how far Helaman’s men would have to retreat if the Lamanites came out to battle or how hard Gideon’s and Teomner’s men would have to fight.

We set up the tents
anyway and prepared a simple evening meal.

I had truly spent the day being hauled like
a sack of provisions on the backs of the men in my unit. When Corban set me down I gingerly tried my ankle, and it felt just fine—a little weak, but not painful. The healing tissue of my javelin wound hurt more than the ankle.

“It’s hardly fair,” I told him.
“Nobody carried you when I hurt your ankle.”

He laughed.
“If you only knew how long every guy in this unit has been dying to get his arms around you.”

“Really?” I asked, the heat of embarrassment stealing
over my cheeks.

“Well, yeah
. I mean, we all know about Zeke and Gid, but Ket, you’re the best thing about this war.”

I grinned at him.
What else could I do?

“And besides, did you think we didn’t know what you were doing with your rations?
We would carry you to the moon if we could.”

My grin faded.
I thought they hadn’t known.

Corban scratched his ear. “I don’t know if the small amount of food made a difference, but the fact that you did it…” He gave his head a
hard shake and didn’t finish.

I
felt myself flush again and stooped to enter the tent Lib and Ethanim had just finished putting up for me.

Kenai
and his men would be moving still, getting a view of the inside of the city. They would need to glean a lot of information from what they could see, and I knew from my spy mission into Antiparah that they weren’t getting their information from a distance. I knew Darius and Jarom would be with Kenai, scouting around the city, and I prayed they would be safe. I also prayed they could bring Captain Helaman the information he needed.

T
he men at Cumeni had not come out to battle, and the men at Manti might not either. Waiting for them to decide could take days or even longer. We were only camped a half an hour’s walk away from the city. Their scouts would report our numbers, and they would know we were easily conquerable.

I thought I would
not be able to rest with the enemy so near, but after the long march, sleep was both necessary and inevitable. Knowing that Kenai and his men had eyes on our enemy put me at ease, enough to close my eyes.

Before I had even opened them to the dark pre-dawn, I heard Lib at the door of my tent.

“Get up, Ket. We’re moving out.”

The
Lamanites were already moving. Our scouts had done their job. If we were to have a chance at taking the city, we had to be gone before dawn in order to set the snare.

We dropped the tents but left them behind when we slipped swiftly and silently into the wilderness behind
Gideon and Teomner. Teomner’s scouts had already been out, probably weeks ago, to find the perfect place to hide four hundred men. The whole stratagem depended on it.

We
traveled north for an hour or so. Teomner and his men fell away to the west into a shallow gully covered with thick vegetation. We watched from the road as they hid themselves until Gideon was certain the passing armies would not see them.

Gideon led us a
little farther north, stopping at a place where the east side of the road fell away into a deep ravine.

He spoke to Seth. “Tell your men to slide to the bottom.” Then he jogged to the rear, presumably to tell Enos the same.

Most of the men had no trouble sliding down the steep hill, but we all had to shake the dirt out of our sandals at the bottom. The vegetation was scarce, but the ravine itself provided excellent cover as the bank was deep and very steep. We would be hidden from the road as long as no one happened to go to the edge and look straight down.

We caught our breath
as the sun rose, but when nothing happened on the road above us, we simply waited. We talked quietly, some men even played ball, while we waited on word from the spies.

Before midday Darius and Jarom came sliding down the steep hill.
Noticing them immediately, Gideon stepped forward, and glancing around, they located him quickly.

Seth caught my eye.
“Go on. Do what you do best.”

I laughed and nudged him along with me.
We would eavesdrop together.

“Where is
Teomner’s band of men?” Darius was asking Gideon. “Kenai said we would see them before we reached you.”

Gideon grinned.
“It’s a well-hidden army when even our own men can’t see them. What news have you?”

The news spilled out of them quickly.
The two boys had spent most of their waking hours together since birth, so they slipped easily back and forth between listening and interjecting, filling silences, and finishing each other’s sentences.

“The army of the Lamanites appears to be making preparations to come out to battle,” said Darius.

“And we’ve forced them out of so many cities, they are numerous and angry,” said Jarom. “It’s obvious they’ve been prepared to come against us for a while.”

“They will be out of the gates today for sure,” said Darius, and then with a glance at the
gray sky he said, “They have probably marched out already.”

“And Helaman still plans to retreat?” asked Gideon.

“Yes,” they both said.

“Estimated time of intersection?
When will they pass us?”

They looked at each other.
“No later than midday.”

Gideon gave a single nod.
“Did you run here?”

“Yeah,” said Jarom, and I caught a surreptitious glance from him.

“Helaman ordered us to stay with you once we’ve delivered the information.”

Gideon gave another curt nod and laid a firm hand on each o
f their shoulders. “Drink, and stand ready. March with Lib’s men.” Then he turned to Reb who stood nearby and spoke to him in a low voice, dispatching him to relay the message to Teomner. Reb started up the steep ravine.

Seth
left me and went to meet with Gideon and Enos a short distance away. They turned their backs to the men. It was all the privacy they could find here.

I went to talk to Darius and Jarom
, and I could feel the watchful eye of both Lib and Ethanim as I moved among the men.

“Hey, Ket,” Darius
greeted me as he replaced his water skin at his belt.

“Hi
, guys,” I said, and my eyes flicked to Jarom to include him in the greeting.

“How long have you been waiting here?” Darius asked.

“Since a little after dawn. Do you really think the Lamanites will march out?”

“The men were lined up inside the walls,” said Jarom.

I didn’t want to know how they knew that.

“They were hefting the gates open even as we ran to report the lines to Helaman,” added Darius.

Jarom crossed his arms over his chest
and scuffed his toe in the dirt. “I wish we could have given them more warning.”

I shook my head.
“Helaman was prepared to go against them. He hoped for it, planned for it,” I said. “How vast are their numbers?”

“Vast.”

I grimaced. “There’s a small creek over there if you need to fill your water skins,” I informed them, and gestured toward the east.

Darius offered to take them both and left
after Jarom handed his over.

When I was standing alone with Jarom
amid the two hundred men that surrounded us, he looked down at me as if we were alone. When had he gotten taller than me?

“Zeke
told me you hurt your foot. Are you okay now?” He leaned out to get a look at the bandage on my ankle.

“
It’s fine,” I said, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that it was.

“I’m glad,” he said and
then began to describe all they had seen within the walls of Manti.

“It sounds similar to
the layout of Antiparah. Where was the army camped?”

“Wh
en were you in Antiparah?”

I bit the side of my cheek as I looked up at him.
His dark, interested eyes showed only curiosity where I expected disapproval. Maybe the things he had said by the fire were true.

“Kenai,” was the only answer I needed to give.
“How long has he been training you?”

“A while.”

“Kenai’s the best at what he does.” I wanted to add that not even Micah was better at spying than Kenai, but I didn’t want to bring up such a sore subject again. That wasn’t the time for it anyway.

I could feel
Jarom’s dark eyes on my face, searching, memorizing the lines of it like I was a girl he was free to look at. But I wasn’t.

“Have you heard from your family lately?” I asked
, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

He gave me an
other searching look. “Yes.”

“Is there news then?” I asked, brightening a little
, hoping for word from Cana.

“Didn’t Zeke tell you?
Or Micah?”

I bit my lip and shook my head.
Did Micah know the news then?

He looked at me for so long I became uncomfortable.

“Jarom?”

Before he could answer, Reb slid back down into the ravine near us in a shower of dirt and rocks. He looked around for Gideon. I caught his eye and pointed to where Gideon stood with Seth and Enos at the edge of the men. I wanted to go there and hear his report, but I stood still and watched closely from a distance.

After a moment,
I saw Darius returning. I smiled when he slowed his pace as he passed the chief captains and perked his ears.

H
e hurried back over to us and tossed a water skin to Jarom, who caught it easily.

“
Teomner’s spies have seen the armies. Helaman and the men are retreating in this direction as planned, and they are moving rapidly.”

Gideon called his men to attention.

“Fall in as close to the west wall of the ravine as possible. The armies are approaching quickly and will be upon us within minutes.”

“Come with me,” I said to Darius and Jarom, and I led them to stan
d beside me in the small column next to Lib and Ethanim.

I expected a little bit of confusion, but
all the men fell quickly into rank facing south. Gideon came down the lines and divided each unit into two shorter rows and urged them closer to the wall.

Building anticipation rolled through the ranks as we waited,
and I stared up at the edge of the ravine wondering if it would fall down on us when thousands of men marched along it.

“Nervous?”
Jarom’s voice was low in my ear.

I craned
around to look at him over my shoulder. “Not really,” I said honestly. “Are you?”

He grinned
. Obviously not.

“I’m more nervous about the ravine wall raining down on us than about Ammoron’s armies,” I admitted.

“Are you worried about Zeke?”

“I’m not going to talk to you about Zeke,” I told him.
It was a strategy I should make and stick to.

“So he’s still mad at you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.
I know how it is.”

How, how do you know?
I wanted to demand, but it was too dumb of a conversation to be having right then. Instead, I curled my lip and glared at him. Then I rammed my elbow back into his gut.

I got a good hit, but he just laughed.

“Zeke is your brother. Doesn’t that evoke some loyalty from you?”

H
is words were hot on my cheek. “Not when it comes to you.”