Thorns of Glory, page 15
We were halted by some Nephite warriors guarding a narrow staircase up the ramparts of the innermost wall. Most fighters assigned to this part of Cumorah were manning the other two walls. This wall wouldn’t come under attack until the other walls were breached. A token force had been placed here because it was near the fortress’s western edge.
“Stop!” challenged a sentry. His left arm was missing, doubtless lost in one of the many battles before Cumorah. Despite the handicap, he wielded his spear expertly, propping it under his good arm. “Division?”
“Jaguar Division of Commander Mormon,” I fibbed.
He looked the three of us up and down. “Jaguar Division? Where’s your insignia?” He and six other men pointed their spears at our breasts.
“We’ve been on the northern ridge,” I continued, “on secret reconnaissance. We must reach Mormon’s headquarters to make our report.”
A pair of lanterns flickered at the base of the stairs, illuminating the bruises on my face.
The sentry grinned and asked, “Insubordination?”
“Disagreement,” I said, trying to sound menacing. Something like, You should see the other guy.
Another sentry to my right appraised Jacobah’s face and spat in the dirt. “Lamanite.”
“Ammonite,” Jacobah responded gruffly.
Smart, I thought. Everyone knew Mormon employed Ammonites on his staff. These descendants of Laman, the great-great-grandchildren of converts of the sons of Mosiah, had occupied the land of Cumorah long before the Nephites. Mormon was said to have been raised near Cumorah. That relationship was likely the reason the Nephites had been permitted to gather here after their defeat four years ago at a place called Jordan. Unfortunately, Ammonite hospitality had done little to quash the bigotry of rank-and-file Nephites, most of whom had long since abandoned Christianity and had no appreciation of the ins and outs of Nephite history.
“Who’s the girl?” asked the sentry with a missing arm.
“My sister,” Jacobah declared.
I wondered about the wisdom of that answer, but with such dark features, she could hardly be related to me.
“We’re in haste,” I stressed to the one-armed sentry, who was apparently in command.
“What’s the watchword?” he demanded.
I replied without missing a beat. “Title of Liberty.”
He studied me more closely, his spear inches from my throat. He could have swiped off my head with that twelve-inch obsidian tip. I had no idea if I’d provided the correct watchword. I was betting this confrontation was more about confidence than correct answers. The lead sentry started to nod. He was about to send us on our way.
Another guard—a cripple who dragged one foot—spoke savagely. “Wrong. That was yesterday’s watchword.”
Other guards grunted in amusement. Something was off. Even to have so auspiciously named yesterday’s watchword seemed no less plausible than naming today’s watchword. My muscles tensed. I doubted these men had been told the correct watchword. Or if one had even been issued.
The sentry who’d spat in the dirt indicated me and Jacobah. “You two can go. You don’t need the woman to make your report.” He leered at Mary and told Jacobah, “Your ‘sister’ will rejoin you later.”
Mary was mostly hidden by her shawl, but what little of her face that I could see paled.
Jacobah struck like a lightning bolt. One moment his spear stood harmlessly at his side, and the next its butt end clipped the underside of the leering man’s chin. The guard fell backward. I thought Jacobah would next plunge the spear’s business end into his chest. Instead, he attacked the one-armed sentry whose spear tip nearly touched my Adam’s apple. Somehow Jacobah appraised the armless soldier, despite his handicap, as the most skilled fighter of the bunch, which might have explained his rank as their leader. Before I could act, Jacobah had shattered the one-armed sentry’s lethal spear tip in one downward strike. He brought the spear up again between the one-armed sentry’s legs. I was amazed at how deftly he’d disarmed two men. Clearly these soldiers weren’t the cream of the Nephite army. Nevertheless, Jacobah’s swiftness was impressive.
I carried swords behind either shoulder—one flint, the other obsidian. It hadn’t seemed wise to arm myself prior to this moment. I did so now, yanking the zebra-striped flint blade around front. I directed my weapon at the next closest threat: the sentry with the crippled foot.
Jacobah spoke fast and fierce to the man with one arm. “Tell them to drop their weapons and back away, or I’ll split you like a cornstalk.”
The other four sentries hesitated. At a nod from their leader, several spears clattered to the ground. A soldier at the rear tried to surreptitiously draw back his arm to hurl an axe. Jacobah jerked up his spear more snugly, ready to carry out his threat on their one-armed commanding officer.
“Drop it,” the sentry growled to his comrade.
The soldier reluctantly dropped the axe.
Mary drew herself up close behind me. She’d have been safer behind Jacobah.
Wordlessly, Jacobah, Mary, and I moved to the stairway, never taking our eyes off the sentries. They did nothing more to hinder us. I suspected boredom was their only motive for slowing us down in the first place. As we climbed the rampart, the guards seemed to forget about us altogether and aided their unconscious companion. I thought Jacobah might’ve killed him, but I glimpsed him groggily trying to stand.
At the top of the stairs was a kind of roofed tower. We paused there to heave a sigh of relief and appraise each other’s condition. Jacobah glanced at Mary, then me. I knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to parrot that I should have left Mary with Garth, Meagan, Apollus, and Becky. I readied myself to bark a stern reply. I was in no mood to defend this decision. Mary’s eyes looked guilty enough.
To my surprise, Jacobah asked, “Was that really yesterday’s watchword?”
I was relieved. So relieved I snorted a laugh. “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“Well,” said Jacobah, “if we come face-to-face with a real Jaguar Knight, try a different one.”
“I’ll do that.”
We ran eastward along the battlements. A light breeze carried smoke from the burning trench right over the top of us, shrouding us in a greasy, asphyxiating gloom. Mary started coughing again, but other sounds dominated my ears—mostly screaming—the war whoops of soldiers and the shrieks of dying men. The smoke parted enough to allow me to take in the scene below. Flames from the burning ditch revealed hundreds of silhouetted figures along the second wall. These were Nephite warriors crouching behind its parapet. I don’t think they were hiding. Rather, they shielded themselves from the heat. I tried to imagine how they could breathe at all. Some of them would surely succumb to fumes, possibly suffocate at their post. A wise commander would have called them down. The fighting was presently centralized at the outermost wall and trench. Why force any soldiers to hunker down at the central wall?
We crossed the battlements and arrived at the next tower. Here we were granted our first unhindered view of the wider battle.
My heart raced in my chest. I suddenly understood why so many men had hunkered down on the next wall. “The enemy has almost taken the outer wall.”
Through the smoke and flames, we watched Nephite soldiers at the first wall furiously bombard the Lamanites with stones and arrows. The enemy was directly below them. The warriors of the Water-Lilies and the Cloud-Forest had somehow crossed the first moat with its deadly pikes. I saw ladders, but not nearly enough. Most of them were broken and burning. The widest bridges across the moat were comprised of the bodies of dead Lamanites. Even wounded Lamanites had been flung into the ditch. The first layer or two had been stretched out to be impaled by pikes. Additional bodies were piled high enough to fill in remaining gaps. Living soldiers crawled over these corpses, practically swimming through a quagmire of arms, legs, and blood. They lurched and pulled themselves out on the opposite side, often to be mowed down by the barrage of ordnance from Nephites at the first rampart.
An assembly line of barges and bridges carried the Lamanite army across the river. Officers on the near bank pressed them forward into the fray. A Lamanite’s life was cheap. There were so many—an ocean of them. Their objective, it seemed, was to overwhelm the defense works of Mormon’s engineers with sheer numbers. I watched in revulsion, my stomach crimping and twisting, yet a part of me was in awe. What kind of hatred, courage, or blind obedience could drive men to crawl over the corpses of their comrades, knowing full well that as soon as they reached the opposite side they’d meet a similar fate?
The top of a ladder appeared on the outer edge of the first wall. Nephites swarmed to the place, firing down arrows. Mormon’s warriors carried a basket of sorts to the place where the ladder had been raised. These men positioned themselves and dumped a payload of softball-sized stones. The ladder was thrown down, but seconds later, farther to the south, another ladder appeared. A similar defensive routine commenced. It’s only a matter of time, I thought. A matter of time.
“Where will they flee?” asked Mary.
I realized she was referring to the defenders on the first wall. How would they reach the central wall after the first wall was irreversibly overwhelmed? I distinguished bridges on the nearer side of the burning moat. These had been designed to swing into place so that the Nephites could cross. Afterward the fighters could have been hoisted back or thrown into the tar-filled ditch, but this wasn’t going to happen while the tar was aflame. These bridges had been rendered useless. How long, I wondered, before the flames burned low enough to put this escape plan into effect? Too long. The first line of Nephite defenders was trapped, destined to fight with fury and desperation to the last man.
“Over there!” Jacobah shouted.
He indicated an aggregate of buildings and tents to the north—the headquarters of Commander Mormon. It was surrounded by its own timber fortifications. The area was well lit, with people scurrying to and fro and a strong contingent of soldiers at the two entry points, front and back. The neighboring grounds were thick with sleeping men in tidy columns. No, not sleeping, I realized. Wounded.
The whole expanse had become Cumorah’s primary field hospital. Everyone knew Zenephi’s best physicians were the Ammonites of Mormon’s staff. Rumor had it that thousands of casualties from Josh’s Fox Division were already being cared for at this location. Locating Jesse in this morass might not be as easy as I’d initially hoped.
We continued along the battlement to the tower and stairway nearest Mormon’s headquarters. I glanced back one final time toward the first defensive wall. The burning ditch was no longer needed to illuminate the melee. Yawning light was visible in the east. The morning was breaking.
Fighting along the outer wall was more ferocious than ever. Wide swaths of the outermost ditch were filled to capacity with Lamanite dead and wounded. As far as I could tell, Fireborn and Eagle-Sky-Jaguar hadn’t set up any of their own field hospitals. The first waves of Lamanite fighters must have known their fate was to become sandbags to fill the ditch. They must have recognized that their commanders intended to use them as fodder to deplete the Nephites’ stockpile of arrows and darts and stones. Still, they rushed forward to die.
To the south I saw Lamanite soldiers topping the ladders and climbing onto the battlements. Nephites were trying to reorganize themselves to defend these breaches. My heart weighed me down like an anchor. Odd. I knew how this day would end. I’d known it all along. Still, watching it unfold churned and coiled inside me like a slithering thing. I tried to transform this demoralization into anger—into motivation. “Hurry!”
We descended the narrow stairs, dodged a few tents and canopies, and found ourselves among the first columns of wounded. Blood, still black in the waxing daylight, smeared the ground like a morning dew. Mary gasped and hesitated. Something to our right had caught her eye. As recognition set in, I tasted bile. Limbs. A lofty, tangled pile of discarded legs, arms, whatever you could imagine. An orderly dumped more gore onto the pile. They hadn’t even gone to the trouble to dig a pit. I nudged Mary to trudge onward. She shivered, staggered. I feared she would retch. She found her nerve and walked faster. Jacobah led the way.
The prevailing sound to our left was weeping; on our right it was screaming. Mary had become adept at averting her eyes at every potential distraction. I wasn’t quite as skilled. One man screamed as others held him down. A surgeon appeared to amputate his leg with something that smoldered and glowed. There were very few metal blades among the Nephites. Nevertheless, the Ammonites fully grasped the concept of cauterization to staunch blood flow. Apparently they were utilizing something besides metal to serve this function. This man is one of the lucky ones, I thought. Countless Nephites afflicted with horrible wounds received no attention at all, just groaned in agony. Many of these had perished. We passed corpses with open eyes, flies buzzing in and out of their mouths. Some wretched souls reached toward us, begging for water.
I shook my head. “No water! We have no water!”
It wouldn’t be long before the sun scorched down upon them. I prayed we’d already be long gone.
We reached the entrance of Mormon’s headquarters. No one stopped us. The soldiers who loitered nearby weren’t sentries. Just more wounded soldiers, except these had already been treated and could stand on two feet. Everyone wore bloody bandages. Bandages sounded too formal. Gashes had been wrapped in mantles, undergarments, fiber sacking, belts—whatever could be scrounged together. Some lacerations were plugged with mud. Men gaped at us, expressions blank and numb, as we worked our way across the compound. More of the wounded stared from the shadows between buildings, from rooftops and porches. Already there was very little unoccupied space, and this battle was only beginning.
Jacobah spotted a soldier leaning inside a doorway. The man’s eye and thigh were bandaged, but he appeared lucid. “Where is Commander Mormon?” asked Jacobah.
“Not here.”
Mary chimed in. “His family? His son, Moroni?”
The soldier shook his head and focused elsewhere, apparently to discourage us from asking anymore questions.
We moved on. Another warrior approached us. He was uninjured, his mantle and weapons unsullied. He tried to march past me, toward the compound exit. I blocked his path.
“Commander Mormon? Captain Moroni?”
He gestured carelessly toward some buildings deeper in the enclosure, then stepped around me impatiently. Jacobah, Mary, and I aimed our steps accordingly. We arrived at the half-stone, half-timber structure that appeared to be the central building. The place looked quiet. No burning lanterns. We didn’t see any guards until we were a few paces from the entrance. Abruptly, two men emerged, spears at the ready. Finally! I thought. Men still well enough to behave like soldiers. They were Ammonites.
“What do you want?” demanded one.
“We’re looking for the Commander or his family,” said Jacobah.
“Mormon is at the battlements with his Jaguars,” the first Ammonite replied. “Moroni is with his Eagles.” His chin jerked toward the western slope.
“Who are you?” demanded the second sentry.
“We’re looking for our companion,” said Mary. “He was wounded. Yesterday. Arrow in the right shoulder.”
The first sentry was unmoved. “Everyone here is the wounded companion of someone. We’re up to our necks in wounded men.”
“He was one of the very first,” I added.
“How did you get in here?” The Ammonite glanced at his comrade. “Who’s guarding the gate?”
“Is young Lehi within?” asked Mary. “He might help us—”
The second man shook his head. “The Commander’s family isn’t to be disturbed. You must leave here. Now.”
“Who inquires about my son?”
The voice had come from behind. I recognized it immediately. Relief flooded my veins. Moroni approached us with nine or ten warriors. Daylight was increasing fast. He smiled crookedly as he recognized us.
“Harry, Mary, Jacobah.” Moroni noticed my face and did a double take. After all, my nose must have been as purple as Barney the dinosaur.
“Just a bruise,” I said before he could ask. “I’m fine.”
He looked around, expecting, I think, to see other members of our company.
Again I anticipated his question and said, “They went in different directions. The citizens of Zenephi . . . They started to turn on us. They blame us . . . for this.”
Moroni grunted. “This should have been expected. You’re outsiders.”
“Most of the others are climbing the hill,” said Jacobah. “Seeking sanctuary.”
“Thousands may soon join them,” said Moroni. “Why are you here?”
“We’re looking for Jesse,” said Mary.
“Inside with my wife and children,” Moroni confirmed.
“We’re here to take him with us,” said Jacobah.
“Up these slopes?”
“Yes,” said Mary.
“He’s weak. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“I’ll carry him, if necessary,” said Jacobah.
Moroni heard Jacobah’s determination. “It will be necessary.” He bit the insides of his cheeks, pondering something urgent. He seemed to make a decision and gestured his Eagle guards to stay put. “Come inside,” he told us.
We followed him into the building’s dark interior.
“Your arrival may be an answer to a prayer,” said Moroni. “I must rejoin my Eagle Knights at the western slope. But my family . . . I don’t want them to stay here. Can you take them with you?”
“Uh, of course,” I replied, a bit taken aback.
