Alma 2

Amlici, master rhetorician, would-be philosopher, and post-Nehorite, started a cult of personality that led to a move to install him as king. This posed a problem for non-Amlicites, who still thought of kingship as a democratic outcome. If the cult continued to grow, they might form a majority that would take down the church, a stated goal of Amlici.

So the people gathered in caucuses around the nation, hotly debated the pros and cons of this potential king, then sent messengers with poll results to the judges. Amlici was voted down. The Amlicites then chose to make him a king over themselves, which he’d virtually been anyway. His first mandate: kill everyone who’d opposed him in the caucuses or force them at knifepoint to submit to him.

Diplomacy was stillborn. Both sides took to the streets, armed as if heading onto a battlefield: swords, bows and arrows, clubs, and slings. Both sides organized their ranks, then clashed on Amnihu Hill (east of Sidon River, which ran alongside Zarahemla). Alma, judge and high priest, led the Nephites in the charge.

But butchery was the real captain of both sides. Nephites fell the hardest first, the River Sidon darkening with their blood. Then the battle tilted in their favor. The carnage would make wild boars look like spring lambs. Nephites, who prided themselves on their peaceful ways, gored their enemies with a savagery even they could not have foreseen in themselves.

The Amlicites who could still walk on two legs started to run. The Amlicite death toll: 12,532. The Nephite: 6,562. A bitter triumph for God’s chosen ones.

The surviving Nephites pitched tents and nursed the wounded in Gideon Valley (named, of course, after Nehor’s victim). Fearing a counterstrike, Alma sent scouts at night to spy on the Amlicites who’d fled. (The scouts’ names were Zeram, Amnor, Manti, and Limher.) In the morning they came back breathless and shaking: Lamanites north of Zarahemla were teaming up with the Amlicites for revenge. They’d already invaded Nephite territory, massacred adults and children, and were about to occupy Zarahemla.

The soldiers quickly pulled up stakes and started marching back to Zarahemla. Inevitably, the Lamanites—multitudes of them—attacked them as they marched. But again, strengthened by a sense of divine duty, the Nephites ravaged their foes, slaughtered them like calves for the meat market.

As though a sign from God, Alma ran smack into Amlici. Alma prayed so loud he could be heard above the wrenching moans of the wounded. As an answer, God gave him the head of Amlici, a trophy for the war chest of divinity.

The king of the Lamanites was luckier: God and or Alma couldn’t catch him, but just his guards, who fought like champions, until they had to turn tail and run from the intrepid Nephites, whose proudly white complexions now blushed with the blood of their enemies. Wet with gore, they began to throw the bodies of dead Lamanites into the Sidon to use as stepping stones to get across and to kill more Amlicites and Lamanites.

The slaughter didn’t stop. How could it? As the Psalmist had slyly said, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” And so bloodshed tasted good even to the onetime peace-mongers. Their only consolation? The ones they couldn’t hack to death themselves were devoured by wild beasts then picked clean by vultures. The Nephites went back later and heaped the sun-dried bones into bizarre parodies of sacred altars.