Alma 47

But back to our story. Amalickiah and his gang went to Nephiland and started whipping up the Lamanites there, so much so the king sent out a broadside telling people to wage war on the Nephites, despite their having given the city its name.

Mixed reviews on the broadside. No point resisting the king. Unless you have a death wish. But also too scary to start it up with the Nephites. Same death wish. Most took the latter route: no thanks, king.

Which made the king mad. (Whooda thunk?) So he ordered forced conscription. They say he’s subtle, but, from what I’ve seen, not much. Some devoted gung-ho soldiers, others just along for the ride. He took them to Onidah, an armory where a lot of the chicken Lamanites had run to stock up and start a little rebel state. They got their own king and their own simpleton mission statement: “No war with Nephites. If we can help it.” They mounted Antipas Hill and waited to fend off Amalickiah’s army.

Amalickiah had no interest in their pseudo-pacifist stance. He just wanted to dethrone their king and take over the place. So his army pitched tents in the valley next to Antipas. At night he sent an agent up to the mount and asked for their military leader, Lehonti, to come down for a meeting. Lehonti wasn’t buying it.

After a second and even third rebuff of his agent, Amalickiah himself went up and begged Lehonti for a meeting. Lehonti—what was he thinking?—said yes. And he went down at night, too. Not smart.

Anyway, Amalickiah offered Lehonti a chance to surround Amalickiah’s troops and assimilate them into his own. The condition? Amalickiah would be second in command over the whole bunch.

Lehonti took him up on it. Amalickiah’s armies awoke to the shock of Lehonti’s armies surrounding them. They begged to be spared, if only they could join their enemy’s army. This was all in Amalickiah’s plan to climb the political ladder up the tower of the military-industrial complex. You see, if the top guy was killed, the second in command got to be top guy. So Amalickiah had one of his slaves poison Lehonti and that was that. Amalickiah took over. He marched his armies to Nephi, capital of Nephiland. The king came out to meet him, but Amalickiah sent slaves to meet the king. They bowed as if revering him. The king put out his hand to lift them one by one, a well-known peace sign. On the way up, the first slave stabbed the king in the chest, bursting his heart. All the slaves jumped up and ran off, the Lamanite slaves to boast and the Nephite slaves just because, well, free at last …

Amalickiah sent in troops to find out what had happened. He got the report of the king’s bloody death and put on a pathetic show of grief, telling everyone that obviously the Nephite king’s own slaves had done this and that anyone who loved the king should chase the slaves down. The hunt began. When the king’s slaves saw approaching troops, they veered into Zarahemla to join Ammon’s people. Amalickiah’s soldiers returned, heroes, and took over the city of Nephi.

When the queen heard her husband had been murdered—and the rest of the story which Amalickiah happily publicized— she asked this gangster to spare her people, come to her personally, with witnesses, and confirm the death report she’d gotten.

They did that. Twisting the knife with words. All the gory details. And some bragging.

To the victor go the spoils, they say. So Amalickiah married the queen and became not only conqueror but authentic ruler of all the Lamanites, including the subgroups mentioned earlier. Speaking of which, it was easy to spot mere Nephite dissenters from regular bloodline Lamanites: they got harder in their faces, stiffer in the jaws, wilder in their carousing. I could make a list of their sins crimes, but your imagination can conjure enough to give you a picture. I trust you on that. We’re all schooled in human nature. And the art of forgetting what our parents taught us.