Mosiah 21

So Limhi returned to Nephi, set up shop, and all was well. Till more Lamanites started rabble rousing again. They wanted blood but respected their king’s oath. So they just beat up and chained some of the Nephites and forced them into slave camps. There they were treated like mules.

But it was as if God had said, “Be stubborn like mules and you’ll have to carry packs like mules.” In other words, God actually wanted someone to whip his people, while keeping his own hands clean.

It got worse. More raids and the city soon surrounded by Lamanites. Nephites began a series of protests to get the king to drop his oath. The Lamanites, obviously, did not honor it. Why should we?

Limhi assented, the troops mounted a frontal assault and were crushed by the Lamanites, who, by temperament and by training, were more suited to slaughter.

The Nephites went into national mourning. Some widows banded together to make themselves heard. They garnered political support and got more military action, which led to more widows and nurses tending their wounded husbands and sons. Another campaign ensued, same results.

This wouldn’t work and everyone knew it. The public at large chose to be slaves without protest. Protest, that is, where their masters could hear.

But they also prayed for deliverance. God hesitated, given how snotty most of them had been to him. So he took a back-door approach to answering: he softened the Lamanites’ hearts so they wouldn’t be so cruel to their slaves.

Over time, normalcy resumed. The economy grew. Religiosity too. Everyone chipped in, especially to feed people most hurt by the war. They had learned a lesson, though: trust but verify. Every grain silo had locks. Every corral had guard dogs. No one went walking after dark. Or too far in the daytime.

They kept their eyes out for Noah’s priests, too, on whom they blamed all the bloodshed of the last few years because of their Lamanite maid-abductions. They set out to catch the priests and free the women and, who knows, any little forest-born kids. They knew as well that the priests had been sneaking into the city and stealing grain to live off of for years.

On one of the night-watches Ammon and his men were caught roaming in the countryside near town. Thinking these were the priests, the abductors bound and gagged them, then locked them up. They would have been executed, too, had not Limhi learned who they were: his own brothers from Zarahemla.

Limhi had previously sent a battalion to find Zarahemla and make contact. Finding only a deserted wreckage, they thought that was it and went back to Nephi shortly before Ammon’s arrival. If only they’d had the magic ball-and-spindles. Or even an ordinary compass.

Still, they had brought back to town a set of engraved plates they found in a temple amid the ruins. Now Limhi took heart at Ammon’s news that King Mosiah had a divine gift for interpreting writing in languages he didn’t know.

Ammon was more subdued. He’d lost of lot of family in battles. His old city had been corrupted and enslaved because of Noah and those damned priests. Abinadi was dead. Alma and his disciples had left town to start their own religious commune. He wished he could join them. Because he had made his own agreements with God.

In time Ammon converted Limhi and others to his faith. Many wanted to be baptized. But they wondered what kind of ordination, if any, gave a man authority to perform this ritual. (And women were not in their thinking.) They held out. No church for now, just a lot of good feelings and mutual civility. People in the know winked at each other and left it at that. They met on the sly to swap sacred tales and share convictions.

They also planned how to free the city from slavery. That’s God’s work too, they knew.