In All Places (Stripling Warrior) Read Online Free

sheepishly, obviously having taken part in the wagering, but I couldn’t help a small smile, relieved at Zeke’s reaction.
    Our unit was already eating when we got back to camp. Corban and Mathoni took their food and left for their guard detail. I got mine and sat between Lib and Ethanim. I had come to feel safe between them, and since the grisly battle a week before, I had found myself seeking their company.
    When I finished eating, I was still hungry. So were the others.
    “Who cooked?” I asked.
    Lib nodded toward Cyrus, who gave a little shrug.
    “That’s all they gave me,” he said regretfully.
    “It was good,” I told him over the embers of the cook fire. Everything tasted good when you were starving.
    Every last one of us could hunt o ur own food, but doing so was not allowed unless we were assigned to a hunting detail, and then we had to give anything we killed to the army. There was an order to things, and we had to preserve it. Hunting parties went out each day, but they weren’t bringing in enough game to feed an army of hungry boys. The grains in the storehouses and supply tents were getting low. Consequently, our rations had been pared down. We had gone to Cumeni to lay siege on the city, but we were the ones who were starving.
    After we cleaned up, I asked Zachariah to take me into the forest to pick more of the plants he had shown me. Maybe we could find some roots to eat, too, though much of the forest had already been scavenged for edibles.
    The terrain was steep . We had been moving about on it for many weeks, but I had to let him help me over the trickier areas.
    “Thanks,” I said when he caught my arm to keep me from sliding down the mountainside.
    He didn’t reply beyond a grunt and a curt nod, just kept moving along with his eyes on the vegetation.
    When we came to a small gully, he hopped easily over it and held out his hand to me. I grasped it for balance and hopped the gully too, but not as gracefully. He dropped my hand quickly, when some of the others might have held it for an extra moment or two.
    “What’s your home like?” I asked him , trying to draw him out into a conversation.
    He shrugged. “Same as everyone else’s, I guess.”
    “Do you have a girl at home?”
    “Hopefully.”
    That surprised me. Though some of the oldest boys in the army were betrothed—some were even married—none of the boys in my unit had any such arrangements, though they frequently talked about girls from their town of Orihah, girls I didn’t know and, frankly, never wanted to know.
    “ Do you think she has gotten married?” I asked him.
    It had been three years . She would likely be married, even considering how many of the marriageable young men were away with the armies. There were plenty of older boys, boys who had been old enough at the time of the oath to make it and who had remained in Melek.
    He shrugged as he inspected a cluster of leaves. “It’s not totally up to her.”
    Her father might have betrothed her to someone, he meant.
    “What’s her name?”
    “ Elizabeth.” He took a slow breath and set a handful of stems and leaves into the basket I carried. “Beth.”
    I wondered if Zeke said my name like that.
    “She is the only one,” he went on, wiping off his knife on his tunic to avoid my eyes. “I could never love someone else. If Beth is already promised, I’ll go to Zarahemla with Gid and become a guard.”
    It took him a moment to realize what he had said. When he did, he flushed, glanced at me, and then crouched to cut some more stems.
    “I know that’s what he wants,” I said. “Everyone knows it.”
    He stood. “I know it’s not a secret, Ket.” He sighed, placed his hands on his hips and set one foot farther up on the incline for balance. “But I know what it feels like to part with someone you love, not knowing if you’ll ever see them again.”
    I imagine d this tall, handsome boy saying goodbye, possibly forever, to the girl he loved.
    “You’ll