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of a horse. Then they all mounted and rode off with her.
    For almost a week the soldiers made their way northeast at an exhausting pace, stopping occasionally to raid an unsuspecting town as they had raided Dabbasheth, burning and killing and destroying. There was no reason for it that Jerusha could see except to instill terror throughout the countryside. Between the villages, they left a trail of blackened fields, slaughtered livestock, and devastated vineyards and olive groves. Jerusha wondered if the Assyrians had destroyed her father’s little farm before attacking Dabbasheth. She prayed that they hadn’t, knowing how very much Abba loved his land. Beloved Abba . Jerusha wept when she thought of him and his desperate efforts to save her. She tried to remember his smile, his voice, but every time she pictured him she saw the Assyrian’s sword slashing toward him and Abba’s face, covered with blood.
    Please, God, she prayed. Please let him be all right .
    She remembered Mama and her sister, Maacah, cowering beneath the cart, and she wondered if the soldiers discovered them. Had they taken Maacah captive, too?
    Please, God …
    Jerusha thought about her family constantly in the days that followed and vowed that somehow, someday, she would find a way to escape and return home. She would live through this somehow and one day be reunited with her family. Her love for them gave her the will to survive the seemingly endless days of terror and cruelty. But the farther away from home they traveled and the more unfamiliar the terrain became, the more she felt her hope trickling away like water from a cracked jar.
    Jerusha had learned that her captor’s name was Iddina. He had shouted it at her, pointing to himself and making her repeat it. Iddina terrified her. There was no mistaking the cruelty in his dark eyes or his hunger for violence, his thirst for bloodshed. The sight of him, the smell of him gagged her as he forced her into his tent, night after night. But she remembered the mutilated bodies left behind in the little grove of trees and knew that her only hope of survival was unquestioning submission.
    Six days after the raid in Dabbasheth, the Assyrian raiders finally reached their destination many miles to the north. Jerusha smelled the Assyrian camp before she saw it, sprawled like a vast black wasteland around a besieged city. Thick smoke and the scent of death hovered everywhere; the air carried the scent of blood and decay. All the trees—which Jerusha imagined had been centuries-old olive groves, vineyards, and fruit trees—had been cut down, and the farmland had been trampled beneath a blanket of black tents. The entire world of the Assyrians seemed dark and oppressive to Jerusha, and she saw more soldiers and chariots and horses than she imagined existed. Her chances of escaping from such a dreadful place seemed hopeless.
    It was early evening when they arrived in the camp, and Iddina led her to the officers’ section, where the larger, three-roomed tents offered more luxuries than the enlisted men’s quarters. Iddina stopped beneath one of the few remaining trees where three more Assyrians, dressed in officers’ tunics like his, sat on mats beneath the tree, eating their evening meal. The other officers seemed pleased to see Iddina and greeted him with hearty shouts. He pushed Jerusha in front of them, a hunter proudly displaying his trophy, and the men quickly lost interest in their food as they gaped at her in undisguised lust.
    “No … oh no, please …” Jerusha whimpered as she edged away from them.
    Without warning, Iddina slapped her across the face and shoved her toward the other men. Then he shouted something, and a woman who had been kneeling by the hearth jumped up and hurried over to them. She was the first woman Jerusha had seen in days, but she seemed more animal than human, with the cowering, skittish movements of a beaten dog. Her every gesture reeked of fear.
    “I am Marah,” she said