Lorenzo took the child away, and Amber looked around her little group. Finally she stood, shakily, feeling light-headed with hunger and privation. Amber looked around the prison camp and wondered how she was going to get out. Would she be walking? Smiling and laughing as the camp was liberated? Or would she be on her back, carried like a sack of grain, yet another casualty of the terrible conditions? Yet more prisoners arrived, always more than were taken by sickness and starvation.

Amber put her hand over her belly. She was more than a month pregnant, and there was only the tiniest of bumps on her abdomen, but it served as a constant reminder. She couldn't afford to die. She owed her unborn child that much. She needed to live.

She again cast her eyes over the camp. Without shelter, the prisoners had formed groups, most consisting of a dozen men, women and children, but sometimes more. In the distance, she could see the steel fence that bordered the camp on four sides. Between Amber and the fence huddled group after group, with barely space between them to walk to the latrines. Some had erected makeshift shelters from a blanket and a few sticks; others had formed a circle of warmth, with the weakest of their group in the middle.

There were so many of the groups she couldn't even begin to count them.

Not far away Amber saw a group of just two, and she frowned with distaste. The pair sat a little further from everyone else, and one, an old man, had his head resting in the other's lap.

The younger man, Prince Leopold, former commander of the armies of Altura and Halaran, was in a world of his own. Leopold had been here since the beginning; he had arrived with Amber when the camp was built, not long after the battle at the Bridge of Sutanesta.

As Amber heard it, he had fled before the battle even began, looking for his uncle, Tessolar. Like Amber, he had been rounded up in the aftermath of the battle, and here they were.

Leopold was despised even more than the prison guards. He had led the allies to defeat, and then left them at their hour of greatest need. Occasionally the Torak and Louan prisoners spoke with him, but all of the Alturans and Halrana shunned him. Amber was almost surprised he hadn't been murdered in the night, another body with little questions asked, but who here had the weapon or the strength? It was hard enough just staying alive. Looking at Leopold, Amber remembered the handsome face and flaxen hair of the dashing prince. Now, he was just another sad man.

Leopold had been granted his desire when, just the previous day, Tessolar, his uncle, had arrived at the camp.