Billos scanned the crowd and called out for all to hear. “My friends, as you can see here, I will soon be serving in the Guard, which means I will be offering my life to protect yours.”

Johnis guessed that Billos meant to ask the crowd to turn him in.

Billos noticed the whispering and glanced to his right, by the far goal, where a man was bending to a shorter woman, passing on the secret. Most of the fighters had followed Billos’s eyes and were watching with some curiosity.

“In exchange for my life, I would like to ask one thing only,” Billos continued.

Johnis moved quickly, while their attention was diverted. He slipped the knife from his father’s belt, squatted down over the ball, and quickly sawed at the main cord that held the long strands of hair tight. Sweat streamed down his cheeks.

The cord around the ball snapped easily, thank Elyon.

Johnis dropped the knife, turned so that his back was toward the field, and stood, holding the Horde ball in his hands.

Horde warriors never cut their hair, preferring instead to weave it into long, nasty dreadlocks. The hair was greasy in his hands as he fumbled with one of the knots. It smelled like sulfur.

Still, considering the predicament he was in, he might have swallowed the whole ball of hair if it would save him from a beating.

Then again, who was to say that Billos could really beat him in a fight? Johnis was no stranger to swinging a sword.

Then yet again, Billos was stronger.

The knot loosed, and the hair unraveled. Johnis wrapped it around his hips, slid it up to his waist, tucked each end under his belt, and pulled his shirt over it. He slowly turned around.

“I pledge my life,” Billos was saying. “Offer me the ball, my friend, and I’ll go easy on the beating I’ve been ordered to give you. It’s the least you can do.”

No one on the field appeared to have noticed Johnis. Who could resist a whispered secret? No one. A mild but effective distraction. Now he had the Horde hair hidden around his belly.

The murmurs and chuckling of those around him might give him away. His father had already thought of that. “Shut up!” he snapped at those behind.

They quieted.

Billos called to an old man who’d just been whispered to by a girl. “You there, old man. Step out.”

He did.

“What did she tell you?” Billos asked.

“She told me, ‘I’m bored and sick.’ ”

“Bored and sick?” Billos repeated.

“This talk is making us all bored and sick,” the old man said. “Get on with the fight, boy!”

“The Horde ball is a trick” had become “I’m bored and sick,” Johnis realized. Laughter rippled softly through the crowd, and his tension eased a little. Maybe this would all work out.