Then a third realization dismissed all other thoughts. The Horde was expecting them. He, Johnis of Ramos, the Chosen, had delivered them into Horde hands.

Michal’s warning whispered through his heart. You’d better be prepared for far worse than anything you’ve dreamed.

“Johnis!” Silvie tugged on his sleeve. “Run!” She’d come back up the hill for him.

He tore down the dune with her, fully confused by panic. This wasn’t just him and a few chosen ones following the Roush into hell, was it? No, it was him leading five hundred against the Roush’s advice.

He slid to a stop by his horse, unsure how to proceed. They were running from his mother? Leaving her?

“Johnis!” Silvie slapped him upside his head. “Move, boy! You have to start using your head!”

He threw his leg over the stallion and allowed it, more than urged it, to bolt up the hill behind the others, the last of whom were already cresting the dune.

Silvie was beside him, bent low over her saddle. “Stay with me!” she said.

She was ten times the fighter he was; they both knew that. For the first time true fear settled over him. The Guard didn’t frighten easily, and yet they seemed unnerved now.

They flew up the dune and pulled up hard. The rest of the Third Fighting Group had halted halfway down the other side in a bunch. Johnis lifted his eyes and saw what they saw.

The scabs wore black cloaks now, not the pale cloth that matched the desert sand, as though cut from the black sky behind them.

Thousands upon thousands of mounted Horde lined the next dune, stretching half a mile each direction, cutting off their escape. Behind them more came from the night, filling their ranks ten, perhaps twenty deep.

“Dear Elyon, help us,” Silvie whispered.

Johnis’s mind scrambled for some kind of meaning, some thread of hope, some logical solution to this impossible sight. It was as if the image of the Dark One that had reached out to them from the books in his saddlebag had come alive, many times over, here in the desert night.

“Take your sword out, Johnis!” Silvie snapped. “Keep your shield up. I know you don’t have that much experience fighting, so remember one thing: they are slower. Wait for them to draw back, and cut quickly under their exposed sides.”

He stared at the line of Horde.

“Johnis!” she whispered harshly. “Your sword!”

He turned to yank it out and froze with his fingers on the handle. Behind them, on the dune they’d just vacated, stood another Horde army, silent and black against the dark sky.

“Behind us!” Johnis cried. His voice echoed through the valley.

Boris was the first to move, rearing his horse around and back up the hill toward Johnis and Silvie. “To the high ground!”