The hours slipped by, and sleep finally gave him the relief he desperately needed. When he opened his eyes next, the sky was already darkening. Had it all been a dream?

“You planning on sleeping forever?” a voice to his right said.

He jerked his head, surprised. A large boy leaned against a tree, arms crossed. It was Jackov, the seventeen-year-old fighter whose nose he’d broken just last week in a most improbable fight that had given him the position he now held as an officer in the Guard.

Jackov tried to grin, but his blackened nose discouraged muscle movement. He lowered his arms and walked up to the rock. “I heard what happened.”

Memories of his fateful attack on the Horde raged back, and Johnis closed his eyes. Not a dream. “What did you hear?”

“That you led five hundred Guard into a trap set by the Horde. That you’ve betrayed the forests. That if you show your face in the village, a thousand Guard will string you up by your ankles and lower you into water.”

He faced the stronger fighter, wondering if all of what he said was true. Undoubtedly. Except for the method by which the Guard would execute him—drowning was the Horde way, not the forests’.

“You’re in a predicament,” Jackov said.

“I am.”

“What will you do?”

Johnis looked around the clearing and saw that no one else was nearby. Pity. He’d hoped Silvie would come back for him.

“I was there, you know,” Jackov said.

“Where?”

“In the desert, with the Third Fighting Group.”

“You were? I didn’t know you’d been assigned to the Third.”

“I wasn’t. Thomas had the new recruits preparing fires for the Horde. He didn’t want us in battle so soon, so he came up with the crazy notion of filling trenches full of resin to light in case the Horde attacked. I was put in charge of a hundred worker bees.” Jackov sneered. “Imagine that, from the best of the new recruits to a taskmaster. On account of one squat who threw one lucky blow.”

“I’m sorry,” Johnis said, knowing Jackov spoke of him. “You’re right, it was lucky, and if I could take it back, I would. I didn’t have this in mind. How did you end up in the desert with us?”

Jackov shrugged. “I saw you leave the forest and slipped into the group when they entered the desert.”

“Then I’m glad you made it out.” Johnis slipped from the rock and brushed dirt from his seat.

“I heard some things,” Jackov said.

“The whole world is hearing things these days.”

“About a woman,” the large lad said.

Johnis eyed him. “What woman?”

“A woman they took from the forests when she was collecting the Catalina cacti for her sick boy. Now she’s sick. A Scab who looks like a baboon for all the rotting—”