When Johnis looked back at the platform, the warriors were spreading out in two lines. A quick glance around told him three things that were now as unbendable as the ground itself: One, the crowd was here to see someone fight. And perhaps be killed. Two, that person was him, unless his logic was failing him totally, which could be the case. He’d felt inordinately stupid since his arrival in the Histories—fast on his feet and full of passion but slow in his mind and as jittery as a trembling mouse crossing a table in broad daylight. Three, the crowd would see him fight and perhaps be killed because there was no avenue for escape that he could see.

A fighter dressed in black from head to foot, wearing a tight-fitting black hood, stood tall on the platform and clapped his hands three times. The crowd fell silent.

The executioner’s voice rang out: “Prisoner, you have been found guilty of fleeing justice and giving aid to the enemy. As is mandated by law, you have been sentenced to death. As is also permitted by law, you may either be hanged by the neck at the gallows until dead, or you may fight to prove your innocence in mortal combat with twenty of the king’s guards. Which do you choose?”

Neither, he tried to scream, but his throat remained closed.

“Has the cat nipped your tongue, prisoner?”

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

Johnis stepped forward, weighing his options, which were few, perhaps even nonexistent, in this death chamber. He could try to confound them and buy some time, but doing so would only give the guard more time to find him.

Or he could fight.

His limbs felt numb. This was it, then. He’d crossed the worlds to face his death in a chamber of bloodthirsty, scabless Horde—

Unless . . .

“I choose to speak to the king!” he called out.

“That is not an option.”

The warriors he was to fight now stood in rows of ten on each side. The executioner motioned them forward, and they began to advance.

“Then you will have his wrath!” Johnis circled to his right. “I am his cousin, and to kill royalty is death.”

His announcement stopped them cold. But not out of fear. Confusion at his audacity, more likely.

He picked up his pace, closer to the soldiers on his right and farther from those on his left. Better to take them head-on, a few at a time, than broadside, where the whole mass can club you to death. Silvie had learned the tactic as a child, and had also taught him.

“There’s been a mistake! I am not sentenced to death. I was kidnapped on my way to the lake . . . by the Horde . . . who then forced the Chevy that was carrying the prisoner off the road and put me in his place!”

His voice echoed to silence.

“Is that so?”