His second thought was one of doom—they were on him, and his horse was bucking ten feet away. Worse, his sword was on that bucking horse.

Still, he’d put up a courageous fight, charging the onrushing Horde on foot, dodging the first Scab before taking a club to the side of his head from out of nowhere.

His world had gone black then. Even when he awoke much later, he wasn’t sure if he really was awake. There was no light, and it took him a good minute or two to realize that there was a bag over his head.

Slowly his senses came to him. And so did the smell.

He was in a Horde camp. By the sounds of the widespread laughter and the distant baying of dogs, it was a sizable camp, maybe even a city.

He was on his back, and his hands and legs were bound around a pole, like a pig being carried to the slaughter.

With his senses now intact, the meaning of his position began to settle on him. Billos was a captive of the Horde, alive for now but soon to be dead. The Horde never let captives live. They took what information they could from them through torture, then cut off their heads with a broadsword.

Thomas Hunter’s stern warning to the thousand gathered recruits still rang in his ears. “Never be taken alive,” he’d roared. “Never! They’ll skin you alive and you’ll wish you’d never been born. Fight to the death.”

Fighting a sudden bout of panic, Billos tested the ropes that bound his wrists around the pole.

He was rewarded with a boot to his ribs, and he grunted in pain.

“The worm is trying to wriggle free,” a gruff voice laughed. “I say we bleed it now.”

“Qurong wants it alive,” said another with more authority.

“They say you can bleed it alive and it won’t die,” the first voice said, kicking Billos again. “It isn’t human.”

Something touched his hand. “Not even human,” the Scab breathed.

The warrior was rubbing Billos’s fist with his scaly, diseased paw. It had never occurred to him that Scab palms were cracked and rough like the rest of their skin. Nausea washed over him.

“Leave it be,” a third Scab ordered. “Qurong wants to question it.”

Qurong! He’d heard the name of the Horde general many times. Elyon help him, he was being taken to the monster himself!

Billos felt true fear for the first time that day. Seeing so much fighting as a boy destined for the Guard he’d found it was easy to become hardened to the threat of death. They were all destined to die anyway, it was said. It was only a question of how many Horde you managed to kill before you died.