AMBER held the child's emaciated body close to her breast as the boy's lips turned blue and his shivering subsided. His eyes glazed, and then he was completely still.
She didn't cry; all her tears had long ago been cried out. Huddled in her group of about twenty prisoners, she just continued to stroke back the boy's hair in the same way she had when he was alive. It was all she could do.
"Give him to me," Lorenzo said. Amber turned dull eyes on the stocky Halrana. Who had he been in his former life? Did it even matter? "Here, yes, that's it. Let go. Give him to me."
Lorenzo took the child away, and Amber looked around her little group. Finally she stood, shakily, feeling light-headed with hunger and privation. Amber looked around the prison camp and wondered how she was going to get out. Would she be walking? Smiling and laughing as the camp was liberated? Or would she be on her back, carried like a sack of grain, yet another casualty of the terrible conditions? Yet more prisoners arrived, always more than were taken by sickness and starvation.
Amber put her hand over her belly. She was more than a month pregnant, and there was only the tiniest of bumps on her abdomen, but it served as a constant reminder. She couldn't afford to die. She owed her unborn child that much. She needed to live.
She again cast her eyes over the camp. Without shelter, the prisoners had formed groups, most consisting of a dozen men, women and children, but sometimes more. In the distance, she could see the steel fence that bordered the camp on four sides. Between Amber and the fence huddled group after group, with barely space between them to walk to the latrines. Some had erected makeshift shelters from a blanket and a few sticks; others had formed a circle of warmth, with the weakest of their group in the middle.
There were so many of the groups she couldn't even begin to count them.
Not far away Amber saw a group of just two, and she frowned with distaste. The pair sat a little further from everyone else, and one, an old man, had his head resting in the other's lap.
The younger man, Prince Leopold, former commander of the armies of Altura and Halaran, was in a world of his own. Leopold had been here since the beginning; he had arrived with Amber when the camp was built, not long after the battle at the Bridge of Sutanesta.
As Amber heard it, he had fled before the battle even began, looking for his uncle, Tessolar. Like Amber, he had been rounded up in the aftermath of the battle, and here they were.
Leopold was despised even more than the prison guards. He had led the allies to defeat, and then left them at their hour of greatest need. Occasionally the Torak and Louan prisoners spoke with him, but all of the Alturans and Halrana shunned him. Amber was almost surprised he hadn't been murdered in the night, another body with little questions asked, but who here had the weapon or the strength? It was hard enough just staying alive. Looking at Leopold, Amber remembered the handsome face and flaxen hair of the dashing prince. Now, he was just another sad man.
Leopold had been granted his desire when, just the previous day, Tessolar, his uncle, had arrived at the camp.
Amber barely recognised the man who had once been the High Lord of her house. Tessolar was a broken man, shrunken and withered, with most of his hair fallen out and eyes sunken into his skull. The two legionnaires who brought him in had unceremoniously dumped him with the other prisoners and then left without a word.
Leopold had immediately gone to his uncle's side. Tessolar had some kind of strange disease; his eyes were yellowed and froth sputtered from his mouth. Amber had watched Leopold try to speak with his father, but Tessolar was past communication.
Now Amber looked on as Leopold sat disconsolately, his uncle's head in his lap. Tessolar moaned and writhed, but none of the prisoners paid any attention. They could hear, and they could see, but they had their own problems, and in any case, the two traitors deserved each other.
Amber looked down at her own cluster of prisoners and her eyes met Beatta's. The Halrana woman stared intently back, and Amber knew that here was a will that matched her own. Beatta's hair was darker than Amber's, brown to Amber's auburn, but like Amber she would do anything it took to escape.
The two had formed a bond one night when Amber had seen Beatta smile coyly at one of the prison guards, a nasty Tingaran named Hugo. Hugo was a bully, but Beatta was attractive, and he wasn't immune to her touch when she laid a hand on his bicep. Beatta ate well that night, and Amber's respect for her grew, if anything. This was a woman who had the strength to survive.