Finna stands up, shrugging Rworg’s arm off herself. “Ah, enough of this sappy crap. Let’s get a move on.”

  “It is still too hot and light,” Rworg says. Still, he releases me and I scoot away a bit.

  “It is really hot,” I say. I think we all needed the moment as it happened, but I worry that someone would have started to cry for real if it had lasted a second longer. “And we’re almost out of water. Any ideas?”

  Rworg grabs his ponytail and twists it around his fist, pulling it while thinking. “Hmm, we do not need to keep running as hard as we can, so we will get water as we go. Enough to quench our thirst for now, if not to last the rest of the way.”

  Finna waves a hand at the barren stone and sand around us. The stone under us is dark, grooved with cream-colored streaks of silt. The banks rising up on both sides yellow sand. “Where will you get water, here?” She knocks on the petrified wood above us, grey and hard like stone.

  “Desert is full of water, if you know how to look.”

  “Well, I don’t. So you better,” she says, sitting back down. “If I have to eat another piece of tack, I’ll lie down in the sand and you can carry my bleached bones back to Tenorsbridge.”

  Rworg chuckles. “We’ll remember you fondly. At least Folke and I. I will not vouch for the elf.”

  Finna snorts at that, but her face goes serious and she glances in the direction where we came from. “You think he is ok? I guess he’ll have to be?”

  “He’s going to be fine,” I say. “I have never seen anyone as fast. He wouldn’t have stayed to fight them. Besides, he said something earlier about the Crunch, so he probably knows the area and the climate. He’ll be fine, won’t he?”

  “Still can’t believe it’s called the Crunch,” Finna mutters.

  “He will be,” Rworg says, and nods firmly. “We will meet him later and make remarks about knowing how Tenorsbridge got the artifact. It will be excellent.”

  Finna opens up her bag and rolls open a map on the stone. “First, we need to get out of this desert, though,” she says, running a finger on the map. “The river continues east, but we want to go south and also backtrack a bit to the west. The map shows nothing useful that I can spot. It’s all just tiny lakes and swamps and someone has drawn a lot of snakes in here. I bet it will be great.”

  “No shortage of water,” Rworg says. “The snakes are harmless, unless you step on one.”

  The area sounds like something will grow there that I can use to craft more arrows. I have three left. Two made by Mandollel and one I got from the Kertharian camp. I feel naked with so few. I take out one of the arrows Mandollel made and roll it around in my fingers. It hasn’t warped a bit. Normally, an arrow that you made from fresh wood would be almost as curved as the bow by this point. Wobbling in flight, veering this way or that. This one is as straight as the best I brought from the village. Maybe Finna can help me run mana into the weaving, if I just get it even remotely right first. It’s pretty amazing she just picked it up like that.

  “I know some rich people eat snakes. You can wrangle us some. They smelled delicious,” Finna says.

  I rub my chin as I consider it. I have to find some way to shave soon. It’s lucky none of us are carrying a mirror. “Hmm, the meat might be good, yeah. Sounds interesting. Let’s try it!” Another thing I can tell the people at home. I wonder if I could bring back some.

  “I have rarely eaten as well as I have on this mission,” Rworg says. “I approve. We are doing important and dangerous work. We should appreciate life as well.”

  I wonder how they decided to put the team together. Instead of a hunter, it would have been easier to send someone with a large backpack full of dried meat and cheese. But with Mountain Ride, the answer to these questions is always the same: they tried it out and found out this was their best option. They couldn’t have seen how to team would start to work later, but I guess they saw far enough ahead to make the decisions they did.

  We were picked for both ability and how we worked together, but probably also based simply on who was stupid enough to agree to go. Not many people would just accept being teleported with complete strangers to a nation full of bloodthirsty maniacs. It’s a weird feeling to be chosen to participate in such a way. Sour, resentful, not much pride left to feel after all the manipulation and lying that made me come this far.

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  Still, here I am. Even if it wasn’t the only option, I would still try to finish what we’ve started. What kind of person would I be if I tried to walk away as thousands died? Taking into account both the people driven by madness and the ones killed by them because of it. “We still don’t know anything about why the Kertharians are acting like they are, right?” I ask.

  Finna is sliding the map back into her bag, but looks up. “What brought that up?”

  I turn to Rworg. “You knew something of what was going on here? How did you end up on this team, anyway?”

  “I volunteered.”

  Finna snorts. “Like that’s a thing with Lictor.”

  Rworg shrugs. “Nevertheless, I did. After I saw how my kin were stricken. The madness spread like wildfire, sparing none.”

  “But why weren’t you affected? It makes no sense.”

  “I do not know. I was in Tenorsbridge when Lictor came for me. He showed me the attacks, and I tried to reason with them. None answered. They only kept singing, attacking me as mercilessly as everyone else.”

  “But not quite as mercilessly. Isn’t that right?” I ask, turning next to Finna. “You said they killed me on sight, but with Rworg, they listen for a moment?”

  She shrugs. “Don’t listen for very long, though.”

  “It is as you say,” Rworg says. He touches the flat of his sword’s blade and yanks his finger away. The sun has edged nearer to the horizon. He grabs a piece of cloth to grab the blade and moves it back to the shadow of the trunk. Soon it will be dark and we can leave. “Maybe they remember the features or the similar sounds of my speech even through the haze of their bloodlust. I can understand nothing of what they scream at me. I have not lived in the cities, but I should be able to make out something. Yet, what they shout is gibberish.”

  “Weird,” I say. I’m not sure what else to say. At least it sounds like it isn’t anything that we could catch, if Rworg is immune, even if he is a Kertharian. “What about your tribe? How are they doing?”

  “They are unaffected, and hidden. Lictor took me to warn them, before it was too late. For that alone, I will die before letting this continue and would still not have paid him back. The mad attack everyone who is not mad as they are. I saw a few who were unaffected be cut down by their own families. It was the moment I decided to take action. Even if Lictor knew I would, and showed it to me intentionally, it does not change anything.”

  Finna throws on her backpack, yanks the straps tight. “We’ll stop it and no one is going to die. So no more dumb heroics, got it?”

  “I appreciated the dumb heroics,” I say softly, to lighten the mood.

  “Ha!” Rworg slaps me on the back. “But no promises for you, thief. I stand by what I said. Now, come! The night has fallen, the sun is low enough. We’ll have an hour of pleasant cool before the cold. You two will be our eyes, as the elf is not here.”

  We’re running again. This whole mission is just running from place to place.

  Well, if only that were true. The next time we stick a stake to the ground, I will probably be thinking fondly of the time when we got to run around during the night, not seeing anyone. With the next stake, we’ll also be closer to Krakkea. The area should be impassable, inhospitable and avoided by everyone with even a hint of sense, but if there are mages ready to fly in or patrolling the area around the capital, things will get real sticky.

  I have my bag still full of iron arrowheads, but I can’t just keep shooting mages out of the air. What was it that Lictor said? Tenorsbridge wizards didn’t care about the attack before the city got attacked directly and even then they only “eventually” started fighting back. “Does anyone have an idea why the mages are fighting with the Kertharians? How can they still use magic if they are as angry as the rest?” I ask as we jog.

  Finna jumps over a rock, sailing over it without breaking her stride. “Lictor and the geezers discussed that a lot. Whatever it is that happened, it doesn’t make them dumb.”

  “They do just run to attack Rworg, though. No one clever would do that.”

  “True,” he says, legs stomping steadily over the sand. “Yet they fight well. They are fearless, single-minded, and ready to sacrifice themselves. Fighting them is not like fighting rabid animals. They are fanatics. Driven beyond belief and sanity.”

  I remember the rider who rolled and dodged from side to side, crafty and quick, shield always where it was most in my way. He could have run away or hid behind his fallen horse, but he had to try to get to me, no matter the cost.

  If the mages act similar, still powerful, intelligent, in control, but focused only on killing anyone that isn’t a Kertharian… well, I understand why Lictor and the rest feel that the war can’t be won by just fighting. Is war really the right word if one side is trying to kill everyone on the other side? Considering that, was Tenorsbridge so out of line with their plan of killing all the Kertharians?

  They were. Even if the Kertharians started it. Even if they want to do the same to everyone in the rest of Velonea. Even if they are insane and don’t have enough sense left to appreciate the gesture of Tenorsbridge not killing all of them.

  I have to believe the rest can be saved. It’s hard to remember that when having to fight them, kill them one after another, to keep them from killing me.

  And yet.

  It can’t be natural what has happened to them. It has to be magical, some sort of curse or a calamity. Thirty years will be a long time to find a solution, especially with the Mountain Ride.

  My minds starts to wander even more as the environment changes. None of us are talking anymore, just running and keeping our eyes on the horizon. I now know Rworg can’t see anything that far, but he at least tries to look like he’s looking. I see occasional lights of a camp or some settlement, but nothing else. The night air is silent and biting cold, cutting right through my clothes. Like the warmth of the day is being shot right up into the sky, into the black.

  Black, except the green tint to the west, the auroras bleeding and fading to the void between the stairs.

  We’re going to make it.

  We have to.