I lift up my own backpack and throw it onto my back. The first five steps are easy. The wind whips up the sand from my path and, for a moment, I see Rworg. He’s still surrounded. It’s impossible to say if he’s been wounded, as he’s so soaked in blood in general. I sprint toward him, bow in one hand, knife in another. I’ll want to be able to use both if needed. A Kertharian is standing with his back toward me, he doesn’t fit in to fight Rworg with the rest of the people swarming around him, so he’s just shouting. Legs wide, arms tense at his sides, fist clenched around the hilt of his sword. There’s a pause as he takes a big breath, then keeps shouting, shoulders and neck curling inward and down as he presses the sound out of his throat.

  It’s crazy. Absolutely unhinged. It makes it easier somehow, makes him seem like a rabid dog. I kick one of his legs out from under him, smack him with the haft of the bow on the neck. Before he’s down, I stab him in the base of the skull, just where the bone ends. Lille said it’s the quickest way to kill anything that has a head and a spine. I don’t know if she thought I’d be using it on humans.

  The Kertharian goes still, twitching for a last time. I push the knife into its sheath. I’ll have to clean it later. Not now.

  Rworg holds off four Kertharians at the same time. There are two with spears, which doesn’t make it easy even for him. One of the Kertharians had a spear, but it lies broken on the ground, cut in half. The woman is crouching low with a knife. It looks like something brought from the kitchen, but she swings it at Rworg. The Kertharians are mad, but when they get close enough, they fight to win. Single-minded and focused only on what’s in front of them, luckily, but fearless as well.

  There are more Kertharians running down the hill, still far enough away that we have some time.

  I pull out an arrow and nock it. “Rworg! We’re going!” I shout, drawing the string back. I shoot one of the Kertharians through the throat. The spear flies from his hands as he falls back, clutching his neck. “Come!”

  “Busy!” he shouts, spitting sand from his mouth, parrying a thrust of a spear. Rworg grabs at the spear with his other hand, but before he can yank it from the hands of the Kertharian stabbing at him, he has to let go to kick the woman coming at him with the knife from another angle.

  I shoot the spear wielding Kertharian in the chest. The arrow nearly grazes Rworg’s side, but there’s was no time to find a better angle. The dozens of feet running down at us thrums my guts.

  Five arrows left.

  “I’ll go find Finna! Try to get Mandollel’s bag and continue the same way. We’ll be right behind!” I just have to hope Rworg has a sense of direction. We didn’t spend as much time discussing what to do afterwards as we should have. Maybe we assumed Mandollel would handle it, but he’s not here.

  Rworg cuts at the legs of the Kertharians and they go down. He runs.

  I run. My feet sink into the sand on every step. It’s everywhere, silken, and smells like the sun. The heat is oppressive. Sweat pushes through my clothes, but I press myself forward, diagonally up the hill. I need to avoid the horde coming down and find Finna. Running around and shouting is only going to get me killed. Maybe we could just go? At the end of the day, she’s the best of us at getting out of trouble.

  I grit my teeth, grains of sand grinding between them. We can’t leave her behind. We have nothing except each other.

  The winds blow the sand this way and that. Some Kertharians pass me, much too close for comfort. They must be as blinded as I. Probably even more so, as they just run ahead, taking big gulps of sand with every breath, their song turning into coughing.

  I finally see Finna. She’s in the middle of a group of Kertharians, running behind them as part of the group. They have no idea she’s there, and the other Kertharians must assume she’s one of them. How the hell am I going to get her out of there?

  I circle more to the side to let them pass me. She said that she hasn’t seen me miss. An arrow made by Mandollel happens to be the one I pick from the quiver. Shame to waste one, but maybe it makes it easier to understand the message.

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  Finna jumps and shouts a curse as the arrow hits the ground before her legs. She bounces backward, but then stops for a moment. She looks at the arrow, then turns her head toward me. They are inside a thicker blanket of dust, so it must be difficult to see out of it. I at least don’t have eyes full of sand.

  The Kertharians that were running ahead of her stop and turn to look what’s going on behind her. There’s a moment of stillness as they take in the arrow sticking in the sand between them and Finna and her.

  “Here!” I shout as hard as I can.

  The screaming starts again. The Kertharians raise their weapons into the air, brandishing them at Finna. One throws some kind of knife at her.

  Finna ducks to the side to let the knife pass by, almost casually. She starts sprinting towards me, veering off enough to avoid running into the Kertharians, who are climbing the slipping sand up the hill toward her.

  “I’m gonna kill!” she shouts as bursts out of the cloud, clothes and hair light brown and grey.

  I nock a new arrow. “Later! Head to the backpacks! Duck!”

  She throws herself forward, tucking into a roll. The sword slices the air above her. It was a wild swing, probably wouldn’t have hit her anyway, but I needed the shot.

  Metal sparks and clangs as the arrow punches through the chainmail the Kertharian is wearing. He has no gambeson under it, just the armor thrown on top of his clothes. This close, I could have shot through the padding too.

  Finna continues the roll, running already before she’s completely up. I shoot another Kertharian, hoping he’ll fall in front of the others and trip them up. Three arrows left. My quiver has never been this empty. It feels weird, bouncing lightly on my hip as I turn and start running down the hill.

  Finna catches up to me. “Are we done?”

  We hit another cloud of sand, billowing and thick. “Absolutely,” I croak, throat clogged tight. “You need to get the thing!”

  “I know,” she says, arm lifted before her face. She doesn’t look wounded. Lictor did say she was untouchable, but I didn’t know it also covered fighting a mob of crazed people. “Rworg’s already there?”

  I don’t answer, because I have no idea and because I’m out of breath to begin with. I just keep running. We nearly run over a single Kertharian. His clothes are so covered in dust, he appears like a ghost from the sand. His mouth opens to start screaming. I drop low to slide on the sand and kick him in the knee. He falls forward. Finna runs past him and there’s a slicing sound, then a gurgle.

  “Nice,” she says, dagger bloody in her hand.

  It’s not, not at all. But this is what whole of Velonea will go through unless we stop them.

  We run, jumping over dead and the dying. Judging from the shape of the bodies, Rworg has been through here. We’re at the bottom of the bowl between the hills. Otherwise it would be hard to notice as it’s still impossible to see far through the clouds, but the slope evens out and I see a shape of a tree ahead of us.

  We pop out from the sand into clear air. Finna gasps, and I do too, as it’s so sudden. There’s a circle void of sand. The sky is clear above us, a swirl of colors. The sand is flying straight up so sharply it forms a circular wall. The auroras spark and whirl, bright and opaque.

  “Come!” Rworg shouts. He has Mandollel’s backpack worn backwards, before his chest, another set of straps running below the ones holding it up. “We go!” He turns around. Finna’s bag is on his back, pulled up, pressing down on his neck so he has to crane his head forward.

  “I would have taken it!” Finna shouts over the wind whipping the sand around, rattling and whooshing so loud it’s hard to hear anything.

  I have an arrow nocked loosely, as I spin around and squint into swirling dust. An arm lies on the ground, sticking out from the wall of sand. If we’re ever going to get away, we have to do it now. The stake and the auroras did something to the weather. The wind howls. What if it gathers up even more speed? Will it pull us into the sky? I wipe my face and mouth with my sleeve, trying to brush off some of the sand, but I just get more of it into my mouth, my sleeve yellow from the dust.

  “Come on!” Finna shouts. She and Rworg dive into the sand, disappearing almost immediately from sight.

  I sprint after them. I hope it’s the right direction, but any direction away from here is better than staying. Running in the sand cloud is getting even more difficult. It’s just not everywhere in the air, but feels like a hail, flying sideways and feeling like being pricked with needles on every part of exposed skin.

  A man screams ahead of me. I press down my head and push forward. Shooting anything is going to be impossible, so I stow my bow on the sling on my backpack as I run and stumble ahead. The mechanism is similar to what Rworg has for his sword, but I can use it by myself, as the bow is so light. I’ll need to secure it properly later, but at least I’ll have both my hands ready if I run into someone. If there’s going to be a fight, it’ll have to be a brawl at a biting distance. Nothing else will be possible.

  I nearly stumble on the corpse, cut almost in half.

  Finna appears out of the dust and yanks me down, grabbing my sleeve.

  I fall on one knee as a Kertharian stumbles out from the sand. Rworg’s sword cuts through the swirling dust, parting it for a moment, leaving small vortexes where the blade passes. The body tumbles and falls, the force of the blow throwing it aside. I have no idea where the head went.

  “Keep up,” she says. Pushing and dragging me back up to my feet. “We’re not done yet.”