The liquid is sticky, thick, but has no taste, mercifully. It does fume in my mouth, a bit like eating too much strong mustard. My eyes start to water, but at the same time, a relief starts to spread all over my body. I lift up to stand straight, muscles unknotting and relaxing. A warmth spreads from my chest, somehow driving away the feeling of being hot.

  I shiver as the liquid sticks on the surface of my mouth, but the feeling spreading around my body makes it worth it. It’s like I’ve just woken up and had a cup of coffee.

  “It looks to be working,” Rworg says. “Look at him.”

  “Why do I always go along with your stupid ideas,” Finna groans. She reaches out, making a “give it to me motion” with her right hand. The other hand she keeps on her eyes, lowering one finger to block her nose.

  I put the waterskin in her hand and she chugs a drink from it. She passes the waterskin to Rworg, gagging and contorting her face.

  I get to watch how it happens. Finna stops making faces and pats her chest and stomach, moves her feet inside her boots. “Whoa,” she says. “Well, ok, that was a better idea better than most of yours. Still disgusting, mind.”

  Rworg takes a drink and wipes his mouth. “I happily do not know what you are talking about.” His eyes go wide and he licks his lips. “It really does work.”

  He sloshes around what little liquid there is left in the waterskin. “Good enough?”

  It’s hot and I’m hungry, but I’m not crashing anymore. It’s more important to save what we have for later, in case someone actually does get hurt. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  We keep running. Rworg had some white cloth in his gear that he makes me wear on my head. It does help with the heat and the sun. My face and neck would have probably blistered off.

  Finna is much paler than me, but her clothes cover her skin almost completely. She must be hot under them, as they are dark. It doesn’t slow her down.

  We run.

  The smooth, dark stone of the river flows behind us. We avoid stepping on the sand and try not to leave any tracks, but the wind will sweep them off, anyway. It’s impossible to say if the Kertharians are following us or not. There’s no more screaming, but I guess even they couldn’t keep screaming for hours at an end. Maybe they stopped once we were out of sight. We hid from the Kertharians once before, but I was so dead tired that time that I don’t remember how long they kept shouting after losing sight of us. I have even less of an idea of how long they kept searching.

  We find shade under a massive petrified tree angling over the old river bank. The shadow is a dark line across the river, wide enough to sit under. The air and ground are cooler, sweetly so. The stone not in the shade radiates heat.

  “We have to preserve our strength,” Rworg says. “After sundown we can move more freely, but It will be cold.”

  I cough, lick my lips and the insides of my mouth. “Water is our greatest problem. We have barely any left.”

  “There're no springs or lakes or anything near here,” Finna says. She’s poring over the map. “We’re veering away from the third stake, heading north-east instead of south. Every step takes us further into the desert.”

  “Do you think the Kertharians are still coming after us?” I ask.

  They both shrug.

  Rworg scratches the side of his head. “They do not know of our mission, but they must suspect we are a danger. I do not know how tenacious they are. We have never had time to find out.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He’s right. With the Mountain Ride’s time limit of only 24 hours, it’s impossible to say if the Kertharians will search for weeks or lose interest moments after losing sight of us. Yet, we are invaders, doing something impressively magical on their side of the border. Large enough to see from maybe a day’s travel away. Half of Kerthar must know of them already.

  Still, it’s impossible to say what it means. Maybe they pull back all their forces to search for the cause of the auroras. Maybe they don’t care and think only about invading Velonea and killing anyone they find.

  I scratch at my itching head and pull off the white cloth. It’s half moist from sweat, half dry. Yet, even after being in the sun for hours, it feels only warm in my hands. “Do you think we could rest here?” I ask, turning the cloth around. “Continue when it gets dark? We have to hurry, but we can’t do anything right away and we can’t keep running in the sun or we’ll die from heatstroke if not from the Kertharians finding us.”

  Rworg leans out from under the trunk and stretches his neck to look at the sun over the ridge of the river. “If we do not see or hear pursuit, we can.”

  “If they send the whole camp, we’ll hear them coming much before they have a chance to find us. And if they send just a small party, Rworg can kill them,” Finna says. “Now that I got out of the sun, I’m not taking another step. This is nice.” She lays down on the cool stone, laying her head on her hands and closing her eyes. “You’ll take first watch. Or whoever, but not me.”

  I push myself up and wave for Rworg to sit down. “I’ll take it. I think you have deserved a rest too. Especially if you have to kill a small search party later.”

  Rworg chuckles, but does sit back down. He reaches for the bundle of white cloth and throws it at me. “Thank you, Folke. Any signs, wake us.”

  The sun is low enough that I can walk in the shadow by just pressing close to the bank of the river in some places. I backtracked, ears poised for anything, but the Kertharians have either taken a wrong turn at the place where we dropped into the dried river or have given up the chase in general. On the horizon, I can see clouds of sand, but the only thing I can say is that it probably isn’t anyone coming in our direction. The auroras have risen even higher and faded into a background color behind the blue. I have to concentrate to see the wide strands of green cutting across the sky and over the horizon in the direction where we set the first stake.

  If the effects of setting the stakes are going to become even more intense with the rest of the stakes and the second was already like this, I don’t even want to imagine what the third and fourth will be like. We’re going to have half the Kerthar coming at us. If they have any sense left, they are going to prepare somehow. Have mages ready to fly in to investigate or cavalry patrolling the countryside.

  The locations of the stakes luckily don’t make any sense. Although it’s probably not due to luck, but to very intentional planning by Tenorsbridge. The directions zig-zag around, the distances between each stake differ from each other. I try to imagine myself in someone’s shoes, trying to guess where the next stake would be. Maybe continuing along the same route as the two first ones from west to east, almost to the sea shore, cutting the whole of Kerthar in half horizontally. Or then the next point could be far to the south, to create a triangle with the top pointing straight down at Krakkea. The Kertharians don’t know how many stakes there are or what we are going to do. That, and their madness, are the only things that we have going for us at the moment.

  And each other.

  I scan the horizon and think of the people I’m travelling with. Rworg is strong and noble. He’s helping us do this to his own people, cutting them down for what he feels is the greater good. Thinking about how Lictor tried to use that same sense of honor for a plan to massacre every Kertharian makes me clench my fists so hard my fingertips dig into my palms.

  Mandollel is proud, but not without merit. He is generous with his time and knowledge. I have a feeling many elves would not bother getting involved with wars of humans. Maybe he understands this is not just a war, but something that would reach even their forests, if the Kertharians wouldn’t be stopped and instead kept going, even after burning their way through Velonea. First Tenorsbridge, eventually the elven forests in the east.

  Finna is Finna, and I’m not sure what to think about her. I’ve put together that Lictor somehow blackmailed her into participating, but he’s not here now and she could have run away multiple times already. I think she’s in this for real. She hasn’t told us anything about herself, but maybe she still will. Or maybe not. Maybe she’ll bite me if I ask.

  Nothing moves. The sand shifts slowly across sand, the clouds over the sky. The desert is quiet. It’s peaceful. I lean on the bank of the river, out of sight, and let my thoughts wander as I keep listening.

  A rustle sounds from nearby. It’s a lizard, as long as my palm. Its tongue flicks out, tasting the air. I have been so still, it thought it was safe to slither out. My stomach grumbles and the lizard lifts its head, turning it from side to side.

  I let it be. Shoo it off with a wave of my hand.

  Hard tack and bitter yellow fruit will be enough for today. There’s been too much death already.