Rworg steps into the puddle and sinks.

  His leg sinks nearly up to his knee in the marsh, and a snake immediately bites him in the thigh.

  “Is that one of the poisonous ones?” Finna asks, watching Rworg swing his leg around, the snake snaking in the air behind.

  Rworg grabs on to the snake’s head with both hands and wrenches its jaws open, then crushes its head in his right fist. “No. So we can eat it.”

  “How about venomous?” I ask.

  “Ha!” he says.

  Guess not. Still, a circle of blood spread on his thigh, even if the bite seems hardly to have penetrated the cloth of his trousers. “We should bandage that. It was you who warned us about the snakes, so how come you’re the first to get bitten?”

  Rworg shrugs, throwing the mushed-up snake on the ground. “I am from the desert. Swamps are unfamiliar to me,” he says, rolling up his trouser leg. Two neat rows of small red pinpricks grin from his hairless thigh.

  Finna bites at the nail of her thumb. “It did look like just a puddle.” She waves a hand to the damp green all around us with a scowl. “Yesterday, we were in a desert. Where did all the sand go? Where did the water come from?”

  I make a small ah sound and look at Rworg, eyes sparkling.

  Finna purses her mouth, closes her eyes. “Go on.”

  “The scenery did undergo a moist dramatic change.”

  “I’ll stab you,” she says.

  “It is true, though!” Rworg bellows. Blood squirts from his thigh as he lunges to slap me on the shoulder.

  “The elf is going to kill you if you bleed out, jumping around like that,” Finna says.

  We’re all in good spirits. Even she’s smiling, despite her best effort. We haven’t seen a single Kertharian during the last day of traveling, and we’ve come a long way toward the third location where we’re supposed to set the stake. Mandollel has the stake, but he is probably already there, waiting for us to arrive.

  Before, everything was sand. Now everything is wet. The terrain changed in what felt like a hundred steps, sand giving way to grass, grass giving away to moss and mire.

  I wrap a few layers of gauze on Rworg’s thigh, as he stands, arms crossed over his chest. It’s just a scratch and not worth using any of the healing liquid we have left. Mandollel has one more waterskin of the stuff with him, so we have quite a lot. Still, just one more serious injury and we’ll be out again.

  Finna watches us, pacing back and forth, splashing in the water, pushing through the mossy ground. “Why didn’t you bandage it yourself?”

  “I did not have time,” Rworg says.

  I’m still paying back for what he did for me in the first Kertharian camp. Besides, I’ve always bandaged people up when needed. People pull their bandages too tight or leave them too loose or miss the wound completely if it’s somewhere they can’t properly see. Better for someone to do it properly. “He would have just gotten his finger stuck under the gauze or something. How long do we have until the third location?”

  Rwrog rolls down his trouser leg and gazes into the swamp. The shallow water ripples, and there’s a hissing noise from somewhere. “Half a day. We have to move slower.”

  “How many days has it been?” Finna asks. She points west, toward Velonea and the haze of orange in the horizon. “Is that the sunset or fire?”

  The sun is still in the sky, even if low and obscured by thick clouds. I shake my head and pull my boot from the muck. “We have been as fast as we could have. Rushing around, exhausting ourselves, and running into patrols would have got us killed far before we could do any good.”

  “Still,” she says. “I hate that we still have to trump that way and this way, and the stupid elf is going to make us sit around a stake as it does nothing and hold hands like we’re on a camping trip.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “On a camping trip, I would make you sing simple and hearty songs about watching the sparks rise toward the stars and the treetops!” a voice shouts from somewhere far behind me.

  Each of us twitches when he called out, but now Rworg’s face pulls into a wide smile. Finna surprises me with smiling openly too, the gap in her teeth showing from the corner of her mouth. I’m not even surprised. Mandollel is still so far that it would have been hard to make out who he was, but of course, he found us first. He moves over the swamp with easy steps, coming in from the north.

  “We thought you’d already be there,” Finna says. “Got lost?”

  “I led them into the wrong direction for a while. I didn’t want the mages to have time to circle back,” he shouts, still just a figure in the distance.

  It’s weird, having a discussion when he’s still that far. At least it means there are no Kertharians around if he’s shouting that loudly.

  As soon as he gets close, Rworg lunges and grabs him into a hug. Mandollel’s heels lift off the ground, and he pats Rworg on the back, tapping lightly. “There, there. How did it go with the stake? You smell like death.”

  Rworg drops Mandollel, his feet landing with a splash. “Nothing we could not handle. Tell us more of your adventure, elf.”

  Mandollel lifts his boot from the water and shakes it like a cat who got its paw wet. He wrinkles his nose and takes a long step to reach a dryer patch of green. “Everything went mercifully according to plan. I made sure the activation would be especially discordant. Even so, I was surprised by how dramatic the effect was. I’m afraid it affected your stake as well.”

  “I think they would have noticed it anyway, us being just on the other side of the hill,” Finna says. She raises a hand to touch Mandollel’s back, but lowers it before she does, stuffing it into her pocket. “Anyway, it’s good they didn’t nab you.”

  Mandollel catches a single strand of loose hair and tucks it behind his ear. “As if they could have. Still, I’m happy to see you all well. The sand twister was a sight to behold, even from afar.”

  I smile watching his antics and move my hands toward my pockets, and then back to cross them over my chest. “The sand helped us get away after they attacked us.”

  Mandollel steps toward me and grabs my hand, shaking it. “As I said, I’m relieved to see you all unharmed.” He lays his other hand on top of our handshake, squeezing. “Our mission is dangerous and every victory should be celebrated. We’re half way done.”

  I squeeze back, smiling. Finna nods behind his back, and Rworg grunts behind mine. It’s good to have everyone together again.

  The splashing continues, my, our, boots sinking into the wet moss again and again and again. I can’t believe I would think fondly of the sand and the stifling heat of the desert so soon, but it’s clammy and wet, and every step is an exercise in trying not to step into a puddle, a snake, or a frog. We’re carrying five snakes already, that ended up getting too close, and one that Mandollel said was especially delicious. How many snakes can a single swamp hold?

  The plan is to stop at the next spot that isn’t wet. The boost the monster juice gave has faded a long time ago, and I’m more exhausted than I ever remember being. It has been a whole day since we ate anything. Nibbling on hard tack while running can take you only so far.

  Mandollel complains that every moment we spend resting, the Kertharians push into Velonea. He spends time staring west, the orange haze now clearly visible as the sun has already set, jaw set. Still, even his step isn’t as light anymore. He stumbles occasionally and even trips, arms swinging before he regains his balance. I’m too tired to even make a joke about it. We’re all stumbling, pulled ahead only by determination and the promise of warm food and a dry spot of land to sit on.

  Once, a mage swishes over us. Whoever it was, whizzes past so fast that I don’t catch any details, just something flying in an impossibly straight line, like nothing natural flies. Even Mandollel didn’t notice them coming, but for a long while afterwards, we stay still, huddled close, in case they circle back to investigate.

  They don’t. The time spent listening to my heart pounding in my chest, squeezed between Rworg and Mandollel, feels like hours.

  “They came from the south. From Krakkea,” Mandollel says. “Heading north, perhaps to investigate the auroras.”

  They can still be seen. The green streaks are no longer fading. Instead, they swim slowly across the sky, like currents in a river.

  “We have to hurry, not just because of the war, but because Kertharians will try to disturb the currents we are building. What I understand of their workings, it should prove to be almost impossible, but I wouldn’t want to take the chance. In their current state, they could try something drastic. Devastate the land to disturb the ambient mana enough for the currents to fail. An unthinkable course of action, but compared to their recent actions, worryingly not completely out of the question.”

  “So, we’re in even more of a hurry than before?” Finna asks. She has her back pressed to Rworg’s back, sitting facing the other way and keeping watch at the sky.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  I press my chin to my knees. The most trouble we have been in has been while waiting for the stake to be ready. Mandollel has been adamant about us watching them finish doing whatever they do before we leave. Yet, if the effect of the stakes is becoming more violent by the stake, more likely to draw attention and interference from the Kertharians, there’s no way we can just stand an hour next to the third stake. Then do it again for the fourth stake, while being chased by half the Kerthar, mages flying, probably more and more patrols on horseback, knowing exactly what they are looking for.

  Yet forcing mana into the stakes is only going to cause an even bigger discord, bringing even more Kertharians. We can’t expect another sandstorm to bail us out and cover our tracks.

  Mandollel is tapping his nose again, a sign that he’s thinking about the problem as well.

  The idea hits me. It’s obvious. I snap my fingers, my mouth pulling into a grin.

  Finna glances at me. “Oh, please, no,” she groans.