Elrick followed Dia, sword at the ready, until they could make out several silhouettes in the distance. They drew nearer until Elise, Durka, Jocha, and the second archer were all visible. Yaraka was on the ground in front of them, still passed out and covered with the slippery bronze mesh. There were two chests with them.

“The fuckers are turning tail back to Rakote!” Durka shouted, pumping his fist.

Jocha crossed his arms and grinned. “I cut down like three of them—”

“You killed two,” Espa, the archer who had been paired with him, said.

“I cut down three, just because you got the finishing shot on one doesn’t mean I didn’t cut him down.”

“Quiet,” Elise said, a disconcerting edge on her voice.

Everyone shut up, and Elise gestured for Elrick and Dia to come toward her.

Dia and Elrick approached her, and she spoke only when they were both in whisper range.

“How many did you two get?”

“We killed four soldiers,” Elrick said, “and the violet mage.”

“Another of the spearmen ran,” Dia said.

“Good job. We lost two for sure,” Elise said, “Thura and Ioka are gone. I saw them take a direct hit from the violet. I’m glad you killed her, for their sakes.”

“Maybe Thura and Ioka can find a way to get resed,” Dia said, though her voice was toneless and unconvinced.

Elise forced a hopeful smile, but Elrick didn’t buy it. After what they’d done to Elrick’s former guild, none of them were ever getting resurrected again. They might as well be playing hardcore mode now.

Durka came up behind Elise’s shoulder and put a hand on her. He was two heads taller than her. He spoke in a low whisper, “The surviving mercenaries all look to be retreating to Rakote. We lost one chest for sure. We saw them hauling it off. If we find Yorius and Nefa, we’ll still have four chests. Good job keeping your chest secure, Dia.”

Durka patted Dia on the shoulder. She hissed and batted his hand away. “Fuck the ingots. If we find Yorius and Nefa, we’ll have them, I don’t care if they kept their fucking chest or not.”

Durka tried to say something, but Elise shot him a look, and he bit his lip as Dia stalked off.

Elrick had gone through a lot with Dia just now, and he partly felt he should go after her and say something, but he wasn’t good with women in general, and he especially wasn’t good with women who were likely to be crying. Maybe he’d say something to her later. Some kind of comforting words. He’d have to think of ones that didn’t sound so hollow, which would be hard since he hadn’t really known any of Elise’s crew.

“Uh,” Elrick stammered to Elise, “what’s the plan now?”

Her eyes widened at him as she clenched her jaw. “The plan is gone. The plan was to be in Rakote by now, waiting for passage to Antia.”

Elrick looked around them. They had a lot of strong fighters all around. They had chests full of what might as well have been gold. They’d just fought off an entire squad of mercenaries. He’d personally struck down a violet mage and taken her spellbook, which was fortunate, because Yaraka’s spellbook had been lost in the chaos of the fight in the mine.

There were certainly downsides to the current situation, but all things considered, he was in the best position he’d ever been in since coming to this world. He did want to get back to Antia and get revenge, but he knew he wasn’t yet strong enough anyway. He’d die if he fought Hunter again right now.

He couldn’t just come back at Hunter alone either. Hunter always had people loyal to him, and he’d seen how much that had helped him in Antium. While Elrick had been focusing on getting individual skills up, Hunter had been surrounding himself with strong fighters who were loyal to him. He could master all of his skills and it wouldn’t be enough to take down Hunter, not unless he had more people on his side.

Now he had a group of people. They might have been loyal to Elise instead of him, but she was looking to him now. She had no plan, and she seemed defeated by what had just happened. Elrick was still optimistic, and Elrick had just come up with a plan of his own.

Elrick bit his lip and smiled at Elise.

She scrunched up her eyebrows at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Durka,” Elrick said.

Durka was talking to Dia, but he looked up when Elrick called his name.

“You’re half Kalhu, you said?”

Durka nodded.

“Who else here is Kalhu?” Elrick asked.

Dia raised her hand. “We’re all Kalhu.”

Elrick looked down at one of the chests, and then over at Yaraka, who still hadn’t woken up.

“Kalhu do not have towns,” she said. “Rakote was the only permanent settlement. We are nomads.”

Elrick looked at Durka, who had very dark skin and emerald green eyes. Dia had darker skin than Elrick did, but not nearly as dark as Durka, and her eyes were grey. How was Durka “half Kalhu” if his skin was so dark?

“Why don’t you look similar then?” Elrick asked. “If you’re both Kalhu?”

Dia and Durka looked at each other as if they were dealing with a complete idiot. They both seemed ready to say something, but both waited for the other to speak.

“I just mean,” Elrick started, worrying he was digging a deeper hole, “Durka, you’re half Kalhu and half what?”

“Half Antian,” he said, “why would I look like Dia?”

He couldn’t say “genetics,” because they wouldn’t know what that was. Then it occurred to him: Even in Antia everyone had never looked the same. There seemed to be a completely random distribution of physical characteristics, including skin color. He had a suspicion now, and it was going to make him look incredibly stupid for asking the question, but he’d look much stupider later if he didn’t clarify this now.

“So,” he said, “Durka, did your parents have dark skin?”

“Why would they?” he asked, “just because I do?”

“And green eyes?”

“My mother’s eyes were blue, my father’s brown. Both were very pale.”

“Elise looks like her mother.”

“There’s always a chance of that happening,” Dia said. “Did you get hit in the head, Elrick?”

He nodded. “I think I’m just tired. I had a weird dream where people looked like their parents. It felt very real.”

Everyone looked at each other with concerned expressions, but Elrick was done asking these questions. He’d determined that your physical attributes were basically determined by random number generation at conception rather than by genetics like it was on Earth. It was more evidence of “low resolution,” and it also meant that no one could be visibly Kalhu. This was important, because Elrick hoped that—long-term—he’d be able to recruit Kalhu into their crew. If Kalhu were visibly Kalhu, he wouldn’t be able to ever sneak them into Rakote.

“How do we survive here?” he asked, “how do the Kalhu do it?”

There was nothing but sand around them. It was getting cold already without the sun. It would be very cold all through the night, but they’d survive that. It was what happened when the sun came back up that worried him. They had some water on them, but not a lot.

“We’re not staying in the desert,” Elise snapped. “We still can buy passage to Antia. We just need to get through Rakote.”

It was a risk, but Elrick needed to go against Elise in front of all of them here.

Elrick looked toward Durka and Dia, “Why do you two want to go to Antia? Isn’t this your home?”

Durka went tight-lipped, but Dia took a step toward Elise. “Elise said we need mages to retake Rakote.”

“You want to hire mages to come all the way back here?” Elrick asked. “The Mage Guilds are never going to agree to help the Kalhu.”

Dia shook her head. “We would become the mages. Then we come back here and train more.”

“What if she could train you?” Elrick said, looking down at Yaruka.

Elise grabbed Elrick by the arm and hissed into his ear. “What the fuck are you doing? We need to get to Antia!”

Elrick stepped back and said loud enough for everyone to hear. “We aren’t strong enough to get to Antia now. There is no way the guilds will let us through the city and to the port. It simply will not happen. We are too weak to fight our way through—”

“Speak for yourself,” Elise said. “We took down the smiths. We could have easily taken you down too, but we spared you.”

“It was a sneak attack,” Elrick said, “but now they will all be looking for us. They even saw us going upriver toward Rakote, so they expect us to try to get into the city. I know you want to get back to your mother, but if we die trying to get back to Rakote, we’ll never see Antia again.”

“We should follow the mountains,” Dia said.

She had cut into the conversation between Elrick and Elise. Elise glared at her, but Elrick let out a relieved sigh.

“Why’s that?” Elise asked.

Dia pointed toward the horizon. From the light of the stars and moons, the mountains were nothing but black shadows far in the distance. “We can find shelter there. Maybe we will decide to do what you want, Elise, and risk going through Rakote. Even if we all decide that, we won’t be able to do that now. We’d need to wait a few days, at least, and for that it’s best if we find shelter.”

“I agree,” Elrick said.

“Of course you do,” Elise snarled at him, “she’s saying what you want.”

Dia shook her head. “I’m not agreeing with either of you yet. I am Kalhu though, and I know how to survive outside of Rakote, and even away from the Strach. Neither of you know what you are doing in the desert.”

Elrick frowned. He’d liked it better when it felt like she was agreeing with him.

Elise turned toward Durka. “Is she right?”

Durka shrugged, then nodded. “She’s more Kalhu than I am. I’ve never survived this far from the Strach, but I know my mom could have.”

Elise sucked air through her teeth as she looked down at the chests full of ingots. “Then we’ll follow your lead for the next few days, Dia. I’m not agreeing with Elrick, just so that is clear to everyone.”

Everyone nodded and muttered humoring words to her, which just made her get more prickly, but finally they all started to follow Dia deeper into the desert, toward the tall shadows on the dark horizon.