Elrick realized the issue. Dia and Espa’s arrows would never be able to hit because of the Green Mage, but Elrick’s crew had no such advantage. It meant that if their enemies simply guarded the bridge with their shields and spears and continued to pelt them with arrows, their flimsy slippery bronze shields wouldn’t be enough to defend. They couldn’t hold this ground.

He ran to Yaraka, and Jocha and Elrick picked her up and carried her unconscious body—more like dragged it—along the grass of the banks and into the forest. Arrows rained down just as they reached the tree line. One landed a few feet from Elrick’s foot.

“They can’t hit us in the trees,” Jocha said, grinning and panting.

“We have to guard Yaraka,” Elrick shouted.

“If we left her,” Elise said, “I bet we could escape.”

“We’d escape with nothing,” Elrick shouted back. “Less than nothing, we’d be down a mage.”

He couldn’t quite see Elise. She was behind some brush. His entire crew was in the forest now, but they were still spread out, just not quite as far out as they had been while waiting for the rafts to arrive.

“If we just sit here,” Dia said, “they could get the cargo back, secure our prisoners, and wait for help.”

Elrick knew they had to strike now. He’d originally planned to cut all the enemies down as they stumbled out of their raft and onto solid ground. The Green Mage’s magic bridge had completely ruined his plan, as the bridge gave them more room to maneuver. Now that they’d even retreated from the shore, Elrick’s crew didn’t even have a chokepoint to take advantage of.

Jocha and Elrick dragged Yaraka further and further into the woods, but finally they stopped, and everyone tried to regroup around Yaraka.

Soon he could see everyone, and speak face-to-face with them. They spoke in low whispers, conscious of the threat of the enemies coming into the forest to root them out.

“Can you wake Yaraka?” Elrick asked Elise.

“I already tried,” she said. “I gave her a red potion after I healed her, but her injuries were too serious.”

“Can’t you just give her more?”

“I’ve already given her more than is probably safe.”

Elrick swore under his breath.

“We split up again,” Dia whispered. “Use the element of surprise. Espa and I can likely use our bows if we shoot at close range where the green mage can’t see. He can only stop our arrows when we are shooting high and in the open.”

“Groups of two again?” Elrick asked.

Jocha grabbed Elrick by the arm. “You’re with me this time.”

Dia and Espa came up to Elrick and Jocha, Dia looked down at Yaraka. “Espa and I should guard her.”

“What if they get to her and it comes to close combat?”

Dia gestured to Jocha and Elrick. “What if you two guard her, and the archers just shoot her before you can reach them?”

“You’re right,” Elrick said, “you two guard, Jocha and I will try to bash their heads in before they can close the distance on you.”

They all paired off, and without another word, Elrick and Jocha moved deeper through the forest.

The “forest” might have been the wrong word for the cover of trees they were inside of. Back in Antia, this “forest” wouldn’t even have registered as “woods.” It would have been just a little strip of trees that wouldn’t have even had a name.

In Rakote though, running along this strip of the Strach, this was the most trees you ever saw together. The strip ran long along the entire river—sometimes interrupted by rocky terrain or little streams running off from the main river—but it was always a strip of trees. It was never truly thick. If Elrick and Jocha just turned their backs to the river and moved as fast as they could, they’d be out of the trees and nearing the barren desert in less than ten minutes.

So they moved along the river, fanning out in opposite directions from Durka and Elise. The idea was that Dia and Espa would sit on top of Yaraka, and their enemies would come into the forest toward the two archers. The archers would hopefully be close enough to get shots off that the green mage couldn’t manipulate, and then Elrick’s crew would have attackers on both flanks to attack with.

“We need to get a peek of where they are,” Jocha hissed, pointing toward the river.

The two of them had moved far enough away from Yaraka that Jocha’s suggestion made sense. Elrick nodded, and they started working their way back toward the end of the treeline and the river.

Soon they could see the end of the trees, and they crept cautiously, crawling on their stomachs at the end. When Elrick poked his head out and looked back toward the bridge, he saw that the bridge itself was gone and had reformed into a new raft—a raft that was wrapped up in seaweed—which was docked on the shore.

One spearman was on the shore, working to bring the bookmakers—which were still out cold—onto the newly remade raft. All of the chests—Elrick’s loot—had already been brought onto the new raft. They were getting ready to take it back to safety.

Jocha whispered into Elrick’s ear, “They are preparing to go back up-river as if we are already dead.”

“Then they’re overly cocky.”

“Maybe we’re the overly cocky ones?”

Maybe, Elrick thought to himself, but he didn’t want Jocha to panic. If they were going to get out of this alive and prove their enemies wrong, their best bet was to hit the flank at the same time as Elise and Durka, and to do that, they needed to march right back into the jaws of the beast.

“Only one spearman on the shore means that the rest of them are already in the woods. We need to get back to the others right now.”

Jocha gave him a long, hard look. The look held just long enough that Elrick started to feel nervous Jocha would refuse, but he finally nodded and started walking back into the forest.

They walked shoulder to shoulder, still holding their shields up.

It occurred to Elrick that, slippery bronze or not, it might not have been the most cunning of plans to run into the forest when fighting a green mage.

They moved slowly and cautiously, taking care not to break any branches or do anything that would give away their position.

“Here!” someone shouted, it was a deep voice that Elrick didn’t recognize. “Shit!” The voice went from deep to high-pitched, and soon it started to scream. Espa or Dia must have landed a hit.

A quick glance passed between Jocha and Elrick, it was one of those looks that conveyed more than words could have in such a short time. Jocha and Elrick had fought together enough in the mines to have cues like this, and this look meant that Elrick should follow Jocha. He fell in behind Jocha, and without questioning where Jocha was going, he followed him with his sword drawn.

Elrick thought he’d be able to see their enemies from a distance, and that they’d stop and look for signs of Elise and Durka. He’d thought that there would have been some time for deliberation. Instead, they passed through a thick piece of brush, and when they came out the other side, Elrick saw all four enemy archers and the green mage not more than ten feet away.

Elrick and Jocha looked to each other in the same moment with wide and astonished eyes. They’d wanted to get a flank on their enemies, but this was more than they could have expected. The archers were crouching down and taking cover behind trees, and the green mage was sitting on the ground meditating. His eyes were closed, and his back was pressed up against a tree.

No one saw Elrick and Jocha.

Before Elrick could suggest it, Jocha burst into a full sprint, his hammer held high over his head. Elrick was right behind him, no questions asked.

They rushed straight for the green mage. One of the archers saw them, and by the time he shouted and got an arrow nocked, Jocha was already on the mage.

The mage opened his eyes at the last moment and kicked off the tree, dodging Jocha’s hammer in the last instant.

Something cracked high above, and a long shadow grew over Jocha’s head.

Elrick shoved him out of the way just in time, as the top of the massive tree came down and crushed the dirt beneath where Jocha had been standing.

A shout came up behind them, and Elrick spent a split second to look back and make sure the archers weren’t all coming for him.

Instead, he saw Elise and Durka.

Elise was on top of one of the archers, her dagger in his throat. Durka had his spear through another’s chest.

Elrick snapped his focus back toward the green mage. Jocha and Elrick fanned out, creating two distinct targets rather than one easy one.

The green mage kept his focus on Jocha at first. Another tree exploded above, but this time Jocha dodged it himself. The trees were big, which meant they were easy to see coming.

Trees started simply exploding. Shards of wood shrapnel blasted across the forest. A piece jammed into Elrick’s breastplate, but the slippery bronze was strong enough to protect him against wood.

The green mage pulled a dagger out and started pointing it toward Jocha, which Elrick took as a very good sign they had already won.

Jocha roared and made a big show of raising his hammer above the green mage, and when the green mage had focused fully on Jocha, Elrick came up behind him and jammed his sword right into the green mage’s heart.

It was a quick kill, which Elrick felt the mage had earned. Morality was different when you knew your enemies would be resurrected, and he’d wanted to at least spare his enemies pain—when possible.

Jocha shook him by the shoulders. “Come on! We have to help the others!”

It turned out they didn’t need to help.

They came back to find Elise and Durka standing above the dead archers. Elise was wiping her blade clean on one of the archer’s robes. Durka had his spear in hand, but was holding it casually.

Just behind them, all of the spearmen were on the ground with arrows in them. Dia and Espa walked up over them, checking their bodies for loot.

One of the spearmen was still writhing and moaning on the ground. Espa put an arrow right between his eyes.

Elise looked up at Elrick, and shortly after, everyone else did too.

He realized then that they weren’t just looking at him, they were waiting for him to give an order. This had been his raid. He’d realized earlier that whether it succeeded or failed, he would own it, and now that it had succeeded, it was his victory.

“The mage made the bridge into a raft,” Elrick said, gasping for breath, “all the loot is stacked on top of it. Get it, take the most valuable stuff, and get everything else into the buried boxes.”

They all moved fast, hyper aware that another raft could come by at any time. While it was very unlikely that another raft would pick a fight with them unprovoked, they didn’t want to risk it.

Jocha and Elise stayed back with Yaraka while the remaining four of them made for the raft and the loot.

When they spotted the raft and the boxes of loot, the lone spearman nearly pissed his pants at the sight of them. Maybe he did piss his pants, Elrick hadn’t had time to check, because Espa simply put an arrow in him.

When Elrick had originally planned this raid, he’d imagined that the end of it would have felt like finishing an actual raid in Everquest. He’d imagined that they’d have killed the raid boss, and then suddenly they’d all be sitting there casually, joking with each other about how they thought they had almost died. He’d imagined them having all the time in the world to pick up all the loot and divy it out.

Instead, it was a mad rush of pure chaos.. Elrick saw dozens of books in a chest, had no idea which of them were worth more than others, and rushed to another chest. This one had blank scrolls, stacks of paper, and material for creating bindings. He knew unfinished books were likely worth a lot less than raw materials, but he also knew that they needed raw materials so that Yaraka could make something for Espa and Dia. The finished books were only theoretically worth more, if he could sell them to someone who wanted them. The raw materials were something they could use right now.

He grabbed as much of the paper and scrolls and materials as he could—trying to make sure he got a little bit of everything—and shoved it into his satchel.

Altogether it was a frenetic two or three minute looting frenzy, each of them stuffing as much into their bags and pockets and hands as they could. They threw everything that didn’t fit onto their bodies into a big pile in the middle, and they split the loot across the remaining space in the buried chests.

They worked quickly to cover the buried chests with dirt, and Elise used a potion to mark their locations, assuring them they’d be able to find everything again later.

Only when they were so far into the desert that the treeline along the river was no longer visible did they start patting themselves on the back, and it took quite a long time to walk that far, because they had to alternate carrying Yaraka.

But with the trees fallen below the horizon, they collapsed onto the ground in the safety of their desert.

“None of us died,” Jocha said, laughing.

Elrick almost reached up to give him a high five, but quickly remembered that he was in Antium, not Earth. High fives didn’t exist here.

“It worked better than I thought,” Dia said, grinning.

“Yaraka almost died,” Elise said.

“She won’t though, right?” Jocha asked. “Not with you tending to her wounds.”

“I’m not a healer,” Elise said, “I just administer potions to her.”

“Those potions will save her though,” Elrick said, trying to will it to be true.

Elise nodded slowly. “They will, but if that tree had hit her in the head, there wouldn’t have been a mouth to pour the potions into.”

“Good thing it hit her in the tits then,” Jocha said, laughing.

Elrick elbowed him, because all the women were scowling at him.

“It broke her ribs,” Elise said, “sorry if I don’t find that funny.”

“I’m just in good spirits is all,” Jocha said, “I was enjoying living in a cave with a bunch of women,” he winked at Elise, “but I was starting to worry that this job may never end up actually paying anything. Then Elrick here got us more loot than we could carry, and I’m starting to see the potential of this whole raiding the river enterprise.”

Durka grunted and threw his breastplate down onto the ground. It was covered in blood.

Elise handed him a healing potion. “It’s been long enough, you can drink another.”

She took out another from her satchel and approached Yaraka.

Durka frowned at the armor he’d thrown onto the sand. “I’m not wearing that shit again. The arrows went through my shields and armor like hot tongs through lard.”

“If we hadn’t been wearing it,” Elise said, pouring a yellow potion into Yaraka’s mouth, “we’d all have been crushed by those trees. I was skeptical of Elrick’s little project, but his armor won us that fight.”

As tempting as it was to tell her “I told you so,” Elrick just tried to keep his smile in check, with a stoic nod of his head.

“I don’t know,” Jocha says, “what if we fight a bunch of guys wearing thick armor who have big weapons, and there are no mages at all?”

“Then we win,” Elrick said, “because Yaraka will melt them. The only reason we didn’t have her in this fight was because they had a mage too, but we negated their mage with the slippery bronze.”

Elise poured a red potion into Yaraka’s mouth, and she started coughing after she swallowed it, then she jolted up wide awake.

She looked around with wild eyes at all of them, but soon she regained her composure and looked toward Elrick. “We won?”

He nodded. “We won.”

“How did you…”

She looked down at his armor, then nodded. “I should have been faster. If I’d taken the Green Mage out—”

Elrick shook his head. “None of us died. We got the loot. Everything is fine.”

She looked at him like she was ready to argue, but when she didn’t, he figured that it was just her pride that had been wounded, and she wasn’t ever going to admit that to any of them.

He showed Yaraka some of the loot they’d grabbed. She took stock especially of the raw materials he’d gathered, and the two empty spellbooks Dia had grabbed.

“Good,” Yaraka said. “I can start training you two now.”