Page 2 of Captive

She should have just walked on without them. She turned halfway and almost did just that. Then an annoying voice in her head prodded her to come back. She wouldn’t be a very good representative of the Queen’s Army if she let a pair of civilian elders cross Kuda Varai with only Dimos for protection.

“I suppose I can’t convince you to reconsider?”

“Nope,” Ermo replied.

“Fine. Let’s move quickly,” she said, already regretting it. She climbed into the wagon beside Dimos, and Ermo tweaked the reins to pull the horses around.

“Women and their worrying,” the old man said under his breath.

“What was that?” Novikke asked him flatly, settling into her seat.

“Nothing, dear. Nothing at all.”

Novikke raised her eyebrows sympathetically at Chrysana, who shrugged.

“It’s just a forest,” Dimos said. “How bad can it be? When was the last time anyone saw a night elf, anyway?”

“Last month,” Novikke said. “There was a raid on a small village just south of here.”

He looked a little surprised at that and only grunted in response.

By the time they returned to the fork in the road and turned down the path into Kuda Varai, it had grown significantly darker.

“Maybe you can push the horses a little faster,” Novikke said, watching the trees.

“I’m not worried,” Chrysana said. “If worse comes to worst, we’ve got a swordswoman and man on our side. Our very own escort from the Queen’s Army!”

Novikke tilted her head toward the woman, giving an unhappy smile. “I wish I were the sort of person you’d want on your side in a fight, Lady.”

“No need to be modest. You’re a soldier,” Chrysana said brightly, with genuine approval.

Novikke opted not to explain to the woman that she wasn’t a real soldier—not because she didn’t want to be, but because the army hadn’t permitted it, due to her… issues. She’d had the same cursory weapons training that every other recruit had when she’d first joined, years ago. And then she’d promptly been shunted into courier duty for the following five years.

Now she was twenty-three and still spending all her time running back and forth on empty roads delivering letters and packages, hardly ever stopping in one place for more than a few hours. It was a safe, if unglamorous and lonely, existence. She had no family anymore, no close friends, no particular skills or accomplishments. But she had independence, health, and enough money to keep herself alive. That was more than some people had, she supposed.

“Well, I can fight, even if she doesn’t want to, so don’t worry,” Dimos said.

Novikke looked daggers at him. He didn’t notice.

The sun had set, and the last streaks of sunlight on the sky were slowly fading. The lantern hanging from the front of the wagon barely lit their way.

Had the forest grown even darker than it should have, or was that only her imagination? It was as if the trees were hoarding shadows around them, keeping the moonlight from penetrating to the undergrowth. When the lantern’s light fell on a branch, the leaves and needles were dark and looked almost blue or purple.

She tried not to think about the soldier she’d once met at an inn just outside of Livaki, not far from where they were now. The one who’d burst through the door shouting about having just survived a night elf attack on the road outside. He’d ranted about how they’d used their magic to turn into shadows and then come at him from all sides. He’d run, and only managed to escape them by taking shelter at the inn. By the time he’d gotten there, he’d been bleeding in five places.

He’d been shaking like a leaf. On a man over two paces tall and wearing a heavy suit of armor, it was a strange sight.

No one in the inn had slept that night. People kept their weapons in hand and their eyes on the doors and windows. Novikke had stared out the window the entire night, her eyes darting toward every shadow, every dark branch that swayed in the wind.

They weren’t like the sun elves, who were more human-like and predictable in their behavior. The night elves attacked without warning, in the dark, from shadows, without provocation. They didn’t speak. They didn’t make demands. They only attacked. Their motives and thoughts were unknowable. Whether they even thought in the same way that other people did, or if they were more akin to other monsters of the forest, was questionable.

Fortunately, the attacks were uncommon, as the night elves preferred not to leave their forest and were rarely seen outside of it.

But of course, that didn’t protect you if you stupidly wandered into the forest, into their reach.

“Almost there,” Ermo said after a long, tense silence. “I can see the watchtower.”

Novikke craned her neck, and indeed, the tall shape of Livaki’s watchtower was silhouetted against the dim horizon a couple miles ahead.

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