Page 148 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

He hated the bolt of dread that shot through him. He hated the feeling of bile rising in his throat and the sudden weakness in his legs, and the panic that threatened to crowd all coherent thoughts out of his head as it flooded through him.

But he loved the hatred that quickly replaced the panic. The hate was what drove him. It gave him strength.

Before he could suggest that Callias make some kind of distraction while Vaara attacked Alexei from behind (and given a moment, he would have thought better of it anyway) Callias had darted away and disappeared around the corner without another word.

Vaara shrank into the shadows as the group approached. Alexei’s strides were long and purposeful, his head high, his mouth a line of barely contained fury. Another guard beside him babbled bits of information about Vaara’s possible whereabouts.

“How did he get through the gates in the first place?” Alexei asked, his face and voice stony and just a little huskier than usual, like he’d been awoken from sleep recently.

“We’re investigating it, sir. He might have slipped in any time in the past few days and hidden somewhere inside. Night elf, you know. They hide.”

“I know,” Alexei muttered. “Is he alone?”

“The Ashara woman was seen with him as well.”

The group turned through a door halfway down the hall. Vaara waited until the last of them had gone through the door, then raced silently after them.

The room was large but mostly empty. A meeting room with a long table in the middle of it. Alexei stood beside the table with his arms crossed, lit by a dim yellowish mage light hanging above the table.

“Are you certain we shouldn’t spread out to search, sir?” one of the guards asked.

“No. I want you to tell me everything you know so far.”

“But shouldn’t we be searching—?”

“The others are looking for them,” Alexei said impatiently. “The rest of you will remain with me. We’ll make a plan before we act. The exits are sealed. Our intruders aren’t going anywhere.”

Vaara clung to the back wall beside the door, watching them all. His gaze flitted from figure to figure, to their weapons and their positions, to the table and chairs, to the threadbare tapestries on the walls just on the edge of the circle of light cast by the mage light, and then back to Alexei. That hatred burned in his heart again as he looked at him. It never diminished, only grew. Each time Vaara looked upon his face, the dread and fury were born anew, as powerful as ever.

He knew he should wait for a better opportunity—when Alexei was alone. But that opportunity might never come. Vaara might never get this close to him again.

Failure was not an option.

He said a silent prayer to the Goddess, then peeled himself away from the wall and crept closer to the group.

There were a dozen guards around the table. All of them were focused on Alexei—trying to read his moods and anticipate his desires, lest he grow impatient and lash out. All of them were too distracted by his presence to notice the shadow sliding along the wall toward them.

With each step, he counted the distance between himself and Alexei. Eight paces. Seven. Six. With each beat of his heart, he measured how many sword lengths away he was. He decided how many blows it would take to kill him, and which combinations of strikes would be most lethal.

And then, one of the guards lit a mage torch.

Light bathed Vaara’s corner of the room, and suddenly he was a stark outline against the wall, as obvious as if he’d been standing in broad daylight. The guards around him turned toward him in surprise. Alexei stopped talking.

Vaara exploded into motion, taking the last six steps to Alexei in an instant. A look of blank surprise crossed Alexei’s face. He never drew his sword. He didn’t react except to stare in shock as Vaara, now fully visible, raised his sword.

Just as his blade began to connect, another sword flashed toward Vaara. He was forced to change the trajectory of his attack to avoid the blow. Alexei stumbled back, pressing a hand to his face. He’d only been nicked.

Two of the other guards had stepped in front of Alexei. And then Vaara was fighting both of them at once, and then another behind him, and then all of them. Swords came at him from all directions.

Shouting in frustration, Vaara swung wildly at all of them, not caring if they killed him as long as he got to Alexei and finished what he’d started. More than one person cried out as his attacks hit home.

“Don’t kill him,”Alexei said from behind the wall of guards, his voice rising above all other sounds in the room. “I want him alive!”

A pair of gauntleted hands grabbed Vaara’s collar from behind and jerked, pulling him to the ground. Even as he fell, he was still swinging. He only succeeded in scraping the steel plates the guards wore.

They closed in around him. Someone set a heavy booted foot down on his sword arm, and then the other, pinning him.

“Fuck’s sake,” one of them said. “He’s like a wildcat.”

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