Page 30 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

Vaara, suddenly wearing his nerves and his exhaustion on his face, quickly followed. “What is it?”

“Dogs. Trackers, maybe.”

“Then Alexei is following us?”

“I haven’t seen any other people for miles now. It’s unlikely they came from anywhere else.”

They were running again. Crow had thought she couldn’t possibly run any farther, and here she was, doing just that. It was amazing how some angry dogs and a mad sadist on your heels could motivate you beyond what you’d thought possible.

“They’re getting closer,” Vaara said after some time. He was right. She could hear multiple dogs now, louder than they’d been before. They could only have been from the prison. She hadn’t expected this. No one had said anything about dogs.

She was leading them toward a plume of smoke she’d seen in the sky. Smoke from a chimney, she hoped.

When they came to the crest of a hill just before the source of the smoke, Crow pulled Vaara to a stop and crouched in the cover of a patch of brush. Down the hill was a farmhouse.

“Astra has given us some good luck,” she said. It was prudent to offer thanks on the rare occasions when the gods took pity on her.

Vaara’s expression told her how much he thought of that. He was squinting in the bright light of midday sun on snow and held a hand up to shade his brow. “How’s that?”

“I think those dogs are ordinary guard dogs, not trained trackers. They’ve got good noses, but they’ve been chasing us for a while and they’ll be getting bored and tired. If we pass by this house, they’ll get here and smell food,” she nodded to the chimney, which she could smell something cooking from, “and other animals,” she motioned to the pens in the back of the house and the barn off to the side, “and strange humans. They’ll want to stop and investigate all those things more than they’ll want to follow us.”

Vaara looked unconvinced. “How do you know so much about dogs?”

“There were street dogs where I grew up. I got to know a lot of them.”

“There are street dogs in Ashara?”

She laughed. “Oh, gods, no. I’ve never been. But the lower ring of Valtos has plenty.”

As they watched, a woman came out of the house and walked toward the barn, and several children trailed after her. Crow ducked a little lower.

“What about the people here?” he asked.

“What about them?”

“They’re in Alexei’s path. He could hurt them.”

“You’re concerned for some humans, Vaara?”

He looked as if he wanted to deny it, but he said, “I have no desire to send him more victims. No one deserves Alexei.”

Crow thought about it. “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” she decided.

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“No. But I did spend some time in his head.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I don’t know whether or not this is a comfort to you, but I suspect he only hurts the people in the prison. People he knows are rejected and abandoned by society. People he believes are evil and deserve punishment. Not families of farmers minding their own business in the countryside.”

“You’ve been spending time with Alexei?”

“Unfortunately.”

He gave her a sideways look. “Is that where those fingerprints came from?”

“What fingerprints?”

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