Night Elves of Ardani: Book One: Captive Read online

  Night Elves of Ardani

  Book One: Captive

  Nina K. Westra

  Copyright © 2021 Nina K. Westra

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  The Story Continues

  Want to see more of Ardani?

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  A fallen tree blocked the road ahead.

  Novikke frowned down at it from the bed of the wagon as they shuddered to a stop. There was a pause as the wagon’s four occupants looked down at the tree in dismay.

  “That’s not good,” murmured Ermo, the old man in the driver’s seat.

  “No,” Novikke agreed. She hopped down to the ground to study the tree up close. Dimos followed her.

  Her hand crept to the hilt of her sword as she glanced up at the darkening woods beyond the road. This close to Kuda Varai, it was wise to keep your weapons within reach.

  She couldn’t see any saw marks on the tree. It didn’t look like it had been put there intentionally.

  “The storm the other day must have knocked it down,” she said.

  Dimos snorted. “Just my luck. First the bandits, now this.”

  Novikke gave him a sideways glance. She’d only known the man for a few hours and was already tiring of him.

  The horses snorted and shuffled their feet as if something had disturbed them. She watched them, wondering if they sensed something she could not. It was said that animals were more sensitive to magic energy than humans were.

  There was no way for the wagon to get past the tree. And the tree was too heavy for them to move.

  “We won’t be able to pass,” she said. “Unless anyone has an axe?”

  She turned to the old couple perched on the driver’s bench. Ermo and Chrysana. They’d picked up Dimos and herself a couple hours ago when they’d passed them traveling on foot. A generous offer, considering they were strangers in the rural parts of Ardani. She supposed the Ardanian army uniforms made them seem more trustworthy.

  Normally she would have had a horse of her own to ride. This time, there had been a mix-up at the stable where she should have changed horses. Instead of a rested horse waiting for her, there was nothing. Dimos, another soldier on his way to Livaki after taking leave to recover from an injury, had had the same problem.

  “There’s always the forest road,” Ermo said.

  Novikke frowned. “When dusk is approaching?”

  “Well, we can’t camp on the road. And it’s too late to go back to Valtos. Would you rather risk running into bandits or wolves on the road? We ought to just push through to Livaki as quick as we can.”

  The old forest road, which forked off the main road a mile or two behind them, crossed through the edge of the night elves’ forest, Kuda Varai.

  She didn’t even like being this close to the forest’s border. Being inside it was another matter entirely. The night elves were fiercely protective of their forest, and vicious in their encounters with humans.

  Only the desperate took that road. Only the most foolish would take it at night, when the nocturnal night elves were awake and watching.

  It was unlikely that any of them would happen to be crossing the very edge of the forest at the same time their wagon was, but… Well. Night elves greeted humans by killing them. Novikke had never seen one in person, and she was inclined to keep it that way.

  “You two can keep on walking if you want to,” Ermo said. “That tree’s not stopping you. But we’re going around.”

  He waited. His wife pressed her lips together, squeezing her hands in her lap. She gave Novikke a pleading look. At least one of them had enough sense to be afraid.

  “I’ll stay with you. I’m not worried about any night elves,” Dimos said, patting a hand to the pommel of his sword. “Let them come. If any of the slimy bastards bother us, they’ll regret it.”

  Novikke folded her arms. “If you see a bear in the wilderness, do you walk up to it and poke it, or go around it so that you can both go on with your day?”

  “I’ll walk where I please, and if that bothers the bear, then so be it. If it’s foolish enough to try to harm me or mine, I’ll happily cut it down.”

  “If we cross into their lands, we’re opening ourselves up to sanction. Everyone knows the border is closed. It’s always been closed. We should avoid it.”

  “It’s only a few miles,” Ermo said. “Come now. You’re worrying over nothing.”

  Novikke rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was on a tight schedule. She had a stack of letters to deliver to Fort Greenbar, and another to take back to Valtos after that. But none of it was anything that couldn’t wait another half-day to arrive. Not when the alternative was crossing through Kuda Varai.

  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.

  The horses suddenly slowed, swishing their tails nervously.

  “Come on,” Ermo grumbled, flicking the reins.

  The horses grew more agitated, tensing their muscles and raising their heads high. One of them reared up as if trying to break free of its harness.

  Then a shadow moved. Just outside the circle of light cast by the lantern. Novikke, struck with panic, jumped to her feet in the wagon and drew her sword.

  The shadow darted closer, into the light. A shining eye stared up at them.

  It was a small, black rabbit. Its nose twitched.

  Dimos laughed for a long time. “A good thing Novikke is here to protect us from Kuda Varai’s vicious rabbits. What a relief. You were right—I never would have come here if I’d known such frightening creatures guarded the road.”

  She lowered her sword, glaring at him. “It could have been something else.”

  “Could have,” Dimos agreed patronizingly.

  The rabbit darted across the road and disappeared with a rustle of bushes.

  Novikke had begun to sheath her sword again when Chrysana whispered, alarmed, “Novikke, do you see that?”

  Novikke followed her gaze into the trees adjacent to them. “What?”

  They both stared into the darkness. Dimos and Ermo looked, too.

  Then she saw it. The shine of eyes reflecting their lantern light out of the darkness.

  There was movement from the road in front of them. Novikke turned and stared as a dark humanoid shape gradually resolved out of the darkness. Her stomach dropped.

  “Ash,” she cursed.

  “Astra preserve us. Turn the wagon around!” Chrysana said, and Ermo struggled to pull the horses into motion.

  Dimos stood up. “Come take your death head-on, demon!” He leapt from the wagon and hit the ground running. The figure on the road seemed taken by surprise, and stopped moving. It drew a sword, but held it down at its side, waiting for Dimos to approach.

  “Well?” Dimos shouted. “Come on! Show me what you’ve got!”

  Before the figure could move, Dimos rushed at it, sword raised. For a moment, Novikke thought he would win, that his opponent would be caught off guard by the suddenness of the attack.

  And then the figure side-stepped, parried his attack, and countered. There was a flash of blood as a blade sliced through Dimos’s neck.

  Novikke and Ermo gasped. Chrysana screamed. Dimos staggered and fell to his knees, clutching his throat.

  The figure on the road stepped around Dimos and came toward them, picking up speed.

  Novikke turned, and there was another dark figure behind them approaching the back of the wagon.

  “Forget the wagon. You have to run,” Novikke snapped at Ermo. The elf who had killed Dimos broke into a run and came fully into the light, and by the gods, he looked terrifying up close, like a demon from the fifth hell. He shied away when one of the horses neighed and reared up.

  Novikke jumped to the ground and chopped through the other horse’s harness, then pulled it up alongside the wagon. “Can you ride?” she asked Ermo and Chrysana.

  Ermo looked aghast. “Yes, but—”

  “Get on and go fast.”

  There was no time to ask twice, nor even to look back, so she hoped they heeded her instructions. She circled around the front of the wagon, where the night elf was still uneasily watching the remaining horse, as if he thought it might be trained to attack. When she crossed his line of sight, he turned to her.

  Her breath caught in her throat. The swinging lantern illuminated his face in uneven light.

  Everything about him was strange. Unnaturally bright blue eyes were set in a face the color of the sky at twilight. His features had an alien sharpness to them, not quite like any other humans or elves she’d ever seen, and his hair was arranged in a style she’d never seen before, with a braid winding along one side of his head and the rest of his oil-black hair falling loose to his shoulders.

  He wore some kind of lightweight armor made of a material she couldn’t identify. It was clearly something built for protection, but the design seemed to prioritize ease of movement over blocking heavy blows.

  She heard hoofbeats, and glimpsed Ermo and Chrysana on the second horse, riding away. They were safe. There was that, at least.

  She’d been staring at the night elf so hard that she didn’t realize at first that he was staring back. He seemed to notice it at the same time she did. He raised his sword and lunged.

  She stumbled backward, narrowly avoiding the tip of his sword. The horse reared again, and the night elf flinched as its hooves kicked past his head. Novikke backed away, raising her sword in front of her, but knew she was only prolonging the inevitable.

  She wasn’t a fool. Night elves were famed warriors, and she was unpracticed and a mediocre swordsman at best. She knew she wouldn’t beat him. But her other option was lying down and dying, and that didn’t particularly appeal.

  The second elf she’d seen behind the wagon appeared beside the first. Oddly, he was smiling. He had the same angular features and deep blue-tinged skin as the first, but was not quite as tall, and had bright green eyes. The eye colors were bizarre, like they’d been enchanted and were laced with magic.

  He abruptly thrust his sword into the horse’s side. Novikke jumped as blood sprayed from it. The horse struggled in its harness as the elf stabbed it again and again.

 
; The blue-eyed one turned to her, his face as cold and serious as the other’s was amused. Novikke held her sword up between herself and him, like a wand that might magically ward him away. The elf wore an expression of cool hatred on his face as he approached. She wondered what she’d done to earn a look like that.

  He lunged again, and Novikke struggled to knock his blade aside. They traded blows, and as the fight went on, she found herself defending more than attacking.

  She got one hit in, slicing a tiny, neat cut across the leather vambrace on his wrist, and he jerked away in surprise. He looked down at the cut, gauging the damage, then glared up at her. Novikke flinched as his sword flew toward her.