“What—?” she began, and he held a finger to his lips.
Fear stirred in her stomach. She held very still, pressing her lips together. Her imagination ran wild with possibilities.
She’d heard that shades were common in Kuda Varai—vicious spirits with a strong command of illusion magic. They were known to take the form of a loved one to trick their victims into getting close, then devour their bodies and souls all at once.
There was a soft crunching of leaves in the brush near Novikke. She took a step back, and Aruna quickly motioned for her to stop as he drew his sword. She gripped her mage torch tightly in her hand, pointing it at the ground.
There was another crunch, and then a bone-rattling roar very close to her. Novikke gasped and flinched. Her light flashed up, illuminating a something out of a nightmare.
It was massive, as tall as Novikke. She thought she could see fur, but when she looked closer, what she had thought were hairs oozed and flowed freely like smoke or water. It was a wolf. An enormous, angry, supernatural wolf.
As the light flashed over it, it snarled and roared again. Sharp white teeth stood out against its black flesh. Then it lunged.
Novikke screamed. Something hit her chest and knocked her to the ground. Her light fell from her hands. The creature’s maw hovered above her for half a moment, and then it roared in protest and stumbled sideways.
Aruna had stabbed his sword into its side, all the way up to the hilt. He grimaced with effort as the beast moved. Dark blood poured over his hands.
He yanked the sword back out, and the creature whined. It backed away from Novikke, turning to face the more dangerous opponent. The sword in its side was enough to slow it, but not enough to put it down. As Novikke watched, the smoke that oozed around it began writhing around the puncture, like it was already rebuilding the broken flesh.
Novikke scrambled backward until her back hit a tree. Aruna held the bloody sword in front of him, warding off the creature. The wolf thing snarled, head low, and snapped at his legs. Aruna’s sword arced down. The creature drew back, but not before the sword sliced through one of its ears.
It withdrew a step, shaking its head and whining. It stayed there for a second, watching Aruna, as if deciding whether the fight was worth it. Aruna could have struck quickly enough to finish it off, but he waited. Novikke stared at him, afraid and awestruck. He didn’t even look that alarmed. As if this was an everyday occurrence.
Then the beast backed off, turned, and retreated into the trees. Novikke heard it crashing through brush for a short while, and then there was quiet again.
She realized she’d stopped breathing. She started again, in ragged, painful heaves.
Aruna lowered his sword. He went to her fallen light, picked it up, and held it out to her. Novikke looked up at him, terror still sparking through her veins. For some reason, he was almost smiling.
That look made her fear turn to anger. She snatched the light from him. “What do you want, a medal?” she said. “It’s the least you could do, if you’re going to tie me up and drag me into this godsforsaken forest.”
The self-satisfied look faded from his face. He frowned a little, then turned away to go clean the blood off himself.
Chapter 4
Not far down the path, they came to another bridge over a steep ravine. Novikke gave a soft laugh as they stopped in front of it. This one was also destroyed, but not from age and decay like the other had been.
Someone had recently burned it down. All but the ends had collapsed, and what remained was blackened and shriveled. Aruna muttered something that sounded like a curse when he saw it.
“Is every one of your bridges in such poor repair?” Novikke asked.
Aruna glanced over at her to read her face, as he always did when she spoke to him in Ardanian. Often her meaning was clear enough through her tone and expression. He sighed, running a hand over his face.
He peered over the edge, scanning their side of the ravine, down to the river in the center and then the other side. The loose rocks that formed the cliff face looked like they’d slide away the moment you put any weight on them.
“Please tell me you’re not thinking of climbing down that,” Novikke said. It looked deadly. At best. Especially with her hands bound.
He jerked his head toward the ravine, beckoning her. She approached apprehensively.
“Can’t we go around?” She began to point toward where she thought the end of the ravine would be, then realized that there was no end in sight.
He shook his head without even seeming to consider it, but then he started unknotting the rope on her wrists. Maybe she tensed up too much, because he stopped and looked up at her. She tried not to look suspicious.
He picked up a rock to carve into the dirt by the end of the bridge. There was not much room to write. “More animals. Dangerous alone. Don’t run,” he wrote succinctly.
She frowned, but could not argue with his logic. He untied her, then pointed to the cliff.
Novikke rubbed her wrists as she plotted a route down the hill. After she’d hesitated a little too long, Aruna cleared his throat.
She slid carefully to the crook of a bent tree sticking out of the hillside, and then to another one a few feet farther down. When she’d taken a few steps, she heard Aruna following her. With both her arms free, the descent was not so difficult, even with her shoulder the way it was.
She’d almost reached the bottom when she stepped on a rock that teetered and slid under her feet. She stumbled, then fell head first the rest of the way to the base of the hill. Her arms, chest, then head slammed into the ground.
When the world had stopped spinning, she groaned. Her shoulder throbbed with pain from catching herself with her weakened arm. She’d hit her chin in the same place as the previous night. She was going to be completely covered in scratches and bruises by the time they got to wherever they were going.
She rolled to look over her shoulder at Aruna. He’d stopped halfway down the ravine and was watching her, wide-eyed. He raised an eyebrow. Novikke cringed and closed her eyes. The embarrassment hurt more than the fall.
Aruna picked his way smoothly down the rest of the slope, never misplacing a step. Novikke was still on the ground and holding her arm miserably when he reached her. He stopped beside her, looking mildly amused.
“You think that’s funny?” Novikke said.
He looked like he was trying not to smile. He held out a hand. She looked at it for a moment, then took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. His hand was surprisingly warm considering the cool weather.
He nodded toward a fallen log that lay across the river. It didn’t look stable, but she saw no better way across, and the water was too deep and moving too quickly to wade through.
“This is a bad idea,” she said, watching the swirling foam that gathered on the rougher parts of the river. She looked up at Aruna, hoping he would reconsider. He just crossed his arms, waiting.
She started across the fallen tree. The wood was slick under her feet, and on her first step she slipped, nearly falling. She took another step, painfully slow. The water rushed noisily beneath her. Aruna climbed up after her.
Halfway across, she glanced up at the ledge above them, where the remains of the other side of the bridge stood, charred and broken. She blinked at a strange shape huddled in the shadows just under the bridge. She stared at it, and jumped when it suddenly moved. A pale hand emerged from the shadows, and then there was a flash of fire.
“Aruna—” she gasped, blindly reaching for him. She felt him grab her hand and pull. She stumbled backward into him, and a ball of flame flew past her. Her feet slipped out from under her, and then she was falling.
She stopped short with a jerk, dangling against the side of the log. Aruna grunted with effort. He was still holding her wrist. Somehow, he’d managed not to fall with her.
Both of them looked up at the bridge. There was movement, and then another flame. The person was about to shoot a
gain.
Aruna’s wide eyes went from the bridge to Novikke. He hesitated, then he jumped off the log with her.
The water went over her head. There was a rush of unfathomable cold and then wild motion as the water carried them away like twigs in a whirlpool. Their fingers, locked around each other’s wrists, slipped and separated.
The current threw her deeper before letting her float upward again. She burst through to the surface to gasp a choking breath and then the water pushed her under again. Something solid hit her back and then her side, flinging her back and forth. She tried to hold her breath, only to have it forcibly expelled from her lungs with each thrust of the current.
Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly go any longer without a breath, she surfaced again. She was somewhere downstream, and the water was gentler. She reached toward a passing rock, and her arms were so cold that they barely moved. She scrabbled at the slippery stone, and the water pushed her past before she could find a handhold. Her head went underwater again, and she fought against the water until she resurfaced.
Another rock loomed toward her in the dark and cold. This time, she grabbed onto it. She held herself there, choking and vomiting water as the freezing current pulled at her legs. It was only then that she realized her shoulder was alight with pain, shooting agony down her arm and into her back.
She squinted her eyes shut and clung to the rock, shivering and gasping. The Panic was creeping up on her—looking for her when she was at her lowest and weakest, as always, so it could make things even worse.
“No,” she murmured to the growing sense of unreality and terror encroaching on her thoughts. “Stop. Stop.” Her eyes were welling up with tears from the pain in her shoulder. She opened them and looked for the bank of the river. She had to get to shore before her limbs stopped working and she drowned or froze.
One thing at a time.
Push off.
Move your arms.
Kick.
Keep swimming.
She drifted farther down the river as she swam. Pain shot through her shoulder all the while.
She caught hold of a bunch of grass at the bank, and with a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she’d had, hauled herself onto the bank, limb by limb.
She fell to her hands and knees on the sand, still choking on water that had made its way into her lungs. Another spike of agony shot up her arm, and she gasped.
She couldn’t stop shaking. The Panic came back, eagerly latching onto her pain and misery.
A hundred paces downstream, a black shape had emerged from the water. It stumbled onto the beach and then stalked toward her, spattering river water in a trail as it went.
“Saava en alzair kuvu Ardani?” Aruna said. Novikke stared at him. His tone was sharp. Angry. She watched his approach with narrowed eyes.
He looked like a drowned cat, which somehow only made him more frightening. He looked at her with murder in his eyes, then started casting around for something on the ground. He was looking for something to write with, she realized.
He found a bit of driftwood and scribbled into the sand, “Who was that?”
Novikke stared blankly at him. Her shoulder hurt so much she could hardly think. He was writing again before she could respond.
“How many?”
He thought the attacker was someone she knew. An Ardanian scout or fighter. She gave a soft scoff. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been trying to pull her to safety when he’d grabbed her on the tree bridge. He had been trying to use her as a shield.
She wrote with her finger, her hand shaking with cold. “Don’t know.”
The answer did not please him. He scribbled again. “It was a human.”
“Ash and blood, I don’t know every human! I don’t know who it was,” she groaned, bowing her head in exhaustion. Her throat was so tight that her voice sounded strained. An uncontrollable sob was building up in her chest.
He snapped a string of words at her. When he grabbed her hand, she tried to jerk away. He shoved the driftwood into it and pointed at the sand.
She swallowed, forcing herself to think. She remembered a pale hand. It had not been a night elf. That much was true.
She didn’t know of any Ardanian patrols in the forest. But their attacker had thrown fire at them. Everyone knew which people were most likely to be found doing such a thing, though she didn’t know what they’d be doing inside Kuda Varai.
Human mages were rare, but all sun elves were born with the ability to summon fire.
“Ysurans?” she wrote.
He glared at the word, and then at her. He looked unconvinced. She reached up and underlined the phrase “don’t know” again. He started barking something at her again, and she flinched. She underlined it again and again, and he kept shouting.
The world crowded in around her. She couldn’t breathe. Everything was too close and too inescapable. He was still yelling.
She wanted to get up and stab him with his own sword. Instead, pathetically, she put her face in her hands, curled in on herself, and sobbed.
Tears ran down her face and mixed with the water dripping from her hair. The air against her wet clothes and skin was frigid and made it hard to move. She wanted to stop, and couldn’t, and after a while she stopped bothering to try.
At some point, Aruna stopped talking. She wasn’t sure whether he was even still there, and she didn’t care. When she grew too tired to even cry, and she just sat there, quiet. The river murmured behind her.
She became aware of a scraping in the sand. She looked up, and Aruna was writing something.
“It’s cold. Let’s go.”
She shook her head slowly. She had not been sure what his reaction to her breakdown would be, but she had not expected him to stand still and do nothing, as he was doing now. After a moment, he started writing again.
“Please.”
She looked up at him. He looked almost as exhausted as she did. He sniffed, pushing wet hair out of his face. He was shivering.
Novikke sat there for another long few seconds, then gathered her strength and raised an arm to write again, because the pain was so bad now that she could hardly stand it.
“Shoulder hurts. Too much.”
He frowned, his eyes moving up to her shoulder.
He came closer and held out a hand. Novikke looked at it tiredly. When she didn’t take it, he nodded upstream. Novikke followed his gaze. She couldn’t see the bridge anymore. The water had carried them a good distance away. But that didn’t mean that whoever had attacked them wasn’t still nearby.
She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet again.
◆◆◆
They walked for perhaps an hour before stopping again, but it felt like longer to Novikke.
They both gathered wood for a fire, both slow and shivering, and Aruna somehow manufactured a flame despite his wet tinder. The fire grew, and as soon as it was stable he piled more wood on it.
Novikke was the first to start peeling off clothes. She was too cold and too tired to be concerned with modesty. She stripped to her underwear and chest wrap and draped her wet clothes haphazardly near the fire. The blanket and bedroll in Aruna’s bag were soaked through as well, so there was nothing but the fire to stave off the chill.
She sat in the dirt by the fire with her arms around her knees, edging closer until the heat stung her damp skin. She stared into the flames, vaguely aware of Aruna moving around as he set out things from his bag to dry.
He hadn’t tied her hands again. Maybe he’d decided there was no need anymore. They were too far into the forest. She was trapped by geography and by the strange forces of nature and magic there, not by ropes.
She listened to him moving about the camp and wondered what he was thinking.
If she were him, she would be reconsidering how much trouble a single courier was worth. Someone else in the forest, an unknown enemy, had tried to kill him. They’d both been half-drowned in the river. Maybe he was thinking he shoul
d just leave her. Or kill her.
Maybe he was afraid. He was alone, except for her. If he encountered a group of hostile humans or sun elves, he wouldn’t be able to fight them.
After a while, he approached her. Novikke looked up, and her breath caught.
He’d stripped to underwear as well. She hadn’t thought that she had the energy to care about such things until she looked up at him.
Night Elves of Ardani: Book One: Captive Page 5