Page 5 of Dark Elves of Ardani

“It’s all right. You’re safe now,” the man said, like she was a small animal he was trying not to spook. He was speaking Ardanian. It had been months since Zara had spoken Ardanian to anyone, but she knew the language well enough.

He slowly bent to set his gore-covered sword on the ground. He took yet another step closer, stopping a few paces from her. The man was tanned and dark-haired. It was a marked difference from the way humans looked in Kuda Varai, where society worked on a nocturnal schedule. No one in Kuda Varai was tanned.

“Can you understand me?” he asked.

Zara watched him carefully. She could not guess what they had planned for her. “Yes.”

The man smiled. A tall, black-haired woman approached and stood beside him, scowling at Zara. She was the only woman in the group, as far as Zara could see. She wore the same heavy-looking steel armor and scarlet cloak that the rest of them wore. A symbol was painted on the left breast and emblazoned on their cloaks: seven swords laid over each other to make a circle.

“What’s your name?” the man asked.

She didn’t really want to give them her name, but she couldn’t just not answer. “Zara. Who are you?” She could hear her flawed accent, which meant they could, too. If they hadn’t already guessed she wasn’t Ardanian, they would know now.

“I’m Paladin Theron.” He gave her another warm, disarming smile. “We’re all Paladins. Followers of Paladius. Have you heard of him?”

She shrugged uncertainly. Theron exchanged a look with the scowling woman beside him, who started scowling even harder. He made a placating motion at her, and the woman rolled her eyes.

“Will you put down the sword?” Theron asked Zara.

She glanced down at the blade in her hands. She’d forgotten she was holding it. She didn’t know how to use it, anyway. Slaves were forbidden from studying swordplay. She tossed the sword to the ground and raised her hands in surrender.

Theron laughed, and so did a few of the others. Zara eyed them suspiciously.

“You still don’t understand,” Theron said. He came to stand in front of her, taking her arms and lowering them to her sides. Jura’s blood glistened on his gauntlets. “We’re the good guys.”

* * *

Zara saton a stone at the edge of the camp as she watched the Paladins pick over the corpses of the Varai. She fiddled with the broken strip of leather in her hands—her collar. One of the Paladins had cut it off earlier.

Everyone she’d been traveling with for the past few weeks was dead. It had all happened so quickly.

She watched them dig through the elves’ meager belongings: pouches of gold marks and other valuables they’d collected, which would have been used to trade for food, stock animals, metals, cloth, and other necessities to be brought back for the people of Kuda Varai. Many materials were scarce in Kuda Varai, and the things brought in from raiding and clandestine trading were necessary to their survival.

As the others worked, Theron approached Zara again. She’d been studying all of them, but especially him, since he seemed to be their leader. He looked only a little older than her. In his late twenties, she guessed. He had a slightly scruffy look about him, with a shadow of a beard and overgrown hair tucked behind his ears, and blood and dirt staining his armor. It was the look of someone who’d been traveling and working outdoors and didn’t have time for things like shaving every day.

Slaves in Kuda Varai were kept clean and neatly dressed, because it was said that a messy slave reflected poorly on their master. Theron didn’t look like a slave. He looked like a free man who did as he pleased and made his own fashion and grooming decisions. There was something appealing about that.

“Don’t look so suspicious,” he said with a smile. He had a friendly face, frequently smiling. So far, they had treated her like she was one of them. Like she was a long-lost sister. It was jarring.

Theron’s smile faded when Zara said nothing. “How long were you captive?” he asked.

“All my life.”

A pained look crossed his face. “You’re free now. Do you understand that?”

She frowned.

It was possible that without Kashava’s protection, the Varai would have tired of her and killed her. It was possible that the Paladins had saved her life.

It was also possible that these were the same people who had killed Kashava.

“We were attacked by another group of humans yesterday, west of here,” Zara said. “Were those your people?”

Theron tilted his head. “I don’t think so. What did they look like?”

“They wore armor, too. A little different from yours. They did not match with each other.”

“Bounty hunters, maybe.” When Zara gave him a blank look, he elaborated, “They hunt monsters, demons, corrupt mages, things like that. They’re like us, but they’re motivated by monetary rewards, not by a desire to serve Paladius and protect the innocent.”

---