Chapter 24

"So how, exactly, did she get past our sentries dressed like that?" Veren Redmorning asked, surveying the captive. Her helmet covered her head and most of her face, and she went armored from head to toe under her cape. Though the metal was black, the articulated plates still gleamed dully in the firelight. Part of the armor had even been fashioned into a small pair of wings projecting up from her shoulders. She's not exactly dressed for stealth.

"This is…" Glaive cocked her head, searching for a word. "Prison-keeper? Jailer? Sometimes hunt enemies, too."

"Warden?" Redmorning suggested.

"Sure. Warden blink past you guards, then hide in shadows. You lucky she thought Shadebreaker was Orc."

"What do you mean by blink?" Veren asked. The enemy Elf was fading to near-invisibility now that she stood still, melding unconsciously with the night as he had often seen Glaive do.

Glaive smiled. "I take my knife away, you find out quick-quick, Chieftain. Disappear one place, come back somewhere else. Can't go far, but they bloody hard to fight."

"Meaning she can teleport," Shel'yin said, moving up on Redmorning's left. "She will not be easily kept prisoner, Chieftain."

"Demons," Redmorning muttered. "Ask her what she's doing here, Glaive," he said, to buy time.

Glaive relayed the question. The other Elf answered coldly. Her eyes stayed on Veren, and he was startled to see they were yellow behind her helmet.

"Came to get druid," Glaive said. "Elves been watching you since battle. Thought I was hostage, too. She pretty annoyed, find out otherwise."

"I can see that, yes," Redmorning said. Only the Warden's mouth and chin were visible under the helmet, but he could just make out the hard line of her dark lips. "They've been watching us all this time… Ask her if she will leave peaceably, if I let her take Arinagh."

Glaive looked at him, pale eyes luminous in the dim. "Not good idea, Chieftain."

"I doubt that Arinagh can tell them anything they don't already know. Perhaps if they know we are leaving their lands, they will be less disposed to attack us again."

"Maybe," Glaive said. "And maybe they just send Warden back again, when you on the move. They not very big group, probably only get one Warden. I kill her now, maybe they leave you alone 'til you get to Barrens."

"I agree," Shel'yin said. "We have not encountered this type of assassin before. If she had not been trying to rescue the druid, you could have been dead before we knew she was here."

"Well, we know now," Redmorning said. "And I'm not going to kill her on the off chance it will turn out to be a good idea later. Ask her, Glaive."

"You the Chieftain," Glaive said cheerfully, and spoke to the other Elf again. The Warden responded suspiciously, and Redmorning was quite sure he knew what she had said. I haven't lived with Shel'yin all this time for nothing. Then the druid said something with an air of finality. The Warden looked at him for a moment without speaking . Then she looked back at Redmorning, meeting his eyes, and spoke. Glaive's translation confirmed his guess.

"Warden says maybe you follow her back and kill them anyway, since she can't blink with druid," Glaive said. She showed no sign of fatigue, though she had been holding a knife to the other Elf's throat for some minutes now. "Druid says you word is good. Warden says you swear, she agree."

"Then I give you my word," Veren Redmorning said, without taking his eyes from the Warden's. "You will not be followed or harmed, either you or the druid Arinagh, unless we meet again in battle or in war. Tell her, Glaive."

---

"Are you all right?" Androis Darkiron asked, when they were some miles from the cave. The two Elves moved quickly in the winter night, even the great druid seemingly weightless as they glided through the snow.

"Yes," Arinagh said. "The Glaive would have killed me, but Veren Redmorning would not allow it. I've been treated well, for a prisoner of war."

"A glaive is a weapon," Androis said. "Has this traitor no other name?"

"You were very close," Arinagh said. "You must have seen her scars."

Few things escaped Androis Darkiron, even in the dark. Especially in the dark. She frowned, reaching for the memory: strong fingers at her throat, and a face beside her as the other Elf leaned forward…

"Her left ear was notched," Darkiron said slowly. "She had parallel slash marks on her cheek, and on her neck. Deep, but very straight." She fell silent as she realized what she ought to have known at once. "I am a fool," she said. "Vendre Fellwind. But I had not thought her skilled enough to creep up on a Warden."

"I suspect she had training before she ever came to us. Perhaps from her father," Arinagh said. "You have met Fellwind the demon hunter."

"Once," Darkiron said. "Before he fell. I thought him half sane, as demon hunters always are."

"Perhaps," Arinagh said. "But you see what happened. Vendre was sentenced to a lingering death, and the Orcs found her while she still lived."

"It would have been wiser to kill her cleanly, and outright," Androis said. They moved through the trees beside the path, retracing the caravan's trail. "Yes, she killed her superior officer in wartime, and such a crime must be punished to the full extent of the law. But this…"

"She has become the weapon of another people," Arinagh said. "The Glaive of the Tattered Banner. She's only forty-five years old, Androis. Yet I watched her kill three seasoned warriors in as many seconds, and two more soon after. I would be dead as well, if she had not spared me to heal the clan's wounded. She is not really a warrior. She is a killer."

"I wondered," Androis Darkiron said. "I knew you would not be easily taken."

"Entirely too easily, I'm afraid. I begin to wonder if it's true that we begin to age," Arinagh said quietly. Androis suppressed a shudder.

"These Orcs are not what we thought them to be," she said, to change the subject. "Demon worshippers would not have taken in a wounded stranger, nor spared a prisoner of war for anything but slavery. Or sacrifice."

"They do not serve the demons," Arinagh said. "Nor have for some time, I suspect. I think they came to Azeroth hoping to rule themselves. Certainly, they have not adopted thecustoms of Warchief Thrall's people."

"We will tell the Priestess," Androis said. "But in the end, you know it makes no difference. We can't have interlopers living in Ashenvale."

"They do not plan to stay here," Arinagh said. "They are going to the Barrens."

"Good," Androis said firmly. "Let Thrall deal with them. We have enough to worry about with the satyrs growing bolder every day."

"Yes. How are you faring, Androis?"

The Warden shrugged. "The same. A little more tired, perhaps. It does little good to assassinate a chief of the satyrs. The next strongest merely steps into his place. I feel sometimes that there is no end to it."

"There is always an end," Arinagh said.