"[i]Thanks. Though I think we probably shouldn't start keeping score on the times we save each other's lives.[/i]"
He gave a grin that showed his teeth at the jest, and realized she was right. They really were a good team. Markus wasn't used to such a thing, as much he tried to appear that way around her. He'd known hard fighting women before, and he'd known those a bit less experienced than he (though not much, judging by his mere 4 years as a sellsword), but he'd always been in a larger, looser group. One where you could easily close yourself from others, yet you were also apart of something bigger than yourself.

It was different for him to be out here with only one partner, especially a woman like this. Alike him in more than a few ways, competent, but... he felt like she looked to him too. He knew she could take care of herself, and in fact she impressed him in a lot of ways. However, he felt a certain sense of duty as the more experienced one. Briefly, he wondered if he was up to this. It was quite an odd thing, hitting it off with a girl so quickly, and then suddenly becoming her comrade in arms, and perhaps even a mentor of sorts, though he used the term loosely. 

"[i]Let me take a look at that?[/i]" she asked, and his reverie fled when he heard her voice. "Oh, yeah." he breathed, lifting his shirt up. It was his turn to blush despite himself, and he was glad his lifted shirt covered the lower part of his face. He nodded, giving a self depreciating chuckle. 

"Yes." he admitted to her question. "I remember when I was a boy, and my older brother accidentally loosed his bow in my direction. He didn't know I was coming out of the woods, and it hit me in the chest. If that was a war bow and not a hunting bow, I might have died just there. And...in the battle I spoke of before. The only one I was in, I...a sword ran through my side. The other side-" he explained. "I'd only been fighting for half an hour, though I suppose many good men died after a minute. I lay there and heard the battle around me as I bled." 

He cleared his throat, and shook his head of the dark thoughts. "Luckily, a priest patched me up once the battle was over. He had magic, and I could walk without help a week later." He sucked in his breath from a jabbing pain as she worked on his wound, though it was her job and he didn't protest. "Thank you, Val." he said breathlessly as the wound was patched up. [@Luminosity]