Asher looked up at the woman, who had brilliantly neutralized the man in front of them. A grin broke on his face. "Nice hit!" He called, over the din, but there was work to be done. He wheeled around, bounding toward another marauder. With a spiral-web of steel and a sudden [i]snick[/s] the man shrieked and dropped his knife, clutching a wound on his side. It would heal.

"Stay near me!" He shouted to Johanna, but he didn't know if she had heard. He decided to assume she had, and moved on to the next fire, where a man and woman struggled with a pair of particularly scraggy raiders.

None of the attackers seemed to be interested in hurting others, as desperate people were more interested in survival than murder. But the refugees also wanted to keep their belongings, and so the violence had begun escalating out of control. There were many, many bandits; more than Asher could count in the flickering fires.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his unlikely partner, at least nearby. But behind her was another worry. To his slight surprise, a woman crept up on the other, with a wicked looking sickle winking in the flame light. An irrational flood of fear speared through him, and before he could even think, he ripped up his hand and hurled the weapon at the other woman.

The blade tumbled, end over end, through the air, streaking past Johanna, and smashing the woman in the face with the hilt. The blade whipped into her mid-rift, and Asher's blood went cold. The desperate, almost-feral woman had only been trying to survive, and he had very likely just killed her.

"You bastard!" A man's voice burst from behind him, and then Asher's feet were swept out from under him by a medium sized, but incredibly dangerous looking man. Asher had no weapons, and the lean muscle beneath his aggressor's skin were reason enough for fear, even if the short blade in his right hand wasn't. "You'll pay dearly for that, you monster."

The blade streaked downward, and a sudden pain exploded from Asher's stomach. The man was torturing him! The madman continued to cut a dozen shallow streaks in Asher's body, face, and arms. Asher could do nothing but take the pain, and pray for a miracle.