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[color=00aeef]"Jorah, you're going to have to find those two archers before they pick you guys off! Let's keep moving—"[/color]

Jorah would have rolled his eyes at the Lion professor’s command, but they were a little busy doing the exact thing he was yelling about. [color=FFAB66]"What do you think I'm doing up here, a strip routine!?"[/color] he retorted, bristling. Duh, wrong time, wrong place! There wasn’t even a pole up here!

Though while he actually was focused on his archer-finding task [i]thank you very much[/i], he was having a hell of a time doing it. This was [i]way[/i] harder than hunting—too much chaos, smoke stinging his eyes and blocking his vision, and plus, boars and bears didn’t usually shoot back. Throw in the fact that he’d already drawn on at least a half dozen fleeing villagers thinking they were bandits, while he’d never admit it, his confidence was starting to wane. By the time he could discern whether someone was holding a weapon, they could already have shot him, and if he shot without checking, he might—[i]woah.[/i]

A large movement drew Jorah’s eye as he scanned the edges of the battlefield, only to watch Auberon all but cleave a shield-bearing bandit in half, only to finish him off with an upward thrust and brace for more. Goddess above, the man could have been Imogen with how loud his aura was screaming in that moment, and it was nothing but a wave of heavenly purpose and righteous fury. Well damn, call that a pick-me-up if Jorah’d ever felt one. Though, at this rate, the damn Lion leader was going to take the lead—by what metric, he didn't know, but it didn’t really matter—and he’d be damned if his Deer were going to lose to some storybook interpretation of a teenage Goneril with one axe haft in hand and the other wedged up his ass. 

Newly motivated by the competition, Jorah became a little more liberal with his arrows, loosing a few at bandits on the ground as he searched for those damned archers. One bandit he spotted was nowhere near the melee, but instead taking a torch to the thatch of yet another village home. That one’s efforts earned him an arrow through his wrist, and when he paused to scream at that, another through the neck to finish the job. Honestly, who burns houses? Banditry, sure, but arson was just shitty. 

That being said, the rumble from earlier had Jorah under the suspicion that burning the houses wasn’t the bandits’ only plan for this village, and the pillar of smoke they’d seen earlier all but confirmed it. Coupled with the fact he’d yet to see any one of these bastards making an escape with an armful of valuables, he was starting to question if they were even ‘bandits’ at all. But then, what were they?

The whistle of a passing arrow broke Jorah’s train of thought, and he hit the roof of the carriage once more, scanning in the direction of the shot. Fair enough point; unraveling mysteries wasn’t really for him anyway. Turning asshole archers into unicorns, however…

Spotting movement behind a tree some distance away, Jorah propped up on one knee, nocking an arrow and taking aim until a shrill, childlike cry froze him solid. 

[color=FFAB66][i]No no no please no—[/i][/color]

Unseen by Jorah, a small boy had fled the fires in their direction. Blocked off and spooked by the melee, he’d taken shelter underneath the carriage, crying and trembling as his world burned down around him. Jorah felt the same: so paralyzed with fear he couldn’t even loose his arrow, he was still as a statue on top of the carriage, blind and deaf to the chaos around him. All he knew was terror, and worse than that, the deep, crushing loneliness of a lost and terrified child with no one to run to and nothing but death all around. 

He was torn from his horror-stricken trance by a familiar whistle in his ear and a very real sting on his cheek, the shock of which took his balance. Jorah fell over onto his side, prone on the carriage roof and sputtering as the air finally returned to his lungs. Wait, shit, was he shot? Was he dead?! No, he couldn’t be dead, the smoke still stung his eyes and the ringing of steel still echoed in his ears. Saints be good, he had to pull himself together! 

A warm, wet sensation on his cheek told him he was bleeding, but there was no time to check. What was he doing? Archers! Right! Still rattled from that episode, muscle memory took over, and Jorah managed to haul himself to his knees fast enough to bury an arrow in that archer’s eye socket before she could get another shot off. This time, though, he didn’t stick around to watch her fall; a flash of light from behind him drew his eye, and the sight beyond it lit a new fire in his chest, this time all his own. 

It was Clarissa, aiding the back line as he’d ordered—or, more likely, as she’d realized was pertinent herself—but that wasn’t what concerned him. No, what interested Jorah more was the bandit she was aiming at, and more importantly, the [i]four[/i] others pressing in around the Prince, who was hacking at them like a mad homeless man with a table knife. Did they really close in that fast? The prince was back quite a bit farther than the rest of the line, so maybe… wait, did that idiot launch himself at them, just like that?

Jorah’s newfound determination quickly morphed into a wave of hot fury, his hands moving on their own to nock a new arrow and draw. Kieran was finally off the ground and dispatching an additional bandit, falling in line with the prince, so Jorah turned his sights on the other side of the clump, burying two arrows into the chest of another axe-wielding bandit and one through the neck of another carrying a sword. 

The whistle of another arrow uncomfortably close to his side was the only thing that halted Jorah’s volley, the blond falling to the carriage roof once again and turning to scan for that last pesky archer. [color=FFAB66]“Asshole!”[/color] he called over his shoulder at the prince, annoyed to have his attention torn from [i]that[/i] shitshow. Yeah, just launch yourself into a crowd of bandits! What could go wrong? Who cares if the healer has to draw within lance range to save your powdered imperial ass? Goddess above, he should have just shot the [i]prince[/i] in the back; way fewer arrows required, and no more need for Clarissa and the others to confront a whole horde of bandits at once to save him. Problem solved.   

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