Prescient

Chapter Eleven: Injury

Anna barely withheld the wince as she snapped off a large majority of the arrow shaft in her arm, not wanting it to get in the way. The forest was almost deathly silent around her. That should've been the first warning. The birds were gone – disturbed from their usual resting places by the orcs. She was hardly going to be able to fire her arrows properly either, with the injury she'd just received, and that meant she had no way to take down the irritant of an archer but to get closer. Her ears strained, cautious as to anything moving to find a better position to aim at her, but all was quiet. Behind her at least, that was. She could hear the clash of blades of her companions as they no doubt faced off with the rest of the orcs. There had to be more than the archer or two that had her pinned behind the tree. Biting her lip, she glanced between her blade and the shorter knife she had on her person.

If she could close the distance and throw the knife... she mulled over the idea, shaking her head and tightening her grip on her sword. She struggled when it came to ranged weapons, and most of her focus had always been on the blade and the bow.

It wasn't as though she could dodge an arrow, especially if she wasn't certain of the exact direction it was coming from. She might have elven reflexes, but there was a limit. Not to mention her fighting abilities weren't on par with what they once were. "There has to be a way..." she mumbled. There had to. She needed to come out of the fight relatively unscathed. The arrow wound was hardly her fault, and it was relatively minor to what it could have been. As far as her thinking went, she'd been lucky with that, and was alive solely thanks to her reflexes.

The sound of a bow being drawn had her on her toes, ready to leap away, but rather than another black arrow sailing towards her, the sound of a heavy body thumping to the ground reached her ears instead. Silence greeted her for a few moments, and she didn't dare breathe as she wondered exactly what was going on beyond the tree behind which she was hidden.

"Lady Anna!"

Anna blinked, head snapping around to spy the black-haired ellon whose name she could not remember for the life of her hurrying out of the bushes. "The archer?" she queried, and he nodded in confirmation.

"Dealt with," he said, holding up a silvery piece of armour which its relevance she didn't quite understand to the situation at hand. "We need to warn the others."

"And Therion?"

"He will be able to hold them off for a short while—"

Anna shook her head. "Only one of us needs to go and call for aid," she said, turning as she heard the sounds of swords clashing.

"Then if you would—"

But Anna didn't listen, instead turning and sprinting towards the sounds of fighting. "You warn them!" she yelled, charging headlong through the thicket, drawing her blade as the sounds grew that much louder.

Not so cowardly now, was she? she thought to herself, teeth bared in a mockery of a grin as she leapt out of the bushes. She had a split second to take in the ten orcs descending on Therion and another before she jumped right into the fray.

"Lady Anna?"

An arrow soared past her head, nailing an orc right between the eyes, and she moved forwards, trusting Therion and his bow to cover her back as she dived through the tiny pack of orcs. She'd seen them in the hundreds of thousands – and she'd stood against ones like them when they'd invaded her precious city. A pack of ten was nothing.

Well, that would be the case if she was in tiptop shape with the rest of the House of the Golden Flower at her back.

She only had Therion and the other ellon whose name she couldn't remember – though he did a fantastic job at standing in for the warriors she missed so very dearly. Ducking under rusted and dulled swords, she hacked and parried with her elven blade. "Barely any resistance," she mused, blinking as she sliced open yet another orc's neck as another one creeping up behind her fell prey to another one of Therion's arrows.