Thistle

The first arrow took the Orc through the throat.

It came from somewhere above and behind you, a sound like a hawk diving, a wet thunk, and then the brute choking on its own blood. It dropped the crate of stolen silks it was hoisting onto its shoulder and crumpled sideways into the mud.

You were on your knees at the time. One of the warband had hammered the flat of a blade across the back of your skull, and the world was ringing like a struck bell. Blood sheeted down the side of your face from a gash above your ear. Your weapon was three feet away in the dirt, knocked loose when you'd been grappled down. An Orc stood over you, raising a notched cleaver with both hands, its yellowed tusks bared in a grin.

The second arrow buried itself in the Orc's eye socket. It stood there for a moment, confused, the cleaver still raised. Then it toppled forward, missing you by inches, close enough that you felt the displaced air on your neck.

More arrows followed. Fast, precise, merciless. You heard them more than saw them — the snap of a bowstring, the hiss of fletching cutting air, the dull impact of broadhead meeting flesh. The warband's war cries turned to shouts of confusion, then panic. An Orc took an arrow through the knee and pitched forward screaming. Another caught one in the shoulder, spun, and caught a second in the chest before it could raise its shield.

From your hands and knees, half-blind with blood, you watched the survivors break. They grabbed what they could carry and fled into the trees, leaving their dead behind. The last one to go took an arrow in the calf but kept limping, howling, until the forest swallowed it.

Silence fell like a held breath.

Then you heard it. A soft clicking sound, tongue against the roof of a mouth. Curious. Appraising. Like a bird studying something shiny.

She dropped from the oak above you with the ease of water off a leaf, landing in a crouch barely five feet away. Bare feet, you noticed. Calloused, dirty, gripping the earth like roots. Her bow was still in her hand, an arrow nocked but not drawn, pointed loosely at the ground. Dark hair hung in wild tangles around a face that was all sharp angles and wide, golden eyes. Those eyes studied you the way a hawk studies movement in the grass, not hostile, but not gentle either. Assessing whether you were prey or something else.

She tilted her head. One long, notched ear twitched.

Her nose wrinkled. She leaned forward, just slightly, and sniffed the air. You realized she was smelling you. Your blood, your sweat, the iron tang of the fight still clinging to your skin.

"You not dead," she said. The words were rough, stripped of grammar, spoken like someone who had learned language secondhand from overheard conversations. Her voice was low and slightly raspy, as if she rarely used it.

A pause. Those amber eyes flicked to the bodies scattered around the road, counting, then back to you.

"You fight good. For a soft-foot."

She said it without mockery. An observation, plain and simple, the way one might note that a deer runs fast but cannot climb. She rose from her crouch in one fluid motion, keeping the bow in hand, and circled you once at a careful distance. Her gaze swept over your wounds, your posture, the way you held yourself. Measuring.

Then she stopped, standing between you and the treeline, silhouetted against the last bruised light of dusk filtering through the canopy. The leather cord at her throat caught a glint of fading sun, the small tooth pendant swaying with her movement.

"Others dead. You not." Another head tilt, birdlike, unsettling. "Why you live?"

It was not a question born from suspicion. It was curiosity, raw and unfiltered, the kind that had no understanding of social grace. She wanted to know, simply because she wanted to know.

Her fingers drummed once against the grip of her bow. She glanced toward the darkening road, then back to you. The forest behind her was already filling with the first evening chorus of insects and night birds, and she seemed to settle into it like a fish in water, her shoulders dropping, her breathing slowing.

"Dark comes soon. Soft-foot should not stay here." A beat. Her nose twitched again. "Wolves come. Worse things come."

She turned halfway toward the trees, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. The invitation was not spoken. It lived in the angle of her body, the slight inclination of her head, the way she waited without waiting.

She would not ask you to follow. But she was not leaving without an answer.