*****
The girl ran like there was no tomorrow. The desert sand was slipping under her feet, sand flying in high arcs in the air, the softness of the terrain making her desperate advance both difficult and tiresome. Yet she continued her way towards an unseen goal, tripping over and getting back up again, running as if her life depended on getting there. And perhaps it did. She was obviously escaping from something.
”Help me, anyone! Help me, Gandum!” she screamed to her god between desperate intakes of breath, clearly with horrified certainty that no one would hear her. But still she kept trying. She was young, not ready to let her life go too easily.
Most any day in the desert she propably would not have been hurt like she rightly feared, but as luck would have it, she was not alone in her plight. Amashanae had already seen her. The elf had spent the whole night wandering around the desert, searching for shelter. She had had to keep moving in order to keep warm; the desert coldness during the night could be every bit as punishing as its scorching heat during the day. Although she felt exhausted and the few sips of moisture she had managed to extract from the spiky plants she had found during the night had hardly quenched her thirst, her instincts were still sharp and alert. Just as the silvery darkness begun to give way to a hint of light on the horizon, she had sensed, rather than heard something approaching and she had climbed over a large dune blocking her view to see a little further. Her sight was excellent, and she had seen how five horsemen – bandits judging by their looks – chased a girl just a few hundred paces to her south. She also saw that very soon they would catch up with her.
It was very easily understood what they were likely to have in mind. Amashanae judged the situation just for a while – she had just escaped trouble herself and needed no further trouble anytime soon – but she also sensed something innocent about the girl, something in her looks that screamed helpless desperation. Besides, she – or the bandits – might carry some water with her. And water she desperately needed, having fled the camp in such a haste she had had to leave most of her belongings behind. So a confrontation would be inevitable. Also, there were only five bandits, not an army of them. With a sigh she collected her strength and launched into running towards the girl. As she raced across the sand noiselessly as a ghost she saw how bandits already were upon the girl.
The girl started to scream as one of the bandits leaped off his horse and fell her down. The girl tried to shout for help, her voice breaking under the stress, but the bandit covered her mouth with a scarred and dirty palm.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” he laughed, revealing his ugly sneer, teeth missing here and there.
“A girl like you just shouldn’t be alone here in the desert”, another of the bandits bawled, still on his horse. The girl’s eyes were just white crescents of fear gleaming in the starlight of the awaking morning when she tried to struggle against the strong bandit. It was of no use.
“Aren’t you a heated one”, first bandit said, still keeping her on the ground. “Girls like you could easily get into trouble, wandering here in the desert like that…” he muttered and continued with laughter, “but wait, we ARE the trouble”. The five of them started to laugh as they dismounted their horses. The first bandit unsheathed a little dagger, and his tone of voice turned low and serious, warning the girl:
“Okay, see this dagger right here, huh? One scream and I’ll cut your lungs out of your chest”, he growled. The other bandits gathered round the girl, taking their time now that the prey had been downed. The horses neighed as they pulled their reins to steady them after the chase, and there were curses as they forced the animals to stay put. One of them produced a bottle of some liquor from a saddlebag, took a long sip and offered it to the one holding the girl down. They were not doing this the first time it seemed. But the man with missing teeth pushed it aside.
”I’ll have my way with her first, then I’ll get drunk”, he said, and the others laughed again as if it had been the best joke ever uttered. The girl, terrified, closed her eyes as tight as she could and prepared to meet her horrid fate as the bandit started ripping her clothes off.
The bandit never had time to realize whose sword it was that penetrated his throat. The girl heard a rupturing sound and the man suddenly croaked, and just as she opened her eyes she had a shower of blood in her eyes. She started to scream, but her screams were muffled when the body of the bandit fell on her as Amashanae pulled her blade free from the corpse. And with a swift, continuing movement and a twist of her wrist she swung the blade at a high curve at the rest of the bandits who were too slowly realizing something had just appeared from nowhere and killed one of them, and beginning to pull out their daggers and swords. The blade came down, slashing off an arm with ease, and Amashanae tilted her body, letting the momentum drive the blade back up and behind her while the twist of her body enabled her to throw a devastating kick on the groin of one of them. The bandit behind her tried to strike at her neck, but Amashanae was too quick for him, already letting her blade continue even further behind her, tilting on her heels while dropping lower to evade the blow and penetrating his heart.
Amashanae pulled the blade from the dead body of the bandit as it fell, again bringing the blade over her head, ready to strike again, and looked around with fire in her eyes. Three opponents were laying dead on the ground, one down on the sand, screaming in agony for a missing limb, and the last one still standing with a trembling sword in his hand and starting to hesitate. The horses neighed and rolled their eyes at the coppery smell of blood suddenly pungent in the air, the screams of the wounded bandit reverberating around them. Amashanae stared at the trembling bandit and grinned, eyes blazing with adrenaline and blood dripping from the blade over her head. She just stood there for a second, and then, with him obviously too terrified to be of any real danger, she suddenly moved forward. She kicked the sword from his hands, and her gaze never leaving his eyes, snatched the sword from the air. With her free hand she threw it, without even looking to aim, like a spear. It hit the back of the screaming, one-handed bandit rolling on the sand and finished his pains. That was too much for the last remaining bandit, and he dropped on his knees and started sobbing and babbling incoherently, and backed away with arms flailing on the sand, turned and half crawled and half ran away in the desert. Amashanae let him go. The desert would take care of that one.