Someone screamed.

     Maybe it was Aldyth, maybe it was me.

     But all I know is that none of it stopped the elf from drowning his teeth in blood. His eyes flashed angrily as the entire squadron of Cardinals charged him. They screamed in a foreign language and he screamed right back.

     "We have to help him," I whispered breathlessly. Aldyth didn't appear to hear, sitting frozen in shock with her hands circled tightly around Ashless's reigns.

     I pulled an arrow from my quiver and poked at her arm urgently. "We have to help him," I repeated.

     "Yes," she gulped and looked around nervously like a maniac in green was waiting to jump out at her (and let's face it, there very well might have been). "Well..." She yanked her spear out from where she has jabbed it in the ground. "We're going to save the savage...elf...from the even more savage...flute people?"

     I nodded. "Yes...that about sums it up."

     She pushed her hair away from her face and adjusted the hood of her cloak with one hand. "Has it ever occurred to you, Eli, that I might be a bad influence...on you?"

     "Many times." I strung an arrow carefully and pulled the string back until the body of my bow creaked. "But too late to worry about that now."

     I breathed out.

     The fletchings whipped through my fingers before I even realized that I was letting go. A soldier, a woman with blonde hair and war paint smeared across her face, fell to the dirt with an arrow sticking out from her neck. "Nine," I muttered to myself. "Or was it eight?"

     My first kill shot.

     There wasn't much time to seek an answer to that question because at that precise moment, Aldyth charged. The soldiers looked up in surprise at the sound of her horse's hooves pounding into the ground. Taurus himself yelped and had to roll out of the way to avoid being trampled.

     I urged Bethor on into the brawl.  It wasn't much of a fight really. The Easterners attacking Taurus were small and didn't put up much of a fight against the crazy girl, the archer, two horses, and the elf with a taste for blood. My knees pressed into Bethor's flank, causing him to rear unexpectedly.

     I clung onto his neck for dear life and winced violently when his hooves sank into a human ribcage.

     "Oi!" Taurus screamed as I failed to regain control of my horse and almost crushed him as well.

     "Oi yourself!" I yelled back and clung manically to Bethor's main. Then. "Behind you, Taurus!"

     The elf lunged, his hands flying up behind his head and reappearing in a blur of a second, clutching the wooden staff he had tied to his back. He brought it down like a two handed club over the the head of his assailant. There was a sharp crack and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't splintering wood, but shattering bone.

     "Dricthen," Taurus spat and kicked the guy in the ribs for good measure.

     "Don't do that," I said quietly as Aldyth expertly impaled the last of the Cardinals. It scared me. Taurus's ruthlessness. Aldyth's ease. It all scared me.

     Suddenly my childhood friend was gone. No more innocent jabs or nonsense stories. Before my eyes, Aldyth had become a warrior, and there was blood in her eyes.

     She yanked her spear out of the bloody corpse and flipped the entire thing in her hand so that the tip was facing up. "C'mon Taurus!" She yelled. "We're not out of danger yet."

     "Is now really the time to be stealing horses?!" Taurus demanded indignantly.

     "Now seems like a perfectly good time to be stealing horses, yes," Aldyth replied forcefully. "Now get up here before we leave you."

     "You wouldn't," Taurus gasped mockingly. "You'd be lost without me."

     "Then get on the bloody horse," I snapped. "We're leaving."

     "What, now? With all this pleasant company?" Taurus strung his foot up into a stirrup and heaved himself up behind Aldyth.
  
     "Now is not the time to add sarcasm to your rather short list of sparkling personality traits," Aldyth said as she gathered the reigns up in her fists.

     "You do know how to drive one of these things...right?" Taurus asked and looked down to the ground nervously.

     "Gods above, Taurus," I noted as Bethor snorted  "It's like you've never ridden a horse before."

     "That's because I haven't."

     "Well then...  here's your first lesson," Aldyth grinned almost sadistically. "Hold on."

    The elf let out a rather womanish scream as Ashless went from standing to a gallop in a little less than a handful of strides. I was able to catch one look at his face before all I could see was the back of his head. With eyes the size of small apples and enemy blood smeared around his mouth, Taurus looked like he should have been prowling around the night, hunting children...instead of manically looking for something to hold onto as he sped away on the back of a horse.

    The crowd of Cardinals was finally starting to thin at this point, and they were running. The flute shrill had abruptly cut off, leaving the air feeling empty and hollow. Any hold that they had had on the town was gone, and they knew it.

    Some ran on foot, while the others who still had horses, rode as hard as they could. I felt a growing smittenness take hold of my chest. They had lost, one less town would fight in their war.

    We had won.

    Bethor cantered past a groaning man on the road. His eyes rolled visibly, and blood flowed from his body faster than the air between his lips. A boy knelt by his side -- though I doubted that he would ever feel like a boy again. His face was slacken and an almost empty quiver laid by his side. I recognized him as the one who had shot at an atrix right when it all began.

    I looked up to the sky and saw the Atrixes circling like vultures. Soon the town would have to fight again, and this time it would be a battle that no one should have ever have to fight. A battle for their dead. A battle for their loved ones right to leave this world in peace.

    Up ahead, I caught sight of a soldier peering out from behind a shed. His face was pained and an arm was hugged tightly to his side. He stumbled clumsily from shadow to shadow, trying his best to avoid any attention. Blood flowed between his fingers and down the seams of his uniform.

    It took me only a fraction of  a second to realize that Aldyth had seen him too. The blade of her spear raised up to about her shoulder level and she tugged at the reigns with her other hand. The soldier stopped his trudge with a look of exceptance in his eyes -- he was young, small even, barely what one could call a man.

    Taurus leaned out of the way as Aldyth brought her arm back.

I dug my heels into Bethor's flank and he sped forward in a burst of speed. Aldyth paused at the sound of his hooves barreling toward her, but before she could  collect her wit, we were blocking her path. "What are you doing?" I demanded.

    "Get out of the way, Eli," she snapped.

    "He's a kid, Aldyth! He's not hurting anyone now!"

    "But he's also an Easterner," she replied with vemon in her breath. "If it's not him today, then it will be someone else tomorrow. Move. Aside."

    I shook my head firmly and stood my ground.

     Taurus remained silent and cast his eyes at the dirt.

    For what seemed like forever, Aldyth and I stood where we were. Neither of us willing to budge from our positions, neither willing to compromise -- not that there was any plausible compromise to be had in this situation.

   It was terrifying. She had never looked at me in such a way before, and never before had she ever been this totally wrong. Finally I had the nerve to look back at the soldier, only to find that he had gone.

    Finally Taurus tapped Aldyth on the shoulder, gently, almost cautiously. "Leave it be, Aldyth. Let us leave this place to their dead, their wounded, we don't belong here."

      "What if the atrixes come for their dead?" I querried wearily.

     "They can take care of themselves -- besides, if worse comes to worse, they have plenty of Easterners to feed them. " Taurus balanced himself carefully, then tied his pole to a strap across his back.

    Aldyth took a deep breath and blew it out slowly; her dark hair fluttered away from her face as she did. "Alright," she whispered.

    She twisted her head around to glance back at the elf, who was still casting nervous looks at the ground every now and again. "How come you've never ridden a horse, Taurus?"

    "Elves live in trees," he replied sheepishly as he wiped his face clean with the back of his cloak. "Horses don't climb trees.

     "Well...alright. You learn something new every day," she gathered the reigns loosely into her hands. "Anything else we need to do before we leave here?"

    "No."

    "Then, let's leave this place."

    "Let's."

A/N

Hmm Aldyth seems a little off, don't you think? Guesses to why? Anyone?