Emeral In Shadow

The Hourglass is Flipped [#4]

    Madelief still laid on the ground, having collapsed from fear. Now the bandits that encircled her and Marijn had a savage look in their eyes as they swung wildly with bladed clubs and daggers, roused on by the heavily geared squad on horseback out for their heads.
    Luckily, a tight circle never is a good place for swinging blades like maniacs, and most of their swings hit allied flesh. Not like they cared, as pure bloodlust dulled the pain.
    However, the cuts that did hit their mark were deep and painful.
   Madelief cried out in pain with each cut as she tried in vain to roll away from the flurry of blades, and Marijn did his best to parry blows aimed at him, but he was way outnumbered.

    The thought had crossed Marijn's mind to bolt away, leaving Madelief for the bandits.
He almost felt guilty for thinking it, but surviving had always been his main objective.
If he ever got in a fight that he had a low chance of winning, he ran. It was the most logical way of surviving, in his opinion. But Madelief was his first true friend, so...
   So he decided to duck, about to dive through a open spot in the circle; when a horn sounded afar off, one he recognized as the horn the Kingdom's Army uses. And the vulnerabilities of the circle vanished under the reckless swinging of blades.
   ...Well, at least he could die knowing he had no other way out. Maybe the Army would round up the bandits, but by the time they arrived it would be all for naught, as they'd probably just bleed out.

    Ewald and his men were only a few hundred yards away, easily crossed on horseback. The bandits, hearing the horses right behind them, began a panicked attack against them, almost forgetting their original prey.
    The guards dismounted the horses as they reached a suitable distance to the bandits, taking swords out of scabbards. The horses continued past the bandits in a trained move and circling back behind the guards to wait on their command.
   The bandits ran around the guards trying to get stabs and slashes in at any exposed flesh, but the guard's were trained to fight, and their swords were longer, meaning that bandit head after head tumbled to the ground, followed by their shirtless bodies.
   Ewald, seeing that his men had the bandits mostly handled, ran to the two shivering and blood-soaked bodies that were being attacked before.
   Ewald looked down at the bodies; one a lithe boy wearing raggedy, mismatched clothes, with a bloody knife limply clutched in one hand, and a girl...
   He felt his throat close up in shock, as the other body was the farm girl he had always admired was one of the two. He knelt down to the girl, but knew little to nothing about first aid.
    "I'll get you to a healer, I promise." Ewald said, giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder. Madelief nodded weakly, not having the strength for words.
    Ewald stood back straight, just in time to see a bandit with particularly long and grimy hair run and thrust a metal-tipped spear at him; Ewald narrowly dodged, the metal just grazing his side. He took his own sword out of it's scabbard, stepping forward to get closer, and lashed out horizontally at the bandit's neck.
   It missed by a hair, drawing a bloody line across the bandit's neck. The bandit, not able to get a good hit in at close range, dropped the spear and leaped forward, ramming his thick-skulled head against Ewald.
    Ewald, disoriented and put off-balance, lets go of his sword falls backwards, landing on his butt. The bandit swoops down and grabs the sword, then holding it up high above the Prince, before bringing it down savagely at his heart.

    Marijn notices the Prince walk up to him and Madelief, but only barely. The blood loss is making him delirious.
    He watched with one eye open as the Prince kneels down and says something to Madelief... Something about a healer.
    He feels his knife, he spends part of his strength clutching it.
    Everything hurts, but also everything screams at him to get up and fight. He wasn't brought up as a loser, he knows he either wins the fight or he dies.
    He watches Ewald get assaulted, he watches him fight, seeing his untrained swing... He goes down to the ground.
    Marijn gets up, his brain feeling muggy and his skin clammy. His arms felt like they were filled with lead.
    He sees the bandit pick up the sword.
Marijn stumbles forward, behind the bandit. The bandit brings the sword down, not even noticing the bloodied Marijn.
    Marijn stumbles left, and purposely falls right behind the bandit, which isn't hard considering his weakness. As he goes down he grabs the bandit's long hair, yanking him down with Marijn onto the ground.
    On the ground, he looks up at Ewald, who took the opportunity and is now the one bringing the sword down at the bandit Marijn watches the gush of blood as the bandit's heart is pierced, and then his vision fades to black as he loses consciousness.