He told himself to run even as he freed his hand by dropping his own sword, then reached out and grasped the arm poised above her prone body. He thrust the last outlaw’s weapon up and away as he sank the bloody dagger to the hilt in the soft flesh low on the man’s back. It dropped him like a stone.

Quickly, before he could think too long on it, he reached down and grasped at her back, her tunic and mail shirt bunched into his fist as he hauled her up and set her on her feet. Dirt and leaves and blood and sweat, covering a reddened face that stared in an uncertain shock at him.

The little clearing was suddenly, jarringly quiet after the noise of the fighting. They stood and blinked at each other until he realized, dimly, that he was waiting for something. From her. He did not know what it was, but it shamed him that she did not say anything. It shamed him more that he wanted her to.

He turned and retrieved her sword from the ground where she had dropped it, then stepped forward and thrust it in her hand. She looked at him as though he had suddenly sprouted a new nose.

He could not stop his own smile.

“Is a fine damsel in distress you make, wench.” He picked up one of the better blades left by the outlaws, and suggested they be on their way with haste, lest there were more villains lurking about.

She was silently wiping blood from her forehead. They were far from the river now, driven deep into the woods where the only danger, to his eye, was from wild animals. No sooner had he suggested there might be more outlaws than they had heard a poorly imitated bird call. Even now he smiled to himself at the memory of her incredulous expression when she comprehended it was meant to mimic a bird, clearly a signal from the fellows of the party that had attacked them. Two more men or twenty, there was no way to know and so they’d made haste to be gone. They had run long past the point where his lungs burned, finally stopping when he could see she had as much difficulty keeping the pace as he had. Now he leaned against a tree and watched her and waited, warily, for what she might say.

“My lord,” she said, her voice rough. Her breath had calmed at last from the run they’d taken to outpace the bandits. She had been holding her side and now he watched her hands fall away from her body as she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. They hung by her sides, all cracked nails and dirt. He imagined them smooth and white, holding a cup to his mouth while the fever burned him.