Vedette's arrow never left her bow and she hardly flinched as the man hacked the other man's hand from his arm. She made no sound as he followed through and killed the bandit. She kept moving, right along with him. She left only a few feet between them as her eyes darted back and forth and her ears strained to hear even the smallest sound. The crunch of snow, the snap of a twig, anything would give away their would be attackers. Seven fingers, that meant, counting him, there were eight men she now had to account for. Too many, she thought, men were often the bane of her new existence. She did not often want to throw orders around even with her title, but right now, were they not forced to be silent, she would have liked to tell him to take the others and go. Of course, finding them now would be the most difficult thing.
She was thankful, at least, that she had bothered to wear her uniform. Had she been dressed differently, or changed into a dragon, she would have been dealing with a less than friendly solider. There were advantages in numbers, of course, but Vedette still felt unhappy about the new situation she had found herself in. She enjoyed working alone, but she could not split off from the man now that they had ran along each other. Too many questions. Some of which would eventually need to be answered. She knew he would ask why she was out here alone. She would think of how best to answer this, when and if they made it out of the woods alive. Both of them, that was, Vedette was not afraid that she would not make it out of here alive.
She worried, however, for her much more human counterpart.
A lump of snow fell heavily in front of him and Vedette only had time to latch onto the back of his coat with one hand as she pulled both of them back and away from that open space. An arrow, whose flight had been nearly unheard because of the snow, bounced off the bark of the tree they had been too close to before. She let go and repositioned her bow and arrow to point upwards. A branch was moving, not by very much, but enough. Vedette closed one eye and shot up into the tree. There was a shuffle of feet, to avoid her arrow, but the man had not thought in his haste to avoid her shot of steadying himself. With a yell he fell from his branch toppled into another, bounced off that and hit the ground with a muffled thump of snow.
Another arrow shot from their right just narrowly passed Vedette as she turned to hear the sound. The man in the snow was forgotten as Vedette nocked another arrow to answer the one that had nearly hit her. Let the man deal with the other bandit.