Bandits

"They are coming!" she screamed, her ear-piercing voice ripping through my dreams. I snapped my eyes open in fear, blinking rapidly to clear my eyesight. I had no time for morning grogginess. I never did.

"Where?" I hissed, sitting up. I reached underneath a nearby pile of leaves, groping for my knife. I managed not to cut myself this time as I gripped the hilt and held the blade in front of me shakily. I heard someone fall to the ground, followed by another one of my sister's screams.

"Omthertehhoramoph!" the muffled voice of my sister screeched. I looked over to my right, expecting to see a bandit with his hand around my sister's head, kneeling over her fallen body with a spearhead pressed to her throat. Instead, my cousin Archie was desperately trying to stifle my sister's screams by tackling her to the ground and clamping his hand over her mouth.

"Shh, Edyln! They'll hear us!" he whispered in my sister's ear. She was only six. She didn't know anything about the projection of sound, but we tried our best to teach her. And yet sometimes she simply forgot.

Archie turned to me. "They're over the horizon! Get Meredith and Anissa! I'll pack the food!" he ordered in a hushed voice.

I nodded briskly and took off, my feet carrying me up the hill in a blur of speed. I burst into the tent up the hill, panting. "Hurry! They're nearly here! Archie and Edyln are safe, but go!" I said between gasps of breath. The two twins stood up in a rush, grabbing their weapons. Once they were outside, they each pulled a thick string on the tent, and the tent collapsed. Meredith gathered the cloth in her arms and threw it off the hill and into the lake below us. She and Anissa jumped down after it.

Archie was running up the hill with Edyln in tow. "Tent?"

"Gone!"

"Twins?"

"Jumped!"

"Weapons?"

"With the twins!"

"Then go!"

Archie pushed me off the hill, and I fumbled in the air, twisting towards the lake below me. It wasn't a particularly high hill, but it was high enough for bandit cowards to second-guess jumping off of. Especially if they spotted a clump of red in the lake. Our red tent made for a good fake blood effect.

I had fallen off high places thousands of times by now, but I never got used to it. I clung to my knife, and as I was a few feet from the water, I threw it towards the dripping figures of Meredith and Anissa beside the lake. I didn't have to worry about hurting them; I knew they would catch it. Fighting against the wind, I hugged my arms together and closed my eyes as I hit the cold, welcoming water.