Arrow
**Janus**
Morning had turned into night, and we were still fighting.
“Joel, this isn’t working, there are just more and more!”
“I know, huff huff, just give me a minute, urgh.”
Joel was letting loose arrow after arrow. They all found their target, and with every shot, one of the undead fell. But this was not enough; it was just a drop in the ocean of corpses marching for Aldmoor.
The others and I were also firing arrows nonstop, but we were still far off from Joel’s precision. We need a different approach. Without looking, Joel asked,
“Louis!?”
“Yes?”
“You go to the guard captain, tell him to reinforce the prison, and tell him to protect the city’s Food supply.” I raised an eyebrow. Why was he sending him there now? However, Louis was as loyal as ever and immediately followed through with Joel’s order.
“And Collin…”
“Y-yes?”
“You go to the east gate and tell me how huff they are doing.”
Collin hesitated but still went to the east gate after I gave him a slight nod.
“Now you are commanding my men, huh?”
“Shut up, at least I did something. Huff, now quit your blabbering, you can shoot while you talk.”
“But why did you send them there? They are guarded already?”
“And you think those guardsmen would be enough? If the city guard could be trusted, we wouldn’t have been caught with our pants down like this in the first place.”
“But what about the west gate?”
At this point, Louis returned, grasping for breath.
“Ser, at the west gate, huff huff the prisoner, Rodrick he…” Louis pointed towards the western wall. A figure could be seen jumping down the wall. It was Rodrick, his signature crimson hair shining through the night.
“Joel…!”
2 Arrows whizzed past my head before I had even finished what I wanted to say. They went straight towards Rodrick. But unlike all the arrows Joel had fired this day, these two didn’t hit their mark.
Rodrick turned around and deflected the arrows with his rapier in one fluid motion before continuing his escape. I was aghast. Throughout my life, I had never seen Joel miss a shot. If they were in range and he saw them, they were as good as dead. This very rule was just broken right before my own eyes.
But Joel was unperturbed. He just shot more and more arrows after Rodrick. Five, ten, fifteen, but they were all deflected. Rodrick just continued to run towards the forest’s treeline. The undead tried to attack him on the way, but they had no chance against the seasoned knight as he cut through them like trash and reached his goal past the tree line. Now, even Joel got frustrated.
“You little shit! You think you can get away, huh? Well, I won’t let you.”
Joel climbed on top of the Battlements to get a better angle and shot. But this shot wasn’t like any I have seen from him before. Joel was putting everything he got into that one shot. His muscles were tense to the point of ripping, and all the fiery blue aura in his body gathered around the bow, flowing into the string and the arrow he had just knocked. He pulled his warbow back as far as possible. Then it seemed as if time had come to a halt as he let the arrow loose. This moment only lasted for a millisecond before a blue streak as fast as lightning pierced through the air.
The arrow flew through all the undead in its wake. Obliterating them even if it didn’t hit their heads. It even broke through a tree Rodrick had just stepped behind, shredding the bark and wood, toppling the tree. Until it finally found its mark, breaking through Rodrick and drilling itself into the ground. It all happened in just a tenth of a second, but the arrow had left a trail of devastation in its path. It was the strongest arrow I had ever seen.
And it hit. Blood spewed from Rodricks’ body, but it wasn’t from his head or heart. In the last moment, the knight had begun to duck slightly to the left, saving his life but sacrificing his right shoulder in the process. Rodrick’s arm was left dangling on strings of flesh and skin, but the knight quickly cut it off before continuing his escape, carrying his lost limb in his other hand. He was now out of range.
This was the first time one of his targets had gone away. Behind me, I could hear Joel screaming in rage,
“FUCK!”
Joel was left sitting on the ground panting. This single shot had taken everything out of him. He had no more strength left.
In the meantime, the undead had begun to come so close that they clumped against the wall. They pushed into each other until more and more fell over. Over time, a small mound formed around the entire wall. Soon, the number of squirming corpses would be high enough for them to climb over the mound.
Joel was now out of commission and could do little else than wheeze on the ground for air.
“Louis?”
The young boy looked up from Joel after laying him down, shock written all over his face. In Louis’s eyes, Joel had been a hero who could kill anyone. That very hero had just let his prey escape, and was now so exhausted that he could do little else than sit on the floor and grasp for air.
“He will be fine; he is just exhausted. You have to go to the west gate and tell me what the situation is and tell them to gather…”
It was then that I felt a shift in the atmosphere. The undead army all turned around and slowly but surely began to retreat past the treeline.
The first attack was over.