Hunter, hunted.

Xia shouts as she leaps from her new cover, swinging her halberd in a way that sends the dead bird tied to the end towards the weasel's face at maximum velocity. "HAVE SOME CHICKEN YOU WEASELY WAIF!"

Xia and party belong to me. Darkflower and party belong to Darkflower.

The early morning sun shines down upon Mossflower in a cloudless day. Despite the sunshine Fall has made it's presence known with a slight chill in the morning air. Several leagues south of the great and famous Redwall Abbey the tree's along side the road have begun to lose their colored leaves, the grass has begun to wither, the sound of buzzing insects is no longer present.

The road, covered in fallen leaves, is rather barren itself these days. Most beasts tend to be busy with their cities and villages or tending to crops. But a few brave souls have been known to migrate this road even during the fall...

Darkflower is along the road today, but she stays along the treelines like she has been taught to do and with her is about 3 other beasts, a couple rats and a weasel and this seems her first outing, well one where she is leading it anyways. She studies the road and stays very alert.

Surprisingly banditry takes more patience than beasts tend to think. You're entire income revolves around waiting for beasts to appear and rob them, carefully weighing which targets are worth the effort to attack, and those who are too dangerous.

It was hard to say really where the party of travelers fell. There were three of them in total. One was a rather lanky ferret with a grey head band tied around his head and wearing a long tattered trench coat. The beast walking to his left was a squirrel wearing a hooded tunic. Across his back was a bow and quiver full of arrows. And then ahead of them was a portly brown fox. The bodyguard / mercenary / what ever put gold on the table Xia wore a green vest across her chest which left much of her flesh stomach exposed. She carried the carcass of a sparrow tied to the end of her halberd. In fact each traveler seemed to be carrying some kind of fowl across their back.

The fox whistled merrily as she walked.

Darkflower shakes her head as she watches them and looks to her two rats and weasel. "So..worth the time?" A rat shrugs as if he rather wait "Maybe the squirrel, most can't fight up close if skilled in just a longbow." The ratmaid shrugs and watches them further as she motions for her group to go and try and surround them if the can.

Xia grunted as she adjusted the weight of the halberd across her back. The long pole arm had a curved blade attached to the back. It was a rather long, and complicated story how the vixen became a bird hunter. One that has no barring on the current events about to unfold. The squirrel behind her came to an abrupt stop. "Wait? Did you hear that?"

The fox and ferret both rolled their eyes. This apparently wasn't an uncommon event with their twitchy eyed bush-tail friend. "Yeah, it was the sound of my stomach rumbling. Come on. I would like to have these birds plucked, roasted, and cooking before night fall."

"But I'm telling you! I heard something!" The squirrel whined. With a resigned sigh he continued after his fellow hunters after they had decided to continue walking forward. Xia muttered under her breath, "Paranoid fool."

Darkflower takes the chance as the squirrel is alone and pullls back her longbow, after careful aiming she then releases the arrow as it heads stright to the squirrel foolish enough to fall behind. The other two rats get closer to the other two beasts and the weasel draws forth his long sword ready for the fight to begin, they may even get some free lunch out of this.

"I'm tellin you! I heard-" Comes the voice of the squirrel. The sudden silence is welcomed, but at the same time alarming. So is the audible THUNK as the arrow makes it's mark into the beasts chest. Xia turns in time to see her fellow hundtr collapse onto his knees, clutching at the shaft protruding from, and through, him. "I...told you...so..." Perhaps not the best last words but it doesn't change the fact that they are his last.

Before the body of their comrade fall Xia is barking out orders, "Off the road. NOW!" With the bird still tied to her weapon she darts off into the bushes and tree's to her left. The ferret makes a terrified DOOK sound before leaping into the cover of the woods. It takes him several moments to fiddle with his rapier before he manages to draw it. "Oh light! What the blazes was that! They killed-"

"Shut up and stay quite you idiot." Xia growls behind a tree before shouting out for all to hear, "Ok! You made your point! No pun intended...now who are you and what do you want you vagabond miscreant sniping jackwagon!"

"Oh! Good insult there Xia, good insult."

"Shut up Joe..." the fox growls again.

Darkflower doesn't answer as she selects another arrow, she nods to the two rats to then serch for the two beasts, the weasel has an idea where they are as he has his longsword and slowly heads towards Joe. Darkflower stays hidden, for now with her longbow ready to fire, but this one more for slowing or injuring for the time being anyways.

The ferret gulps, he has seen his share of fights...one or two shares at least. His heart is beating fast as they get no reply. "Xia...what do we do? Xia?" He turns towhere the fox was hiding and his eyes widen when he finds her missing. "Xia! Xia!" the fox left him! She really left him to die! He should demand a refund! Lazy bodyguard, all she ever did was eat and sleep and make snarky comments. She was skinny when she joined their hunting party...skinny-ish at least.

It's funny what one thinks when they see a weasel coming to murder them. The ferret finds himself backing into a tree as the weasel approaches. Holding is rapier out shakily before him Joe yells, "Back! Stay back! I'm armed!" He doubts it will do him good though. He's about to die, probably violently. At the last moment he closes his eyes and covers his face with his paws, "GAH! Please don't kill me!"

"I told you to be quiet!" The vixen shouts as she leaps from her new cover, swinging her halberd in a way that sends the dead bird tied to the end towards the weasel's face at maximum velocity. "HAVE SOME CHICKEN YOU WEASELY WAIF!"

The weasel blinks as he is hit in the face with a bird, that was not what he expected to happen to him today. The two rats then draw their daggers and head into the fight now, aiming to wound both of them as Darkflower speaks "We are the silent blades, you will" She fires the arrow at Xia's leg "Surrender and give up your valuables,coins..and lunch"

After beaning the weasel in the head with her dinner Xia turns to the sound of closing enemies. The halberd spins with deadly efficiency around her head as she readies to face those rats, possibly beaning the weasel in the head more than once with the bird again. "Come and face me you-" she yelps as the arrow passes by her leg, tearing a gash along her thigh. Dropping to one knee she she howls in pain. The vixen quickly tries to stand again, despite the pain flowing through her leg. "Insolent rats! Come fight me fair and square so I can feed you your own tails and..."

"We surrender!" Shouts Joe the ferret, dropping his sword. "We surrender!" The vixen rolls her eyes as she sighs. This fight isn't going too well and doesn't promise to get better. With another defeated sigh she holds up her halberd slowly and drops it to the ground. "Joe. If we survive this. I'm going to do mean and terrible things to your person."

Darkflower steps out and nods "Fetch.." The two rats nod and start to serch for vauables as the weasel growls as he is hit upside the head again and slices at the bird, cutting it clean in two and free of its string or waht ever it was on and narrows his eyes at Joe angleing the sword at him. The rat in charge, Darkflower watches them closely, "Also any gold or..pretty things they have, we shall take the loot to Ebony."

The portly fox keepers her paws held high as she is searched. She balls them into fists and growls dangerously as she is parted with her coin purse, a spare knife attached to her belt on the small of her back. Joe continues to shake his knees as he stares at the blade pointed at him. "Oh please don't kill me...I...I have a wife and three, three dozen kids! You don't want to deprive them of your father do you?"

"Oh will you SHUT UP already Joe?" The fox practically snarls, baring her fangs. The ferret has only a modest sum of coin on his person, his rapier, a small knife, and pocket lint. He also doesn't take the hint. "L-listen! We are just hunters. We don't want no trouble. We just catch birds and sell them to vermin encampments. No need to kill us." his voice is shaky and beyond terrified and yet catches a glimmer of hope when he says, "M-maybe this Ebony fella likes wood pigeon? We can catch them for him! Honest! Loads of wood pigeon!"

The fox just sighs.

Darkflower narrows her eyes as Joe goes on and on and...suddenly the weasel growls, "Ebony is a female, how-DARE- you" He stabs forwards either aiming to kill Joe or seriously injure him. The two rats back off with their new loot and look to Darkflower as she keeps calm and alert, The one bird cut in two is also taken, hey it's food and that's not always going to be easy to find here soon.

Unfortunetly Joe is both seriously injured and killed by the blade running him through the belly button. A look of surprise comes across face as his paws clutch at the wound to his gut. He begins to breath deeply as he collapses to his knees, his mouth opens to let loose one last plea for mercy which never comes. Xia just closes her eyes as she hears the ferret body crumple to the Forrest floor.

She gulps and laughs nervously, it is her turn to be afraid. "I...I don't suppose there is any way I can talk you lot into not killing me as well?" She asks hopefully. "I should mention that you're a little early for fox season. That starts up next week. Can't have you killing off foxes before then, right?" Xia had the nasty habit of chatting when she got nervous. And now seemed the time to diffidently panic.

Darkflower aims an arrow at Xia, but she doesn;t fire it, she speaks to the 3 with her, "Get the other birds, may as well" They nod and do so. She watches Xia and then pulls back the arrow but instead she fires at her footpaw and backs up to follow the now leaving band of theifs, "Be lucky Ebony was not with me, or you too would die..try not to bleed to much, it may bring something woorse to you, one never knows" With that she sprints into the woods, up into a tree and is off back towards thier camp, thats hidden deep in the woods.

The vixen starts to shout an insult towards the fleeing bandits, it is however quickly replaced with a ferral yelp as the arrow strikes her foot paw. She collapses onto one knee. After her yell she grits her teeth, gripping the shaft in her foot. A stream of cruses best left unmentioned flow freely from her mouth. She curses the rat, her mother, her father, her ancestors and all rats of ratdom. Tears of pain in her eyes she growls to herself, "I...hate...archers..." then pulls the shaft free.

The following profanity, cursing, and feral screams of pain causes birds to take flight in the forest for miles...