If Gunther had known, it would have just about killed him… but he didn't know, and that was exactly how Jane wanted it. She could handle this. She could. She knew she could. It was nothing to fuss over, really – nothing much at all.
What happened was this:
They walk cautiously into the clearing, spreading out a bit as they go, eyes everywhere at once. But there's really nothing to see – or so it seems at first. The outlaws are in their element, after all; these are men who have spent weeks, months, in a couple of cases more than a year, living in the forest. These are men who survive by coming upon travelers unaware. They know how to blend into their surroundings; how to become all but invisible.
It is Jane who first catches a flicker of movement in the foliage – it is Jane who puts her own people on guard, and in the nick of time, too.
"Defensive positions!" she shouts. "Look to the trees!" And the words have barely left her mouth when the clearing explodes into action. The brigands abandon their cover and rush Jane's group – there are over a dozen of them and they come from almost as many directions.
Amid the ensuing chaos, Jane has only one thought and that is to get closer to Gunther. She'd been about as far as physically possible from him when they'd entered the encampment, seeing as they've been studiously ignoring each other all day. This changes things though.
Imminent danger changes everything.
She locates him and makes her way toward him, engaging with one of the outlaws on the way. They are poorly equipped, not trained at all, and unaccustomed to meeting any resistance whatsoever. They already seem to be realizing, to their dismay, that taking on a party of king's men is a vastly different prospect than setting upon frightened peasantfolk and travelers.
Jane disarms one of the rogues with a few deft sword strokes – sends him fleeing toward the cover of the trees without so much as a backward glance. Then she turns again toward Gunther and her heart freezes in her chest.
Gunther is fully engaged with two brigands who have rushed him head-on. He doesn't see Jane closing the distance between them, and there's something else he doesn't see either; a third man, off to one side, who hasn't broken cover yet. Who's sill hanging back in the trees, and who's notching an arrow to his bow; drawing it back to let fly.
Gunther doesn't see any of this – but Jane sees. He has no idea the danger he's in –
But Jane knows.
There is no time to think, only to act – and there's nothing to think about in any case. All of her internal turmoil regarding Gunther is wiped clean in a heartbeat. The icy distance that's loomed between them all day ceases to matter, to even exist.
Nothing matters anymore except protecting him. The world has narrowed down to this, and this alone. She's moving, flinging herself between Gunther and the man with the bow, praying with every fiber of her being that she will be in time.
She is.
She staggers backward with the impact, but manages to keep her feet. In those first few seconds there isn't even any pain, just a deep, enveloping sense of shock as she stares down at the shaft of the arrow protruding from her shoulder, then back up again, wide-eyed and stunned into immobility, at the man who loosed it.
He stares back at her appearing just as shocked as she by this turn of events – then gives his head a slight, almost regretful-looking shake and melts back into the woods, vanishing from sight.
Jane returns her attention to the arrow and that is when the pain hits her and with it, a brief but breathtakingly intense wave of vertigo. She stumbles again, drops her sword from suddenly nerveless fingers, shoots a wild look toward Gunther.
She is positioned to the side and slightly behind him, and he is still occupied with the two men who ran at him a moment ago. He isn't struggling – he's in complete control. But he is busy. He hasn't seen. In fact, it doesn't appear that anyone's seen. There is too much activity whirling about.
It is their little secret – the man with the bow's, and hers.
And she resolves right then that it's going to stay that way.