"Listen!" Dolanna said sharply. "Stay together, and do not advance past me," she warned. "I will have to use sorcery, and I do not want to hurt one of you by accident. Faalken, with me. Tarrin, stay with Walten and Tiella and defend our pack animals."

In a rush, at least ten men erupted from the brush ahead, shouting and brandishing weapons. Five men on horses rounded the corner ahead and charged, and a single man stood back by the brush. Tarrin could hear him shouting in oddly discordant, unintelligible words that made Dolanna's eyes widen like saucers. He could feel her do her magic, then he felt a sensation of enclosure. The shouting man pointed his hands at them, and Tarrin almost jumped when a ball of fire erupted from his hands and streaked right at them. It struck something in front of them, something invisible, and exploded. Tiella screamed and Tarrin had to supress the sudden urge to run away when an inferno of angry fire surrounded them, licking at the invisible something that prevented it from reaching them. Dolanna's magic had created some sort of shield that was defending them from the enemy's magical attack. "Walten, take out that mage!" Faalken demanded instantly. Walten raised the longbow instinctively, pulled back, aimed, and fired. Tarrin could see from the instant it left the bow that it would hit the mark. It arced over the small field separating them, homing in on the chanting man, then simply bounced away harmlessly.

He had something protecting him too.

"I cannot divide my attention," Dolanna said in a strained voice as the men reached her shield and started beating on it with their swords. "It is all I can do to hold a shield this size!"

Tarrin pulled off the robe and dropped off the horse, understanding instinctively that if the mage wasn't killed, he would bring down Dolanna's shield, and they would be hopelessly outnumbered by the attacking bandits. He dropped his staff and waited for the right instant, right when the middle-most man was rearing back his arm. Then he exploded forward like an arrow from a bow. His shoulder caught the man squarely in the chest, picking him up and carrying him into the man behind him, exploding him off his feet and carrying him for several spans before Tarrin threw both of them aside almost negigently. Then he put his ears back and ran flat out right at the mage. Tarrin's inhuman strength gave him inhuman speed in that sprint, faster than a horse, and the chanting man's eyes' bulged and he nearly mis-spoke himself as he saw the Were-cat bearing down on him, his face full of mindless fury. The mage simply redirected his spell, pointing at Tarrin instead of Dolanna. A bolt of brilliant white lightning lashed out from the man's hands, arcing across the meadow.

But Tarrin wasn't there.

The man blinked a second, then a shadow on the ground made him look up.

It was the last thing he would ever see.

Tarrin had sprung into the air at the last instant, jumping clear of the magical attack, jumping impossibly high, nearly twenty spans into the air. He could have jumped onto the roof of a two story bulding with his vaulting leap. It wasn't that hard for him to adjust his trajectory so that he would land right on the unfortunate man His hand-paws leading, Tarrin slammed directly into the man's chest, and he was already slashing and tearing before his opponent hit the ground. They both rolled several times backwards as Tarrin's momentum blew them both back towards the trees, as Tarrin got a grip on the man's shoulder with one hand, his claws sinking deep into flesh, and he brought up a foot and put it against the man's ribcage. He drove his claws into the man's belly as they rolled, then kicked out and down even as his hand pulled the man into it. It was an instinctive move, the same as a cat raking with its back claws, and it was devastating. Tarrin ripped the man open from the base of his ribcage to his hips, and all his internal organs flew out of him in a stinking, bloody spray, their rolling making them fly all about. The man managed to make a gurgling croak before he came down hard on his back, Tarrin on top of him. His eyes registered shock as Tarrin lifted a paw while hunched over the man, his other paw holding him down by the chest and his face twisted into an animalistic snarl of pure hatred, and then struck with it. The blow was aimed at the throat, but the sheer force of it, and Tarrin's inhuman strength, ripped the man's head right off his body. That head was swiped aside by the raw power of the blow, bouncing in the bloody grass like a ball before coming to rest at the base of a tree.

Tarrin was almost overwhelmed by the smell of the blood, and for a horrifying moment, he had to stop himself from ripping the man apart. He put a blood-saturated hand-paw to his head, trying to shake off the loud song of the Cat trying to get him to do as it willed, urging him not just to kill, but to savage the victim. But his human reason prevailed; his friends needed him. Tarrin got up and turned around, looking at the men beating against the shield Dolanna created with their weapons. Dolanna made a pushing motion, and the shield suddenly exploded outward, sending the men flying in all directions. Faalken charged into the fray with his sword drawn, having his warhorse stomp and grind enemies into the ground under his hooves. Tarrin sprinted back towards them, chagrined at throwing away his staff like he did. Walten put an arrow into a man's belly as Dolanna seemingly grabbed small balls of fire from the air, hurling them with deadly accuracy into the chests and backs of the attackers. Tarrin hit the back of the regrouping men like an avalanche, grabbing one by the back of his mail armor, picking him up, and hurling him into three others with enough force to tumble them three paces down the road. He raised a bloodstained paw, the claws with small bits of ripped flesh stuck to them, and ripped the face off one attacker with it, then backhanded another with enough power to rip through his chain mail. One man desperately tried to spear him from the side, but Tarrin twisted, grabbed the spear with a free paw, and swung the man around, throwing him to the ground. Tarrin used the spear shaft to block a sword, then an axe, then stepped into an overswing and delivered a short kick to the knee. It snapped the man's leg like a twig. Tarrin almost instinctively fell into the Ungardt forms of fighting, and found a center, a focus that kept the Cat in check and let him concentrate on the matter at hand. Killing enough of them to make the survivors break and flee.

Tarrin went to rake a man across the chest, but an arrow appeared in his side, and Faalken cut him down from behind an instant later. Tarrin darted to the horse's side and grabbed the haft of an axe that was aimed at the horse's leg, then yanked it out of the man's hand and buried it up to the handle in the back of the man's head as he was turned by the strength of Tarrin's yank. Tarrin saw out of the corner of his eye a man trying to stab him in the side with a sword, then grabbed the brained man and dragged him into the sword's path. The man lost his sword as the dead man fell, then he fell himself with an arrow right in the temple. Tarrin had to admit, Walten was a very good shot with his bow.

The remaning five men, two wounded by Faalken's sword and Walten's arrows, turned and fled, screaming in panic. "Let them go!" Dolanna said wearily as Tarrin moved to chase them down.

"Are you alright?" Faalken asked. "You're covered with blood."

"It's not mine," Tarrin said through clenched teeth. He'd killed. Not just one, but several men; he couldn't even remember how many. Although it was a case of kill or die, he'd never taken a human life before, and he found the taste of it to be very bitter.

"Tarrin," Dolanna said in a tightly controlled voice. "The next time you decide to do something like that, let me know. You nearly gave me a heart attack."