Cyrille gave a faint smile. "Thank you, Miss."<br/><br/>A humble and weary-looking old man shuffled forward and took hold of the doorhandles, parting them and standing aside with a stiff bow. Just outside the doorway and down the stairs stood a carriage with two trunks in the back, The man gave a toothless smile to the two women as they passed, to which Cyrille replied with a nod of her own before opening the carriage's door and offering Aerylinne a hand to help her up. When her charge was seated, Cyrille stepped into the coach seat, set her flambard next to her, and grabbed the reins. One whip on the horses later, and they were off.<br/><br/>The road, lined with trees of all kinds, led them through what would be relatively flat land at first, but soon began to roll as the hills grew more prominent. There was a town they could reach by nightfall, so long as there were no serious interruptions.<br/><br/>'Such as this one,' Cyrille thought to herself as she heard rustling from the brush off the side of the road, not four hours after having left the keep.<br/><br/>The carriage had been surrounded by a group of five highwaymen, all of them armed. Three came from the front, two of them with shortbows, and the horses stopped upon sight of them. "Stand and deliver!" called one with a longsword that looked to be of a far higher grade than that which the remaining  bandits wielded, "Your valuables or your lives!"<br/><br/>Cyrille sighed through her nose, grabbed her sword, and hopped down. "Just stay here, this will be over in a moment," she softy instructed Aerylinne.<br/><br/>She then approached the one who presented them with an ultimatum. "Really, now?" she said distastefully, "You should reconsider your situation. Six against one? That's hardly fair."<br/><br/>The bandit gave a bark of a laugh, and signaled for the two archers to fire. Lazily, Cyrille dodged one arrow, striking the other out of the air as though she was batting away a fly. With a standing leap, she covered the ground between herself and the nearest archer, and with a swift attack, slashed his bow in half before kicking him in the stomach and knocking him over.<br/><br/>"I think ten would have the chance to beat me, bare minimum, were all of you able to fire a decent shot in the first place," she quipped, an expression so aggravatingly smug that the bandit leader charged at her. Another counterattack from Cyrille repelled the man, forcing him backward.<br/><br/>In the meantime, the two bandits who came from behind the carriage dashed forward to try and open up the back and take the trunks...<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>