Pursuit was not far behind, she knew; she had seen her assassins take flight a split second after she had. These were professional fighters; they had been completely unfazed by her sudden flight. To top things off, her injured leg felt like heavy lead, and it was only by sheer willpower that kept the pain at bay. Despite her lead, she could sense them quickly close the short distance between them.
Gritting her teeth, Shendelzare flew upward as far as she dared, then abruptly turned around and flared her wings, almost stopping dead in mid-air. With startled exclamations, the two closest pursuers shot straight past her. Looking down, she could see the others quickly catching up; wasting no time, she tucked her body tight and beat her wings powerfully, this time in a straight line away from the fortress.
A crossbow bolt whistled dangerously close past her left ear, and behind her she could hear the warcry of an incoming attacker. Instinctively, she folded her wings around her and spun violently, just in time to avoid the downward cleave of a broadsword from behind. As she came out of her spin, her hand lashed out and caught the attacker by the side of the head, snapping it to the left. An instant later, her chakram followed up on the momentum of the spin, and the assassin's face wore an expression of surprise even as it fell, detached from its body. Before the corpse had even begun its downward descent to follow its dismembered head, Shendelzare was already back on her original course.