Llygad am Lygad - Welsh. "An eye for an eye."

They could have killed him, finished the job and stuck his head on a spike with a squirrel tail stuffed in his mouth. Instead, they let him live, but not before taking his eye.

It's a cruel punishment for an archer. Despite his best efforts, Iorveth had screamed. He hates that he feels almost grateful it had ended there. They might have taken his bowstring fingers or clipped his ears, like he's known plenty of dh'oine to do to Aen Seidhe, but they'd decided that carving up the right side of his face was sufficiently barbaric. Overnight he'd gone from expert marksman to clumsy beginner throwing every shot wide. Humiliating for a veteran commander of the Scoia'tael.

Iorveth doesn't forget. There's no restoring his obliterated depth perception or healing the scarring that corrupts his face, but Iorveth picks up a bow again and trains, and practices, and remembers.

By the time he finds the soldiers responsible again, he's learnt to compensate for the lost eye so well he's almost a better shot than before.

"Don't, please…" one of them begs as Iorveth drags a knife blade over his cheek towards his eye socket, a twisted smile on the elf's face.

"Half blind you while you're tied up at my mercy? What do you take me for? A dh'oine?" Iorveth says, slashing the bonds on the soldier's wrists instead. "Let's see if you crippled me as thoroughly as you think."

He gives the soldier a hard kick to the spine before unslinging the bow from his back. The human scrambles to his feet and glances fearfully over his shoulder, quaking under the look in Iorveth's single green eye.

"Go on," the elf snarls. "Run."

He flees.

Calmly, Iorveth nocks an arrow to the bowstring and aims. He doesn't overthink it, feeling out the shot by instinct, then lets out a breath and looses the arrow between heartbeats.

There's a whooshing as the arrow breaks the air, feathers in the shaft rippling, and then a sudden unsettling silence as it strikes its target. The tip enters in the back of the soldier's skull, punches through brain and bone, and emerges through the man's right eye socket. He drops to the ground with a thud.

Iorveth smiles, and turns to the other soldiers tied up awaiting his revenge. "Which of you wants to go next?"