I have been playing without followers for some time but took Erik on after a miscellaneous quest in Rorikstead when I convinced his father to let him be an adventurer. He seemed so polite and ill-prepared in his cheap armour that I felt sorry for him.

Anyway, I kitted him out in enchanted dragonscale armour, gave him a dragonbone war hammer and bow and went forth to see what he could do. He's surprisingly adept, with good finishing moves, doesn't charge into the fray when I'm wanting to do sneak attacks (or at least not often) and his dialogue is refreshing.

So why the title, you ask?

Well, he literally ran off like a scalded cat, in the middle of a fight.

I polished off the rest of the enemies and waited for a while. He eventually ran back into the room as fresh as a daisy and commented on how old the place must be. I was amazed. He most definitely fled from the field of battle because he ran off up the tunnel we had entered by and everything had been killed back that way. All the new enemies were in front of us and descending down a ramp from an elevated platform while I was doing my best to up my archery by shooting them with the bow.

In all fairness to him, he hasn't done it again since. In fact he's recently been more inclined to charge in front of me so that I'm in danger of hitting him when using the bow...maybe he's trying to make up for his panic attack!

Has this ever happened to you?

Not exactly, sort of. Lol. The few times I've had a helper 'run away', I've tried to anolyze why and generally have concluded that my character/terrain/obstacle was blocking their access to foes so they tried to go the loooonnngg way around that made it appear as if they were retreating. Once or twice though, I've had it happen where that sort of seemed mysteriously unlikely.

Actually most of the followers will do that, it has something to do with their AI and pathing. I have had some followers appear to run from Skeevers but 2 seconds later charge strait at a Dragon.

I agree that it's probably an AI thing. I've never had it happen with Eric or any other follower yet that couldn't be explained by an enemy coming in from behind though.

It's interesting that other people have had similar experiences and also tried to work out if there was a reasonable explanation. I got used to them running halfway round Skyrim to get a few meters forward if I slid down a cliff or jumped off a wall that was a bit high for them, but this was strange.

I've dismissed Erik for now: not because of his dubious courage but just the opposite. He was starting to take out too many enemies and I couldn't get my archery skill up as fast as I wanted.

I really hated sending him home. He looked so forlorn and said that he could do with more experience, told me cheerfully that I could take him back any time at no cost and trudged off back towards Rorikstead. I know I was being ridiculously sentimental but I let him keep the fine dragonbone war hammer and gave him some gems from the last quest before he went!