five steps before I remembered to zigzag. I thought to myself, irrelevantly, that my old army instructor would have been ashamed of me if he knew.
Well, if I died here, he’d never find out.
It was lucky I remembered when I did, because at that instant an arrow whizzed by exactly on the line I’d been charging. I’d gotten it wrong. He wasn’t climbing a tree at all. He was waiting for me, and now I was committed.
I yelled a blood-curdling scream, hoping to put him off his aim, and changed direction again. Another shot went by. I remembered that old sergeant telling us to change direction at random. “Otherwise the enemy will guess where you’re about to be and shoot there,” he’d said grimly to us raw recruits, and we hadn’t paid the slightest attention because none of us had ever expected to be pinned down in a barley field by a deadly bowman.
I swore as I ran that I’d never get caught like this again, but my fervent promise to correct my inadequate life planning wouldn’t be worth spit if I didn’t make the next fifty paces into the treesahead. If only I could get some solid wood between me and my attacker, we’d be on an even field.
I scanned the woods as I ran, but I couldn’t see him. That meant he was further within, perhaps behind some shrubs. I changed direction for the last thirty paces, to approach on a broad curve. I hoped that by moving sideways I’d put trees or at least bushes between us from time to time to interrupt his sighting. Also, a man moving across the field of vision is harder to hit. The expectation of feeling an arrow in my side at any moment was a wonderful goad.
There were no more shots until I made the first of the trees. I wanted to stop and gasp for air—in fact I did stop for the briefest moment and heaved in the extra air I desperately wanted—but I had to keep moving. I dodged from tree trunk to tree trunk, searching for the man I now had the advantage over. Unless he had a sword, in which case I was in big trouble.
But I couldn’t find him at all. There were no more shots, and all was silence.
I searched all over, stepping carefully from cover to cover, constantly aware of the danger of ambush, but the shooter was gone.
“W E HAVEN’T EVEN arrived yet, and someone’s already trying to kill us,” I said. I’d caught up with Diotima along the path to the sanctuary. Or rather, we’d found each other, because she’d tethered Blossom out of sight and pulled out her own bow and quiver of arrows, and was running back to help me. She’d had to retrieve the bow from where we’d cleverly packed it: underneath everything else in the cart. There was another lesson learned.
“It does seem a little premature,” Diotima agreed. “We’ve hardly had time to annoy anyone yet.”
“That’s a good point. Who
have
we annoyed?”
“Polonikos, the father of Ophelia, seems to be the only candidate.” Diotima paused to think about it. “He wouldn’t seriously try to kill us to stop us finding his own daughter, would he?”
“Also, he’s back in Athens,” I said. “Come to that, anyone we might have annoyed is back in Athens. Whoever that attacker was, he must have run out the back of the woods as I entered from the front. The woods are smaller than they look from the roadside. There’s another open field beyond, then more trees. I was slow moving through, for obvious reasons. He had ample time to reach the next copse.”
“You didn’t follow?”
“Across another open field, when I knew someone on the other side was armed with a bow? No thanks.”
“He’d probably run out of arrows. That’s why he retreated.”
“I wasn’t keen to test that theory.”
Diotima sniffed. “Whoever he is, he’s not so good. I could have hit us at that range.”
“Maybe,” I said. I doubted whether she could pull a flat trajectory out to a hundred paces. Diotima’s bow was a custom-made marksman’s weapon in reinforced bone. It had been the gift of her birth
Well, if I died here, he’d never find out.
It was lucky I remembered when I did, because at that instant an arrow whizzed by exactly on the line I’d been charging. I’d gotten it wrong. He wasn’t climbing a tree at all. He was waiting for me, and now I was committed.
I yelled a blood-curdling scream, hoping to put him off his aim, and changed direction again. Another shot went by. I remembered that old sergeant telling us to change direction at random. “Otherwise the enemy will guess where you’re about to be and shoot there,” he’d said grimly to us raw recruits, and we hadn’t paid the slightest attention because none of us had ever expected to be pinned down in a barley field by a deadly bowman.
I swore as I ran that I’d never get caught like this again, but my fervent promise to correct my inadequate life planning wouldn’t be worth spit if I didn’t make the next fifty paces into the treesahead. If only I could get some solid wood between me and my attacker, we’d be on an even field.
I scanned the woods as I ran, but I couldn’t see him. That meant he was further within, perhaps behind some shrubs. I changed direction for the last thirty paces, to approach on a broad curve. I hoped that by moving sideways I’d put trees or at least bushes between us from time to time to interrupt his sighting. Also, a man moving across the field of vision is harder to hit. The expectation of feeling an arrow in my side at any moment was a wonderful goad.
There were no more shots until I made the first of the trees. I wanted to stop and gasp for air—in fact I did stop for the briefest moment and heaved in the extra air I desperately wanted—but I had to keep moving. I dodged from tree trunk to tree trunk, searching for the man I now had the advantage over. Unless he had a sword, in which case I was in big trouble.
But I couldn’t find him at all. There were no more shots, and all was silence.
I searched all over, stepping carefully from cover to cover, constantly aware of the danger of ambush, but the shooter was gone.
“W E HAVEN’T EVEN arrived yet, and someone’s already trying to kill us,” I said. I’d caught up with Diotima along the path to the sanctuary. Or rather, we’d found each other, because she’d tethered Blossom out of sight and pulled out her own bow and quiver of arrows, and was running back to help me. She’d had to retrieve the bow from where we’d cleverly packed it: underneath everything else in the cart. There was another lesson learned.
“It does seem a little premature,” Diotima agreed. “We’ve hardly had time to annoy anyone yet.”
“That’s a good point. Who
have
we annoyed?”
“Polonikos, the father of Ophelia, seems to be the only candidate.” Diotima paused to think about it. “He wouldn’t seriously try to kill us to stop us finding his own daughter, would he?”
“Also, he’s back in Athens,” I said. “Come to that, anyone we might have annoyed is back in Athens. Whoever that attacker was, he must have run out the back of the woods as I entered from the front. The woods are smaller than they look from the roadside. There’s another open field beyond, then more trees. I was slow moving through, for obvious reasons. He had ample time to reach the next copse.”
“You didn’t follow?”
“Across another open field, when I knew someone on the other side was armed with a bow? No thanks.”
“He’d probably run out of arrows. That’s why he retreated.”
“I wasn’t keen to test that theory.”
Diotima sniffed. “Whoever he is, he’s not so good. I could have hit us at that range.”
“Maybe,” I said. I doubted whether she could pull a flat trajectory out to a hundred paces. Diotima’s bow was a custom-made marksman’s weapon in reinforced bone. It had been the gift of her birth
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