Looking at the wreckage of the stump, Gansukh imagined what such a weapon would do to him. His armor would offer no protection. But the handheld cannon had to be cumbersome to wield, otherwise Munokhoi would have used it when he had first attacked. He wouldn’t have waited until Gansukh had been hiding. In fact, Gansukh theorized, he had only used it because he hadn’t been able to get a clear shot with his bow. I would have done the same, he thought, risking another glance. If your target is obscured, make him move or make his hiding place no longer safe.
Munokhoi had both bow and fire thrower, and Gansukh had only three arrows. He was at a disadvantage, but he thought he knew what Munokhoi was thinking.
An arrow struck the trunk of the tree above Gansukh’s head, and he didn’t flinch. He glanced at it, noting its angle and orientation in the tree, and rose to his feet, mentally reversing its flight path as he drew his bow back and loosed an arrow. It disappeared into a thicket to the right of the last tendrils of drifting smoke, and as he ducked back behind the tree, he noted movement in the brush.
He had to coax Munokhoi close enough that the ex-Torguud captain would try to use the Chinese weapon again. Gansukh suspected it would take Munokhoi some time to ready the weapon-his attention would be devoted to that task. That would be Gansukh’s opportunity to get a clear shot. He had to have time to aim his arrows. He had to see his target without being seen.
Gansukh poked his head out once more, and another arrow hissed past. He darted in the other direction, up slope but still away from Munokhoi. He paused behind every large tree-varying the time spent in cover so that Munokhoi couldn’t anticipate when he would emerge again. He kept looking for a suitable hiding place, and finally spotted a fallen tree that had lodged between two other trees. The trio of trees made for excellent cover-he could stand upright and still be hidden from view-and the long trunk of the fallen tree provided him the means to crawl away from cover without being seen.
He made it to the other side of the barrier without being hit by an arrow, and he caught his breath before he carefully poked his head out for a quick peek. He saw no sign of Munokhoi, and he shifted to the center of his cover. Grabbing onto the thick bark of the fallen tree, he hoisted himself up to risk another look. An arrow skipped off the bark, not far from his head. It vanished into the forest behind him as he dropped back down.
Munokhoi was still coming. Gansukh didn’t have a lot of time with which to accomplish his ruse. He dropped to his belly and began worming his way along the ground. When he had gone several body lengths, he got to his knees and slowly rose to a half crouch, peering over the dead tree. He had chosen a spot where a leafy fern had spouted from the trunk, and he was confident he wouldn’t be seen.
His ruse had worked. He could see Munokhoi clearly, kneeling behind a large bush. His bow lay on the ground beside him, and he was busy stuffing something into an iron tube held cradled in one arm.
Gansukh nocked one of his two remaining arrows and, holding the bow sideways so that he wouldn’t reveal himself prematurely, he drew back the string. Rising slowly to a standing position-his thighs quivering at the glacial pace of his motion-he aimed carefully. Munokhoi sensed his presence right before he let go of the bowstring, and Gansukh had a brief glimpse of the ex-Torguud captain’s wild eyes before he ducked back down behind the log.
Gansukh scrambled farther to his left, not worrying too much about being quiet, and finding another fern to obscure him, he risked another glance over the log.
Munokhoi was gone, but he had left a leather satchel on the ground. Gansukh wasted a few seconds peering at where Munokhoi had been crouching, trying to ascertain any other sign that his arrow had struck its target, and movement in the nearby bush warned him in time. Munokhoi’s arrow shredded the leaves of the fern as he ducked. That one would have hit him if he hadn’t moved.
He saw a gap between the tree trunk and the ground and realized he had gone as far as he readily could. The gap grew wider on his left, and Munokhoi would be able to track his movement.
The Chinese weapon thundered again, and Gansukh flinched even though he was protected by the dead tree. Wood splintered and cracked nearby, and he looked upslope to see a spindly tree start to topple. Munokhoi’s cannon blast had destroyed the tree’s trunk, and the tree was falling right toward him. Its looming branches were like a hundred eager hands, reaching for him.
Gansukh scrambled out of the tree’s path, and the trunk missed him-striking the heavy log and rebounding. It slid downhill, its branches clawing and tearing at his clothes. He tripped and struggled to free himself of the tree’s clutches. After being dragged a few paces, he managed to roll free of the branches, still clutching his bow.
But he had lost his last arrow.
His heart racing, he ran, weaving through the trees to spoil Munokhoi’s aim. Arrows whistled through the branches around him as he fled, and some of them smacked into trees, sounding like a flat hand swatting a horse’s rump. Run faster, young pony, run faster.
As the arrows faltered, he began to pay closer attention to his surroundings: Where was the brush thickest? Could he find a hollow log to hide inside? Were the shadows beneath a copse of evergreens dark enough?
None of these places mattered though if he didn’t have an arrow. All he needed was one clear shot, but there had to be some bait for Munokhoi. How to best the hunter at his game? Where could he hide that Munokhoi wouldn’t think to look for him?
The forest had gotten thicker, the trees bristling with densely packed branches. He stopped beside a wide alder with a generous shroud of thick branches. The owl falls upon its prey from above, he thought, mentally charting a path up through the branches of the tree. The hare doesn’t see the owl until it is too late.
He draped his bow around his neck so that it lay close to his chest. Branches poked at his face as he began to climb, and his heart leaped into his throat when one branch snapped as he put his weight on it. He looked down once, and his head started to swim as he saw how far off the ground he was, but he tamped his fear down and kept going. He paused once more, balancing on one foot, to hack at a relatively straight branch with his knife. Finally, he found a pair of thick branches that would work as a perch, and he steadied himself against the rough trunk.
He held his arm out, measuring the length of the branch he had cut. Satisfied that it was both long and straight enough, he trimmed it down and then carefully set about stripping off the bark. There were a few tiny buds, and he cut them back, smoothing out the shaft with delicate strokes of his knife. Once all the knobs and burrs were gone, he whittled one end to as fine a point as possible, and then he cut a deep notch in the other end. The last step was to peel back the soft wood on either side of the notch so that he could create makeshift fletching from leaves stuffed under the flaps.
It wouldn’t fly very far and, judging by the gentle curve he hadn’t been able to work out in the shaft, it would pull to the right. But it was an arrow nonetheless.
Settling in to wait, he laid his rough arrow across his bow and kept his right fingers loosely curled around the leafy end. He kept his breathing shallow and measured, ignoring as best he could the cramps and aches that came from holding one position too long. The branch on which he was standing was narrower than his feet, and he couldn’t shift his footing too much without danger of slipping. He watched the landscape below, constantly scanning for some sign of his prey. I am a patient owl.