“If you kill me,” the camel rider replied, “my friends will kill you.”
Long thought back to the standoff the night before. He looked at the man who held GuangZe’s reins and saw a scabbardless curved sword dangling at the man’s side. Long could clearly make out a large nick in the blade.
Long scowled at the man. “You tried to steal my horse last night! You must be working with Ding-Xiang’s apprentice. That is how you knew to ambush me in this particular pass.”
The archer with the nicked sword laughed and tied GuangZe’s reins to his own horse’s saddle. “You should have sold me your horse last night,” he said. “Consider yourself fortunate to have lived this long. We would have killed you last night, had DingXiang not arrived. That apprentice of his would sell his own mother for a few taels of silver.”
Long heard a noise behind him and turned his head. The camel rider was beginning to circle.
“You have no intentions of letting me live, do you?” Long asked.
“Not anymore,” the camel rider replied. “Not knowing the truth about DingXiang’s apprentice. The young man is too valuable to us.”
Long shook his head. “That is what I thought. I am sorry.” He turned the musket toward the archer with the drawn bow and fired.
The barrel erupted with a terrific BOOM!, the musket ball flying true. It passed clean through the first archer’s chest. The man dropped out of his saddle, but not before releasing his arrow. Long heard a quick buzz rush past him and a sickening thwack!
Long turned to see the arrow shaft protruding from the camel rider’s right ear. The man fell, stone dead.
GuangZe whinnied and snorted loudly, and Long heard the second archer curse. Long remembered that Cang had said that GuangZe was afraid of loud noises.
Long spun around to see GuangZe rear up. He pawed at the air with his booted front hooves and shook his head from side to side, trying to free his reins from the second archer’s saddle. The saddle rocked wildly, and the man was thrown to the ground.
GuangZe decided to run. The second archer’s horse had no choice but to go with him. Both horses disappeared into the pass, tied together.
As Long turned to watch them go, he heard a second thwack! and felt white-hot pain sear his side. He glanced down at the right edge of his abdomen, amazed to see a bloody wooden shaft tipped by an arrowhead protruding through the front of his coat. He looked over his right shoulder and saw the arrow’s fletching flapping in the breeze behind him.
Long was unsure what to do. The arrow wound hurt more than any of his previous injuries but did not appear to be bleeding too badly.
The second archer reached for his quiver, and Long recovered his wits. He was not about to let that man skewer him again. He reached into his sash and grabbed the knife, ignoring the violent surges of pain that racked his torso. As the archer nocked another arrow, Long snapped his right hand back and then forward, sending the knife through the air and deep into the man’s throat.
The second archer dropped, dead as the first archer and the camel rider.
Long was determined to not have his life end here in the desert. He needed to get moving, but he also needed to do something about his new injury. He knew better than to pull the arrow out and open the wound. The arrow was serving as a plug. However, if he was to travel, he had to take care of the long shaft sticking out from either side of him.
While he still had his strength, Long grasped the arrow with both hands and snapped off the arrowhead in front of him. Then he took a deep breath, grasped the fletching, and snapped the tail off the arrow behind him.
Flashes of blinding light exploded behind Long’s eyes. He staggered and fell to the sand. He forced himself to roll onto his left side in order to try to lift the right half of his coat and robe to better assess the damage done to his body.
Long managed to lift his jacket and robe up to his waist before he passed out from the pain.
Long woke many hours later and found himself still lying on his left side in the sand, his right hand clenching his jacket and robe. He groaned and sat up in the evening sun.
He looked down at his jacket, and, while it was bloody, he had expected it to be much worse. The pain in his side had subsided significantly as well. He lifted his jacket and robe and saw the broken arrow shaft in the far right side of his abdomen. He felt his back and found that the shaft had passed to the right of his right kidney, just below his rib cage.
He was fortunate. The arrow had missed his vital organs. It had not even cracked a single rib. It was a painful wound, to be sure, and he had bled a fair amount, but he would not die from the injury. He might, however, die from exposure. It was too late to attempt any more travel today, and he needed to find shelter.