That would be entirely the wrong thing to do—race across an open field with my light hair a clear target for my assailant. While later—presuming I survive—I will claim that I had the presence of mind not to run into that field, what truly stops me is my leg.
My injured leg folds, and I stumble and fall. I glance down to see that it is, as I thought, only a scratch, barely bleeding. Yet I cansmellthe coppery stink of it. When blood drips onto my trouser leg, I realize that’s where the smell is coming from. My arm. Which had been hit before I dove into the hedges.
Blood soaks my sleeve. Did one of the pellets pierce an artery?
I pluck at my sleeve with an interest devoid of any emotional connection, which can only mean one thing: I am in shock. As a doctor’s daughter and a nurse’s sister, I know all about shock, and I have the wherewithal to recognize that this is what I am experiencing.
The truly interesting thing about shock is that one is so numb that it is all too easy—if one is a writer who suffers from an addiction to new experiences—to simply stop mid-escape to ponder the moment. This is what shock feels like? How terribly interesting. Let me mentally document this moment for future stories... while I bleed out from a severed artery.
I do not think the artery is severed. It is bleeding quite heavily, though. Also, someoneistrying to kill me, and even if I do not bleed out, I will surely perish if I sit here and ponder the matter much longer.
Thunder booms again. I don’t see the lightning strike, but everything is illuminated for just long enough that I can determine a path.
I test my leg. It is sore, but it will move. Ignoring the screaming pain in my arm, I creep to the right, in the direction where Nicolas...
Lies dying by the roadside?
I dimly pick up voices, but my blood pounds too loud for me to distinguish words.
Stop and listen, Miranda.
How? I am being pursued by a killer.
Am I?
No, I’m crawling, bleeding, along a hedgerow of brambles. My assailant hasn’t pursued me.
I force myself to stop and listen. Beyond the hedgerow, all has gone silent. I strain. Still nothing.
Is my attacker waiting on the other side for me to pop my head through? Or is he looking for an easier spot to come through himself?
I peer around. With the storm shadows, I cannot see well, but my memory fills in the missing pieces and tells me that the pasture divides with a stone wall, half-swallowed by more brambles. I brace myself to make a run for it, but as soon as I tense my muscles, blood streams down my arm.
I glance around. Then I remember the belt I put on to hold up the trousers. I yank it off and refasten it above the wound. Portia would be so proud of me... though she’d also feel the need to say that she’s glad all my endless hours of pestering her with medical questions for my books actually proved useful. Of course, telling her about this would also require telling her that I was shot. So perhaps she does not need to know that I proved such a keen student of her teachings.
I cinch the belt as tight as I can, which is not tight enough, to my annoyance. I am rather light-headed, and I struggle to focus on the task at hand. I give myself a sharp shake and nearly pass out from the sudden movement.
I have lost blood. That is dangerous. Logically, I know that, and yet emotionally, I do not feel it, and that is what gets me up and bolting to that stone wall. I wriggle through a crumbling opening, and then I am crouched on the other side, listening.
The voices come clearer now. I still cannot make them out, but one is definitely snapping orders. Then I hear something that has my head shooting up. A word.
Pirate.
He’s addressing Nicolas, which means Nicolas is alive. Alive and well and ignoring the man’s orders? Alive and injured and unable to obey the man’s orders?
It does not matter. He is alive. At least for now.
I crawl as quickly as I can while straining to hear more. There are two voices. Neither is Nicolas’s. The one I thought was barking orders is asking questions. Demanding answers that Nicolas is refusing to give, and the other man is telling his compatriot to shoot Nicolas. That part I hear clearly.
“Shoot the devil and be done with it. He’s a traitor and a thief. They’ll hang him anyway.”
I finally reach the spot. The men are on the other side of the hedgerow. I pull away the brambles until I can see through. There, on the road, kneels Nicolas, with his hands laced behind his head.
“Tell me who you work for,” one man says. “Who is this Robin Hood of the Bay?”
That gives me pause. Is it not Nicolas himself?
“Tell us who you work for, boy, and we might let you go.”