When another bullet went far to the right of us and cracked through a tree, I nodded in confirmation of what Marlon was saying.
“Either that, or he’s just trying to warn us!” I shouted. “And he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who believes in friendly warnings.”
“Right you are!” Marlon shouted back. “Though I still vote we get off this river and out of sight! No pun intended.”
He was right on that one too, and I saw another curve coming up in the river ahead that I thought might just give us the opportunity we needed to do so. After all, the best way to hide was for the person who was chasing you to completely miss where you’d gone—and when.
Then again…
“Let’s see what comes up after this curve ahead!” I said. “If there’s another curve, there’s a chance we could lose him by staying on the river—while maintaining our current speed. And saving our energy. I’d rather not run through the woods with a madman after us if we don’t have to!”
“Hear, hear,” Angie said from behind me, and my mind flew back to Angie.
Of course. We couldn’t get off the river. Getting into the forest would mean we had to progress on foot—which meant that either Angie had to run with us, or we had to pull her. Both options would slow us down. Both options might get us caught.
I didn’t like that being on the river made us such easy targets, though, and my mind quickly jumped on to fixing that particular problem. How could we defend ourselves against Randall and his men? What could we use to build some sort of shield to go behind us? What could we use to throw them off the trail? How could we—
Oh, I realized. Of course.
“Marlon, you still got that crossbow we were sitting with last night?” I called back to him.
We were almost at the turn, now, and with any luck whatsoever, we’d be out of sight of the men behind us soon. I further hoped that if we kept going forward at our current rate of speed, we might be around another curve—or too far ahead for them to reach—by the time they reached this first curve.
After all, unless they’d found a way to use the river themselves, they were on foot—and far slower than we were. I didn’t know how they’d managed to catch us in the first place, but I didn’t think it would happen again. I hoped. Still, if it did, I wanted us to have a way to defend ourselves.
“Sure do!” came the answer. “I had it in my pack, rather than in the sled with the guns!”
“How would you feel about turning around and acting as my shotgun?” I called back. “Covering our six, so to speak?”
There was a short pause, and then I could hear him laughing. Laughing.
“You, my friend, have the mind of the very devil himself. Are you going to be able to handle this canoe on your own if we have to steer around anything?”
“I’ll have to!”
“Right you are, my boy. You and Angie sit as still as you can. I’m going to try to turn around without sending us over onto our sides.”
Oh, right. I hadn’t thought about how much this was going to unbalance the sled—as we were going at what I estimated to be around 30 MPH down an extremely frozen river. I grabbed the edges of the sled and braced myself equally between the two sides, ready to lean like my life depended on it if necessary, to balance out what Marlon was about to do.
In the end, I heard more than I felt. Marlon grunted, swore, and even kicked Angie once, and the sled wobbled a little bit, making me grunt and swear myself, but a few minutes later everything grew still again.
“I’m now facing backward!” he screamed up to me, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the wind and the scrape of the sled over the ice. “But I’ve got nothing so far! They’ll have to fire again for me to locate them, unless—”
Another shot, and I heard Angie’s sharp intake of breath. That shot had come a lot closer to the sled than the others had. Was it possible that we’d mistaken their lack of aim as a mistake, when they’d really just been trying to scare us? Could they sight in on us after all?
“Come on, Marlon,” I muttered, leaning forward and urging the sled to even greater speeds. That turn was about two hundred feet ahead, now, and I didn’t think we could hit it soon enough.
I didn’t want to find out whether they’d been faking their lack of aim. I just wanted to get as far away from them as I could.
“I’ve got one of them!” Marlon shouted. “Saw the muzzle flash, and I can see him in the trees. How the hell did they get so close to us?”
“Honestly, Marlon, I don’t care. Just shoot the son of a bitch!” I called back.
We could worry about how they’d gotten so close later on. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting the hell away from them—and taking out the ones that were actively shooting at us.
I heard the metallic twang of the crossbow, then, and a second later, I heard Marlon shouting in glee.
“Got him!” he screamed. “Shot him right out of the tree! I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but he’s not going to be shooting at us again!”
I blinked quickly. I had no idea how far behind us the shooter had been, of course, but I was shocked at the idea that Marlon had shot him. With a crossbow. A crossbow that didn’t have any sort of sighting equipment on it.
I wondered once more who the hell the guy sitting behind me was, and then shoved the thought away in favor of dealing with the coming turn. It was bigger than the last one we’d been through—sharper—and it was going to take all of us controlling the sled if we were going to get around it safely, rather than shooting right through it and into the woods on the other side.
“Marlon, get turned around again!” I screamed. “I need you facing forward for this one! We’re going to have to work together to steer the sled or this is never going to work!”
Some grunting and a bit of tipping back and forth behind me, and a moment later, Marlon was calling out that he’d managed to turn around and was ready. Then I actually heard him draw in a breath.
“God, that’s a sharp turn,” he muttered.
“Yep,” I answered, not bothering to lift my voice up high enough to be heard.
We could all see the exact same thing. And I thought we all knew exactly how difficult this was going to be. Even worse, we didn’t have any option. We couldn’t go into the woods—not if we wanted to stay away from Randall and his men. They’d managed to catch up with us already, and I suspected that meant something that we hadn’t yet figured out about how they were traveling. It certainly meant that I didn’t want to be on foot.
We had to stay on the river. We couldn’t afford to go shooting off into the forest on the other side of this turn. But I didn’t know if we had enough weight to make the turn I was now looking at.
Then I realized that there was a better way to get the right angle on it.
“We’re going to have to bulge out into the center of the river!” I shouted.
“What?” Angie and Marlon screamed at the same time.
“John, that’s insane!” Marlon continued. “We don’t know how deep the ice is out there, or if it’ll support us!”
“It’s a chance we have to take!” I responded. “We have to cut the corner right now, get as close to the bank as we can if we’re going to make this turn, then allow the momentum to take us out into the center as we lean! It’s the only way we’ll make the turn gradually enough to stay upright! There’s no way we’ll be able to make the turn as sharp as it would have to be for us to stay on the shoreline!”