Ivan Semenovich explained the situation to Artem: “Varkan’s men, the main body, that is, of his men, got too involved in fighting and allowed the priests to cut them off from their leader, Varkan. But then they should have attacked the retreating priests, which they apparently did not do, and now the situation is somewhat complicated.” That was evidently what Varkan was so annoyed about. He turned to the outlanders, making an eloquent gesture with his hand toward the cliffs, as if to say: that’s the place we must get to, and quick! He did not have to insist as the situation was only too clear to everyone. Soon they were climbing the rocks to the flat ledge where they would be able to defend themselves, protected by the jagged rocks along its edge.
As they spread out among the boulders, Artem remembered the geologist’s assessment of the situation, and said:
“All the same, the victory will be Ronis’s and Varkan’s! We’ll have a chance yet to celebrate their victory with them! Take my word for it!”
“Don’t be too rash with conclusions, Artem. It’s not yet clear whether we’ll be able to participate in any future celebrations…”
“And why is that?”
“Well, if the priests manage to capture us again… then, I don’t think they are likely to spare us… And there’s nowhere for us to escape from here, do you realize that?”
“But we can wait out here until Ronis comes to the rescue. Besides, there must be horses somewhere in the vicinity…”
“First, we must get to those horses, Artem.”
A moment later, as though in support of the geologist’s words, something began whizzing and buzzing and hissing menacingly in the air all around them. It was a wild cacophony of high-pitched sounds of various intensities, grating on the nerves and striking panic into everyone. Artem had never heard anything like it before. He saw Lida go pale and Ivan Semenovich grimace. The sudden eruption of these terrible sounds gave Dmitro Borisovich a bad start. But a moment later he managed to get a control of his fright; strange as it might seem, he was the first to do it, he of all people.
“Don’t get up! Keep behind the rocks!” he shouted in a peremptory voice. “Hug the rocks! It’s the famous whistling arrows of the Scythians!”
In a few seconds they crawled to the protection of the rocky crest that separated the flat ground from the slope at the foot of which the priests and Hartak’s soldiers were now positioned. Artem and the rest had now understood what gave them such a bad fright: a hail of arrows descended on their hiding place; the enemy had used unusual arrows equipped with whistling devices that produced terrible sounds. The arrows flew over the crest, but due to the angle at which they had been shot, they could harm no one so far…
Dmitro Borisovich, snuggling in safety behind a huge rock, said:
“Yes, the famous whistling arrows of the Scythians! They were used to strike panic into the enemy. Dorbatay must have thought these arrows would frighten us, too… and I admit he was not wrong, the old rogue! It was really frightening!”
“It was frightening because it came so unexpectedly,” Artem said trying to put on a bold face, and glancing at Lida whose face still retained the pallor of a bad fright. “You know, it was really sudden, this ghastly whizzing… It was like an attack on the nerves, really! But they are just arrows, nothing more. Besides, arrows shot from below will pass above us without doing any harm! And as they say, the devil is not so black as he is painted!”
“What you say is basically correct,” Ivan Semenovich said pensively. “But if they choose to shoot in a different manner…”
“How?” Artem asked.
“In artillery it’s called ‘plunging fire.’ If you shoot at a certain angle, the missiles go rather steeply up but then they go down and can fall right behind a barrier… Do you follow me?”
“And they can use barbed arrows too,” Dmitro Borisovich said as though thinking aloud. “I’m not sure whether the Scythians use them, but the possibility exists.”
“Barbed arrows? And what’s that?” Artem asked rather tensely, feeling Lida squeeze his arm in fresh alarm. Artem wanted to say something else, to reassure the girl who had been considerably ruffled by what she had gone through, but he did not have time to.
Several arrows clanked and thudded, falling on the stones very close to where the explorers sat. Two arrows stuck vertically, trembling. A muffled groan reached their ears. Someone must have been wounded!
Turning around, Artem saw Varkan grab his left shoulder with the right hand. There was blood coming from under the hand and between the fingers.
“Varkan’s been hit!”
Varkan, pale in the face, pulled at the arrow but it did not come out. He gave it a stronger tug, but again with no effect. The arrow stayed in the flesh, and only the bulging muscles showed that he was applying great effort in trying to extricate it. Glancing at Dmitro Borisovich, Artem saw great anxiety in his face.
“It must be a barbed arrowhead,” the archeologist said in a whisper. “If it is what I think… it cannot be pulled out like this… only if you cut the flesh around it… The arrowhead must be taken out, otherwise it’ll oxidize… And what if it’s poisoned?”
Varkan, biting his lips, gave one last pull and then abandoned his attempts. One of his men crawled up to him. He cut off the shaft and bandaged the wound tightly, using a belt to secure the bandage. Then he said something to Varkan who silently nodded his head, his eyes closed.
Artem did not try to reassure Varkan; he did not think the Scythian needed it. The arrows had meanwhile stopped falling. Only occasional arrows still whizzed past.
“Dorbatay must be up to something else,” Ivan Semenovich said. “He must be planning another attack. With arrows, or sending his soldiers up? Artem, where’s the bag we found and smuggled out to you in the forest?”
The two bags that Varkan had brought Artem soon after their escape to the forest, did not contain the dynamite charges, so sometime later, after Artem had managed to repel the sudden attack in the forest with the primers, he had asked Varkan and Ronis to try to find the other two. The slaves found them among the things, stored away after the death of Skolot, and passed them on to Varkan’s men, who, in turn, delivered them to Artem. Much to his joy, he discovered that nothing had been taken out, probably out of fear of meddling with things belonging to the foreign magicians. Artem took the trouble of carrying one bag, into which he put their most prized possessions, with him from the camp to the place in the rocks from which the final attack was launched. But when they saw Ronis’s signal and started running down to the grove, Artem had left the bag behind. In the heat of battle and retreat he had forgotten about it, and now, when Ivan Semenovich mentioned it, he looked around in panic, thinking he had lost it. As he looked around, feverishly trying to remember where he had left it he was very much relieved to find it sitting untouched where it had been put a few hours ago. He rushed to it and squatted beside it, opening it. He did not see a head in the leather helmet emerging noiselessly above the crest of the rocks. The entire Scythian soon emerged, and holding onto the rocks, took a quick look around. Artem, still oblivious of the enemy’s presence, was the closest to him. The Scythian raised his spear and took aim. It all happened within a second.
“Artem!” Dmitro Borisovich suddenly cried out in alarm when he saw a Scythian with the raised spear at the crest. Artem looked up and was petrified with horror; just a few steps away, he saw an enemy soldier aiming at him with a spear.
That’s it, a thought flashed through his mind.
But at the same time, he saw someone leaping right in front of him. It was Varkan! The young Scythian had also noticed the danger to his blood brother. In a lightning movement, he had leapt between Artem and the enemy soldier. Had his intention been to tackle the enemy with his bare hands? The explorers were never to learn the answer.