the recurved snapped straight and hurled the shaft at 188 feet per second.
The kinetic energy downrange might not have seemed like much in comparison to a bullet that moved much faster, but the dynamics of an arrow, especially with razor-sharp leading edges, translated into better aerodynamic passage through flesh and a larger wound cavity. And the fact that the wound channel was filled with the shaft of the arrow added to the disruption of physical function.
With this bow, Grant had dealt with a rogue deinonychus on Thunder Isle, a wounded creature weighing in at 250 pounds of lean muscle and reptilian hide. Grant first had assumed that he’d missed his shot, as there was no arrow jutting from the rib cage of the time-trawled predator, but the animal dropped to the ground immediately. Grant’s arrow had punched through the deinonychus’s rib cage, breaking one rib and turning both lungs into slurries of destroyed brachial tissue, and burst out the other side, embedding into a tree just behind it.
The impact had had such force that Grant had broken the shaft retrieving the arrow, and its hunting tip jammed into the cedar trunk. That kind of trauma was more than sufficient to end the life of a desperate, limping, but still deadly, dinosaur with a single shot. Grant knew that few humans would be able to stand against him. He pulled back on the bow, arms raised in the traditional kyudo draw, his shoulder muscles flexed and tensed.
His would be the shot that initiated this conflict with the Panthers of Mashona. Through the light amplification sensors on his shadow suit’s faceplate, he could see the others, perched and ready to begin the butcher’s work for this night. Grant, with the reach of his bow, and his speed and grace, was given the task of taking down two more men subsequent to his first target. Kane had another target, as well, but Thurpa, Brigid and Nathan were limited to only one ambush apiece.
Kane was a veteran of a dozen blade battles, and he had both the swiftness and certainty with which to bring down a militia maniac in a minimum of effort and time, freeing him for a second opponent. Even so, Grant braced himself to fire a fourth arrow in this dark plan.
Grant cleared his thoughts, entering the samurai state of zanshin, relaxed alertness, his thoughts in a smothered calmness. He was focused on nothing but aware of all around him. It was part of the art of kyudo and as much a mental state as a series of physical movements. He was mentally standing on the razor’s edge, uncommitted to any single action, to leave himself ready for anything.
The guards were in position, Grant stretched the drawstring back, packing the two-ounce arrow with kinetic energy. The stiff, reinforced limbs struggled to return to their natural state, fighting against Grant’s manipulation of them. He opened his thumb, and the string was freed to slip over the ridges on his glove. Now, at close to 190 feet per second, Grant’s first arrow sliced silently through the night.
The arrow struck the Panther caravan guard at the knot of muscle and bone where his neck met his shoulders. Razor-sharp steel cracked the man’s spinal column, splitting a vertebrae before the broad head slashed through the trunk of nerves that connected his body to his brain. The arrow would have gone farther, but vertebral bones were designed as thick armor to protect the spinal cord, and the shaft had already expended much of its energy shattering one half of the ring of bone.
It didn’t matter. The instantly quadriplegic man turned rag-doll limp and spilled to the ground, struck so hard and quickly he didn’t even have a lungful of air to cry out before he was facedown in the dirt. Grant pivoted, drew another arrow from his quiver, nocked it and turned toward his next opponent. In the shadows beyond, he spotted four people emerge from their hiding spots along the tree line and lunge toward four other guards. In a heartbeat, Grant pulled back, aimed and fired his second arrow of the night.
Grant’s shot met its target in the breastbone, broad head cleaving through rubbery cartilage and squelching off ribs before it shredded two ugly holes in the Mashonan’s aorta. The Panther militiaman’s only sound was a grunt of expelled breath as the impact of fifty foot-pounds of energy slammed into his chest. This arrow wasn’t stopped by the heavy bone of the man’s spinal column, and it burst out from under his left shoulder blade and continued on into the shadows.
Had the arrow stopped, the two yawning wounds in the man’s main pipeline of lifeblood would have been somewhat staunched, except where the four blades of the arrowhead had widened the wound beyond the diameter of the shaft. With the fletching gone through the blood vessel, causing more tissue disruption of already sliced tissue, the man’s chest instantly filled with high-pressure blood gushing through an entrance and exit wound. That arterial pressure pushed hard on the man’s lungs, making him unable to inhale as he knelt, eyes bulging from his horrific internal wounds.
Kane, whom Grant recognized from his location and his build, dropped the Panther he’d ambushed, and dashed with all the speed and power of the wolf he was often described as, overtaking the next of the Mashona slave masters, leaping at the last moment. Kane clamped his hand over the man’s face, and all his weight pushed the man backward to the ground. There was the ugly grind of steel on bone as Kane thrust nine inches of blade through the gunman’s sternum, slicing his heart in half.
Grant turned toward the last of his targets, drawing and nocking even as he was aware of Kane’s victory. The third of the militiamen had heard the rustle of silent, brutal combat, and he’d pulled his rifle from where it hung on its sling, swinging it into position. Grant took this into consideration for where he aimed, and he let fly.
Grant hit the would-be killer on the bridge of his nose. The arrow punched through the relatively fragile bones around the nasal cavity. That target was specific; Grant’s Magistrate training had kicked in and reminded him that an enemy with his finger on the trigger would be unstoppable with anything but a “fatal triangle” hit. The triangle formed by the eyes and the nose were not only the weakest part of the human skull, but they were also directly in front of the huge cluster of nerves and brain functions that narrowed down into the spinal cord.
The broad-head arrow destroyed that, and the third gunman was shut off instantly. His finger would never reach the trigger of his rifle; no shot would blast into the night, bringing down the rest of the slave caravan, rifles blazing. He could see Thurpa attending to a prisoner lying on the ground and Kane watching them.
“Mission accom—”
The crackle of a rifle discharging into the night sky cut Grant short.
He turned and saw that Brigid and Nathan were both atop a militiaman. Though Nathan’s target was no longer struggling, he’d still managed to fire his gun.
Yards away, the caravan quickly stirred at the burst of gunfire.
“Kane...”
“The prisoners have a chance. But we have to make it better for them,” Kane answered over the Commtact. “Get loud and get bloody!”
Chapter 4
Kane wrenched his knife from the heart of the second Panther gunman, then took a step back, looking toward Grant, who was using that weird samurai archery to dispatch yet another of the Mashonan thugs with a single shot. Kane saw the muzzle-flash and heard a Panther’s rifle. Bullets sliced into the night sky to where they wouldn’t hit anyone until they fell back to earth. Nathan had his arms wrapped around the legs of a guard, and Brigid Baptiste was on the gunman’s chest. She had her knife deep in the goon’s face, having ended his existence.
The cacophony that the rifle produced was damage enough.
Fortunately, all eight of the gunmen assigned to the prisoners were down, snuffed out before they could shoot at any of the chained victims. That meant anyone armed and willing
