“How long?”
“Three hours to make a nice brown soup of him. That’s if I added three-hundred-degree heat.”
Fire crackled and exploded beneath the floorboards. “We don’t have three hours. And did you have to remind me of the heat?”
All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and comfort her. The rope snapped. They both crashed to the floor. He rubbed his wrists. The dog nuzzled Anthony’s face. “Good Casey.” He stood, his muscles, sluggish, each of his movements like a delayed reaction. He scratched the dog behind the ears.
“Do you realize you called the dog by her real name?”
Anthony looked upon Rachel with veneration, followed her to the window. The murky silhouettes of treetops emerged in the predawn light. Too far to the ground. Cuthbert leaned against a tree, glorying. No trace of his men. Anthony ground his teeth. They would get away.
“It’s our only escape route,” Anthony said.
Like kindling on fire, the ancient wood frame house snapped, popped and spit…a matter of time before it leapt through the floorboards. Smoke filled the room. A block and tackle beckoned, rope, yards of it…a crossbow and quiver of arrows. His mind sped with possibilities.
Move!He staggered to the block and tackle, so weak from where Cuthbert bashed him in the head. He stumbled…fell. Rachel rushed to his side, propped her arm under him and helped him lean against a post. He closed and opened his eyes to clear his vision. How would they get out of here without his help?
“I know what you’re thinking.” She uncoiled the ropes, helping him thread it through the block and tackle. She fashioned a looped chair to sit in, securing it with sailor’s knots, slanting him a smile. “Working in a shipyard has its advantages. The sailors make these chairs to work on the side of the ship when out at sea.”
On tiptoe, she stood on a chair and secured the rope to the ceiling. On a support beam a crossbow hung. She retrieved it.
“I’m thinning the rope. It is too heavy for the arrow.” He tied the end of the rope with an arrow. Fire heated the floor. Anthony sweated, rose and shook his head. Better now.
She looked out the window. “Must shoot high to carry the weight.”
“I estimate a forty-degree arc, considering the weight of rope, force and velocity and gravity,” Anthony said.
Rachel nodded. “How good are you with a crossbow?”
“Never tried.”
“I suppose that elects me to the position. Different than a bow, but I think I can manage. There are only three arrows. What I’m worried about is the arrow getting caught in the tree branches.”
Locking the nut into place, she placed the nose stirrup on the floor and pulled back on both sides of the string with all her might. She picked up the crossbow, leveled it on the windowsill, loaded the arrow against the string, checked over her shoulder to make sure the rope had plenty of slack, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The arrow sailed, past the tree.
Anthony wiped the dampness from his brow with his coat sleeve and helped her retrieve the rope. “Can’t give up now, my love. The trajectory is off on the crossbow. Aim more to the left.”
She pushed another arrow into the crossbow and eyed down the center. “How many degrees to the left would you estimate?”
“Twenty degrees. You’ll do fine,” he assured her.
“Now who sounds like the optimist? Seems strange talking in navigational terms when we are navigating a crossbow and our lives depend on my aim. Forty-degrees high, twenty left. Like following a duck.”
Up and to the side, she aimed and fired. An explosion from below created a wind, hurled the arrow off its trajectory and into the branches of the trees.Damn.
Anthony pulled and pulled on the rope, the arrow fell off.
He went rigid. A searing hot pain tore into his right forearm. A burning ember had settled on his sleeve and burned through the material. Anthony brushed the cinder off.
Rachel shook, panic and instinct now overruling her body.
“Keep focused,” he commanded.
She swore like a sailor, retrieved the last precious arrow, licking the end feathers for accuracy. After pushing the arrow into the cradle and anchoring it, she took aim and fired. The arrow sailed. The velocity and propulsion prompted by the crossbow buried the point into the tree trunk.Clunk.Rachel tested the rope. “It will hold our weight.”
He boosted her up onto a high ledge and clambered up next to her, standing, unsteady on the precipice. From the windows below, smoke billowed. Tongues of fire pitched skyward.
She coughed. Her eyes watered. Beneath them, far beneath them, the lawns spread out to the forest, beckoning like a tranquil oasis. To have more time. But they were out of time.
