The Codex

62

Sally had crawled within two hundred yards of the soldiers guarding the bridge. She lay behind a fallen tree trunk, her Springfield resting on the smooth wood. All was quiet. She hadn’t said good-bye to Tom; they had simply kissed and gone. She tried not to think about what was going to happen. It was a crazy plan, and she doubted they’d ever get across the bridge. Even if they did, and were able to rescue their father, they’d never get back.

This was exactly what she didn’t want to be thinking about. She turned her attention to the rifle. The Springfield ’03 dated back to before World War I, but it felt right, and the optics were excellent. Chori had taken good care of it. She had already calculated the distance from her hiding place to where the soldiers were hunkered down inside the ruined stone fort—210 yards — and she had adjusted the scope accordingly. The ammunition Chori had given her was standard military issue .30–06 with a 150-grain bullet, so no additional calculations were necessary, even if she had the adjustment tables handy, which she did not. She had also adjusted the knurled windage knob to her best estimate of the wind conditions. The fact was, 210 yards was not much of a challenge for her, especially with a stationary target as large as a man.

Since she had arrived at the log she had been thinking about what it would mean to kill another person and whether she could do it. Now, as the action was minutes from beginning, she knew she could. To save Tom’s life she would do it. Hairy Bugger was sitting in a little cage made of woven vines. She was glad he was there to keep her company, although he’d been fretting and grumping at Tom’s absence and his own imprisonment. She took out a handful of nuts, gave a few to Bugger, and ate the rest herself.

It was about to begin.

Right on schedule she heard a distant yell from the forest on the far side of the soldiers, followed by a chorus of whoops, shrieks, and ululations that sounded more like a hundred warriors than ten. A shower of arrows flashed out of the dark woods, aimed high so they would come down on the soldiers at a steep angle.

She quickly fitted her eye to the scope to see the action better. The soldiers were scrambling in a panic, loading their grenade launchers and getting in position behind the stone wall. They began firing back, disorganized panicky bursts aimed willy-nilly at the wall of forest two hundred yards away. A grenade went sailing uselessly toward the forest, falling short and going off with a flash and bang. More grenades followed, bursting in the treetops and ripping the branches off the trees. It was an unusually incompetent display of military prowess.

To her left Sally saw a flash of movement. The four Broadbents were running at a crouch across the open area toward the bridgehead. They had two hundred yards of brush and fallen tree trunks to negotiate, but they were making good time. The soldiers seemed fully occupied with the feint attack on their flank. Sally continued watching through the scope, ready to provide covering fire.

One of the soldiers rose and turned to get more grenades. Sally aimed for his chest, finger on the trigger. He scurried back, dodging the rain of arrows, took two more grenades from the can, and came back — never having looked up.

Sally’s finger relaxed. The Broadbents were now reaching the bridge. It spanned a gap of six hundred feet, and it had been well engineered, with four cables of twisted fiber, two above and two below, carrying the load. Vertical cords between the upper and lower sets of cables formed a kind of support for the surface of the bridge itself, formed from pieces of bamboo lashed midway between the two sets of cables. One by one the Broadbents swung underneath it, climbing out over the chasm on one of the lower cables, sidestepping their way and using the upright cords as handholds. The timing was right: The mists were rising heavily, and within fifty yards the four brothers had disappeared. The attack continued for another ten minutes, with more yells and showers of arrows, before dying away. It was a miracle. They had gotten across. The crazy plan had worked.

Now all they had to do was get back.