M3C10/11 - Take Arrow and Fall

I was staring down at about two thousand arrow tips, and two thousand guys squinting up at me along the arrow shaft.

<Uh-oh.>

Flit! Flit! Flit! FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

The air was filled with arrows. It was like some weird backward hail. It was a wall of arrows!

Flit!

<Aaaahhhh!>

An arrow passed clear through my wing. I banked hard.

Flit!

<They’re shooting at me!> I yelled. There was a sharp pain in my wing, and blood streaked my feathers. The wing was weaker, but I could still fly.

<Get outta there!> Rachel yelled.

<Gee, do you think?!> I said frantically.

I beat wing but now it was like every idiot on the ground was trying to murder me. Already, they were reloading. But I was hauling. Hauling not exactly in a straight line because one wing was dragging, but I was moving. I headed more or less along the front of the English lines, trying to stay in no-man’s-land. One thing I knew for sure: I didn’t want to try and cross directly above the English troops.

Unfortunately, that was a bad insight. The archers were on both ends of the line, in the woods! I was heading straight for another couple of thousand archers! Ahhh! I tried to turn. I tried to haul. I would have run on air if necessary.

Arrows snapped into place, up came the bows, and …

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

Clean miss! I was out of the way, and now I could watch where the arrows were heading. Down they came.

The arrows arched toward a column of Frenchmen on horses. Maybe three hundred guys, many loaded up in fabulous armor. Some in less-than-fabulous armor. But all yelling from behind their visors, all with long lances leveled.

The French cavalry went straight for the archers. The archers were behind a lame wall of spikes angled out toward the horses. Unfortunately for the English, their spikes wouldn’t stay up in the mud.

But the spikes weren’t the important issue. The important issue was the arrows.

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

Thousands of arrows, all shooting up, all arching, all seeming to hang in the air. Thousands of these arrows just sort of waiting, poised at the top of their arc. A fly could not have gotten through that wall of arrows.

Down and down to stick in French arms and necks and shoulders and heads and thighs and faces, and all of a sudden what was happening below me was not a joke anymore.

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

Arrows flew again, tracking the approaching column of rowdy, disorganized cavalry.

The main knights seemed almost invulnerable at first with all their armor. Even their horses were armored along the back of their necks and over their heads. But the arrows were so thick that they found their way into the narrow slits in knights’ visors.

Men were dropping. Horses were dropping.

If I’d stayed one second longer, avoiding the arrows would have been like avoiding raindrops in a thunderstorm.

If I had stayed a second longer I wouldn’t just have been shot. I’d have been a pincushion.

Now the screaming started. Guys with arrows sticking through their necks, into their stomachs, out of their sides, all fell and crawled and stood up and fell again. And it wasn’t just the men. Horses were screaming, too. And that’s not a sound I’ll ever forget.

The cavalry fell back. They didn’t look good. They plowed right into their own lines, practically riding down their own people.

The English kept coming. Looking a little more sure of themselves, too. Like maybe two masses would have been enough.

I tried to find Visser Four again. I looked for that weirdly clean face, the weirdly white teeth.

And that saved my life. Because I saw now that the archers were forward, half in the woods, and they had shifted their aim.

Suddenly, the arrow barrage had changed direction.

<Aaahhh!> I yelled, spilled air, and plunged like a rock. I saw the English archers release their strings.

I saw arrows fly!

Right. At. ME!

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

Hundreds of arrows arched toward me as I dove toward the ground. Hundreds of arrows, some so close I felt the breeze from them, blew above me.

I raked, opening my wings to catch air. But now my injured wing failed. It collapsed, seemed to break in half, and down I went at impossible speed.

Flump!

I hit mud, beak first. I maintained consciousness for about a half second. Passed out. Woke up to hear Jake yelling, <Marco! Marco! Get up!>


(... Perspective switches to Rachel here...)


I saw him stick, literally stick, in the mud. I was high above and to the right, off the main field. I was in bald eagle morph - the only one of us nearly big enough to drag an osprey up out of the mud.

I dove.

<Rachel! No!> Jake yelled.

<I can get him!> I had Marco in plain view. A crumpled little wad of dirty gray and white feathers in the middle of what was, by the standards of 1415, probably the most dangerous piece of real estate on Earth.

I fell like a stone. No, like a missile, because I was under control, directed, aimed with a dozen tiny movements of tail and wingtip.

<Break off!> Jake yelled. <The arrows! The arrows!>

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

The arrows!

I opened my wings wide, spread my tail feathers, pulled my talons up, and did an impersonation of Wile E. Coyote trying to stop in midair after he’s just run off a cliff.

It didn’t work much better than it does for Wile E.

The arrow barrage flew. Two or three missed me by millimeters, but most were well below me.

As soon as the arrows were by, I folded my wings, making the smallest possible target, and dropped again toward Marco.

<Marco! Wake up!> Jake yelled.

I swept down, barely avoiding hitting the mud myself, and dug my talons into Marco’s back.

<Hey! Ow!>

<Complain later, we are outta here!>

Only we weren’t outta there. I flapped with all my strength and managed to drag Marco about three feet through the mud. But there was no way we were getting airborne.

FlitFlitFlitFlitFlitFlit!

The arrows flew again, this time far overhead. And then I heard a bloodcurdling sound. The roar of battle lust from hundreds of throats. Or maybe not so much battle lust as sheer terror.

I shot a look to my left. The English were suddenly running. Right at us. To the right: the French, running, galloping, and also doing some screaming.

We were about to be stomped by several thousand really unattractive shoes.

<What do we do?> I asked Marco.

<How do I know? I thought you were rescuing me!>

<Demorph?>

<And tell them what? We’re neutral?>

(...)

Then, hooves.

Feet! Hooves! Someone tripped, face down, landed beside Marco and me. At least I thought he’d tripped. Till I saw the short arrow sticking out of his chest.

It was the green knight. He lay on his shield and tried to breathe. I stared at him, unable to look away. Unable to stop myself from thinking that at least he wouldn’t live to tell the story of the witch who became an elephant.

<Grab my legs!> Cassie cried.

<What?>

<Grab my legs!>

Brown horse legs were tall in a forest of shorter limbs. I sank talons deep into bone and skin. It had to hurt. But Cassie didn’t complain. Marco did the same, and then we were off. Two big mudencrusted birds of prey latched on to a horse’s front legs as the horse tried to shove through a melee.

And the melee had just gotten radically worse.

Cassie, and we, were shoved by the force of the packed bodies around us, toward the French.

Now, battle was joined. There was no way out. I dug my talons deep. A horse might survive this hell of yelling, slashing, screaming, shoving, grunting, stabbing madness, but a bird is a fragile animal.

<Arrgghh!> I heard Cassie cry. I assumed it was the pain of my and Marco’s talons.

But it was much more likely that the pain came from the spear that had been shoved deep, deep into her haunch.

Cassie stumbled. She fell, face down I disengaged just in time to avoid being crushed.