rifle shooting

This time we didn’t have surprise on our side. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two since the Hunt had announced its arrival, but I saw figures stirring on the deck of the barge ahead of us.
“Gun!” shouted Karrin. “Incoming!”
Crap.
Out over the water like this, I didn’t have access to anywhere near enough magic to provide a continuous shield—and I couldn’t try to slap down individual bullets, either. By the time I saw the gunfire, the round would already be going through us. Which meant that this was going to happen the vanilla way, the way soldiers worldwide have done it for a few centuries now. Advance, advance, advance, and hope that you didn’t get shot.
Then Karrin snatched the rifle out of my hand and screamed, “Take the bike!”
I fumbled for a moment, but found the handlebars, reaching around her to make it happen. I gunned the throttle as Karrin raised the Winchester to her shoulder, half rose, and squinted through the buckhorn sights.
Flashes came from the boat, and something that sounded like an angry hornet flicked past my ear. I saw bits of spray coming up from the water ahead of us as the shooters misjudged their range, and I kept on racing straight ahead.
When we got to within a hundred yards, Karrin started shooting.
The old rifle boomed, and sparks flew up from the barge’s hull. She worked the lever action without lowering it from her shoulder and fired again. One of the dark shapes on the deck vanished, and two more flinched away. More gunfire came from the boat—panic fire, splashing wildly everywhere and mostly nowhere close to us. Whoever was over there, they didn’t like getting shot at any more than I did.
As we closed the last yards, Karrin fired three more times in a rapid, assured pace. I couldn’t see whether she hit anyone else until we went roaring past the barge, no more than ten feet away, when a man holding the distinctive shape of a shotgun rose into sight. Karrin was covering the barge’s stern with the Winchester when he popped up. The old gun roared again, and the gunman fell away and out of sight.
We raced by unharmed, but the enemy gunfire had done its work. The riders and hounds of the Hunt had been distracted by the flying bullets, and they didn’t do nearly as much damage to the barge as in the initial attack. Even as I watched, more and more figures with guns appeared on the barge and started shooting.


Cold Days Chapter 43, Page 420-421