{"id":1412,"date":"2012-01-01T00:03:13","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T06:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1412"},"modified":"2012-01-01T00:03:13","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T06:03:13","slug":"christmas-present-snippet-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1412","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Present: Snippet #8"},"content":{"rendered":"

Episode 8 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.<\/em>\ufeff<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At the rear of the Pargunese formation, half the horsemen faced backward.\u00a0 The formation was definitely smaller than what she had seen before, but too close to bring her troops into view without risking a deadly charge.\u00a0 She blinked, trying to calculate the distances.\u00a0 Captain Talgan had had some arrangement of sticks and string he used for that.\u00a0 She crawled backward down the slope and described what she’d seen to her troops and the three rangers.<\/p>\n

“You want a dropping volley from back here, out of sight?\u00a0 How far is it, Sergeant?”<\/p>\n

“A hundred full paces, about,” she said.\u00a0 She sketched it in the snow.\u00a0 “You can clear the rise; they won’t know it’s coming and it should fall among them.\u00a0 Shoot from here, two volleys, then run straight for the woods, well out of sight–beyond volley-range from this scar–because any horseman you don’t dismount or kill will be coming this way fast.\u00a0 They’ll see the tracks we made, but–”\u00a0 She turned.\u00a0 Behind them, the rangers were already brushing away the tracks into what looked like windblown streaks.<\/p>\n

Thirty arrows flew up together, hanging visibly in the air, and then dropped out of sight.\u00a0 Another thirty followed.\u00a0 Vardan made sure all her people were back into cover…and sure enough, ten horsemen came galloping over the rise; they reined in when they saw nothing but the empty stretch of snow ahead of them.<\/p>\n

From the far side, Vardan saw an arrow streak toward a horse from the brush–close range, a flat trajectory.\u00a0 The horse screamed, tried to leap away, and fell; the rider just managed to roll clear.\u00a0 Vardan looked at the Halverics to either side of her.\u00a0 Could they take on the Pargunese now?\u00a0 Would the rangers fight with them?\u00a0 And how many rangers were here?\u00a0 Surely the few they’d seen so far weren’t all.\u00a0 With enough bows–but the ranger touched her arm.<\/p>\n

“Let them go unhindered a little.\u00a0 Your volley did well–fifteen dead at least, and three horses down.\u00a0 We have a surprise for them a little farther on.”<\/p>\n

………………………..<\/p>\n

Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Episode 8 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1413,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}