As I ran through the woods, the snowdrifts continually hampered my progress. They made it hard for me to both run and look out for traps. Also, any of my enemies could have been lying in wait, and I wouldn't have seen them until they threw a net over me.
The snow was coming down lightly, making it easier for me to watch out. But I walked lightly, slower, making sure that I wasn't walking into one of them.
Then an arrow shot from a tree.
When the bow twanged, I leaped backward. The shaft missed me by a foot, but then another one fired while I was off balance.
The only thing I could think of to do then was: jump. I jumped as high as I could, knowing full well as I did it that the arrow would just hit my legs.
It did. The shaft sank into my thigh and my whole leg burst into pain.
When I landed, the knee buckled. I fell into the snow, face-first, tears running down my face from the pain.
I grit my teeth and snapped the wooden haft in half. There were still about two inches and an arrowhead in my leg, but that would have to wait until later.
I glanced around, ready for a fight. But no one appeared.
I threw Death directly at where the arrow had come from, hoping at least to startle somebody. But there wasn't the slightest movement.
Fine…
After retrieving my knife, I took a medic kit from my side pocket and patched it up. I cut the head out of my leg with a razor, wincing, silently, and then wrapped a bandage around it. Very tight. Enough to choke the bloodflow, which, in the long run, would be bad, but at the moment I just needed to not bleed out.
Then I limped over to the tree, behind from which the arrow had come.
It was a trap. A clever trap. Basically a tripwire, stretched between two trees. Then, when I hit the wire, an arrow would fire. Then two more, hitting the two places I could possibly have jumped to.
My enemy is clever, I reminded myself. My enemy is dark and devious, and after so long I can't be forgetting.
I shook myself. This was no use, thinking about it. I needed to carry on.
But there could be tripwires anywhere and everywhere. There was no way that my enemy could have known exactly where I would be walking.
I shook my head. There was also no way I could avoid it. Examining the tripwire now, even when I knew where it was, it was almost invisible. I couldn't see it, except when I held it against my skin.
So I kept to the open spaces. With a trap like that, there would be some mistake, in the timing or aiming, so I hoped that by giving myself this extra space, I would be safe.
I was wrong.