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Egypt action adventure fiction "THE SARCOPHAGUS" (AMAZON KINDLE) |
"They are coming," Neith said in a low voice. "Two
of them, very fast."
The group had just passed a big outcrop of rock and
faced a bare stretch of plain. Ryder stopped and peered into the gloom. The
dark silhouettes of twin-horsed chariots were running an oblique line towards
them, throwing up ribbons of dust. Ryder was struck at once by their speed.
Demon charioteers, she had said. They were certainly traveling at demonic
speed.
But then the Egyptian chariot was a lightning fast and deadly
weapon. Egyptian innovation had taken the cumbersome Aryan invention and made
them skeletal, lighter and infinitely more nimble and they ran between two
horses at breathtaking speed so that they became high-speed launching platforms
for the missiles of their occupants - arrows and spears.
Ryder handed his shoulder bag of food and water to Janet and
slipped his composite bow off his shoulder.
He took two broadhead alloy arrows and kept one arrow in readiness
in his hand, while nocking the other to the bowstring.
He drew the arrow to the anchor point at his chin.
Ryder felt that
unique convergence of senses that the marksman knows. The world reduced to his
target. Their place on the horizon and the line his arrow would take, bisected
like crosshairs. He felt the space that lay between them, swept the emptiness
like radar and then searched for the solidity of the target. His senses
computed distance, windage, the speed of his assailants.
He had chosen the charioteer on the left, the one with the jackal
head. He felt all these factors converge down and down to the point of an
arrow.
He released.
They were around three hundred yards away and couldn't imagine
themselves to be under threat yet. Egyptian bows had a range of around two hundred
yards at best. The arrow blurred across the gap...
