There was no time to reach him, no barricade to dodge behind, and the distance was too long to fling his sword accurately. Godwin jerked his head round. A brazier of burning coals stood on a brass trivet at his side. Quicker than thought he had caught up the pot of them and in the same sidearm motion flung them down at the bowman. The man saw them coming, let fly his arrow and tried to roll out of range. Several coals took him in the face and neck. Seared and scorching flesh sent up an acrid, nauseous stench as the poor wretch screamed with agony. His arrow had gone wild by the slimmest of margins.
The other archer emerged from the opposite edge of the sail, shaking his head. He was bleeding from the nose and his eyesight had gone slightly awry. He leaned on the bulwarks and rubbed a fist into his eyes. He looked up and saw the gorilla coming at him over the crumpled, heaving sail.
He plucked an arrow from his belt and fitted it hastily to the string. He did not understand in the slightest how this awful creature had appeared aboard his ship, but it had fled once from his bow and so it might be slain by a mere mortal. He was a Seljuk Turk, this archer, proud and cruel and infinitely superstitious; he felt sure that Godwin was a spirit of some kind, yet he knew that spirits may be slain and all the odds seemed to be on his arrows.
The first one twanged out from his short sturdy bow.
Godwin saw it hurtle at his breast, and in his proper shape might only have watched it strike him, for he had no shield and only the smallest fraction of a second in which to take thought. But the gorilla's body was made of faster muscles, quicker reflexes, than ever a knight possessed. One arm flicked across his chest, and the arrow was caught in flight, three inches before it would have buried itself feather-deep in his thorax.
The Turk, a second arrow already on the string, froze. Before he could force action into his petrified hands, the gorilla was upon him. Great black paws took him by throat and groin, he was lifted over the brute's head, and the air whistled around him as the waves of the Mediterranean reached up to assuage their age-old hunger for living flesh.
Godwin watched him vanish into the sea. Weighted by his armor, he never came up. Godwin grinned.
Unnoticed behind him, the coals from the brazier had started a fire in the fallen sail, a fire which was rapidly spreading in a score of directions.