I was partly dazed by my fall. To tell you the truth, by every right I ought to have been killed. But the armor which I had slung so lightly over my shoulder had saved me. When the blow struck, the point of the dagger caught in the meshes of the twisted links. The weapon was a straight knife with no cross piece to form a protection for the hand. The impact was so sudden and so unexpected that my enemy lost his grip on the haft. His hand slipped down the blade and, as I learned afterwards, was cut along the fingers and the palm. It was the pain of it that made him cry out and to that the frenzy of it caused him to take to his heels and run away.
There was danger on every side of me. I had no time to breathe a word of thanks for my deliverance but got up as quickly as I could and made forward in the direction I was bent on. Then came my third surprise. I had started at a fairly good gait when an arrow whistled past my face and buried itself in the trunk of a great tree. My flesh crept from the very terror of my situation. There was one thing to do, I thought, and that was to take the bridle in my teeth and make the best of it.
I plunged on ahead recklessly. I am sure that I was as white as a ghost. It is one thing to have an enemy in front of you with whom you are matched on even terms. It is another to be beset by lurking foes who are able to strike unseen and who have every advantage in position and in weapons. But even at that the spirit of desperation was strong within me, for I was resolved to use my last speck of strength to worm myself through the woods and to make for home.
But my resolutions were nipped in the bud before I had fairly formed them. I was just getting into full career when another arrow passed my face, this time closer than the first and whistled on among the trees. But I did not stop. I bent my head low to the ground. I grasped the piece of mail more firmly in my hand. I was breathing hard, but more from the strain I was under than from actual labor. Three strides further and a third arrow buried itself in the turf straight before me and snapped with a little click.
I could not help looking down for my face was directed towards the ground. To my amazement, even in the gloom of the woods, I spied a piece of parchment tied in a hard knot on the haft of the missile.
“A message,” I thought. “Is it a warning from a friend? Or a threat from a hidden foe?”
As quick as a flash I stooped and snatched it open. There I read in letters scrawled as coarsely and as rudely as a child would write the words:
GO BACK BY THE ROAD
I trembled a little, I must confess. Whether from friend or foe, it was wisest to obey. If I insisted on going on ahead, I knew I would surely be killed. If I were to go back—well, there was a ray of hope.
I turned. I was as much in the hands of Fate as ever was any man alive. This time I did not run but kept on at a steady gait. At every step I was in expectation of some fresh attack, to be confronted by one of the two men who had assailed me, or by a knife darting through the air, or even by an arrow. But to my surprise the woods were as calm as when I first entered them. The rain dripped slowly from the overhanging branches and the light wind fanned and cooled my heated cheeks.