A hundred arrows make a different sound. Now the air seems to thicken, to become dense, incandescent; it vibrates like a solid. The warrior feels encapsulated as in a corridor of living steel; reality shrinks to the zone of murder in which he finds himself imprisoned; the sky itself cannot be glimpsed nor even remembered. Now come a thousand arrows. The sound is like a wall. There is no space within, no interval of haven. Solid as a mountain, impenetrable; it sings with death. And when those arrows are launched not skyward in long-range arcing trajectory to beat upon the target driven by the
...more
