Oh yes. Rufus is the fool here.

Where the devil was I going? I looked around for the obligatory passing hay cart (a staple element of stories like the one I seemed to have wandered into) into which I could safely leap, but it had missed its cue. Five soldiers and the officer were on the stage now, all shooting and trying to shut Rufus up, while Brundage stood there like a sardonic angel of death, sending glances of bitter amusement up with their arrows. For the moment I was safe behind the chimney, but four of the troopers were on their way up after me.

There was still no sign of the hay cart.

There was, however, a house, its roof about ten feet away. The street was about thirty-five feet below. I released the chimney and let another arrow scud past me. Then I rose, setting one foot on each side of the sloping thatch, and began running or staggering to the far end, where I half jumped, half fell across the gap.

The edge of the neighboring roof hit me in the stomach, drove the breath from my body, and almost knocked my wig off. (Don’t ask why I was still wearing it. I have no idea.) There were shouts and the sounds of running feet below. I clawed myself up, that infernal dress making it almost impossible for me to get my legs up. (How did women move in these things?) I hitched the skirt up around my waist and-as if they had been waiting for me to do just that-one of their arrows immediately found my thigh and stuck there like a firebrand.

I rolled myself out of sight and stared with horrified fascination at the wooden shaft that grew out of the side of my leg, wagging about as I shifted to get a better look. Any sense of pain was temporarily stifled by disbelief. This was a new dimension to my life: Bill the Moving Target, Wounded Will. I pulled at it and gasped as it slid out easily, blood seeping out in a thin trickle. Not much of a wound, I pointed out to myself, vaguely disappointed. The flat arrowhead had gone in at an acute angle, barely under the skin really, but it hurt like. well, like an arrow in the leg, actually, and it served to remind me of what I was doing.