The relative quiet that followed Peregrine's comment only made the resounding crack of the first gunshot all the more shocking.
"Doctor!" roared Radovic. Now audible through the missing windows of the control room, his voice was strangely doubled and distorted by the speakers on the walls. "Call me doctor, you stupid, foul, loathsome, stupid woman!" Pausing only to stamp his feet in apparent incoherent rage, he fired again as the two agents and the princess hit the floor. The witch meanwhile remained firmly on her feet, all the better to make unfamiliar yet somehow unmistakably obscene gestures up at the control room, to the accompaniment of a truly impressive array of raspberries, catcalls and other assorted rude noises.
"Britney, get down!" shouted Fields, as he and Peregrine, both bent double, attempted to shepherd Embers towards the cover of a fallen section of wall. "This way!" He loosed off a couple of rounds at the control room, more in the hope of deterring Radovic from firing again, than with any real expectation of hitting him.
He achieved neither. The incensed scientist fired a third time, and while there was no indication as to where his first two shots had gone, it was evident this one found a target.
"Yowie," muttered the sleeping giant, as his body gave the briefest of twitches, "powie, inkle, scrouch..."—rolling on to his side, demolishing another few metres of wall in the process, he gave out a prolonged sigh, reached around to give his butt a sleepy scratch, and then lapsed back into apparent insensibility—"...ouch." The snores began again.
Aim improving, Radovic's fourth shot hit the hangar floor only a few metres from the little group scurrying desperately for cover, while his fifth was closer still, ploughing a furrow in the concrete just an arm's length to Fields' left.
The sixth shot, however, was the most well-directed by far. Whether by good luck or good marksmanship, the sixth shot—fired from a small but powerful handgun, aimed by an enraged but amateur shooter, towards a small and moving target, through the shattered window of a crooked room, at a range of over twenty metres—somehow found its mark, slamming like a hammer into Embers' slight form and sending her tumbling to the floor.
For a horrified moment, the two agents stared in dumbstruck shock at the fallen princess, who looked back at them, eyes wide and mouth working as she tried to speak.
"Oh..oh, dear," she gasped. "I appear to...to have fallen."
"Don't sweat it, slugger." Peregrine was the first to recover. "We've got you." She bent down to help, and with Fields spurred out of his stunned inertia by her example, the two of them gently lifted the wounded woman back to her feet. At an awkward trot, half-carrying her between them, they made for shelter, encouraged on their way by another shot from Radovic.
The witch ceased gesturing. Her latest raspberry faded wetly into silence. She stood motionless for a few seconds, as though lost in thought. She looked up at the control room. She looked at the giant. She looked at the bullet-holes in the floor. And she looked at the bloodstain where Embers had fallen. Then, she looked back up at the control room.
"Are—you—freakin'—kidding me?" she exploded. "That's what the bang-sticks do? Why didn't somebody tell me? I coulda been killed!" Spying Featherstone peeking over the sill of a broken window, she pointed a gnarled finger up at the appalled scientist. "And you tried to use one of the bloody things on me, you monumental, witch-napping, weedy-arsed bastard! Ooh, just you wait, sunshine. Just you wait until I get my hands on you. First, I'm gonna—"
Fortunately for Featherstone, Britney's plans were forced to remain a mystery, as her tirade was cut short by the passage of a bullet whizzing past her head, close enough to ruffle a few of the stray hairs protruding from under the brim of her black hat. With an ear-piercing shriek, she picked up her ragged skirts and ran for cover, almost overtaking the others in the process.
The four of them barrelled into the shelter of a buckled piece of metal sheeting, Fields and Peregrine doing their best not to jar the injured princess too much. Gently, they laid her down.
"Right, you two—out of my way." Evidently already recovering from her recent shock, Britney took charge of Embers, tearing away a section of the stricken woman's bodice to reveal an ugly wound in her side, from which fresh blood flowed at a slow but disturbingly steady rate. "Never fear, girlie. We'll soon have you sorted out."
Only half-conscious, the princess gave a faint smile. "Dear Britney. Thank you ever so much for your kindness." Her eyelids drooped. "You know, on the bright side," she murmured, "I never did like this gown very much." With the faintest of sighs, she passed out.
Agency training included first aid, and Fields couldn't help but feel as though he should take over from the warty, weird and quite possibly demented interloper from another world, but the witch was already pressing a cloth she had retrieved from her bag against the wound with one hand, whilst rummaging through her supplies with the other. She exuded such an air of authority and competence it was difficult not to have faith in her abilities—letting her get on with it just seemed the sensible thing to do.
"Will she be alright?" he asked tentatively.
Britney snorted. "How the hell should I know?" she snapped, as Fields felt his confidence drain away. "This girlie just got hit by a weapon I ain't never seen before, never mind the wounds it causes. I've done arrows, I've done sword-cuts, I've done skulls cracked by maces—hell, I've done skulls cracked by frying-pans—but holes made by bang-sticks? Not so much."
Peregrine, peering cautiously over the top of the hideout as she tried to catch of glimpse of their assailants, had apparently been listening to the conversation. "It's kind of like an arrow," she said, flinching as a bullet pinged off the twisted metal that sheltered them. "But smaller and a lot faster."
"Yeah, yeah," Britney muttered, sprinkling an acrid-smelling powder onto the wound. "Thanks a bunch, but I kinda figured that out for myself. Look, I can stop the bleeding and I can patch her up, but to sort her out good and proper, I'd need to get her back to my shack." She winced, as yet another bullet clanged into their shelter. "But I'm guessing that's probably not gonna happen anytime soon.
"So," she continued, as she began to dress Embers' wound with a white linen bandage, "we're gonna need to get her to whatever passes for a witch in this weird-arse land of yours." She looked from one agent to the other, frowning at the bemused expressions on their faces. "Or a warlock, if that's the best you've got. Even a wizard would do. I ain't prejudiced.
"But it needs to be soon. So, we all know what that means." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the control room. "You two are gonna have to get up there and sort out Mr Beardy Knobhead and the chinless wonder. And you're gonna have to do it pretty toot bloody sweet."
The two agents absorbed this for a moment, before Peregrine turned to her partner with a crooked smile and a gentle punch in the arm.
"Piece of cake, huh partner? But I call dibs on Mr Beardy Knobhead."