Harold falls to the forest floor, unable to stumble along any further. The pain in his leg is intense, and in the dead of the night he’s certain he can still see the bullet’s smoke rising off his thigh. Amber stops, but he yells at her to leave him. No sense in both of them getting caught. He thinks to give her the book, but decides she probably won’t want it. She hadn’t even seen him take it.
The guard was not a great shot. Most mercenaries aren’t, not anymore, not with nothing left to shoot at. They’d escaped the canopy, and cleared the 15 feet to the forest’s edge before anything actually hit them, and even then it was a leg wound. Had Harold been a tougher man he’d be fine. As it is, he is in a great deal of pain.
He can hear the shouting and firing off in the distance. Too far off to be Amber. At least that thought allows him reason to smile. He crawls against the trunk of a rather large tree and props himself up. He drops the book beneath a root, starts a countdown in his mind. It will all be over soon.