This may insist upon becoming a novella.
…I scrambled forward to the driver.
He had taken a bolt to the leg, and was looking kind of gray by now, but he was still in it to win it. “Repeating crossbow on my left!” he half-shouted, half-hissed. “Six-shooter!” I’d have preferred my pepperbox, but what the hell. I pulled the crossbow off of its mounting and started looking for targets. The damned thing wouldn’t have any range, but if the ambushers stayed out of it we’d get away anyway.
One of the horsemen tried his luck; he was good enough to draw and fire a bow while riding, and young enough to think that he was immortal. He took his own shot, close enough so that I could see his grin, then did that trick where somebody swings over the side of the horse just in time to avoid the return fire. His horse had barding on it, too: not much, but you don’t need much to soak up a repeating crossbow bolt.
Unfortunately for him, I knew that he’d try that maneuver. I also knew that for a moment his foot would be visible underneath the horse’s belly. Hip-shooting may not be the most accurate thing in the world, but I’m a damned good shot, and I guessed right. And I don’t care who you are: two crossbow bolts in the foot will wreck your day. The sudden pain must have wrecked his control, because he went tumbling onto the grass, dragged and battered until the stirrup gave way.
“You still grinning, asshole?” I shouted back at him as I emptied the rest of the crossbow at the suddenly thoughtful ambushers. They scattered, the idiots — even I couldn’t hit them at that distance — but that was the idea. I wanted the time to reload.