Ugh.
Help a writer for whom blocking action scenes is not a natural gift.
In the scene I'm attempting to write, Jack and Anna are fleeing, on foot, having escaped from a village where they were being held prisoner by the French. Between them, they have two rifles and a pistol, though Jack is the only one who knows how to shoot. I'm figuring Anna has the pistol as a point-and-shoot weapon of last resort, while Jack manages both rifles. Bear in mind that these are rifles that fire one shot at a time and take at least a minute to reload. They have a good eight hours' head start on their (mounted) pursuers, so it's not like they're against inherently impossible odds--I can limit how many of the searchers get anywhere near them at will.
I need a scene that accomplishes the following:
1. Some pursuers need to actually see and threaten them. Shots must be fired, and Anna must actually need to use the pistol. For a later plot point to work, she needs to be motivated to learn to shoot, and I figure there's nothing like botching it now to make her want to take lessons at the first opportunity--this is my Act I placement of the gun that must be fired in Act III, if you will.
2. They can't be captured, so there can't be more pursuers discovering them than they're capable of dispatching. I'm thinking at least 3, no more than 5-6.
3. After this, they need to hide (in a tiny cave I'm conveniently creating for that purpose) until they're confident any further danger of pursuit goes away.
Simple enough, right? Except I suck at action sequences, and want to make sure I don't write anything unforgivably stupid. I've been thinking this through as I've written, and I think I know how to handle it, but please tell me if there's anything that would completely wreck your suspension of disbelief here:
1. I need to revise the bit where they flee in the predictable direction, south, straight back toward the British army--they'll need to bear east or something, so it'll actually make sense only to encounter token pursuit, the main pursuers all being off to the south. This will mess with my carefully calibrated timetable a bit, but I can work around that--maybe they're able to catch one of the French horses and make up for some lost time that way, but then it pulls up lame or something so they leave it with a farmer somewhere and don't make up for too much lost time.
2. I think four is the right number of pursuers for them to actually encounter--Jack can shoot two, and while he's reloading the other two get close enough that Anna shoots one with her pistol, with Jack reloading just in time to get the other one.
3. They then hide the bodies as best as they can, hurry away in case there are other searchers nearby who might've heard the shots, happen upon the cave, and decide to hide there for awhile. And then when they come out, perhaps finding that convenient horse roaming about unsaddled.
So. Any holes in all that?