Simon Hawke - Ivanhoe Gambit

"The man is insolent beyond belief, Sire," said Front-de-Boeuf. "Let me run him through and we'll have done with him."

"No," said John. "I am of a mind to have some sport with this rude peasant. We shall put him to the test. We'll see how well you shoot, Tinker, if your arrows fly as true as your mouth runs ready. Marshal, prepare the butts. We will begin with archery today. And if you do not prove to be as expert as you are rash, my loutish friend, I'll see you lashed for your impertinence."

As the heralds proclaimed the beginning of the tournament, John and his retinue took their places in the stands in a section separated from the others by being somewhat elevated above them and enclosed on all sides save the front, giving those sitting within the most commanding view of the field. The archery butts were brought out and Bobby stepped forward to take his place among the ranks of the competitors. There were not too many of them, since challengers would have to shoot against John's Norman archers, who were famous for their marksmanship.

"Now look what you've done," growled Finn Delaney, who had gone along with Bobby to hold his quiver and his cloak.

"Now look what you've done, sir," said Bobby, grinning. Finn was old enough to be his father.

"Shit, give me a break," said Finn. He ran a beefy hand through his thick red hair. "This isn't funny. He wasn't kidding about giving you a whipping. You think they'll stop with just tearing some skin off your back? These bastards will keep at it till you croak!"

"That's assuming I lose this contest," Bobby said.

"Who do you think you are, Robin Hood?"

Bobby stared at him in astonishment, then broke up.

"Okay, very funny," Finn said, frowning. "But what if any of these characters are better than you?"

"Then I guess we'll be in trouble."

"We?"

"Thanks, Finn. I knew you'd stand by me."

"Jesus, you could at least have called him Sire or Your Majesty or something. You had to go and piss him off. What was the point?"

Bobby handed him his cloak and hat. "You're supposed to be Little John," he said, "and I'm supposed to be the fastest gun in Sherwood Forest, remember? If I win this shoot-out, they'll be talking about it all over the place. Can you think of a better way of establishing our credentials?"

"Give me a minute, I'm sure I can come up with something."

"Well, think fast, because they're about to get this show on the road."

The trumpets blared again and the herald announced that each man would have three flights of arrows at a distance of seventy-five paces. The moment that had been announced, seven of the competitors dropped out. That left only nine, including Bobby. Each man shot at will, taking as much time as he wished to shoot three arrows in succession. Bobby hit the gold with every shot with no apparent difficulty and, to most of the people in the stands, it looked like he hardly even aimed. Only two archers did as well, which eliminated everybody else.

"That wasn't bad," said Finn.

"I had to make harder shots in training," Bobby said. "Besides, this isn't entirely new to me, you know. Remind me to tell you about the time I took archery lessons from Ulysses."

They moved the targets farther back, to a distance of about one hundred yards. They shot again and this time one man was eliminated. That left Bobby and Hubert, John's champion archer.

"If Hubert doesn't beat this insolent braggart," John said, "I'll have his guts for garters."

The targets were now moved back to a distance of some hundred and twenty yards.

"You sure about this?" whispered Finn.

"Piece of cake."

Hubert was to have the first shot. He drew his long bow back to his right ear, aimed carefully, waited for the breeze to die down and then let fly. The arrow described a graceful arc in the air and landed directly dead center in the gold. A cheer went up from the stands.

"Hah!" John exclaimed, jubilant at Hubert's shot. "Let's see the Saxon bastard beat that shot! It can't be done!"

Finn's heart sank.

"Hell of a shot," Bobby said. "I'd give my left nut for a laminated Browning recurve with stabilizers right about now."

"What are we going to do?"

"The only thing we can do."

"Resign and run for it?"

"No, cheat."

He turned his back to the stands, taking a position so that Hubert couldn't see what he was doing. He removed an arrow from the quiver that was colored differently from all the others. He fitted the black arrow to his bow.

"A little something the ordnance boys whipped up for me, just in case," he said to Finn.

"What's the gimmick?"

"Look inside the quiver and you'll find a little black box. When I nock my arrow, the bowstring depresses the arming trigger. The moment I let fly, you hit the button on that box. Inside the shaft, there's integrated microcircuitry coupling a ferrous metal detector inside the bronze arrowhead with a limited trim system on the fletching."

Finn grinned widely. "Now that's style," he said.

"I don't know about style," said Bobby, "but I've got a strong sense of self-preservation. The black arrows have shaped charges in the heads. Just stand between me and Hubert while I remove that, I don't want to blow up my target."

The whispered conversation with Finn was taken for hesitation on Bobby's part by Hubert, who began to grin broadly and act as though he had already won. Indeed, he had no reason to believe otherwise. When Bobby took his stance and drew his bow back, the crowd fell utterly silent. No one believed that there was any way the tinker could match the shot, much less beat it, but they respected his determination.

"He'll never best that shot of Hubert's," John said confidently. "I'll teach that Saxon cur a lesson in manners yet."

Bobby made a show of aiming, then let the arrow fly. The moment the shaft left the bowstring, Finn depressed the button activating the guidance system. The arrow was halfway to the target when the ferrous metal detector picked up the presence of Hubert's iron arrowhead just ahead of it. Fortunately, there were no other iron objects near enough to confuse the system and the arrow flew straight and true, the fletching adjusting itself imperceptibly until Bobby's arrow hit the end of Hubert's shaft precisely, splitting it right down the middle until it came up against Hubert's arrowhead with a shock that sent it halfway through the butt. There was a moment of complete, unbelieving silence and then the crowd roared.

Hubert's jaw dropped in astonishment. He could have sworn that the tinker's aim was off.

"By God, the man's a devil, not an archer!" John swore in amazement, forgetting his annoyance with the tinker. "Any man who can shoot like that, I'll have in my service!"

He would have made the offer, only a mob charged out upon the field to congratulate one of their own, thrilling in a Saxon's victory over a Norman. When the tumult died down and the crowd dispersed, the black garbed tinker and his friend in lincoln green had disappeared. They did not show up to claim their prize. Vexed, John pronounced the man a craven coward and said that he hoped his Norman knights would make a better showing than his pathetic archers. Hubert left the field, looking miserable.

John flourished his truncheon and ordered the jousting to commence.

The Saxon boy was quite impressed with the tinker's performance. He could not contain his joy. Lucas thought that Bobby had showed off just a bit too much. It had been risky. Obviously, the last arrow had been a guided one. Lucas conceded that Bobby had no choice, since the Norman archer's shot would have been impossible to beat any other way, but still, he hadn't liked it very much. Fortunately, Bobby had been able to retrieve the arrow and melt away into the crowd. That, at least, had been prudent of him. The guided arrows were equipped with a fail-safe mechanism that would fry the circuitry inside the shaft if anyone was curious enough to examine them too closely, but he was still glad that Bobby had managed to get his arrow back and disappear. It had been an impossible shot. John might have decided to order him to duplicate it just to see if it was luck or skill. If it happened again, it would have been clear evidence of skill-superhuman skill. It was well to draw attention to themselves in order to curry sympathy with the locals and to flush out the renegade ref, but there was such a thing as carrying it a bit too far.