John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

“All I did was herd a few cattle,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Bull,” she answered with a grin. “I made five chits off of you myself. Nobody thought you’d survive the first tiger. The way you were charging around, nobody thought you’d last half an hour.”

Herzer’s face worked but he didn’t reply because about then the tent flap opened, revealing a figure in armor in the doorway.

“Step up to the table, give your true name, true age and answer the questions,” the figure said brusquely. He stepped to the side as two women took up seats at the table.

Herzer waited for the line to form and took a place near Deann. The process was slow and he realized there was probably going to be a lot of waiting around today.

Finally it was his turn and he stepped up to the table. The sun was up by then and his belly rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t gotten any breakfast this morning.

“Herzer Herrick” he said. “Seventeen.” Barely, he didn’t add.

“Okay, I think I can put you down as experienced with horses and a bow.” The woman chuckled.

“I’m not an expert…” he temporized.

“Not an expert, got it. Do you have any other skills you would like to list?”

“I am trained in individual swordsmanship,” Herzer said. “Enhanced reality training. Some with a spear.”

“And lance,” the woman said.

“Not lance,” the figure in armor said. “That was luck as much as anything. His seat was bloody awful.”

Herzer cast a quick glance at the man. He was an oldster, he had white hair and wrinkles even, but he was a hard-ass, that was clear, wearing a loricated armor, armor made of curved plates that overlapped like the carapace of a centipede. Herzer wanted to dispute his statement, at least mentally, but he really couldn’t. It had been lucky. The man was just being brutally honest. And astute.

“Do you know the fashioning of arms and armor?”

“No, I didn’t even put it on myself in training,” Herzer admitted. “And I don’t know that much about caring for horses. I can ride, though.”

“That is true,” the armored figure said.

“Anything else?” the woman asked.

“No.”

“Step into the tent and follow the directions you are given,” she said, handing him a folder. “Hang onto that,” the woman continued in a rote voice. “You’ve just become a record and that is it.”

Herzer held onto his file and passed through the stations. There was a test of reading and writing, a simple test of strength involving mostly lifting various weights and then a physical examination. He submitted to this last with good grace; at this point he was so used to being poked and prodded that it just didn’t seem his day was complete unless someone told him to stick out his tongue and say “aaaah.” The examiner was one of the nurses being trained by Dr. Daneh who had turned up from time to time during his convalescence. She was a pretty enough brunette with the annoying habit of talking with her teeth clenched. She had been friendly enough during her visits but was professionally distant during the examination. Right up until the end when she chuckled.

“Given that Dr. Daneh did a complete exam a couple of days ago, this one seems pretty unnecessary,” she said, making some notes on a piece of paper and slipping it into his file.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Herzer replied with a smile.

“Well, other than needing some exercise, you appear to be perfectly adequate sword fodder,” she said with a frown in reply. “Do me a favor and don’t get yourself killed. We’ve got a lot of work invested in you.”

“Well, since you care so much, I’ll try really hard not to.”

“Okay,” she smiled. “Through that door.”

Herzer passed through the door into the outside, finally, and saw a small group of recruits milling around, one of whom was Deann. There was a man in mail, light helm and leather bracers who seemed to be in charge of the group and he nodded when Herzer appeared.

“That’s twenty,” the man said. “You lot, follow me.”

The area behind the examination tents was a large, recently cleared, stump-covered field in the northeast quadrant of the Raven’s Mill valley. One end of it had been set up with archery butts at various distances, each with a number at the top, and the man led them to a table where a series of bows were laid out. At one end of the table was a water bucket and a half barrel filled with arrows, the fletchings in multiple colors and patterns. To Herzer’s eye something about the fletchings looked wrong.

“My name is Malcolm D’Erle,” the man said when the group was gathered around. “Today I will be testing you on your ability to draw and fire bows. We’re not really expecting anyone to be able to hit anything. We just want to see how much basic capability you have to draw and fire.”

Herzer saw that, blessedly, there were some gloves and bracers laid out with the bows.

“This,” Malcolm said, picking up one of the larger bows, “is called a longbow or a self-bow. It is so called because, as you can see, it is very long. The reason for its length is that the arrow has more distance that it can be driven by the spring of the bow. Shorter bows have less distance of travel and therefore can impart less energy to the arrow. This type of bow will, for the time being, be the basic bow of the Raven’s Mill Defense Force archers. There are a couple of aspects to it. One is that it is a very strong bow, and difficult to draw. Especially repeatedly as is necessary in combat. The other is that it requires a person who is of normal male height or greater.” He looked around the group and then at Deann. “You, young lady, for example, I don’t think have much of a chance; you’re just too short.”

Deann grimaced at that and growled. “But you are going to give me a chance, right?”

“Of course. Now, does anyone here have any experience with bows?”

After a moment when no one else raised their hand, Herzer did so reluctantly.

“Oh, yeah. The guy on the horse. Where did you learn?”

“I was doing enhanced reality training before the Fall hit,” Herzer replied.

“What do you normally use?”

“During training I used a one-hundred-kilo composite recurve, sir. But my muscles are out of shape and I don’t think that I could handle that in my current condition.”

“A hundred kilos? Well the good news is, I don’t have one that strong so we won’t be finding out if you could or not. I brought these other bows out just to show them to you,” he continued, setting down the long bow. He picked up one of the smaller bows and bent it in his hands. “This is a short bow, which, as you can see, is shorter. It is otherwise similar to the longbow. The major difference is the distance an arrow can be thrown, the damage that it does and the amount and type of armor it can pierce. Mass fire of short bows are useful against groups of unarmored enemies. But unlike the longbow, just about any decent armor, including rivet mail, will shrug it off.”

He picked up another bow that was about the same length but was broadly curved. “This, on the other hand, is a short, composite recurve bow. It is a much stronger bow and has a long draw. It uses sinew backing to give it extra strength. In the case of this one, it is made out of horn and sinew with a thin strip of wood in the middle. It is a very strong bow and quite as powerful as the longbow. However, they are extremely difficult to construct, require materials that we don’t have available and tend to suffer from damp. They were used primarily by steppes horse archers for a reason. The steppes were dry, the bows could be used from horseback and they had the appropriate materials in abundance while lacking much wood.”