Jeffrey Quyle - The Healing Spring

“And I’m an elf,” Kestrel clarified.

“Let him come along,” the woman decided.

“Got a taste for something exotic, Vinetia?” one of the other guards chided her immediately. “You have to take him as your doubles partner.”

“Oh for the love of branch and leaf — grow up, Hitchens!” Vinetia growled. “Are you any good?” she spoke directly to Kestrel.

He studied her, a stout elf guard who was studying him in return. “I think I‘m pretty good,” he answered.

“I’ll trust you on that, for now,” she answered ominously.

“Vinetia, look at it this way, even if you don’t win the competition, the two of you can still try to win the scariest couple contest,” one of the other guards jibed, but Kestrel could hear the humor in the man’s voice, and recognized the camaraderie of squad members who had served together.

Everyone started to rise, and Kestrel stood as well. “Go on, go get your bow and arrow. I’ll meet you outside the commissary,” Vinetia told him, starting Kestrel off on a jog back to his room to retrieve his weapon. Minutes later he was among the group that left the guard compound to walk through the city towards the competition grounds.

Center Trunk felt vast to Kestrel, after having spent his life in Elmheng. The walk to the competition grounds took him through both busy commercial areas and crowded residential areas, where he realized more elves lived than he had ever seen together before. The end of the stroll across the city was a large field where few trees grew. Ropes and barriers created numerous separate competition areas, and several competitions were already underway around the periphery of the field, with the twang of bow strings constantly sounding throughout the area.

“We register here,” Vinetia told Kestrel as she grabbed his arm and led him towards a line that waited at a table. “We’re going to register as individuals, and as a team,” she told him. “That lets us compete both ways — so if one of us has a bad match, we can stay in competition, provided the partner has a decent match.”

“How big is the field for a match?” Kestrel asked her.

“For these qualifying matches this morning there will be twenty five shooting in each match, and the top five will go on to the next round,” Vinetia explained as they inched forward. “The ones who don’t qualify get a second chance, but only the top competitor from the consolation matches goes on.

“Then this afternoon, everyone who made it through the morning goes through the second round — along with their partners, if they have one, where the organizers move the targets back further, and the game starts to get challenging. Only the top three of each match move on, and eventually the tournament comes down to a final field of a dozen or so, where we get a winner to be the princess’s champion for the year,” she summed up as they reached the table and completed their registration, the official at the table giving Kestrel an unfriendly look before distributing colored arm bands that denoted their competition fields and starting times.

“Is there a place to practice?” Kestrel asked, concerned that he hadn’t used or even checked his equipment in several days.

“No time for that, rookie,” his partner told him. “We did that this morning before breakfast. You’ve got to do your homework in advance.”

“You go that way, I’m over here,” Vinetia gave Kestrel a gentle shove. “After the match, let them know you’re my partner, and meet me over there,” she pointed to a solitary linden tree. “That’s where our squad usually meets; if there’s a fight, which has been known to happen, stick with our side — the judge has a son in our squad,” she winked at him, then sent him on his way. “There’s the red flag flying over at the far field — that’s you! Get over there and hit your targets!”

Kestrel hustled across the competition spaces to get to the target range where the red flag was flying, and arrived barely in time, as some competitors were already shooting their first arrows.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” a proctor told him as he raced down to a vacant spot at the end of the line. “If you don’t get you first shot off before one of the others fires his second shot, you’ll be disqualified.”

Kestrel hurriedly pulled an arrow from his quiver as he ran to his spot, and dumped his equipment on the ground. He saw a competitor already sighting his second shot, and he realized he would have to get a shot off without any hope of scoring the target. He raised his bow, placed his arrow on the string, took cursory aim at his target, and released his shot. A split second later he saw the second arrow fly from the competitor’s bow.

“You got it off; you’re in the competition,” the proctor told him, standing behind him. “For now. You’ve only got eight shots in this competition, and you’ve just wasted one of them,” he nodded across the green space that separated the competitors from their targets. Kestrel turned and saw that his arrow was stuck in the ground just in front of the target.

Kestrel realized that his circumstances were dire; losing one out of eight shots in a competition was a difficult handicap to overcome against good marksmen. He examined his bow, tightening the string slightly and adjusting the mark he used to sight his target, then carefully looked through his arrows, selecting one that he knew was his straightest, truest shaft. He carefully took his time aiming his second shot, and when he released it, he watched with satisfaction as the bolt flew straight and true towards the center of the target, where it landed with a resounding thud. He was holding his breath he realized, and he exhaled in relief at the success of the shot that gave him a chance to get back into the competition.

He picked out another reliable shaft, tinkered with his sight bead slightly, then released his third shot, one that landed just a finger’s-breadth away from his first. He looked down the long line of the targets that the other archers were shooting at, and saw several that already had three shafts in the center. Despite his two successful shots, he still had no margin for error.

His next two arrows were also in the center of his target, but also depleted his limited supply of high quality shafts. His last three shots would be made with his supply of cheap, second-quality arrows that each had flaws of some sort. He picked a green arrow with faulty fletchings, which we worked to try to bolster, then let his shot go. The sound of the flight as the bolt left his bow indicated that the arrow would not fly true, but it only deviated slightly to the left, and landed just outside the center ring.

Most of the other competitors were finished. He looked at their targets and calculated the scores of the best of them. If he could put his last two shots in the center, he would become the fifth qualifier from this group. With the arrows he had left, that would be a tough task. The faulty arrows were more than adequate to hit a large target, such as a turkey or deer in the forest, but for the fine control needed in this competition they put him at a disadvantage.

He pulled another arrow out at random, inspected it, bent the yellow shaft slightly to try to correct its flaw, then tweaked the fletching as well. He guessed that it would drop more than it should, so he raised his aim slightly, then let it fly, and held his breath as he listened to it and watched it wobble though the air before landing just inside the center circle.

There was a small audience gathered behind him, watching him finish as the last competitor, and he heard snippets of their conversations despite his effort to stay focused on his game. “That was a great shot,” one voice said. “Too bad he’s as ugly as those arrows he’s using,” someone responded. “He hardly looks like an elf.”