S. Stirling - The High King of Montival

The major started towards his men, or former men; Rudi caught his eye and shook his head slightly.

“You’ve made your choice, and they shall make theirs,” he murmured to himself.

The words wouldn’t carry, but they didn’t need to. The officer of the Sword of the Prophet was nobody’s fool. He nodded in return, turned and stalked off along the beach, with his left hand making occasional movements as if to rest on the pommel of a shete that wasn’t there and his little tuft of chin-beard bristling.

“That may solve one problem,” Mathilda said.

She looked over to where the ex-High Seeker was doggedly dragging a long piece of driftwood towards the fires. Her eyes narrowed; he knew she found the five-year-old in the man’s body disturbing in a way that went below words. The more so because the child in the man wasn’t merely lost. You could see hints of a sunny-natured boy named Dalan, brave and willing. And you knew what had happened to him.

“Perhaps him too?” she said hopefully. “There would be worse ways for him to make amends. Father Ignatius thinks he’ll. . mentally age. . enough to do a man’s work. Eventually.”

Rudi thought, then shook his head, though he’d have been just as glad to see the last of the man as she.

“No. I have the feeling he may be. . useful.”

Ignatius nodded. “Nor would it be safe to leave him alone, I think. He is vulnerable. The malice of the Adversary has been defeated here, but not destroyed.”

“No indeed,” Rudi said softly, his hand caressing the hilt of the Sword. “Not yet.”

“Bows out, y’lazy beggars!” Edain Aylward said.

“Shouldn’t we be getting aboard?” Hrolf Homersson asked, nodding towards the refitted Gisandu where she rested at her anchors with furled sails.

He was one of the Norrheimers they’d picked up at Eriksgarth to replace casualties; a very big man with a braid in his brown beard, whose favorite weapon was a four-foot ax with a war-hammer’s serrated shape on the side opposite the broad blade. He handled it like a willow switch.

“We’ve a few hours yet till sundown,” Edain said, and grinned. “And what better way to spend them than practice with the bow? We’re off on the morning tide tomorrow.”

He heard muffled groans, and a voice that muttered: Sleep? Food? Beer? from the background, and he didn’t try to see who. It was the sort of cold, dank day in the Black Months when your thoughts turned naturally to a chair and a crackling fire; and hot cider, and apples and nuts roasting on the hob while you worked on a bit of harness and yarned with your friends and smelled supper cooking.

“So back to work!” he said, putting a sergeant-major’s snap into it that he’d learned from his father.

It worked, too. He paced up and down the line, his own longbow in the crook of his arm, watching critically.

Asgerd Karlsdottir was off a farm near Eriksgarth too, tall and lithe, with the ends of hacked-off hair the color of fresh honey sticking out from under her knit cap; she’d been trying stubbornly to use the longbow he’d tossed her, but her string-arm gave a betraying quiver at full extension.

“This stave’s too heavy for me,” she said bluntly, glaring at him. “I’m over-bowed.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “I made that one with Ritva in mind, and you’re as tall, and near as strong. You’re drawing from outside the bow, sure and y’are. That’s the problem.”

Another glare, raw and belligerent. He’d noticed that Norrheimers were touchy, and she had extra reason-her affianced man had been killed by tribes allied to the Cutters. She was here because she’d taken a vow before the Gods of Norrheim, what her folk called a bragarfull , to take ten lives for his one, or die in the attempt, and sworn service to Rudi for the accomplishing of it. Edain intended to see that she did so and lived.

It would be an offense against the Lady of the Blossom-time to let a lass that fair die unwed.

“What does that mean?” she said. “Outside the bow?”

“Gather ’round, ye infants!” he said.

They did; the Norrheimers and the men of the Southside Freedom Fighters-who’d been savages in the Wild Lands of Illinois, until the chief and he had picked them up last year. The Southsiders nudged each other. They found the asatruar folk of what had been northern Maine a bit heedless and arrogant. Also they’d had him drilling and bully-damning them into shape considerably longer.

“The folk who taught you archery were hunters before the Change,” he said. “Or they learned from such.”

“So?” Ulfhild said.

She was the sole other woman in the war band the original questers were building, dark and built like a barrel, and she’d been having the same problem. The Norrheimers were good shots; their people depended on wild meat for a good bit of their diet. But they weren’t battle-archers as the Clan thought of it, and they tended to think of fighting as mainly an affair of cold steel at arm’s length.

He’d seen fights won where the enemy never got to within twenty yards of a longbow harrow-formation, and that was the way he liked it best. Against horsemen particularly, which the Cutters mostly were in their home ranges.

“Hunters can make do with light staves,” Edain said. “And take their time about a shot. Me dad practiced all his life with the war-bow, yes and made ’em too, for all they had those gun weapons back then. As pastime, and because it’s old in my family, the Aylwards. He taught me-all us Mackenzies-how you draw from inside the bow.”

They looked blank. He took his own weapon and tossed it to Hrolf. “Draw that, big man, and yourself so strong and hearty.”

The big man did; his eyes widened as he pulled it to full draw, grunting a little.

“Heavier than mine! A good deal heavier!”

Edain nodded; he was thick in the shoulders and arms himself, and deep-chested, but of no more than average inches. Asgerd was tall for a woman, and within a finger-width of his height; their eyes were level with Hrolf’s chin. He took the bow back and held it before him, elbows out, one hand on the grip and one on the string.

“This is outside the bow,” he said, pulling.

Then he shifted to a real stance. “This is inside . Push at it. Like you were in a doorway and pushing on the jambs from the inside. Bend your whole body into it. Feel the curve from left hand through your body to your feet and out your right. The bow stave is a spring; make your body a set of levers and springs to push it. Inside the bow, and sit into the draw.”

He did, twisting and sinking down a little.

“You look like you’re drawing with the weight of your arse,” Ulfhild said, and laughter barked.

Edain grinned himself. “But it works.”

“Maybe with an arse like yours.”

“Ah, well, y’need a heavy hammer to drive a long nail,” Edain said cheerfully, and there was another laugh.

The Mackenzie bow-captain put the snap back into his voice: “Try it! Right hand past your ear, past the hinge of your jaw. Open your chest right out, that uses your back muscles-they’re stronger than your arms.”

They did, and Asgerd’s eyes went wide. “I can hold it! Long enough to shoot. . but it makes aiming harder.”

“Don’t aim! Aiming’s for beginners. Don’t look at the arrow at all. Look at where you want to hit. Think the shaft home-and once it’s clear of the bow, don’t think of it at all. Shift to your next at once. You only get one try at a deer, and then it runs away. Men are different. They come at you .”

He turned. . and suddenly a shaft was in the air. Two more followed before the first hit in the driftwood log a hundred and fifty paces down the beach: tock-tock-tock in the hard sea-bleached wood.