Oakleaf Bearers

26

W ILL CALLED THE LAST GROUP OF TEN MEN FORWARD TO THE firing line. The preceding group moved to the rear of the waiting ranks and sat down to watch. He was working the men in small groups at this stage. That gave him a manageable group to work with as he tested their ability to follow his orders and shoot at a predetermined elevation.

"Ready!" he called. Each man took an arrow from the bin in front of him and nocked it to the string. They stood ready, their heads turned toward him, waiting for his next order.

"Remember," he said, "don't try to judge the shot yourself. Just go to the position I call, make a full draw and a smooth release when I call it."

The men nodded. Initially, they hadn't liked the idea of having their shooting controlled by someone as young as Will. Then, after Halt had encouraged his apprentice to give a demonstration of high-speed pinpoint shooting, they had reluctantly agreed to the system Will had devised.

Will took a deep breath, then called firmly: "Position three! Draw!"

Ten arms holding bows rose to a position approximately forty degrees from the horizontal. Will quickly glanced down the line to see that each man had remembered the correct position. He'd been drilling the four different elevations into them all day. Satisfied, and before the strain of holding the bows at full draw became too great, he called:

"Shoot!"

Almost as one, there was a rapid slither of released bowstrings and a concerted hiss of arrows arcing through the air.

Will watched the small flight of shafts as they arced upward, then nosed over and plunged down to bury themselves up to half their length in the turf. Again he called to the waiting line of men: "Position three, ready!"

As before, the ten men nocked arrows to the strings, waiting for Will's next call.

"Draw:shoot!"

Again there was the slithering slap of released bowstrings hitting the archers' arm guards, and the sound of the wooden shafts scraping past the bows as they were hurled into the air. This time, as the arrows came down, Will changed his command.

"Position two:ready!"

The line of left arms holding the bows extended and tilted up to a thirty-degree angle.

"Draw:shoot!"

And another ten-shaft volley was on its way. Will nodded to the ten men, who were watching him expectantly.

"All right," he said. "Let's see how you did."

He began to pace across the open field, followed by the ten men who had just shot. There were markers set out down the middle of the field, marking 100, 150 and 200 meter distances. Position three, with the bow arm elevated forty degrees from the horizontal, should have equated to the 150 meter marker. As they approached that marker, Will nodded with satisfaction. There were sixteen arrows slanting up from the turf within a ten-meter tolerance of the mark. Two had gone long, he noticed, and two more had dropped short. He studied the long shots. The shafts were numbered so that he could assess how each member of the shooting line had performed. He saw now that the two overshoots belonged to two different archers.

Moving back to the arrows that had undershot the target, he frowned slightly. The arrows were both marked with the same number. That meant the same archer had dropped his shot short of the mark both times. Will took note of the number, then moved back to view the results of the final volley. The frown deepened as he saw that nine arrows were well grouped, with one falling short by the same margin. He didn't really need to check, but a quick glance showed him that, once again, the same archer had undershot the distance.

He grunted thoughtfully.

"All right!" he called. "Recover your arrows." Then he led the way back to the firing point, the ten men following behind him.

"Who was at number four position?" he asked.

One of the archers stepped forward, hesitantly holding up a hand and looking like a nervous pupil in school. He was a heavyset bearded man of about forty, Will noticed, yet his demeanor showed that he was totally in awe of the young Ranger facing him.

"That was me, your honor," he said. Will beckoned him closer.

"Bring your bow and two or three arrows," he said. The man picked up his bow, and selected two arrows from the bin that stood by his firing position. He was nervous at being singled out and promptly dropped the arrows, scrabbling awkwardly to retrieve them.

"Relax," Will told him. "I just want to check your technique."

The man tried to smile in return. He'd seen they were his arrows that had fallen short and he assumed he was about to be punished. That was the way life went for a slave in Hallasholm. If you were told to do something and you didn't do it, you were punished. Now the brown-haired youth who was directing the session was grinning at him and telling him to relax. It was a novel experience.

"Take a stance," Will told him, and the man stood side-on to the firing range, left foot extended, left hand holding the bow at waist height.

"Position three," Will said quietly, and the man assumed the position that had been drilled into him all the previous day, his left arm holding the bow at forty degrees-almost maximum distance. Will studied him. There seemed to be little wrong with the man's stance.

"All right," he said. "Draw, please."

The man was using too much arm muscle and not enough of his back muscles to draw the bow, Will thought. But that was a minor fault and the result of long habit. There would be no way of changing that in the time they had left.

"And:shoot."

There it was, Will thought. A fraction of a second before the man released his shot, he relaxed the draw length slightly-letting the arrow ease down a little before actually letting his fingers slip from the string. That meant that at the moment of release, the arrow was at something less than full draw, which in turn meant it was receiving less than the full power of the bow behind its flight. Halt and Will had tested all the bows to make sure they were similar in draw weight and the arrows were all exactly the same length to ensure results were as consistent as possible. The main cause for variation would be little technical errors like this one.

He looked down the range to where the colored flights of the arrow were visible against the brown, sodden grass of the spring thaw. As he had suspected, it was short again.

Will explained the reason for the problem to the man, seeing from the surprised expression that he had no idea that he was relaxing the draw at the crucial moment.

"Work on it," he told him, giving him an encouraging slap on the shoulder. Halt had impressed on him the fact that a little encouragement in matters like these went a great deal further than scathing criticism. Will had been surprised when Halt had put him in charge of the archers' training. Even though he knew he'd be directing the archers during the battle, he'd assumed that Halt would supervise their training. But the Ranger had repeated his earlier sentiment.

"You're the one who'll be directing them once we're fighting. It's as well they get used to following your orders from the start."

Will remembered another piece of advice the Ranger had given him. "Men work better when they know what you have in mind," he told the young apprentice. "So make sure you tell them as much as possible."

He stepped up onto a raised platform that had been placed here for the purpose of addressing the entire group.

"We'll break for today," he said in a raised voice. "Tomorrow we'll shoot as one group. So if I've picked any technical faults in your shooting today, practice getting rid of them before the evening meal. Then get a good night's rest." He started to turn away, then turned back, remembering one thing more. "Good work, all of you," he said. "If you keep this up, we're going to give those Temujai a very nasty surprise."

A growl of pleasure rose from the hundred men. Then they broke off, heading back for the warmth of the halls and lodges. Will realized that it was later than he'd thought. The sun was touching the tops of the hills beyond Hallasholm and the shadows were lengthening. The evening breeze was chilly and he shivered, reaching for the cloak that he'd hung from the platform railing as he'd directed the shooting.

A half dozen boys had been assigned to help and without orders from him they gathered the arrow bins and arrows, putting them under cover in one of the store sheds that fronted the practice field. Will couldn't help noticing the admiring glances they cast his way as they went about their work. He was only a few years older than they were, yet here he was, directing a force of one hundred archers. He smiled to himself. He wouldn't have been human if he hadn't enjoyed their hero worship.

"You look pleased with yourself," said a familiar voice. He turned and realized Horace must have approached while he had been talking to the men. He shrugged, trying to act diffident.

"They're coming along quite well," he said. "It's been a good day's work."

Horace nodded. "So I noticed," he said. Then, in a worried tone, he continued, "Evanlyn hasn't been here with you, has she?"

Will looked up at him, instantly on the defensive. "What if she has been?" he asked, an argumentative tone creeping into his voice. Instantly, he saw the worried look clear from Horace's face and realized he'd misinterpreted the reason for his friend's question.

"Then she has been here?" Horace said. "That's a relief. Where is she now?"

Now it was Will's turn to frown. "Just a moment," he said, putting a hand on Horace's muscular forearm. "Why is it a relief? Is something wrong?"

"Then she hasn't been here?" Horace asked, and his face fell again as Will shook his head.

"No. I thought you were being:you know:" Will had been about to say jealous, but he couldn't quite manage it. The idea that Horace might have something to be jealous about had too much of a sense of boasting about it. He saw instantly that such thoughts were far from Horace's mind. The apprentice warrior had hardly seemed to notice Will's hesitation.

"She's missing," he said, in that same worried tone. He cast his hands out and looked around the empty practice field, as if he somehow expected to see her appear there. "Nobody's seen her since midmorning yesterday. I've looked everywhere for her, but there's no sign."

"Missing?" Will repeated, not quite understanding. "Missing where?"

Horace looked up at him with a sudden flare of asperity. "If we knew that, she wouldn't be missing, would she?"

Will put up his hands in a peacemaking gesture.

"You're right!" he said. "I didn't realize. I've been a little tied up trying to get these archers organized. Surely somebody must have seen her last night. Her room servants, for example?"

Horace shook his head miserably. "I've asked them," he said. "I was out on patrol most of yesterday myself, keeping an eye on the Temujai approach. We didn't get back in to Hallasholm till well after supper time, so I didn't realize she wasn't around. It was only this morning when I went to find her that I found out she hadn't been in her room last night and that nobody had seen her today. That's why I was hoping that maybe you'd:" The sentence tailed off and Will shook his head.

"I haven't seen hide nor hair of her," he told his friend. "But it's ridiculous!" he exclaimed after a short silence. "Hallasholm isn't a big enough place for someone to go missing. And there's nowhere else she could have gone. Let's face it, she can't have simply disappeared:can she?"

Horace shrugged. "That's what I keep telling myself," he said morosely. "But somehow, it looks as if she has."