The Royal Ranger

Seventeen

Maddie was practising with her sling. It was a week since her first session and now Will had her working at it every day. First she would spend an hour with the bow. Then another with the knives. They would break for lunch and then Will would set her to practising the sling in the afternoon.

She was still using the five old helmets as targets, but each day, Will moved the poles so that they always formed a different pattern.

“No good getting to rely on one particular set of angles and distances,” he told her and she conceded the point. Her accuracy was improving. These days, she could usually manage to hit all five helmets three out of four times. But the perfect score that Will insisted on still managed to elude her.

She had noticed an interesting phenomenon. With each set of five shots, as she hit target after target, the nervous strain increased and her muscles began to tighten on that all-important final shot. As a result, she tended to rush the shot, to try to get it over with as quickly as possible. The usual result was a miss.

She mentioned this to Will and he nodded.

“It’s a natural reaction,” he said. “You can see that perfect score looming and the nerves begin to build up. Try to control it. Relax. Don’t rush. We’ll work on your speed later, but at this stage, it’s better to take a little longer and hit every target, rather that rush through it and miss one.”

She was on her second set of five shots. Her first sequence had been perfect. Five casts for five solid hits. She had followed that up with four more hits and was now on her fifth. She paused, allowing her breathing to settle. She could feel the excitement, the temptation to rush and get it done with. But she resisted.

Better to hit the enemy late than miss him entirely, she thought to herself. She glanced covertly at Will. He was sitting to one side with his back against a tree, his legs stretched out in front of him. For once, she noticed, he didn’t have that ever-present sheaf of reports or the leather binder. Thinking about it, she realised that it had been some days since she had seen the leather folder. His cowl was up, obscuring his face, and he appeared to be asleep. She was willing to bet that he was anything but.

She took another deep breath, settled herself, eyed the target and forced her muscles to relax. Then she whipped the sling up and over, stepping through with her right foot as she did so.

WHIZZ… CLANG!

The helmet leapt several centimetres in the air under the impact, then settled on the pole again, off centre and wobbling.

“That’s ten shots for ten hits,” she said.

Will said nothing. She looked at him again. He hadn’t moved. She sighed and moved forward to the target posts. Two of the helmets had been knocked off the poles and she replaced them. There were several lead shot lying in the dust and she retrieved them, studying them. They were distorted from the impact with the iron helmets, flattened on one side or with deep gouges scored in them from sharp edges on the helmets. She couldn’t shoot with them again in that condition, but she could always melt them down and re-mould them. She picked them up and placed them in a pocket, then moved back to the shooting line.

She whipped another five shots away, moving smoothly and gracefully, controlling the power and speed of each shot.

Five hits.

She felt excitement mounting in her chest. Three rounds and not a single miss. She had never shot three perfect scores in a row before.

If I miss one now, I’ll ruin it.

The negative thought stole into her mind like a thief. She angrily dismissed it, then paced up and down several times, breathing deeply, shaking her hands and arms to dispel the tightness that was beginning to take them over.

She rolled her neck and shoulders to loosen them. In her mind, she saw herself cast the next shot. She visualised a perfect cast, co-ordinated and accurate and powerful, seeing the blur of the lead shot as it flashed across the clearing to slam into the selected target.

See it. Then do it, Will had told her. She nodded to herself and, very deliberately, set a shot into the sling’s pouch. She advanced her left foot, letting her sling hand fall back and down to her right, the loaded sling swinging gently back and forth like a pendulum.

Will had her shooting at the targets in reverse order with each set of five. The first set, she would shoot at the nearest first, progressing to the most distant. Then for the second round, she would shoot at the furthest target first.

“Let’s assume they’re running away,” Will had said.

Then she would go back to the original order for the third round, then reverse it again.

She was on her fourth round now, so her first target would be the most distant helmet.

The hardest first, she thought, then again pushed the negative thought away. She blanked her mind, concentrated on the target, then smoothly whipped the sling over, releasing at just the right moment.

She knew it was a good shot the minute she released. She followed through to the target, her eyes glued to it.

WHIZZ… CLANG!

The helmet rotated madly and she smiled. From now on, the shots would become progressively easier as the range shortened.

WHIZZ… CLANG!

The second shot struck the helmet square on, the force of the shot actually knocking the pole from its vertical position. She reloaded, turning to stand side on to the next target, which was on the extreme left of the line.

WHIZZ… CLANG!

Another perfect strike. She reloaded. Two to go for a perfect score. Just two more shots. Her breath was coming faster and she felt her heart racing. She forced herself to calm down, relaxing all the muscles in her body, letting herself go limp. Then she loaded, addressed and cast.

WHIZZ-CLANG!

Slightly off centre, but still a killing shot. This time there was virtually no pause between the sound of the shot whirring away then striking the helmet.

Four out of four. Nineteen out of twenty. She had never before been this close to a perfect score. She fumbled in her pouch for another shot, then set it in the sling. She nearly dropped it and she realised her hands were shaking. She breathed deeply once more, pulling the air deep into her lungs, willing her heart to stop beating with excitement, striving for the calm she knew she’d need for the final shot.

And then, unexpectedly, finding it. Her breathing and pulse slowed and she saw that final shot in her mind’s eye. Perfect, powerful and dead on line. Calmly, she took her stance, fixed her gaze on the target. Her instincts and the memory of hundreds of prior shots took over. She could do this. She let her weight settle back on her right foot, then whipped the sling through, letting the loose end slip through her fingers at just the right moment.

WHIZZ-CLANG!

The old helmet had a crack in it and the shot struck square on the fault. It punched a massive rent in the front of the helmet, penetrated, rattled against the back of the iron pot, then fell into the sand below. The helmet was knocked backwards, only staying on the pole by the barest margin.

She heaved in a huge, exultant breath. A wide smile formed on her face and she stepped forward to study the effect of that last, perfect shot.

Four rounds. Twenty hits. A perfect score. Will’s words echoed in her mind: Practise till you don’t get it wrong.

She had done it, she thought. She looked back at her mentor now. He was still leaning against the tree. But his cowl was pushed back and he was regarding her steadily.

“That sounded suspiciously like a perfect score,” he said.

She nodded eagerly. “It was! Twenty out of twenty! I did it at last!”

“Hmmm,” he grunted, screwing up his face. “Well, we’ll see if you can do it again tomorrow.”

He scrambled to his feet and she looked at him, somewhat disconcerted. Was that all? We’ll see if you can do it tomorrow? That was it? She’d practised for weeks to get it right… and that was it?

Will sensed her chagrin and his tone softened somewhat. “Well done,” he said. “But don’t get carried away. I need you to be as good as you can be. And I sense you can be very, very good indeed.”

“Oh,” she said, looking at the ground and scuffing her toe in the dust. It was hard to stay offended when he said something like that. “I suppose so…”

“So, keep practising for the rest of the week. Then we’ll look at getting you a horse,” he said.

She actually took a pace back, looking at him in some confusion.

“I’ve got a horse,” she said. “I’ve got Sundancer, remember?”

Sundancer was the name of the Arridan gelding she’d ridden from Castle Araluen to Redmont. He was stabled in the lean-to behind the cabin, with Tug.

“You need a Ranger horse,” Will said.

Maddie tilted her chin defiantly. “One of those shaggy little ponies like the one you ride?” she said disparagingly. “Sundancer could run rings around one of those four-legged barrels.”

“Is that so?” Will said, his eyes narrowing. “Well, we’ll see. And in the meantime, don’t let Tug hear you say that.”

“Why not? Would his feelings be hurt?” she said sarcastically.

Will inclined his head and didn’t answer for a second or two.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “But more to the point, you might annoy him. And that’s never a good idea.”

He turned away and started walking towards the rear of the cabin. She followed, hesitantly.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Let’s get our horses saddled,” he said. “We’re going for a ride. I can’t wait to see your horse run rings around my four-legged little barrel.”

As she followed him, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she’d just made a mistake.

“We’d better pack some provisions. We’ll be away overnight,” Will called back to her.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Derrylon ford,” he said. “It’s only a day’s ride away. We’ll camp out and come back tomorrow. That should give Sundancer plenty of opportunity to run those rings you were talking about.”

Once again, Maddie had the feeling that she had made a mistake.

A big one.