allowed, teasing, “if it was also slow of foot and weakhearted.”
“I do not hunt anymore,” he told her. “But if I did, I’d bring back the biggest, swiftest, strongest stag you’ve ever seen—a genuine Lord of the Forest.”
She regarded him with a curious, bird-bright eye. His use of the term tantalised. Could it be that her pupil was ready for the next step on his journey? “Finish the bow first, Master Bran,” she said, “and then we’ll see what we shall see.”
Completing his work on the bow took longer than he expected. Obtaining the rawhide for the grip, slicing it thin, and braiding it so that it could be wound tightly around the centre of the stave was the work of several days. Making the bowstring proved an even more imposing task. Bran had never made a bowstring; those were always provided by one of the women of the caer.
Faced with this chore, he was not entirely certain which material was best, or where it might be found. He consulted Angharad. “They used hemp,” he told her. “Also flax—I think. But I don’t know where they got it.”
“Hemp is easy enough to find. Given a little time, I could get flax, too. Which would you prefer?”
“Either,” he said. “Whichever can be got soonest.”
“You shall have it.”
Two days later, Angharad presented him with a bound bundle of dried hemp stalks. “You will have to strip it and beat it to get the threads,” she told him. “I can show you.”
The next sunny day found them outside the cave, cutting off the leaves and small stems and then beating the long, fibrous stalks on a flat stone. Once the stalks began to break down, it was easy work to pull the loosened threads away. The long outer fibres were tough and hairy, but the inner ones were finer, and these Bran carefully collected into a tidy, coiled heap.
“Now they must be twisted,” Bran told her. Selecting a few of the better strands, he tied them to a willow branch; while Angharad slowly, steadily turned the branch, Bran patiently wound the long threadlike fibres over one another, carefully adding in new ones as he went along to increase the length. The process was repeated until he had six long strings of twisted strands, which were then tightly and painstakingly braided together to make two bowstrings of three braided strands each.
Determining the length of the bowstring took some time, too. Bran had to string and unstring the bow a dozen times before he was happy with the bend and suppleness of the draw.When he finished, he proclaimed himself satisfied with the result and declared, “Now for the arrows.”
Making arrows was not a chore he had ever undertaken either; but, like the other tasks, he had watched it done often enough to know the process. “Willow is easiest to work, but difficult to find in suitable lengths,” he mused aloud before the fire while Angharad cooked their supper. “Beech and birch, also. Ash, alder, and hornbeam are sturdier. Oak is the most difficult to shape, but it is strongest of all. It is also heavier, so the arrows do not fly as far—good for hunting bigger animals, though,” he added, “and for battle, of course.”
“Each of those trees abounds in the forest,” Angharad offered. “Tomorrow, we can go out together and find some branches.”
“Very well,” agreed Bran. It would be the first time he had been allowed to walk into the forest since the winter ramble that had sent him back to his sickbed. Even so, he did not want to appear too excited lest Angharad change her mind.
“If you think I’m ready.”
“Bran,” she said gently, “you are not a prisoner here.”
He nodded, adopting a diffident air, but inwardly he was very much a prisoner yearning for release.
The next day they walked a short distance into the wood to select suitable branches from various trees. “The arrow tips will be difficult to make,” Bran offered, swinging the axe as they walked along. “If I could get back into the caer, I’d soon have all the arrowheads I needed—arrows, too.”
“What about flint?”
The idea of a stone-tipped arrow was so old-fashioned, it made Bran chuckle. “I doubt if anyone alive in all of Britain still knows how to make an arrowhead of flint.”
Now it was Angharad’s turn to laugh. “There is one in the Island of the Mighty who remembers.”
Bran stopped walking and stared after her. “Who are you, Angharad?”
When she did not answer, he hurried to