it’s done, then?’ Riv said, the words escaping her mouth before she’d realized they were even there, and at the same time she was throwing the bow at Jin. Riv was a little disappointed at the ease with which Jin caught it, a moment’s surprise flashing across the girl’s face even as she stepped forwards and deftly plucked the bow from the air.
Jin held it her hand, studying it with her flat, emotionless face as she twisted it from left to right.
‘This is not fit for firewood,’ she pronounced with a curl of her lip and passed it to a man behind her, an older man, with a beard the colour of iron. Another Cheren warrior handed Jin a curved bow, already strung, and a bag of arrows. Riv’s eyes flickered to Israfil, saw him staring at her and she quickly looked away, back to Jin, who strode forwards a few steps, pulling a handful of arrows from the bag. She nocked one, the others held loosely in the hand that gripped the bow, drew and released in one fluid motion. Even as the arrow was rising high into the air she was drawing the next one, loosing, and then a third. She let the bow drop to her side and stared at Riv, not even watching to see if her arrows would find their target.
Riv did, though, and saw the first slam into the chest of the same target Riv had selected, with her arrow still protruding from its leg. The second arrow took it through the throat, the third piercing what would have been a shoulder, the straw man rocking on its base with the impact of the arrows.
‘You should close your mouth, it is not a becoming look,’ Jin said to her.
Riv just stood there, torn between admiration and respect for the feat of skill she’d just witnessed, and a bubbling anger that didn’t take too kindly to being humiliated. An image of her fist connecting with Jin’s disdain-set jaw flashed through Riv’s mind. It was very tempting. But even through the first tendrils of red mist seeping through her she knew that it was a humiliation she deserved.
Israfil is watching. Show him you have learned a lesson. Show him you have control of your anger.
‘That was …’ She hesitated, her jaw tight and clamping on what she knew she should say. ‘Good,’ she ground out, not quite what she intended, but better than a host of other responses that were filling her mind.
‘Pah,’ Jin said. ‘It is no more than any child of the Cheren could do. Our warriors do the same from the back of a galloping horse. To my shame I am a little out of practice.’
Riv searched for words to answer that, but couldn’t find any, so she just nodded stiffly and walked away.
As she stepped onto the flagstoned road that led from the weapons-field she stopped and looked back. The field was alive with activity, as it always was: different cohorts of troops training in shifts throughout the day. There were giants upon the field, now, sparring with wooden hammer and axe, making the ground tremble, and Ben-Elim swooping and diving in mock aerial combat.
And there was Vald, her friend and, until recently, training partner. He was with the others who had passed their weapons-trial and Long Night. He stood proudly amidst a unit of White-Wings, being drilled on shield wall formations and flanking manoeuvres.
No, not amongst the White-Wings. He is a White-Wing now.
The sight of it twisted a knife in Riv’s gut and she wrenched her eyes away, back to Jin and the others. It looked as if Israfil was showing the two lords from Arcona something of warrior training and life at Drassil.
The Lord Protector was talking to the man Jin had given Riv’s longbow to. Jin’s father, Uldin, Riv presumed. The others were lined up watching riders galloping at targets with sword and spear. As Riv watched, she saw Bleda amongst the crowd, but he wasn’t watching the riders. He was staring right back at Riv. A woman, Bleda’s mother, leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. Riv remembered her well: Erdene, sitting upon her horse, bloody and bowed. She was still clearly a warrior-born, solid and wiry as a twisted rope, head shaved clean except for a coiled warrior braid.
Riv saw a jolt go through Bleda at Erdene’s whispered words and he leaned away from her, looking into her eyes, his face twitching with more emotion