to hurt. Then the fog parted and Legon saw a flash of bright blue.
He sat bolt upright in his bed, covered in cold sweat from head to foot. He could almost hear his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. He was trembling almost uncontrollably and his breathing was heavy and labored. The dream was slipping through his memory like sand. Soon he remembered none of it and began to calm down. “It was just a dream, nothing more,” he said in a whisper. “You’re fine. Go back to sleep”.
He lay back down, more tired than he had been when he went to bed. His legs ached as if he’d been running. The room was dark. He felt himself drifting again. He soon fell asleep and by morning would not remember even waking up in the night.
* * * * *
Legon woke to the warmth of the sun’s rays on his face. He slowly sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms above his head. “Hmm, I feel tired still. I must not have slept well,” he thought with a yawn. He lay back down and considered going to sleep again, but an image of Sasha and a bucket popped in his head. “Maybe I should get up,” he said aloud to himself.
He got out of bed, walked over to the dresser, and pulled out a blue shirt and brown pants. He pulled on some socks and boots and walked out of his room into the hall. Sasha’s door was open and he could hear her downstairs. When he got downstairs he could see her flitting around the kitchen, making breakfast and humming to herself. Her red dress spun as she turned to smile up at him. He could tell that she hadn’t slept well last night either, though it didn’t seem to slow her down. Maybe I was snoring really loud last night and kept us both from a good sleep, he thought.
He walked in front of the mirror for his normal pre-day inspection. There was a dark spot on his chin, and for a moment his insides squirmed with excitement. He reached up to feel the stubble… and his fingers slid across his smooth face and smudged a spot of dirt. Feeling stupid, he looked at Sasha in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t seen his mistake. She was too busy scooping eggs onto plates. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“You look tired this morning. I didn’t keep you up snoring, did I?”
She looked up at him, her eyebrows furrowed in thought, and said, as if she was having a hard time remembering, “No, I just had a hard time falling asleep. You weren’t snoring… although I kept hearing you say something like ‘Sasha is the most beautiful girl in Airmelia and so smart and funny and…’ oh, I can’t remember the rest.”
Legon shook his head. “No wonder I’m so tired - I was delirious last night.”
Sasha laughed and said curtly to him, “Rude!”
They sat down and Legon ate his eggs. They were good, but not as good as Sasha’s pies were. After they ate Sasha washed the dishes and took off her apron, then went upstairs to get her money pouch. Legon walked to the space under the stairs to get their bows. Kovos was always up for shooting, and they hadn’t gotten the chance yesterday. Legon grabbed Sasha’s hunting bow and his combat bow.
Legon, like most of the men in town, had two bows, one that was for hunting and the other for combat. A hunting bow usually had a fifty to sixty pound draw weight on them, perfect for bringing down all but the largest animals but underpowered against armored targets. Chain mail was expensive, so very few people had it, but bandits and soldiers that didn’t have chain mail wore a thick doublet that was made of layered cloth and leather. The doublet would not be able to stop an arrow cold at close range, but it could from a distance. For a hunting bow to penetrate the armor at close range the shooter had to be about ten feet away. It was for this reason that combat bows were significantly stronger.
The average man had a bow with a draw weight of one hundred and sixty to one hundred and eighty pounds, which gave it an effective range of about two hundred yards and the power to go through leather armor and punch through chain male from