skilled but for one, who had either gotten lucky with his first shots or else unlucky in the extreme this round. Perhaps it was the man whose lucky shot had so worried Marian—she could not now remember what his face had looked like, or what colors he’d worn.
The archer before her shot well twice, but the third arrow was badly made, and part of the fletching split against his fingers, and he dropped his weapon, dripping blood from his bow hand and cursing.
Such a deadly thing, a feather, Marian thought, fingering the fletching of her discarded arrow in her quiver under her cloak. The force and speed with which an arrow left the bow meant that for an instant, the feathered fletching could cut through flesh like a hot blade through rendered fat.
Marian stepped to the line and drew without pause.
Lads in their first growth, men driven to poaching in their declining years, ladies striving to perfect their airs and graces—they all made the same mistake when they first began to learn archery. Marian had done it too. The instinct was to pause with bow drawn, to look then at the target, to adjust the body, the shoulders, the fingers, even the lips, as if an ounce of extra concentration would lend some desperate intent to the arrow’s path.
They sought control. They sought it in the jerk of their hand when they tried to pluck the string instead of release it; they sought it in the white-knuckled grip of a bow that would settle in their palm effortlessly if they could but let it; they sought it in the bracing of a dozen different tiny muscles preparing to flinch at the force of the bowstring’s release. It had taken Marian years to understand all the cares she wore when she tried to perfect her archery, cares that intruded upon her skill. It had taken her years to realize perfection was the wrong goal.
An experienced archer knew her shot before she drew. Before she put the arrow to the string even, maybe before she ever picked up a bow, back when she was a child, when she first thought to prove she was as skilled as any boy might be.
The soul knew the target. All Marian had to do was welcome the bow to herself, let it become her heart and the arrow her voice, and then step out of the way.
There could not have been more than half a breath before she released the first arrow, yet she could hear a voice, distant, somewhere to the left.
That’s him, said the voice. That’s him. I know him, the way he stands, the height of him, how he draws—that’s him.
She could not have said how she heard it above the din of the crowd, how that cold voice, quickened with agitation, came to her ears uncorrupted by those around it. It was as if Gisborne were speaking for her ears alone.
Let me go—in God’s name, I would know him anywhere. Let me go, now, before he . . .
The first arrow silenced the crowd when it struck with icy precision. The second, only a breath later, left a resounding thud in the quiet that followed the first. The third splintered the second, so close, its point sheared fletching from shaft and left a fine shower of feathered strands drifting toward the ground.
All landed within seconds of each other. Marian stayed there, bow at arm’s length, not lifting her head until the rain of fletching had settled. The leather of the archer’s glove was like a kiss on her cheek, warm from the caress of the bowstring.
One voice, a mighty, thundering, bellowing whoop, broke the silence half a heartbeat before the rest of the crowd erupted. Bodies rushed her way, voices screamed approval and awe and delight. The first to reach her was a massive tree of a man, and only when he grasped at her shoulders and pushed her downward did she half realize, half remember that it was Little John, leading the distraction they’d agreed on in advance.
Marian dropped to her knees and let go of her bow, leaving it in the grass under John’s feet, and turned. A pair of vermilion leggings stood out among the sea of gray and brown. Scarlet, she thought, breath hissing in a giggle that would have betrayed her as a woman in any guise, had she not been so thoroughly drowned out by the roaring crowd. She crawled toward the leggings, and they made