A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,86
a few moments ago, at the gallop and still putting his arrows in hearts and eyes.
“So why did you shoot him in the leg?”
“To distract you. You were strangling him. I thought you were going to choke the life from him, right there in the sky, in front of a whole field of people. It would hardly have ingratiated you to the folk of Drassil.”
“So, you tried to distract me by shooting Sorch in the leg?”
“Yes.”
Riv roared her laughter, wiped tears from her eyes when she regained some control. “That was thoughtful of you.” She chuckled.
“I must confess, I may have enjoyed it a little,” Bleda said, which set Riv to laughing again.
Jin stared at them with cold eyes, though Erdene was talking to her.
“This fighting in the sky,” Bleda said, “it strikes me that you are limited. You still have to be close to kill. You are missing a great opportunity.”
“What’s that?” Riv asked.
“You should wield ranged weapons. The bow, javelins. You would be death from above. And you should carry a shield.”
“Why?”
“In case Jin wanted to shoot you from the sky.”
That was a sobering thought. Riv had seen Jin’s skill with a bow, and also the way the Cheren Princess looked at her.
“I’m not good enough with a bow,” Riv said. It was her worst weapon. Sword, spear, knife she felt she could match most people, but with a bow…
“You could get better,” Bleda said. “And you haven’t used the right bow. You couldn’t take one of those logs in the air with you.” He nodded towards some of Drassil’s huntsmen and scouts practising on the range. “You would need a Sirak bow, they are more suited to motion, to fighting whilst moving. They are smaller, easier to draw and with a greater range.” He halted his horse again and lifted his bow from its case at his hip, his touch loving. He paused a moment, then offered it to Riv.
She was used to it, had looked after Bleda’s bow secretly for over five years, and had regularly tended to it, but somehow, with Bleda offering the bow to her now, it felt different. She reached out and took it, almost reverently. The bow was light, much lighter than the bows of yew and ash and elm that Drassil’s huntsmen used, and it was balanced differently. She turned it in her hand, saw the layers of wood and horn and sinew.
How do you ever make something like this?
Riv took the bowstring and began to draw.
“No,” Bleda said, shaking his head. “Never draw without an arrow nocked.”
Riv just shrugged and released the string.
What Bleda was saying did make sense. Of course, there was a great advantage to being airborne in battle, but how much greater would that advantage be if you could strike at your enemy but they could not strike at you.
And the Kadoshim—it could be used against them, too.
“Where would I get one of these?” Riv asked.
Bleda shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
They were approaching Erdene and Kol now, Jin talking with them, too.
Bleda slipped gracefully from his saddle, one of his honour guard stepping forwards to take his reins—a dark-haired woman with a limp. Riv recognized her as one of Bleda’s guards who had been at the cabin, so she nodded a greeting.
The warrior nodded in return, her eyes drifting to Bleda’s bow in Riv’s hand.
“Come, try it now,” Bleda said, leading Riv to the toe-mark for a target on the range. A straw man about seventy or eighty paces away.
“Nice and close to start with,” Bleda said.
Riv snorted, thinking he was joking, then saw from his face that he was not.
“Here,” Bleda said, offering her arrows from his belted quiver.
Riv took one.
“No, three or four, like this,” Bleda said, grabbing a fistful and threading them through his fingers, showing Riv how to hold them and the bow at the same time. “Time is the key to success, so why waste time reaching to draw one arrow at a time?”
Fair point.
Clumsily, Riv took one from her left hand and nocked it, started to draw.
“Wait,” Bleda said. “See your target first. Imagine your arrow sinking deep. Think about the range, the poundage of the bow, the wind, balance it all in your mind first. Never take your eye from the target, even as you draw, and aim as you draw. Do not pause at the end of the draw. One motion, draw and release. Draw and release.”