Mounted sidelong on a platform, the thing would have passed for a fair-sized ballista!
"You throw arrows with a tree?" the ranger scoffed.
Bradwarden's smile didn't lessen a bit "Call 'em arrows," he said evenly, placing his pipes on the ground and hoisting a quiver that would have passed for a sleeping bag for Elbryan, with arrows each as long as the man was tall. "Call
'em spears. But if ye get hit by one, know that ye'll call 'em death!"
Elbryan didn't doubt that for a minute.
Bradwarden led the way out of the area to an open meadow upon which he had placed a series of six targets; each a different distance from the appointed line.
"We'll be starting close and working our way to the back," the centaur explained. "First one to miss a target is the loser."
Elbryan considered the rules, so befitting the centaur's blunt style.
Normally in a test of archery, each contestant would be granted a specified number of shots, with the best total score serving as the measure. With Bradwarden, though, it was a simple challenge of hit or miss.
Elbryan stepped up and let fly first, confident that the first target, no more than thirty paces would pose no difficulty. His arrow slapped into the target near the bull's-eye, a straight, level shot.
Without a word of congratulations, Bradwarden lifted his monstrous bow and drew back. "Ye only stung the giant," the centaur remarked, them let fly. His great bolt thudded into the target near Elbryan's arrow and overturned the whole three-legged thing. "Now," the centaur declared, "the beast is properly killed."
"Perhaps I should shoot first at each target," Elbryan said dryly.
The mighty centaur laughed heartily. "If ye don't," he agreed, "then ye'
ll be aiming high for the clouds and hoping yer bolt drops straight down on the mark, don't ye doubt!"
Before the centaur had even finished, Elbryan's second arrow thudded dead center into the next target, ten paces farther away than the first.
Bradwarden hit it as well, and again the target fell over: They were up to the fifth target in no time, the first three having been knocked flat, and the fourth still standing, for Bradwarden's great arrow, though true in aim, had not pushed it all the way over. This fifth target, some hundred yards away, was the first for which Elbryan had to elevate his shot. Not much, though; so strong was Hawkwing that the arrow's flight was barely arched, cutting a sure line through the gentle wind to strike perfectly.
The centaur, for the very first time, seemed honestly impressed. "Good bow," he muttered, and then he took aim and let fly.
Elbryan clenched a fist, thinking himself victorious as he marked the flight.
Bradwarden's arrow did hit the target, though, barely catching hold in its outer edge, as far to the left of center as
it could go.
Elbryan turned a wry gaze on the centaur. "A bit of luck," he remarked.
Bradwarden pawed hard at the ground. "Not so," he insisted in all seriousness. "I aimed for the beast's weapon hand."
"Ah, but if it was left-handed . . ." the ranger replied without hesitation.
Bradwarden's smile was gone. "Last shot," he said evenly. "Then we'll be picking out farther trees to substitute for targets."
"Or leaves," Elbryan replied, and lifted his bow.
"A bit too much," the centaur said suddenly, and the ranger eased the tension on his bowstring, having almost lost his concentration and the shot.
"Too much?"
"Too much faith in yerself," the centaur clarified. "Next, yell be wanting to wager."
Elbryan paused and thought hard on that line, then looked back to consider the centaur's last shot, so near a miss. Or had it been planned that way? he had to wonder. Was Bradwarden setting him up? Certainly the centaur was a fine archer, but was he even better than Elbryan had recognized?
"Me pipes'll be needing a new bag," Bradwarden mused. "Not a difficult chore, but a dirty one taking a hide."
"And if I win?" Elbryan asked. His eyes betrayed his idea, roaming to the centaur's strong back.
Bradwarden started to laugh, as if the notion that Elbryan might win was absurd. The centaur stopped abruptly, though, and glared hard at his human companion. "I know ye're thinking ye might be riding me, but if ever ye try, I'll be giving human flesh another taste."
"Just to End-o'-the-World," Elbryan clarified. "I wish to be there and back in a hurry."
"Never!" the centaur declared. "Only a maiden I'd let ride, and then she'd be letting me," he finished with a lewd wink.
Elbryan didn't even want to conjure the image.
"What, then?" he asked. "I'll wager against you, but the prize must be named."
"I could make ye a real bow," the centaur chided.
"And I could put an arrow up your arse from a hundred paces," Elbryan retorted.
"Big target," the huge centaur admitted. "But what might ye be needing, me friend, not that ye've a chance at winning."
"I already told you," Elbryan replied. "I enjoy my walks, but I fear that I need a faster method to cover the ground about the three towns."
"Ye'll never climb on me back."
"Do you lead the wild horses?" Elbryan asked, surprising the centaur.
"Not I," Bradwarden replied. "That's the work of another." A strange smile came over the centaur, a strange expression as if he had found the solution to some puzzle. "Aye," he said at length, "that'll be yer prize. If lightning hits me arrow — for that's the only way ye'll beat me — I'll take ye to the one who leads the wild herd. I'll take ye, mind ye, but then ye'll make yer own deals."
Elbryan realized that he was being duped, that this prize, in Bradwarden's estimation, was more a punishment. The ranger felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, felt a tingling of trepidation. Who might this leader of the herd be to inspire such uncharacteristic respect from cocky Bradwarden? Along with the realization came an undeniable sense of intrigue, however, and so the ranger agreed.
Up came Hawkwing and off flew the arrow, striking hard on the far distant target.
Bradwarden gave a grunt of respect, then let fly, his arrow, too, hitting the mark.
"Three," said Elbryan, and he put up his bow three times in rapid succession, each bolt flying unerringly.
Bradwarden followed and scored three hits.
"Fourth, fifth, sixth!" Elbryan cried, letting three more shots fly, the first hitting the fourth target squarely, the second striking the fifth —
splitting Elbryan's previous shot on that target — and the last zipping into the final target, dead center.
The centaur sighed, beginning to understand that he had, for the first time, possibly met his match in a human. He got the fourth target easily enough, and then the fifth, but his shot at the last in line skipped off the top of the target and flew away into the brush beyond the far edge of the meadow.
Elbryan smiled widely and clenched a fist. He looked up at Bradwarden and found the centaur eyeing him with an expression he had not really seen from the creature before: respect.
"Ye've got yerself one dragon-killer of a bow, me friend," Bradwarden offered. "And be sure that I've not seen a steadier hand."
"I had the best bowyer," Elbryan replied, "and the best tutors. None in all the world can match the archery of the Touel'alfar."
Bradwarden snorted. "That's because the skinny little folks don't dare to get close to an enemy!" he replied. "Come on then, let us go and get our arrows, and then I'll show ye something fine."
They gathered together their arrows and their belongings and set off at once, the centaur leading Elbryan deep into the forest, past the pine and the caribou moss, down a deep valley, then up its other side. They walked for several hours, speaking little, but with the centaur often lifting his pipes to play. At last, the sun moving low in the western sky, they came to a secluded grove of pines, neatly tended into roughly a diamond shape. It sat on the gentle slope of a wide hill, surrounded on all sides by a meadow of tall grass and wildflowers. Elbryan could hardly believe that he hadn't found this grove before, that his ranger instincts hadn't guided him to a place so naturally perfect, so in tune with the harmony of the forest. This grove — every flower, every bush, every tree and stone, and the trickling brook that crossed it — was something more than the ordinary forests of the region. It was something sacred, something befitting Andur'Blough Inninness, and not of the tainted world of men.
There was some magic here; Elbryan felt that as clearly as he had felt the magic of the elven valley. Reverently, almost as if in a trance, the ranger approached, Bradwarden at his side. They crossed the outer line of thick evergreens into the heart of the grove and found bare paths weaving through the dense undergrowth. Elbryan walked along without speaking a word, as if fearing to disturb the stillness, for not a hint of a breeze came in through that wall of pines.
The path meandered, joining another, then forking three ways. The grove was not large, perhaps two hundred yards across and half again that measure in length, but Elbryan was certain that the paths, if straightened and laid end to end, would cover several miles. He looked back often to Bradwarden for guidance, but the centaur paid him no heed, just followed silently.
They came to a dark, shady spot where the path forked left and right around a great jut of rock covered with a thick patch of short, yellow flowers.
Elbryan glanced both ways, then, figuring that the paths converged just the other side of the boulder, went right. He soon came to the expected joining, and, looking ahead, he almost continued on.
"Not so perceptive for one trained by elves," the centaur remarked, Bradwarden's deep voice shattering the stillness. Elbryan spun around, meaning to hush him, but all thoughts of that, all thoughts of Bradwarden at all, left him as he glanced past the centaur, to the back side of the boulder that had split the path. Elbryan glided back, moving beside the centaur, staring hard at the pile of rocks, eight feet by six and roughly diamond shaped. The ranger glanced all about. They were in the very center of the grove, he realized, and he realized, too, that this cairn was the source of the magic, that the tree-lined borders of the grove seemed to be a reflection of this place.
He went down to one knee, studying the stones, marveling at the care with which they had been placed. He touched one and felt a gentle tingling there, the emanation of magic.
"Who is buried here?" the ranger whispered.
Bradwarden snorted and smiled. "Not for me to tell," he replied, and Elbryan couldn't discern if the centaur meant that he did not know, or that it was not his place to reveal the person's identity.
"Put in the ground by the elves," the centaur said, "when I was no bigger than yerself."
Elbryan looked at him curiously. "And how long ago might that be," he asked Bradwarden, "in the measure of human years?"
The centaur shrugged and pawed the ground uneasily. "Half a. man's life,"
he replied, as exact an answer as Elbryan was going to get.
The ranger let it go. He didn't need to know who was buried here.
Obviously the man, or elf or whatever it might be, was important to the Touel'alfar; obviously they had graced this place, this cairn and the grove that had grown about it, with more than a small measure of their magic. He could be satisfied with that; Bradwarden had promised to show him something fine, and indeed the centaur had fulfilled that pledge.
There remained, however, the matter of Elbryan's prize for winning the archery contest. He looked up at the centaur.
"Ye just keep coming here," Bradwarden remarked, as if reading Elbryan's thoughts, "and yell find the one who leads the horses."
The notion filled the ranger with both excitement and fear. They left the grove soon after, to find an evening meal. Elbryan returned later that night, and then again the next day, but it wasn't until his fourth journey, some two weeks later, after he had returned from his rounds to End-o'-the-World, that he found Bradwarden's payment.
It was a brisk autumn day, the wind whipping though inside the grove, the air remained still — leaves and clouds alike, the puffy white mountains drifting swiftly overhead across the rich blue sky. Elbryan went right to the heart of the grove, paying homage to whoever was buried there, then came back to the edge, wanting to feel the breeze in his face.
Then he heard the music.
At first he thought it was Bradwarden at work with his pipes, but then he realized that it was too sweet, a subtle vibration in the ground and air, a natural song. It didn't increase in volume or intensity, just played on, and Elbryan soon realized it to be a heralding call, the run of hooves and the wind.
He turned and ran along to the southern tip of the grove, though he had no idea of what might be guiding him.
Across the wide meadow, past the flowers and the grass, he saw perfection of form, a huge stallion, milling about the shadows of the distant trees.
Elbryan held his breath as the great horse, shining black except for white on the bottoms of its forelegs and a white diamond above its eyes, came out onto the open field. It was taking his measure, Elbryan knew, though he was not downwind and too far for most horses even to notice him.
The stallion pawed the ground, then reared and whinnied. It came forward in a short burst, a show of strength, then turned and thundered away into the forest.
Elbryan breathed again. He knew the magnificent steed would not return that day, and so he walked away, not in the direction in which the horse had run but back toward Dundalis. He found Bradwarden, at work crafting some devilish arrows, and the centaur's face immediately brightened.
"Welcome back," Bradwarden offered with a chuckle. "I see ye've already been to the grove."