Ranger's Apprentice 12: The Royal Ranger (15 page)

‘Always make sure it’s properly seated before you release the pressure,’ he said. ‘You don’t want it slipping out and the whole thing coming unstuck.’

He studied the string, satisfied that it was seated properly, then released the pressure on the bow stringer. He slipped the wide, padded loop over the end of the bow, removed the cylinder from the other end, and presented her with the weapon, now properly strung and ready for use.

‘That looked kind of difficult,’ she said doubtfully. She had seen the effort he had to make to bend the bow.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not easy. But you’ll learn how to do it.’

She liked the way the bow felt now that it was strung. It was definitely balanced better than before. Tentatively, she pulled back on the bowstring and raised an eyebrow at the resistance. She’d heard archers talk about draw
weights before, but it had meant little to her. Now she could feel how difficult it was to draw back a fifty-pound bow. She had a sudden spasm of doubt. She’d never manage this.

‘It’s a matter of technique,’ Will told her, as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘You’ll need to use the big muscles in your back and shoulders and arms. I’m guessing that when you’ve shot before, you just pulled the string back with your arm?’

She nodded and he gestured for her to take up a shooting position with the bow. She held it at arm’s length and he moved to correct her.

‘Start with the bow hand close to your body, not extended. Then push with your bow hand and pull with the other. That way you’re using the muscles of both arms, not just the string arm.’

She nodded thoughtfully, and brought the bow back close to her body. Then, with a co-ordinated effort, she pushed out and pulled back. The string came back almost two-thirds of its maximum draw before the increasing resistance defeated her. She let it down with a grunt of effort.

‘I can’t do this,’ she muttered.

‘Yes you can.’ Will’s reply was terse and left no room for argument.

She looked at him. If she was expecting any sympathy, there was none to be found. She realised then that if she tried, if she made an honest effort, Will would be understanding and helpful. If she simply decided to give up, it would be a different matter altogether. She took a deep breath and set herself to draw the bow again.

As she began, she heard him say: ‘Think of pushing your shoulder blades together as you push and pull. That gets your big back and shoulder muscles involved.’

She did as he said and this time, she felt the string come back a little further, until her right thumb was a few centimetres from her nose.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now try again and see if you can bring your thumb back to your nose.’

She did, exerting all the strength she could muster in her arms and her back. Fleetingly, her thumb touched against her nose. Then she let the string down again.

She shook her right hand. The string had cut painfully into her fingers as she hauled it back. Will noticed the movement and took something from his pocket, handing it to her.

‘Can be painful, can’t it? Try this.’

‘This’ was a patch of soft leather shaped rather like a small mitten. At the narrow end, a hole was cut in the leather, about the width of a finger. The patch widened out then formed into two pieces – one small, the other larger – with a notch cut between them. He showed her how to slip her second finger through the hole, so that the patch lay along the inner side of her hand. The smaller section corresponded to her first finger. The wider part covered her second and ring fingers. The gap in between separated them.

‘The arrow goes here,’ Will said, indicating the gap. ‘The rest of it protects your fingers from the string.’

She tried it again, pulling the string back part way to experiment. He was right, the leather protected her fingers and she could see how the arrow would sit between them
in the gap – with her forefinger above the nock and her other two fingers below it.

‘Do you use one of these?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘They’re a bit fiddly if you’re in a fight. I have the tips of my gauntlets reinforced. We’ll get some made up for you. But in the meantime, that tab will do nicely. Try it again. Remember, shoulder blades together.’

She raised the bow. Push, pull. Shoulder blades forcing together. Her thumb touched her nose fleetingly and she let the string down.

‘I’m glad to see you know enough not to just release it without an arrow on the string,’ he said gruffly.

She gave him a wan smile. She knew that dry-shooting a bow that way could cause damage to the limbs. ‘Master-at-arms Parker always threatened the direst consequences for any lady who did.’

Will nodded. ‘Good for him. And of course, the more powerful the bow, the more damage can be done. Let’s see how you manage with an arrow.’

There were several arrows in the fold of oilcloth. He took one and handed it to Maddie, nodding with approval as she found the cock feather and set it out from the bow. He remembered how Halt had to teach him even the most basic facts about bows. She clicked the nock onto the string just below the marked nocking point and looked critically at the arrow.

‘It’s a little short,’ she said.

He inclined his head. ‘It’ll be about the right length for you to draw back to your nose. No point in shooting a
longer arrow than you can draw. All you’re doing is adding weight without increasing the thrust behind it.’

She thought about that. It made sense. She took up her stance again, then hesitated.

‘What’s the target?’

Will indicated a hay bale some twenty metres away from them.

‘That should do the job,’ he said. She studied it, nodded and turned side on to it, bow down, arrow nocked to the string. The tight nock held the arrow in place, and the gap in the shooting tab fitted neatly where the nock was, with her index finger above it and her middle and ring fingers below. Much better with the leather to protect her hand, she thought. She began to raise the bow, then stopped.

‘Do you have an arm guard?’ she asked. She saw a slight look of disappointment cloud Will’s face, then it was gone as he turned to rummage among the equipment in the oilcloth. He found a leather cuff and handed it to her. She slipped it over her left arm.

‘A bow like this would hit like a whip without an arm guard,’ she commented.

He grunted and something in his attitude attracted her attention. She looked at him closely.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘The first time you shot one of these, you didn’t wear an arm guard, did you?’

He glared at her and she felt a wicked sense of delight.

‘You didn’t, did you?’ she repeated.

He gestured stiffly at the target. ‘Just get on with your shooting.’

She shook her head in mock disbelief. ‘Boy, you must have been so dumb.’

‘Any time you’re ready to shoot will be fine.’

She set herself into the shooting position and raised the bow. As she did so, she couldn’t resist one more sally.

‘Bet you had one for your second shot.’

‘Get on with it!’ Will snapped at her.

She flexed her shoulder and back muscles, drew the bow as far as she could, sighted quickly and released. The arrow skimmed into the ground a metre before the hay bale.

She frowned, reloaded and shot again. Same result. She looked sideways at Will.

‘What am I doing wrong?’

He inclined his head at her. ‘Oh, do you think someone as dumb as me might be able to tell you?’ he asked in a mock-sweet tone.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. There was no answer to that and she resigned herself to letting him have the last word. When he spoke again, his tone was brisk and businesslike.

‘You’re not used to the weight of the bow and you’re too eager to release it. That means you’re dropping your bow hand as you shoot and the arrow flies low. Hold steady a little longer. Not too long, or your arm will start to tremble. But keep it steady until after you’ve released. Release the arrow and count two, while you hold the bow in its shooting position.’

She tried again, straining to hold the bow steady for a few vital extra seconds. This time, as she released, she saw the arrow streak away and slam, quivering, into the left-hand edge of the bale. She grinned delightedly.

‘Not bad,’ Will said.

She reacted in a scandalised manner. ‘Not bad? Not bad? My third shot ever and I hit the target! That’s better than not bad.’

‘If that had been a man,’ Will told her, ‘you would have grazed his left shoulder. If it had been a knight, he would probably have been wearing a shield there and your arrow would have glanced off while he kept coming.
Not bad
isn’t good enough.
Not bad
can get you killed.’

They eyed each other for a few seconds, she glaring angrily, he with one eyebrow raised in a mocking expression. Finally, he jerked his head at the target.

‘Twenty more shots,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if you can progress to
halfway reasonable.

She groaned softly as she drew another arrow back. Already her shoulders and back were aching.

I shouldn’t have made fun of him, she thought. But the realisation came too late, as it so often does.

THE TWENTY ARROWS
grew into forty. Then Will finally relented and let Maddie rest for the day.

That night, the muscles in her shoulders, back and upper arms ached and cramped as she tossed on her bed, trying to sleep. The strip of light under her bedroom door told her that Will was still awake. After an hour, she rose, tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack, peering through. Her mentor was sitting by the fire, with a sheaf of papers on his knee – reports from other fiefs, she knew. As she watched, he took a sheet and placed it in a leather folder on the side table by his elbow.

‘Could be him,’ Will muttered softly. Then he took up the next report, angling the page so that the candle light struck it directly.

Frowning thoughtfully, Maddie went back to bed.

‘What was that all about?’ she wondered. Somehow, she sensed it would be a mistake to quiz him on the matter.

The next day, after she had completed her housekeeping duties, Will had her at it again. She shot twenty arrows, rested for ten minutes, then shot another twenty. Again, her back and shoulders shrieked with pain. But she gritted her teeth and kept at it. By the end of the week, she sensed that it was becoming a little easier to draw the bow back to the full length of the arrow. Her technique was improving and her muscles were toughening. The pain was still there, but now it was a dull ache, not the searing cramps of the first few days. And it was decreasing with each passing day.

As she practised, she noted Will’s continuing preoccupation with the regular reports from Rangers in other fiefs. He would sit, his back against a tree, scanning new reports as they came in. She knew by now that it was standard practice for Rangers to keep up to date with events around the Kingdom. But she sensed that this was something more than routine. Every so often, he would add a page or two to the growing file in the leather folder.

After two weeks, she found she could draw the bow with relative ease and hold it steady for several seconds. As this happened, she found her accuracy was improving and she was hitting in the centre of the bale more than half the time. Her misses and near misses were becoming less and less frequent.

As he saw her technique and strength growing, Will began to work with her on her accuracy.

‘Don’t try to aim down the arrow shaft,’ he told her. ‘You have to sense where the arrow will go. You need to see the entire sighting picture – the bale of hay, the bow and the arrowhead. Learn where the arrow will fly.’

She frowned. ‘How do I do that?’

‘There’s only one way. You practise. Over and over again, so that aligning the shot to the target becomes an instinctive action. After a while, after seeing enough arrows fly, you’ll instinctively know where to position the bow in the sighting picture. As the range increases, you’ll also need to gauge how much elevation you give the arrow – how far above the target you need to aim to hit the centre.’

Of course, archery wasn’t the only skill she was practising. He also set her to practising with her throwing knife and the saxe knife, using a pine board set against a tree for a target. As she became more proficient in putting the knives into the target from a short range, he moved her back so that she had to judge how to spin the knives twice on their way to the pine board.

At least, she thought, this didn’t leave her with aching, cramped muscles. She had to admit, there was no sound in the world more satisfying than the solid
thunk
of a knife burying its point into the pinewood.

And nothing more frustrating than the vibrating rattle of an inaccurate throw hitting the board side on and bouncing harmlessly into the trees.

There were other lessons, too. Will showed her how the mottled, uneven design of the cloaks they wore helped them blend into the background of the woods around them.

‘The mottling breaks up the regular shape of a person’s body. There’s nothing even. Everything is irregular and random, and the colouring matches the greens and greys of the trees and undergrowth.