Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [62]
“Ready!” he called. Downrange, Suli and Devlin stood one to either side of the target, an arm’s length away. Both said, “Here.” Stammel aimed, Arcolin could see, between the voices. He pulled the trigger. The bolt skimmed over the top of the target.
“Two fingers above the target,” Devlin called.
Stammel had re-spanned the bow and lifted it. Again it was level. “Ready,” he said. The other two called, and again he shot. The bolt bounced off the middle of the target. He spanned the bow again and this time shot without waiting for the others to call. The bolt hit the middle again.
Silence. Arcolin could not believe what he had just seen.
“Well?” Stammel said finally.
“I think some people will be regretting that bet,” Arcolin said. “Gird’s arm, man, I didn’t think anyone could do that. How—?”
“I’m not sure,” Stammel said. “When I found I could walk and then make my way around the grange, I remembered that even on dark nights I had good balance. I always knew where my arms and legs were, when I was upright and when I wasn’t. Siger used to say that crossbows were the lazy man’s bow—you remember he said a blind man with one hand could shoot a crossbow. Then it was a jest, but I thought … if I could figure out a way to hold it level without someone having to show me each shot … and then there were the redroots.”
“Redroots?”
“I was slicing redroots a few days ago, and Dev made some awful joke. I threw a redroot at him—just joking, you know—and it hit him square, he said. I threw at his voice. Turned out I could throw to any of them, though I couldn’t catch. I could throw to someone I knew was between two voices, who said nothing. Well, if I could aim a redroot, why not a crossbow?”
“What about range—what will you do there?”
“Practice. The sound’s different enough—I know how far away you are, Captain. I need practice to understand how much over the sound to aim for different distances, but—I can help, sir, in a fight, and not be helpless.”
“Yes, but—none of our people will be out there to give you a direction and range. You could hit one of them by mistake.”
“Not if I shoot beyond all their voices, at distant enemy voices. I know I’m not likely to hit anyone, but I can certainly scare them.”
Arcolin still had doubts, but this was Stammel, after all.
By the end of that day’s practice, Stammel was hitting the target four times out of five at a distance twice as far as at first. The others, using crossbows without the twigs to signal when the prod was level, did worse. Stammel was grinning when he came back, one hand lightly on Bald Seli’s shoulder and his crossbow hanging from the other.
Over the next days, Devlin helped Stammel pick those who were learning fastest, and they were assigned to more practice sessions. The armorer devised a better way to attach Stammel’s levelers: iron rods with the ends beaten into smooth flanges set into the stock. As they all improved, Stammel managed to maintain a slight lead on them; Arcolin realized that would not continue forever, but they were all proficient enough to be useful in a fight, and two or three of the best were close enough to Stammel’s level to make a contest fair.
The days shortened perceptibly, though the southern heat lingered; Arcolin thought of the coronation that had happened tens of days ago in Tsaia and wondered what it had been like. He could not imagine Dorrin as a duke, really. Or the young prince as a king, for that matter; and he must attend Autumn Court. He began counting how many days it would be, how soon he would have to leave the south to make it there in time.
River Road, Tsaia
Marshal-General Arianya rode steadily westward, glancing aside now and then at her most unexpected paladin. If, indeed, Paks was in any way her paladin despite being on the list in Fin Panir.
Paks at Kieri Phelan’s northern stronghold had been surprise enough—alive and well, with the powers a paladin should have—after the way in which she had left Fin Panir. That had been miracle upon miracle,