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"Fifty-pound draw at least, twelve aimed shafts a minute, and able to hit a man-sized target at a hundred yards eight times in ten."
"Fifty's a bit light for a war bow," Hordle said.
Sam Aylward shrugged. "A heavier draw's a better draw, but fifty's useful enough-I've seen a bow that weight put an arrow all the way through a bull elk at a hundred paces, and break ribs going in and going out. Which wouldn't do a man any good, eh?"
Chuck nodded. "And that's the minimum, of course; the average is around eighty. Nearly everyone hunts for the pot these days, what with the way deer and wild pigs have gotten to be pests, and absolutely everyone knows there's times your life is going to depend on shooting fast and straight."
Hordle grunted, drawing and loosing. The arrow whacked home, and a chunk of the fir target weakened by multiple impacts broke off and went out of sight.
"Well, you've more fighting to do here than folk back in England," he said. "There's the Brushwood men, but they're not much more than a bloody nuisance unless you're up on the edge of cultivation north of London."
Aylward sighed and shook his head; he'd been here in Oregon at the time of the Change, and there hadn't been any news from the Old World until the Lorings and Hordle arrived on a Tasmanian ship before this last Beltane. It was still a wrench, visualizing southern England as a pioneer zone, a frontier wilderness where a bare six hundred thousand survivors fought encroaching brambles, hippo roamed the Fens, wolves howled in the streets of Manchester, and tigers gone feral from safari parks took sheep even on the outskirts of Winchester, the new capital.
"And of course there's the odd dust-up with the Moors, or the wild Irish when we have to help out Ian's Rump over in Ulster," Hordle said slyly, in the next interval in their shooting. "There's a joke for you-the Change and all, and we're still having problems with the Provos."
"Better not mention that too often among Mackenzies," Aylward said. "Half the folk in our territory here have hypnotized themselves into believing they're cousins of Fi
"Not me," Chuck Barstow said. "English and German in my family tree, plus a couple of Bohunks, a trace of Canadian French and a little Indian way back. And Judy's Jewish-or Jewitch, as she likes to put it."
"At least you don't try putting on a brogue, Chuck. Every second kiltie these days does, or tries to rrrrrroll their r's as if they were from Ayrrrrshire."
He went on to Hordle: "We still get a fair count of plain old-fashioned bandits now and then, too, which keeps everyone on their toes. Plenty of places aren't doing as well as us, just scraping by, and east of the mountains there's always fighting, all of which gets us a yearly crop of broken men too angry to beg but hungry enough to steal."
"And you've got Arminger waiting up in Portland," Hordle said. "After Sir Nigel and I had the pleasure of his hospitality for weeks, I'd have to agree you've got a roit nasty old piece of work there."
Chuck Barstow nodded grimly. He'd lost an adopted son in a skirmish with the Protector's men only the summer past. Then his face lightened.
"Look!"
The dogs had strayed off a little while the men moved around the pasture shooting; the beasts were far too well trained to get in front of an archer without permission. Now the three archers could hear a frenzy of barking from across the road to the south, down in the alder and fir woods that lined Artemis Creek. An explosion of wings came seconds later, and a gabbling, honking sound as a quartet of Canada geese came out of the willows, thrashing themselves into the air on their broad wings with long necks stretched out in terror. The birds had bred beyond belief in recent years; they were a standing menace to the crops: and very tasty, done right.
"You first, Chuck!" Aylward called jovially.
The Armsman held the draw for an instant, still as a statue except for the minute movement of his left arm, then let the string roll off the gloved fingers of his right hand. Snap as it struck the bracer, and then one of the geese seemed to stagger in midair, folding around itself and dropping like a rock.
That only took an instant, but the birds were rising fast. Aylward shot twice, the arrows disappearing in the murk as they rose, and another two of the big birds fell as if the air beneath their wings had turned to vacuum.
"Too late, Little John," Aylward taunted; the last was nearly out of sight. "Too late!"
Hordle made a wordless sound, then shot. The dusk was falling, but they could see that the goose stumbled as if it had hit a bump in the air, before circling down with a broken-winged flutter.
"Not so late as all that, Samkin," Hordle said smugly.
"Tsk, Little John. Nobody taught you to finish 'em off?" He shot as he spoke, and the bird fell limp the last hundred feet to hit the grass with an audible thump.
"Aylward the Archer!" Chuck Barstow said with good-natured mockery. "Showoff!"
A dog ran up, wagging its tail and dropping a goose at Aylward's feet. Collecting the others took a few minutes, and finding all the arrows they could.
"Sorry, little brothers," Chuck said, making a sign over the birds when they had the bodies laid out in a row. "But we need to keep our gardens and grain safe, and we have to eat. Cernu
Aylward murmured polite assent, and then they trimmed a sapling from the hedgerow and headed back towards the walls of Dun Fairfax with the stick thrust between the birds' trussed feet; four big geese came to a considerable weight.
"Good eating, these," Hordle said, smacking his lips. "Hang them for a bit, roast them with bread-and-nut stuffing, some mushrooms in it, and some bacon grease on the outside-"
"Andy and Diana would like a couple for the celebration di
At Aylward's shudder, he went on: "Come on, Sam, that many pipers : it'll be a sight and sound to behold!"
"So's a pig with its arse on fire," the older man said dourly, and Hordle's laughter boomed out like artillery.
Chapter Four
Mithrilwood, Willamette Valley, Oregon
December 17th, 2007/Change Year 9
P erfect, Eilir Mackenzie said in Sign.
There were a dozen others here in the woods with Juniper Mackenzie's daughter; her anamchara -soul-sister-Astrid Larsson, and half a score of their Dunedain Rangers. Those were youngsters who'd joined them in what was first more than half play, a chance to ramble and hunt, and then turned serious over the years. She and Astrid were the eldest of those at twenty-three; the youngest here was sixteen-year-old Crystal, a refugee from the Protectorate. They'd saved her and her family from a baron's hunters and hounds this last spring, just as their original oath demanded, the one they'd sworn back at the begi
The other two with them were Alleyne Loring and Little John Hordle, both a few years older than the Dunedain leaders, but still young men.
This will make a perfect Yule Log, Eilir went on. If we can get it through the door.
The log had been bigleaf maple, growing on the side of the canyon; it had fallen whole as it came down, pulled out of the rocky soil by its own weight and falling across a basalt boulder a few feet above the root-ball. Bigleaf maple was like stone itself, useful for furniture or tool handles or fancy carving and yielding a pleasant, sweet sap in spring. This one had fallen about a year ago, to judge by the state of the wood; it was grown with moss and shelflike fungi and the bark had peeled away, but the feel was still solid when she stamped her boot on it. That meant it would be hard to kindle but would burn long and slow, unlike the fierce, swift heat of Douglas fir or hemlock or the spark-spitting enthusiasm of Ponderosa pine.