As winter came down, locking the eastern part of the forest into a cold season and Kerian into her decision to seek shelter among the outlaws, the startling thought stayed with her and became, through familiarity, less and less startling.
Chapter Eleven
Practice with borrowed bow and targets drawn on trees,” Jerrate ordered her, “but you’re not gonna step a foot out to hunt until y’ve made your own bow, strung it with your own string, and fletched your own arrows. Till then, y’sit and clean the catch.”
So over the weeks of winter Kerian practiced, savaging the trunks of trees with skill that grew from both practice and the return of memories of her Kagonesti childhood. Those memories, it seemed, resided in muscle and bone, in the sure understanding how to draw a bow, how to sight a target. She remembered how to account for even the slightest breeze when preparing to loose her arrow, how to sight only a little bit higher than one would imagine must be correct. With delight, she knew again the swift satisfaction of seeing her arrows hit where she sent them, and if this required yet another set of muscles to become used to long-forgotten work, she stretched these sore muscles with the contentment of one who has earned the right to grin and groan.
All the while, she strove to make her own bow, a thing she’d at first thought impossible without the tools available to even the poorest bowyer in Qualinost. With Jeratt’s guidance, she’d found a fine yew tree, assured herself of the goodness of the wood by testing both its strength and its ability to yield. Under Jeratt’s direction, with borrowed tools crudely made but well kept, Kerian freed the heart of the wood, the strong dark center.
“No one around here uses anything else but yew-heart for bow-wood,” he’d said. Then he’d laughed, as though over a fine joke. “Unless we can get a bow for free.” Stolen bows, reclaimed arrows, a sword taken from the hand of one it had failed to defend-these were free weapons not always the most trusted. “We like the yews from our own hands better.”
Kerian had accepted that for the sake of learning but wondered why a bow crafted in the forest would be better than one made by an elf who had learned his craft from his father. Jeratt had only told her that in time she’d know the difference.
Kerian planed the wood until it became a stave, one long enough for her reach. She bound a stop onto the stave in the middle, a piece of wood no thicker than her finger, only enough for an arrow to rest before flight. This she placed just a bit higher than the exact center of the belly of the bow. In the making of the bow, she learned the names of all the parts.
“Know your weapon,” the half-elf told her, “the way you know a lover. Youil be counting on it like a lover.”
In the making, Kerian learned to twine gut and make a strong bowstring. No one had to tell her how to keep her bow polished and clean and dry. Memory of things like this came back to her with dawning delight. Over the weeks of winter, she studied the craft of arrow making until she began to know it for an art-the making of the slender shaft, the crafting of the deadly point. She learned to survey closely the small bodies of the fowl she had to clean and to salvage especially the feathers of geese for fletching her arrows.
A drop of blood sprang from her finger, splashing onto the white snow. With all she had learned, and that had been much, Kerian had not managed to learn the art of fletching.
“It’s because you’re slitting the arrow too wide,” Jeratt told her scornfully, around a mouthful of breakfast. “Y’got no patience here, Kerian. Here’s where you need it” Swiftly he reached across the fire and snatched the failed arrow from her hand. He tossed it into the fire and handed her another naked shaft. “The arrow’s always going to bite your finger when you try to fletch into slits too wide. Try again.”
The stink of burning feathers stung her nose. Kerian took out a small-bladed knife and began the work of etching the slits the feathers would sit in. Too narrow, the feathers would fail to settle, too wide …well, she knew about that already.
Around them, outlaws came and went, men and women going about the business of hunting, fishing, and trapping. Some had other missions, and now and then one would call Jeratt aside. These conversations were short, out of Kerian’s hearing. They always resulted in a handful of outlaws drifting out of the basin, up the hill and away from the falls.
Once, when they came back, she’d noted their flush of victory. A ringing pouch of steel coin hung at a hip, an ornately decorated sword over the back of another, and two pairs of gleaming leather boots roped and slung round the neck of a third. Later she learned that two Dark Knights lay dead in the forest, ambushed and killed by these outlawed elves.
A black cock feather slipped neatly into the top slit; Kerian did not stop to rejoice. She settled in the two gray hen feathers on either side. As though casually, she lifted the arrow to inspect it. Jeratt watched a moment, then snatched it from her hand.
“What?” she demanded. “It’s perfect!”
“Maybe for someone else.” He held it close to the snapping fire. “But shouldn’t Kagonesti choose white feathers in winter?”
Kerian lunged and grabbed back her arrow. She jerked her chin at the feathers and said, “I’ll do that when your hunters fetch me white geese.”
Jeratt’s laughter rang around the stony basin. Here and there, outlaws looked up to see what amused him.
“All right then, Kerianseray of Qualinost. The snowy geese are gone away to warmer places now, but you go fletch yerself a full quiver of arrows, and day after tomorrow we’ll go see if we can find something else to take down and make you a hunter.”
Wind blew a scattering of old snow across the stony distance between Kerian and Jeratt. The wind bit her cheeks, stung the tips of her ears red. She wore a tight-sleeved, long-cuffed bleached woolen shirt, which she had got from one of the smaller men in exchange for first cut of whatever she brought down this day. Her coat of tanned elk hide, warmly lined with the beast’s own fur, came from an end of autumn raid on a trader’s cart headed into Qualinost. Had they been outlanders or Knights, the traders would have fared hard, but the man and his two sons were elves, and so Jeratt’s outlaws left them roughed up and bruised, one a little cut, and all angry.
“Ought to know better than to bring that kind of thing through here,” Jeratt had laughed, displaying the plunder. “Outlaws all over the Qualinost road. Didn’t the fools know that? Nice of ‘em, though, to come by with supplies.”
Warmly outfitted, still Kerian shivered and longed to slip her stiffening fingers into the sleeves of her coat for warmth, hut she did not. A silver ribbon of water streamed between her and Jeratt, leaping over rocks and lapping the dark lines of mud at either side. The mud on both sides of the water was churned by tracks, the marks of a deer’s passage, Kerian had said upon spotting them. Jeratt had nodded agreement and positioned her deep in shadow on one side of the stream, himself concealed on the other, and said no more.
Wind-whipped, Kerian watched the stream. A blue kingfisher darted down and came up with a flash of silver in its beak. In the forest, a jackdaw called, its raucous voice drowning out smaller birds, and another answered. Kerian did not so much as glance in the direction of the sounds. She was held in aching stillness by the thought of Jeratt’s mockery, his own jackdaw laughter should she so much as shift her weight from one foot to another.
“Dancey-footed folk go hungry,” he’d snarled the first time he’d seen her do that. “Find your place and stay.” He sounded like Dar when he said that. She could almost conjure up a memory of the ancient days when he let her come along while he hunted. She had not hunted to kill then-in those days she was just learning her bow skills-but here, in this place far from home, she heard an echo of Dar’s gruff tones and frustration with her impatience.