Osha stared at the thing.
“It was likely made to fit the handle of a bow carried by our ship’s soldiers,” the greimasg’äh explained. “I did not realize this soon enough.”
He crouched again and retrieved the curved bow he acquired in that long night in the city. With a bit of pressure, he snapped the tube over the back side and around the bow’s handle. “It is not a proper fit, but it will do once it is properly wrapped.”
Brot’ân’duivé settled to the earth, dug in his own pack, and pulled out a long strip of thin black leather. He began by packing the strip’s end in between the tube and the handle with the tip of a stiletto, so that the tube was not loose. Then he set to wrapping and binding the white metal tube around the handle.
Osha settled to the ground. Not wishing to watch, he looked away to where Leanâlhâm had fallen asleep upon her bedroll. He hoped she did not dream of the recent past as much as he did.
“You will learn to use this bow,” Brot’ân’duivé said.
“No,” Osha replied.
Even if he could not cast aside the burdens given to him, he would not use them. He would not submit to more loss of himself in what had been put upon him as well as taken from him.
“It will be unfamiliar,” Brot’ân’duivé went on, as if Osha had not spoken. “The bow arms are longer and far more curved than those of an Anmaglâhk bow. It has greater range and power but will be more difficult to draw, and hence—”
“No,” Osha repeated.
Something cracked sharply across his chest and upper right arm. Pain made his sight flash white as he toppled over, and then anger brought him around in a crouch.
Brot’ân’duivé sat cross-legged on the earth with his left arm outstretched to the side, and he still gripped the unstrung bow he had used to strike. The greimasg’äh’s eyes, one caged by the four slashing scars, fixed on Osha.
“Enough self-pity!” he ordered. “The stretch we must cross for more than a moon is called the Broken Lands by those in the city who speak adequate Belaskian. There are creatures out here that neither of us has ever seen. Any merchant caravan crossing either way travels heavily armed and guarded. And we are only three.”
“Then we turn back and find a caravan!”
“I will not lose time in tracking my quarry or have them double back to find you, should you think to turn back on your own. You have one choice, here and now.”
Osha clenched all over as his fingers dug into the earth. Only a fool would assault a greimasg’äh, but he was beyond caring.
“If not for yourself,” Brot’ân’duivé whispered, “then what of the girl?”
Osha froze before he could lunge and glanced toward Leanâlhâm’s sleeping form.
“When a moment comes when I cannot protect you both,” the greimasg’äh added, “how will you protect her? If not for yourself, that is a reason to accept what you have been given.”
Osha hung in stillness.
“And since I cannot teach you the sword ...” And the greimasg’äh’s extended arm whipped forward.
Osha scrambled back out of reach, but instead of striking him again, the bow tumbled to his feet.
“You will make yourself useful,” Brot’ân’duivé said.
Again Osha found he had no choice. He could not let Leanâlhâm suffer for his burdens or the bloodlust of Brot’ân’duivé. But he burned inside at the way the greimasg’äh manipulated him through using someone else ... like Most Aged Father so often did.
In the following days, when they stopped before dusk, he learned how to fletch, but he would work only with the steel arrowheads and the black crow feathers that Brot’ân’duivé had brought. Osha would not touch the white metal heads or the five black feathers dropped by the séyilf. As he fletched, Leanâlhâm watched him. Once, she tried to offer to help, but the greimasg’äh forbade her, saying that only Osha should attend his own weapons.
However, while Osha worked upon the arrows, often starting over for mistakes, the greimasg’äh frequently slipped away, sometimes not returning until dawn. Brot’ân’duivé said nothing of where he had gone, though Osha knew the greimasg’äh was tracking the team of loyalists.
When Osha finished with the steel arrowheads and would still not touch the five from the Chein’âs—or the black feathers from the séyilf—Brot’ân’duivé fashioned those himself in less than an evening.
“Do not use these in battle unless necessary,” he instructed. “There is some purpose to them that I—you—have yet to understand. But you will learn to use them.”
Osha had no intention of doing so. When the moment came to learn the bow, he strung it with only a little effort, for he had been “adequate” with an Anmaglâhk bow. As he reached for a steel-tipped arrow from his quiver on the ground ...
“That is not an anmaglâhk bow,” Brot’ân’duivé said, “but you will learn as if it was, and by what is taught later to even those who ... barely managed to gain a jeóin.”
Osha heated under that slight.
“You will learn what Sgäilsheilleache did not have the days to teach you,” Brot’ân’duivé said.
Osha was at a loss as to what that meant. Yes, he had lost his teacher too soon after gaining the only one he had wanted—and the only one who might have accepted him. More baffling was that this new training did not begin with an arrow.
It began with a lit candle.
At first he wondered whether he was to shoot at it. Even Leanâlhâm blinked and frowned at this strangeness.
“Sit ten strides off and watch the flame,” Brot’ân’duivé instructed as he lit the candle and set it upon the ground. “Listen to everything around you, but keep your eyes on the flame at all times.”
And so Osha did, but only on those evenings when the wind was no more than a breeze that could not snuff the candle out. How many dusks and dawns did he do this each time until the greimasg’äh told him to stop? And one morning, instead of fluttering in the changing breeze, the flame blew out.
A trail of smoke from the wick quickly dissipated.
“What did you hear?” the greimasg’äh asked.
Osha scowled. “Wind, a breeze ... in the grass ... in the trees.”
“What did you feel on your body, your exposed skin, your hands and face?”
“Wind!” Osha snapped.
“Enough to blow out a candle?”
“Yes, enough to ...” Osha paused, staring at the wick ten strides off. “No ... not enough.”
“What is the difference between you and the candle? What did you hear that you did not feel?”
The difference became obvious, though he had never thought of this before. The wind did not blow with the same strength in each place where it passed—even with as little as ten paces’ difference.
Training continued with two, then three, and finally four candles in line out beyond him. It grew harder to know for certain, to hear the differences in the air’s movement farther outward. After that the greimasg’äh added a change whenever the wind was too strong for candles.
Brot’ân’duivé took Osha into stands of woods along the way. He gathered leaves that had fallen beneath a near tree and walked out across an open space to another distant one. He turned and, dropping a leaf every few strides, traced his steps back.
“Draw an arrow and aim for the far tree,” he said. “Watch the leaves until an instant comes when you are certain all of the leaves are still.”
Osha did so and hit the tree the first time, though it was only twenty to twenty-five paces off.
“Now wait until you see only one leaf turn, and then shoot.”
Again he hit the tree, though a little off center. This continued every morning until they camped early near some tall oaks and the wind was more brisk than a candle could bear. That evening the greimasg’äh laid out the leaves, some of which turned or flopped immediately.