“Take aim, note the movement of the leaves for three breaths, then close your eyes and shoot.”
Osha scowled at such a ridiculous practice, but he did as instructed. He never heard the arrow hit the tree.
“Retrieve the arrow and repeat ... always with the same arrow.”
Osha went wandering off after the arrow. He spent until dusk trying to hit the tree with his eyes closed—and never did. He cheated and tried it with his eyes open, and hit the tree only half of the time. When the sky darkened too much, he turned back to camp, where Leanâlhâm had finished cooking a squirrel that the greimasg’äh had likely caught.
“So, why did you miss ... even when you opened your eyes?” asked Brot’ân’duivé.
Osha glanced back along the way he had come. The greimasg’äh could not have seen him from camp, so how would he know?
“Because I listen,” Brot’ân’duivé said, “and you do not. Obviously you only hit the tree when your eyes were open. Return to the candles at dawn. You will use the bow and leaves only at dusk. And this time you will listen as well as look.”
The greimasg’äh fixed Osha with an unblinking stare.
“When aiming for a distant target, you will not have leaves and candles to mark the varied movements of the air at different points along the arrow’s path.”
Leanâlhâm let out a sharp sigh before Osha could. The greimasg’äh did not look her way, but Osha did. Leanâlhâm appeared as mentally weary of all this as Osha felt.
A whole moon passed before he hit a tree at least half of the time at twenty, then thirty, and finally forty paces. In that time the greimasg’äh often disappeared for a whole night. One dawn Osha and Leanâlhâm awoke, had a fire going and oats boiling in a small pot ...
And Brot’ân’duivé had not yet returned.
Osha wondered whether to go searching, but he could not leave Leanâlhâm alone. She, too, stared off into the distance with panic in her quick breaths. And perhaps that panic sharpened when she glanced at him looking off into the distance. And then Osha started at the sound of leaves crushed underfoot, and he quickly pulled an arrow and drew it back as he turned left.
He relaxed a little even before Brot’ân’duivé stepped out of the trees. If the greimasg’äh had wished, he would not be heard until too late. Then Osha tensed again and heard Leanâlhâm gasp.
Brot’ân’duivé’s tunic and sleeves were rent and torn. One side of his hood had been sharply split, and the forest gray cloth was splattered with dark stains ... from blood. Without a word, the greimasg’äh stripped off his tunic, cloak, and hood, dropped them in a pile, and settled cross-legged on the ground beside the fire. He looked at Leanâlhâm. “Can you wash and mend these?”
Wordlessly she nodded, but Osha studied the greimasg’äh.
There were other old scars, besides the ones on his face, on Brot’ân’duivé’s torso and arms. A line of bruises had formed along the left side of his chest and on his right forearm, but more disturbing was what was not there.
There was not one bleeding wound for all the blood on his clothes.
Osha knew then that they had caught up to the loyalists ... who were now at least one less than they had been.
“How far?” he asked.
“A day’s walk,” Brot’ân’duivé answered, peeking into the pot over the flames as if interested only in its contents.
Osha blinked repeatedly, looking west, not believing that even the great Brot’ân’duivé could have gone so far and returned in one night.
Leanâlhâm crouched before the pile of stained and torn garments, but she still had not touched them. With her green eyes fully widened, she looked up at Osha, and Osha turned to the greimasg’äh.
“Will they not find—”
“No,” Brot’ân’duivé said as he poured water from a flask to rinse his hand with stains long dried and crusted. “The body is hidden. Once they know one of theirs is gone, they will not willingly linger against their purpose in trying to find it.”
“You left one of our—” Leanâlhâm began, but she was silenced by the greimasg’äh’s stare.
“He ... she ... whoever,” Osha added, “is still one of our people. How could you leave even one of them with no way back to our ancestors?”
“There is no time for sentiment,” Brot’ân’duivé whispered at first and then barked, “or do you believe these fanatics would give you such a thought?”
Yes, Osha did ... or he hoped. Without that, at least, what was left of their people, no matter who won this conflict? And still Leanâlhâm would not touch the bloodstained clothing.
Osha took those clothes and walked off into the trees to search for a stream or pool or even a puddle that was far from Leanâlhâm’s sight. And when he returned with the soaked clothes and hung them over a tree branch to drip in the night ...
“You do nothing for her in hiding the truth of our state,” Brot’ân’duivé said, lying on his back in the dark near the fire’s dying embers. “Her innocence and your denial of what is ... are a danger to you both.”
Osha ignored this, though he sat up half the night and watched Leanâlhâm sleep fitfully.
In the morning his training changed again.
“You will use only an arrow with a Chein’âs point,” the greimasg’äh ordered. “We will see if its secret can be uncovered.”
“No.”
“Do as I say!”
To his shame, some part of Osha could not continue to rebel. All that previous night he thought on Leanâlhâm, and then worried about the loyalists still at least a day ahead. It was not hard to imagine what they would do once they arrived on the western coast. Somewhere in the city of Calm Seatt was one known place—and person—from where that journal had come.
Wynn Hygeorht would be easy to find at her Guild of Sagecraft as a starting point in a hunt for Magiere, Léshil, and the wayward majay-hì called Chap.
Osha pulled a white metal–tipped arrow from his quiver and drew it in his bow. His heart was not in the first shot, and he missed. The arrow vanished among the trees.
“Find the arrow,” ordered Brot’ân’duivé. “And continue.”
Osha set down his bow beside the quiver to go searching for that arrow ... one he was reluctant to find. The morning continued, though he hit the tree only three times. When he did so, the greimasg’äh held him off with a raised hand and went to stare at the embedded arrow. Each time he returned with that arrow, his frown had deepened.
It appeared there was nothing special about the white metal arrowheads.
On the last shot of that morning, Osha missed again. The arrow glanced off the tree’s trunk and disappeared from sight.
“It is time to move on,” Brot’ân’duivé said, exhaling long and slow. “Gather your equipment, retrieve the arrow, and return to camp.”
Tiredly, Osha picked up his quiver, and, with bow in hand, he stepped off toward the tree to gauge the strayed arrow’s trajectory. Slinging the quiver over his shoulder as he walked, he raised the bow and prepared to pause at the tree and unstring it.
The bow suddenly felt wrong in his grip, and it tilted to the right as if unbalanced.
He stopped at the tree’s right side, where the arrow had struck, and looked the bow over. He wondered whether he had somehow warped it. Perhaps it was not as resilient or as soundly made as an Anmaglâhk bow. But he could not see anything wrong with it.
“What is the delay?” Brot’ân’duivé called out.
“Nothing,” Osha answered, pivoting left to get a sight line from the gouge in the tree’s bark.
The bow tilted sharply to the right in his loose grip. Warmth beyond that caused by holding it all morning grew in the handle’s leather wrap. His mind flashed with a memory of being assaulted by the Burning Ones.