"There was absolutely nothing you could have done," Havel said with flat conviction. "Apart from what you did, which probably saved Eric's life and maybe mine. Jail-house would have gotten to him in another thirty seconds, and you saved me at least that much time.
"Sorry," he finished, as she paled and swallowed.
"No!" she said fiercely. "I've got to: learn to deal with it. I can't live with it clubbing me every time I get reminded."
"Which brings me back to Astrid," Havel said, looking down the meadow.
She was wheeling about, tiny with distance at the northern end of the meadow. Still shooting from the saddle, he thought, but it was hard to tell.
"Sometimes feelings bleed off, like pressure from a propane tank," he said. "That's what happens with some people, at least. Brooders, they tend to build it up and then snap. I'd read Astrid for a brooder."
Signe gave him an odd look: "You're a lot more: well, no offense, sensitive, than: "
Havel grinned at her. "Jarheads don't have feelings?" he said.
He enjoyed her blush; she probably got extreme guilt feelings herself when she found herself believing a genuine stereotype. That was insensitive.
"Actually, that's what got me thinking. You get real tight with the guys in your squad, closer than brothers-you live closer than brothers do, and you have to rely on the guy next to you to save your ass; and you have to be ready to do the same for them. Watching someone you're that tight with die: not easy. Some people seriously wig out after that, self-destructive stuff. I don't think Astrid will get careless with explosives-not now!-or get drunk and try and disassemble the shore patrol, but there are probably equivalents a fourteen-year-old can come up with."
Signe nodded. "I'll try and get her to talk: and meanwhile, shall we practice?"
"Right," he said.
He'd tried his hand at the compound; the offset pulleys at the tips made it much easier use than a traditional bow of the same draw-weight, and it had an adjustable sight. And he was strong, and had excellent eyesight, and was a crack shot with a rifle and very good at estimating distance.
Even so, he could tell it was going to be weeks or months before he gained any real skill with it, and that was frustrating-he might need it on a life-and-death level sooner than that. Given a choice, he preferred to do any fighting from a comfortable distance.
Signe had drawn a shaft to the angle of her jaw. He waited while she loosed; the arrow flashed out and thumped into the burlap-covered hay bales. It sank three-quarters of its length as well, just inside the line marking the man-shaped target.
"Not bad," he said. You'd have lamed the guy, at least.
"I've done target archery off and on," she said. "Nothing like Astrid, though; she's been a maniac about it for years-since she was eight or nine."
"Yeah, but you'd look silly with pointed ears," he replied, pleased when he got a snort of laughter. She'd been very withdrawn since the fight and her mother's death. Understandable, but:
"Right, let's take it up where we left off," she said.
They walked closer to the target; Signe had been practicing from sixty yards, and it was a bad idea to start at a distance you'd consistently miss-that way you couldn't identify your mistakes and improve. She handed over the bracer, and he strapped it to his left forearm, adjusting the Velcro-fastened straps. Hutton had rigged him an archer's finger-tab for his right hand, and he slid two fingers through it.
"We'll have to make some sort of moving target, eventually," Havel said. "And a glove fitted for this; I wouldn't want to be stuck wearing this tab thing if I had to switch weapons suddenly."
Signe moved him into proper position with touches of her fingers, which was pleasant.
"Rolling pie plates are what Astrid uses. All right, make a proper T: And she has things that run on wires, she had a bunch of them set up on our summer place, besides the stumps."
"Stumps you mentioned. We're not short of them, and pie plates we could probably manage too," Havel said.
Then he drew his first shot. The bow's draw-weight was eighty pounds, but with the pulleys he only had to exert that much effort at the middle of the draw. It fell away to less than forty when his right hand was back by the angle of his jaw, and he brought the sighting pin down on the middle of the man-figure's chest:
Whffft!
There was something rather satisfying about it; particularly this time, since he'd come near the target, at least.
Someday I'll actually hit it.
"You're releasing a bit rough," Signe said. "Remember to just let the string fall off the balls of your fingers-"
They worked at it for half an hour; when he stopped he worked his arms and shoulders ruefully. "This must use muscles I don't usually put much weight on," he said.
"You're making progress," Signe replied. "Any more today and you'd get shaky."
He nodded. "After a certain point you lose more than you gain," he agreed.
"And you don't mind learning from a girl; I like that."
A corner of Havel 's mouth quirked up. "I'm not an eighteen-year-old boy," he said.
Their eyes went to the flatbed. Eric was standing with an air of martyred patience, holding something on the anvil with a pair of pincers while Hutton hit it two-handed with a sledgehammer; Ken Larsson observed, a measuring compass and a piece of paper in his hand.
The ting: tang: chink! sound echoed back from the steep slopes, fading out across'the white noise of the brawling river.
"And I'm not an idiot either, if there's a difference," Havel went on.
This time Signe laughed out loud, probably for the first time in a few days.
"Knives?" he said briskly.
She nodded eagerly. They walked over towards the tree where the mule deer was hanging.
They'd wrapped it in sacking, but there weren't many flies this early in the year. He went to the tie-off on the tree trunk and lowered the carcass from bear-avoidance distance from the ground until the gutted torso was at a convenient height.
Signe watched, a little puzzled, but eagerly caught one of the wooden knives he'd whittled. She fell into the stance he'd showed her, right leg slightly advanced, left hand open and that forearm at an angle across her chest. The knife she held a bit out and low, point angled up and her thumb on the back of the blade.
Havel took an identical stance. "Now, what are we both doing wrong?" he said.
She shook her head, wincing a bit as she bit her lip in puzzlement; it was still swollen and sore.
"We're about to fight a knife duel," he said. "Which means that one of us is going to die and the other's going to get cut up real bad, get killed too or crippled or at least spend months recovering. Yeah, I'm going to teach you how to do that kind of a knife fight, eventually, but it's a last resort unless the other guy's truly clueless. I was real glad not to have to go mano a mano back there."
He switched the grip on his knife, holding it with the thumb on the pommel and the blade sticking out of his fist, the cutting edge outward.
"First let me show you something. Grab my knife wrist and hold me off."
She tucked the wooden blade into her belt and intercepted his slow backhand stab towards her throat. He pushed, using his weight and the strength of his arm and shoulders; Signe stumbled backward, struck the trunk of the tree and grimaced as the point came inexorably towards her throat. Suddenly her knee flashed up, but he'd been expecting that; he caught it on his thigh and pressed the wooden knife still closer.
"Halt!" he said, stepping back; he was breathing deeply, she panting. "OK, you're what: five-eight? Hundred and forty-five?"
"Five-eight and a half," she said. "One-forty-four, but I think I've lost some since the Change."
"Probably," he said. "Right, so you're a big girl, tall as most men, and as heavy as some; which means you've got plenty of reach, and there's no reason you can't get real fast-you've got good coordination and reflexes already, from sports."
"But?" she said.