“Raring to go, huh?” Kane asked. He had emerged from the tack shed with some new gear and a long spear.
“Just warming up,” Herzer said. “When are the beaters supposed to get here?”
“They started this morning but they have a few miles to beat and they’re moving slow. So, say five hours from dawn. But there’s going to be stuff running ahead of them. So we need to be in place in another hour or so. But Alyssa and I want to show you a few things and get with everybody to talk about responsibilities.”
Herzer dismounted to wait and work on his horse. He pulled the saddle and bridle off, switching the latter for a halter, and gave the horse a thorough currying. The horses were losing their winter undercoat so Diablo especially appreciated that. Then he hunted up a feedbag and some feed; he knew he was going to be using the horse hard today and he didn’t want it falling out from low blood sugar.
By the time he was done Kane had saddled his own horse and hooked the odd accoutrements to it. The tack turned out to be a holder for the spear, along with places to hook other weaponry. Kane also brought out a long battle axe and sword to go along with the spear. Herzer mentally changed the word “spear” to “lance” but he really couldn’t see the difference.
In the meantime Alyssa had scared up one of the little Arabs and saddled it as well. Her saddle was much more ornate than Kane’s but seemed just as functional. On the side of it she hung an odd, rectangular case. Just after Herzer recognized it, correctly, as a case for a recurve bow, she opened it up and removed the bow, which was unstrung. Stringing it turned out to be a major operation and actually took Kane doing most of the work. First she took out a long string, more of a rope, really, with two leather toggle and loop devices on either end and attached them to the opposite ends of the bow. Then as Kane lifted the bow in a curl, sweat almost immediately breaking out on his face, she carefully attached the actual string to the bow and ensured that the limbs were straight. That done Kane slowly let off pressure until the bow was fully strung. Herzer had to wonder, as she removed the stringer, how often she could actually draw the thing, which looked as if it must have a pull of sixty kilos or so.
A few of the older riders had been setting up targets and a few even brought out their own lances and holders. But Alyssa was the only one with a bow.
“Okay, cavalry means fighting from horseback,” Kane said. “But most cavalry techniques derived from hunting on horseback and only got converted to killing people later.”
“Well, the lance was probably the other way around,” Denver Quilliam pointed out. The rider was one of Kane’s coterie and while his horse work was only so-so he handled the lance with ease.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Kane argued. “There’s no clear archaeological record for it and admittedly it seemed to appear after the development of horse cavalry, but…”
“Kane,” Alyssa said.
“Oh… yeah… well we’re going to show you a little about the lance and the horse-bow this morning while we’re waiting for the first animal to arrive.”
“Are we going to be using lances and bows?” Herzer asked.
“If anyone feels like they can handle them without falling off their horse they can try,” Kane said with a laugh.
He started by demonstrating the two ways to hold the lance in a charge. The idea was to hold it lightly in the hand so that you could maintain targeting even on the horse, which was, of course, moving in three dimensions, then at the last moment “clamp down” and drive it into the target. Smaller lances could be used overhand with a throwing motion for similar effects. He drove one of each into the center of the target and then challenged others to copy his actions. Herzer and Denver probably got closest and Herzer had done his turn at a gallop like Kane; Denver had driven his home at a much more sedate canter.
Herzer had gotten very comfortable with riding Diablo. The massive chestnut was not unlike those in his enhanced reality training and was even a tad “smarter.” But he still hadn’t opened the horse “all the way up.” He had seen that blazing gallop the first day and he was still a tad uncomfortable with seeing what it was like to be on his back under those conditions; a slower gallop was still like having a rocket between his legs.
After Kane was done and the lances recovered, Alyssa gave a demonstration with the horse-bow. She first demonstrated firing from a still horse at about seventy-five yards, putting three arrows into the center of the target just about as fast as she could draw and fire. After that she began to canter, putting an arrow into the central area of the target about every five or six seconds, then last she demonstrated the “Parthian shot,” turning on her horse as it was galloping away and firing. These last were… more or less in the target area. But Herzer could see how it would be a nasty situation to deal with on a tactical level.
After the demonstrations Kane told them off to their duties. Herzer was going to be one of the “zone riders,” in charge of managing a certain section of the main corral. He was supposed to move herd animals out of his sector and to the herding riders, break up dangerous activities, drag off any animals that were killed in his sector and otherwise handle any contingencies. Besides Diablo he would have two more animals to switch off to, an even larger bay gelding called Butch and a bad tempered palomino named Duchess. He’d have to lead them over himself but as long as Duchess was at the rear of the lead he wasn’t worried.
Before they headed out to the slaughtering corral Herzer trotted over to Alyssa, who was in last minute consultation with Kane, and waited until she nodded in his direction.
“Ma’am, is there any way I could try out that bow for a moment?” he asked, diffidently.
“You’ve shot before?” she asked.
“Not from horseback and I know I can’t shoot while riding. But I think I can hit the broad side of a barn from Diablo when he’s still.”
She looked at Kane and traded a look, then nodded and pulled out the bow. However, she then looked at his bulging forearms. Both of her own were guarded by bracers, but his were bare and the left would be turned into hamburger if he didn’t have some protection. She paused and traded a look of consternation with the younger man; there was no way that her relatively dainty bracers would ever fit over his arms.
“Hang on a second,” Kane said with a laugh and rode over to his hut. He went inside and emerged a moment later with a pair of metal bracers and another bow case.
“Really should be leather for bow work,” he said. “But see if these fit.”
Herzer tried them on and found that they fit fairly well. There was an internal leather strap arrangement that was somewhat adjustable and the bracers were, if anything, a tad large.
“Keep ’em,” Kane said, remounting. “I won ’em off someone a while back and have just been carting them around. I don’t use that kind of armor.”
Herzer accepted the bow and a quiver of arrows with a nod and then trotted out to the range. He carefully checked to make sure no one was going to be riding across the way and then stopped Diablo with a gulp. He realized that if he missed he was going to look like an idiot but he had to try it anyway. He took a moment to check the inside of his bracer to ensure that there were no protruding bits of metal or sharp edges that would strike the bowstring, then drew out an arrow. He kneed Diablo to a stop, gave him a quiet word, then took a breath and nocked the arrow. The draw on the bow was, as he suspected, at least sixty kilos but he’d fired worse and the recent “exercise” he’d had helped in the strength department.