Will was by now stringing his bow and pulling target arrows from among the broadheads in his bag. The target arrowheads were long and heavy, solid and round and tapered like armour-piercing bodkins, shorter but no less sharply pointed; hollowed out, they fitted tightly over the arrows’ shafts, and were fletched with grey goose feathers. When he was satisfied with his six selections, he stepped forward to the firing line and thrust the arrows point first into the ground in a row by his right side.
Robertson had defined the range and the targets; Will’s was the choice to shoot first or last, and the right to determine the number of casts.
“One flight,” he said to his adversary. “Six shots only. You first, then me.”
Robertson nodded, plainly having expected this. “Six each, then. All at once, or shot by shot?”
“All at once. Straight count. Your six first, then mine. The winner the man who leaves most arrows in the marks. No repeats. I ha’e to get back to work.”
“Right. Let’s be about it.”
The crowd had separated in anticipation of the contest, a few of them flanking the firing line to watch the bowmen, but the majority crowding near the targets at the end of the narrow firing lane. I could see they had no fear of being killed by a stray shot. They were accustomed to such contests and they knew the skill of the contestants.
Robertson stepped forward to his side of the aiming line, nocking his first arrow to his string, and Laithey raised his arms and shouted for silence, bringing a hush to the crowd. Will’s eyes were narrowed, taking stock of his opponent’s stance and missing no single element of the man’s preparation.
The targets were small and the distance to them was short, but no one there, man or woman, would have thought to criticize. Every one of them knew how difficult the contest was, precisely because of those constraints.
Robertson stood stock-still, his eyes narrowed to slits as he stared at the first mark, its bottom half obscured by waving fronds of seeding grass. He held the bow loosely, resting horizontally across his left thigh, the fingers of his right hand gripping the string above and below the nocked end of the arrow. Then, still slit-eyed, he spread his feet, taking a half-step back with his right, and brought the bow up smoothly, leaning into it and drawing the taut string to his cheek as though it was weightless. He released quickly. The sound of the arrow’s flight was lost in the snap of the bowstring against the shaped guard of bull horn that protected his forearm, and the crowd hissed as his shaft struck solidly, within a palm’s width of the top of the distant mark. The peg was deeply buried, almost twothirds of its length firmly seated in the earth, but the force of the arrow’s impact moved it visibly and split it; the arrow was gripped there, pointing sideways and down.
Without pausing, Robertson drew and loosed again, nocking a fresh arrow within seconds of each shot until he had fired all six within the span of a single minute. As the sixth hit home, some of the distant watchers clapped and whistled. Only his third shot had missed its mark. Another, his fourth, caught the very top of its stake, where the wood was flattened and frayed by the maul that had hammered it into the ground; the point lodged in the damaged wood, but the arrow hung precariously in place. The other four missiles were firmly lodged in the target stakes. He turned to Will with a tiny smirk.
“Five, you agree?”
“Aye, five hits. A fine try. Not bad at all. I’ve seen far worse.”
“Not bad?” The smirk widened. “Let’s see you do better, then.”
Will’s six arrows were still where he had set them in the ground, about a pace behind the firing line, and now he moved to stand beside them, plucking up the first of them and laying it across his horizontal bow stave, holding it in place with his left index finger while he nocked the end slot securely onto the taut string. His arrows were longer than Robertson’s by a full finger’s length, thicker and therefore heavier than the other man’s. He flexed his fingers on the bow’s grip, then froze, concentrating.
For long seconds he stood there, looking at the first slender target. Robertson harrumphed and muttered something. It was surely intended as a distraction, but Will ignored it. He drew a deep breath and went to work.
He stepped forward, leaning into his pull as his left foot went forward to the line, his straight left arm pushing the arcing bow stave forward while his massive chest, back, and shoulder muscles pulled the thick string of densely braided hemp back smoothly to his ear. The release was immensely powerful, and the line of flight was low, the arrow sinking so swiftly that I thought, for an instant, that it had fallen short. But then the target stake whipped violently and the arrow in its cleft sprang free and spun to the ground, its fall accompanied by a great shout from the crowd.