A Meeting At Corvallis

December 12th, 2007/Change Year 9
The girl drew carefully, using the shoulders and body as much as the arms. The yew bow bent …
"Bull's-eye!" Mathilda Arminger whooped as the shaft thumped home in the circle behind the wooden
deer's shoulder.
"Not bad, Matti," Rudi Mackenzie said. "Not bad!"
It was late afternoon going on for evening, and overcast. The sudden chill and wet mealy smell in the
fir-scented air meant snow coming soon, rolling down the heights from the wall of mountains eastward.
Rudi finished another round of practice and then looked up and stuck out his tongue; sure enough, the
first big flakes came drifting down, landing with a gentle bite and a somehow dusty taste. Snow was rare
in the Willamette, where winter was the season of rain and mud, but Dun Juniper was just high enough in
the foothills that it could get heavy falls sometimes, though they rarely lay for long. This would be a big
one, by the way the air tasted and felt.
The two children were the youngest in the crowd at the butts; they'd both been born in the first
Change Year, and were shooting up with a long-limbed, gangly grace. Rudi was the taller by an inch or
two; the hair that spilled out from under his flat bonnet was a brilliant gold tinted with red to her dark
auburn-brown, and his eyes somewhere between blue and green and gray to her hazel, but otherwise
their sharp straight-featured faces were much alike as they began to shed their puppy fat.
"Willow!" one of the assistants called to a round-faced girl of ten. "Don't hop and squint after you
shoot. It won't help."
The girl flushed as classmates snickered and giggled; she shot again, then did the same
up-and-down-in-place hop as before, squinting with her tongue between her teeth and the wet turf
squelching under her feet. Today Chuck Barstow Mackenzie, the Clan's Second Armsman, had dropped
in to observe.
Which made everyone a little nervous despite the fact that he lived here, even if it wasn't as
momentous as it might be at some other dun. Now he silently reached over and rapped her lightly on the
head with the end of his bow; she flushed more deeply, hanging her head.
The rest of the crowd at the butts ranged from nine or so to thirteen, children of Dun Juniper's smiths,
stockmen, carpenters, clerks, schoolteachers and weavers, and of the Clan's small cadre of full-time
warriors. Their work was overseen by a dozen or so elder students in their later teens, walking up and
down the line offering advice and helping adjust hands and stances, and four Armsmen oversaw them;
archery was very much part of the Mackenzie school syllabus, and much more popular than arithmetic or
geography or even herblore.
"And Otter, Finn, don't laugh at Willow," Chuck added. "She shoots better than you do most of the
time. Someday you'll have to stand beside her in a fight, remember." He cocked an eye at the darkening
clouds. "All right, it's time to knock off for the day anyway; everyone unstring. Carefully!" he added,
keeping a close watch on the process, as did the teachers and their helpers, lest cold-stiffened fingers
slip.
There were a couple of quick corrections to those doing it wrong. Rudi braced the lower tip of his
bow against the top of his left foot, stepped through between the string and the riser, and pushed down
against the bow with his thigh while his right hand held the upper part of the stave steady. That let him
slide the string out of the grooves in the polished antler tip—carefully!—with his left hand. There were the
inevitable throttled yelps and a few tears from those who'd let go too early or put their stave hands too
far up, and so pinched their hands between string and wood even through their gloves, but no real
accidents. Even a light child's stave could be dangerous if the wielder let it get away from them, and the
tip of a grown-up's war bow would rip through flesh and bone like a spear when it slipped just wrong.
That was why you always kept it pointed away from your face when stringing or unstringing, something
he'd learned years ago.
"You're getting pretty good, Matti," he said.
"I always had a bow," she said. "Not just here."
"Not a bow like that, I bet," Rudi said, grinning.
"Yeah!" she said enthusiastically. "It's great. We heard about Sam's bows, even, you know,