After the display of falconry, there's still one more event before archery – the riflery competition. There's a flurry of activity as the competitors take the field. Two rows below Daryl, Enid hands Glenn, Jr. over to Liam and heads toward the aisle. Liam calls her back for a good-luck kiss, and soon she's clattering down the stairs, her rifle swinging from her shoulder.
Rosita and Carol leave Daryl and Khalid behind in the stands to compete. Aaron deposits Gracie with Judith under the watchful eye of Olivia's mother, who assists each of the little girls to put soft orange earplugs in their ears. Tara also takes the field to a cry of "Good luck!" from Dianne.
Oceanside offers up Cyndie, Beatrice, Kathy, the king's betrothed, and a woman Daryl doesn't recognize. From the Kingdom come six more competitors, among them Roland. By the time all the competitors are arranged, a row of sixteen riflemen stretches across a recently marked-out line on the otherwise faded AstroTurf, near the end zone. Targets are arranged at one hundred yards away, in front of the rusty, faded yellow goalposts. Beyond the field lies nothing but the chain link fence, woods, and then, somewhere beyond those woods, the Kingdom's perimeter fence.
Khalid slides closer to Daryl on the cool aluminum bench. "The way this works," he explains, "is that there are three rounds. They fire ten shots per round. The bottom six scorers will be eliminated at the end of each of the first two rounds, until only four remain to compete for the bronze, silver, and gold."
Daryl leans forward with his elbows on his knees to watch, but it's impossible to see the targets clearly. Instead, he admires Carol's controlled, kneeling stance and her laser-like focus as the whistle blows and she begins her steady fire.
The Kingdom may be competent with horse and lance, javelin and staff and sword, but at the end of the first round of firearms, five of their competitors are eliminated, along with one of the women from Oceanside. After the second round of firing, Roland is eliminated, along with Enid and the remaining four Oceanside women. That leaves only Carol, Rosita, Aaron, and Tara in the final round.
"Hilltop's gonna take all three medals," Daryl murmurs proudly. "M'people are the only ones still out there."
"You're not rooting for Carol?" Khalid asks with surprise.
"What?" It takes Daryl a moment to realize that because he was thinking of Carol as his people, he wasn't thinking of her as representing the Kingdom. "Nah. Meant….Hilltop's gonna take the silver n' bronze. Carol's gonna take the gold of course."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Khalid tells him. "I think Rosita's taking the gold."
"Nah. She won't," Daryl insists. "Carol ain't been shootin' as long, but she's better."
"Care to wager?" Khalid asks.
Daryl sits up straighter. "Wager what?"
"One of those cigarettes I see in your pocket."
"'N what I get if'n ya lose?"
Khalid scratches the dark, black goatee that lines his face. Then he fishes in the pocket of his brown suede jacket and pulls out a single shot bottle of Vodka, which he displays to Daryl by holding it between his thumb and his forefinger.
"Deal," Daryl says.
"You realize we're both betting against our own communities?" He sighs and looks out at Rosita taking a kneeling position. "But the heart wants what the heart wants."
Daryl doesn't think it's Khalid's heart that wants Rosita, but he doesn't say so.
As the final four competitors reload their magazines, Khalid says, "Let's sweeten the pot. Raise me another cigarette, and I'll raise you…" He pulls another single shot bottle out of his pocket and shakes it.
"Ya got a mini liquor store in there?"
"I found a crashed and abandoned airplane when I was out scouting last month. It went down in a field. The liquor was still intact. That's one thing that keeps well."
Daryl peers at the little bottle. "Don't want no sweet-ass apple schnapps."
"But with both, you could make your woman a vodka appletini tonight."
"My woman?" Daryl asks.
"Carol? She's not your woman?"
"Carol…" Daryl glances at her on the field where she's reloading her magazine. "Carol's 'er own woman."
"Oh...I just assumed, with you two sitting together...and her going to the Hilltop almost once a month, and the fact that I've never seen her with a boyfriend since she moved here.." Khalid shakes the vodka again. "Nevertheless, you could make her an apple martini tonight. If she wins. If not, I suppose I'll be sharing a second cigarette with Rosita after our second round of wild sex." He extends his hand.
Khalid's confidence in his impending sexual conquest may be well placed, but he's damn sure wrong about winning the cigarettes. "'S a bet," Daryl agrees and shakes.
[*]
Daryl's front pocket is light two cigarettes when Carol returns to the stands, a silver medal swaying from her neck atop the gold she won for knife throwing.
"Congratulations," she tells Rosita as she sits down next to Daryl.
In front of them, Tara returns to sit next to Dianne, who tells her, "You were robbed. That bronze should have been yous."
"Aaron just has better sights," Tara agrees.
Carol clanks her medals together, but her lips form a thin line. Daryl can tell she's disappointed in herself for losing to Rosita. "Hey," he says. "Ya go two medals now. Ain't no one else got two."
"Umm, hello, I do," Rosita reminds him. "The silver from the footrace?" She slides the silver out from beneath her gold and thrusts it toward him.
"Oh. Yeah."
"And Jerry also has two," Khalid reminds him. "A bronze from the staff competition and a gold from javelin."
"And Roland," Carol adds. "He has a bronze from javelin and a gold from rings."
"A'ight, but ya got the two best ones," Daryl insists.
Carol smiles. "Oh, I don't know. Archery is considered the most important sport in the tournament."
As if Daryl wasn't nervous enough.
"If only you'd won, Carol," Khalid says, "Daryl would be making you an appletini tonight. Instead, he lost two of his cigarettes to me."
"You bet on me?" Carol asks.
Daryl mistakes her surprise for annoyance and scratches the back of his neck. "Well…'s just…"
She smiles. "You risked two cigarettes on me because you believed in me so much?"
"Well...Yeah," he admits.
"I'm sorry I lost you your cigarettes."
He shrugs. "Still got two more."
"So if you were planning to make me an appletini tonight," Carol says, "I guess that means you plan to room with me?"
"Uh…" He doesn't want to sound like he was expecting to be invited to room with her.
"You might as well. Judith's got her sleepover. You need a roof over your head. It's supposed to rain in the middle of the night, according to old lady Mildred's leg."
"It's a premiere weather-telling device, that old woman's leg," Khalid agrees.
"I have one of the classroom trailers all to myself." Carol lost her little white house. It burned in the War with the Whsiperers, but the fire didn't reach the gates of the Kingdom. "There's plenty of room."
"A'ight," Daryl agrees. "Ain't brought my sleepin' bag though." He's not sure why he said that. He can certainly sleep on the floor of her trailer without a sleeping bag. He's slept on the forest floor without one before.
Carol smiles in that way that gives wings to the nerves in his chest. "We'll figure something out."
[*]
Daryl has ten rivals in the archery tournament. Five of them are in their late teens or early twenties, among them Liam. The other five, like Dianne, are older adults. Every single one of them is from the Kingdom. No one from Oceanside has dared to compete, and no one else from the Hilltop has set foot on the field.
Daryl watches the archers casually sliding their leather archery gloves into place and suddenly remembers that the Kingdom has been training archers since before Daryl ever set foot in it. Archery practice has always been part of the Kingdom's morning routine. What if he doesn't even manage to take the bronze?
"Do you need to borrow a glove?" Liam asks him.
"Nah." Daryl raises his arm and nods at the sleeve of his black leather jacket. "Doubt a sting's gonna hurt with this on."
"You're going to shoot while wearing a long-sleeve jacket?" Dianne asks.
He shot his crossbow half of October wearing this jacket, and he didn't have any problem bringing down game. Defensively, he snarls, "Gotta problem with that?"
Dianne shrugs coolly. "If you want to get string drag and end up shooting left, I suppose that's your choice."
The master of the games steps up to the loosely huddled group of competitors. "There will be six rounds," he explains. "Two rounds for each bow, at 30 yards and 60 yards for compound and crossbow, and at 80 yards and a 120 yards for longbow."
"Only 120?" a tall, thin, man with light brown skin and olive-green eyes snorts. His long, black hair flows out from beneath a black leather headband that's decorated with triangular patterns of blue and red. "I could do that with my eyes closed."
"That's as far as we can go on the football field," the games master explains. "You will have six arrows per round. The yellow bullseye is a ten. The red is an eight, the blue is a six, the black is a four, and the last, outer white ring is a two."
"No one here's going to land in the white," the man with the black headband says flippantly. But then he looks Daryl over like he's not quite so sure no one's going to land in the white.
"The scores will be tallied from each round," the master of the games continues. "And you will be ranked by your total score from all six rounds. Those without a personal bow in every category may use the Kingdom's bows." He waves his hand toward a stand that is being rolled onto the field by Henry, from which a variety of bows swing. Meanwhile, two other teenagers set up quivers full of arrows along the white thirty-yard line. The targets are in the endzone.
The master of the games inspects the personal bows of the archers to determine whether they meet competition regulations. He looks suspiciously at the modifications Daryl has made to his crossbow, but ultimately declares it regulation. However, he makes Dianne trade out her compound bow for one of the Kingdom communal bows – something about the fixed pin sights giving her an unfair advantage. She grumbles, but she accepts the game master's decision.
Daryl is handed one of the Kingdom's compound bows for the first round and takes his assigned place before a standing quiver of arrows. He's been practicing all summer and fall with a compound bow at the Hilltop, and he knows he's decent, but he still feels nervous as he sees everyone line up confidently, Dianne to his right and a red-headed woman to his left.
He sets his bow on the AstroTurf for a moment and shucks out of his long-sleeve black leather jacket, trying to ignore the smirk on Dianne's face as he does so. The jacket pools on the worn green behind him. Underneath, he's wearing a charcoal gray, button-down shirt. He rolls up the shirt sleeves almost to his shoulders.
"Nice arms," says the redhead to his left.
Daryl doesn't know how to respond to that, so he pretends not to hear her. But the man with the black leather headband, who stands to the redhead's left, does. He leans over her and looks at Daryl through narrowed eyes. "Who are you, exactly?" he asks.
"Daryl," Daryl replies. "Dixon. 'M from – "
"- the Hilltop," the redhead finishes for him. "You're the one who got the bomb planted in the Whisperers' base, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"I'm Cassandra." She nods her head to the man with the black leather headband. "And this is my husband Avonaco."
"Avocado?" Daryl asks. Carol once told him that he'd have an easier time remembering names if he repeated them after every introduction.
"Avonaco," the man replies sternly. "It's Cheyenne. It means Leaning Bear."
Daryl's not sure why a bear would lean, or, if it did lean, why that would be worth noting, but he refrains from saying so. He also thinks this Avocado fellow is about as Cheyenne as Daryl is African. But Carol once told him that everyone gets to reinvent themselves in the apocalypse.
The game master holds up a hand. "On the whistle, you may load your first arrow and begin shooting. Shoot at your own pace, but remember you have only four minutes total."
Daryl seizes the grip of his borrowed compound bow. He glances in Carol's direction and finds her at the front railing of the bleachers, watching closely.
Don't let me screw up bad in front of 'er, he mutters in silent prayer.
And then he waits for the whistle.
