A Woman In Trousers

(Was: Kit's Journey)

A/N: Before you all die of shock because of the speed of this update I would like to say – its okay! It doesn't count as a chapter; it's more of a "ZOMGIMISSACHERY" rant. ;; Plus, the two main things in it I've had planned for weeks, and were uberly easy to transfer from my head to word.

I did write all but 500 words of this on the same day as my last update though. :P

The Duke of Edinburgh award is a challenge for school kids. You have to do a hobby, a sport and charity work for a fixed number of weeks, and plan and take a two or three day hike. Excellent CV material, but more importantly, a great laugh.

In archery, a group is when you have three or more arrows in the same (small) area of the target. Of course, hopefully this area is the bull's-eye, but the theory is if you have a group, you just need to make adjustments to your sight so that they are in the bull's-eye. And a sight is an adjustable sightline that you use to aim at the target. Longbows and the ilk obviously don't have this, so I was taught to pick on object that you sight along the arrow instead.

Thanks again for the +fav, +watch and the review.

-Ela

Chapter Ten

Bull's-eye

The whole process of admittance passed Kit over. Algar and Leax answered for her, and Kit spent the whole time looking around her and taking the place in. She still could hardly believe that she was doing this. She should be heading off with the women – no, she should be at home, curled up on her chair in front of her laptop with something fatty and unhealthy and a nice warm mug of tea. Not stuck in the middle of nowhere, where they didn't speak sensible English, there didn't appear to be any electricity, or even running water, stunk of horseshit, and was about to enter into a war that she didn't understand or have any chance of surviving.

This was ridiculously stupid. She was probably insane. Perhaps her mother had actually been sitting next to her the whole time, muttering prayers in her ear while her father studiously tried to ignore them. Kit almost laughed at that mental image. Her sisters would be doing everything physically possible to avoid having to come and see her, and her brother would come grudgingly, say something pathetic, and then walk out again. Yes, that was her family all right. And she loved and missed them.

The officer who had been taking down their details called to someone over his shoulder, drawing Kit back to the present, real or not. A tall, muscular man in his thirties trotted over to them, and smiled. Kit tried to keep her attention up this time, in case she missed something important. Barely any of the words they were speaking were even familiar to her though, and it was hard going.

After a brief discussion, the older man was sent off into the barracks to find someone or something, and Algar was addressed instead. Kit heard something familiar this time, but took a moment to place it – sword! They were talking about weapons? She frowned without realising it as she attempted to listen to the Rohirrim talking. Perhaps she should have tried to get some army life vocabulary from the boys the night before. If she got any orders, she didn't know how on earth she was going to follow them.

Leax was next, and this time he drew his sword to show the older man. Kit remembered how heavy it was as the two poured over it, and put her hand on the hilt of the sword that she had been given. Now she looked again at Leax's, she could see just how much shorter and slimmer her one was, which probably went a long way in explaining how it was that she had been able to do some damage with it.

She was passed over, and she assumed (rightly) that her situation and ability had been explained. But they hadn't spoken to her, and so while the man spoke to the two boys that had accompanied them, she tapped Leax's shoulder to get his attention.

Mindful that she was meant to be keeping the English to a minimum, she struggled to stop using English words in between Rohirric ones as she had been doing up until now. "You talk?" She asked him. "Sword?"

Leax's first explanation went over her head completely, but by miming shooting a bow and a thrusting motion that might have been a spear or a sword, he was able to explain "weapons" to her, confirming her suspicions about their discussion.

Kit nodded, and smiled a little. Tapping her chest to show I, and saying "Kit", she mimed shooting a bow. Leax looked surprised at this, so Kit nodded again, to reassure him.

"What is…" She mimed shooting a bow again, and Leax held up a hand, putting the question off for now, and spoke instead, first to Algar, and then to the man, both of whom gave her the same look of surprise. She tried to ignore this and not get offended by it. She'd prove them wrong if she could get her hands on a bow.

Zoning out of the conversation again, Kit found herself thinking about archery. She'd been doing it for… oooh, maybe five, six, seven? years now. A long time. Of course, she'd wanted to do it for a lot longer than that: as a child she'd always play pretended at being Robin Hood. She didn't want to be a princess (or at least, denied it venomously, but her waist length hair said differently), she wanted to be the hero so that she could run in and save the day (and run off with the princess, Kit remembered with a smirk). She really had never been your average girl. Her chance had finally come when her friends convinced her to do the Duke of Edinburgh award with them. Her parents had relented, and she and her father had both taken it up. Of course, she'd lapsed a bit between her GCSEs and ALevels, and hadn't been able to find a new club at uni, but while practise was useful, it wasn't like she would just forget how to shoot a bow. Whenever she went home she always got decent enough scores, even if they weren't the First Classes that her father and youngest sister (who'd taken it up when she'd left for uni) were getting.

The problem was, she'd never had the patience for it. Some of the archers (particularly the older ones) would take what seemed like hours, drawing their bow and aiming, before finally releasing – only to take another ten minutes thinking about where their arrow had gone and starting again. Kit was much more of a quick draw. In fact, they'd joked about it, telling her that it wasn't a machine gun, and she had all the time in the world.

Kit wondered if that would actually be a benefit here.

She realised suddenly that the others were moving, heading off after the man that had been talking to them. She padded after them, trying not to stare as they walked through the barracks. There were men sleeping on bunks in the main room, and others sitting around talking. There were far more, though, as they were lead out through the other side, into some sort of practise courtyard. There were men sparring with swords and axes, some wrestling, and others watching. Kit couldn't help but notice an abundant lack of shirts that would make a lot of her friends grin, especially with the muscles that were on show. It was making her grin and she was pretty sure she wasn't into manly men.

They were led into a room, dark from the lack of windows. After a moment to readjust her sight, Kit realised it was an armoury, and looked around at the weapons on show in disbelief. Her eyes jumped from a row of swords, to a pile of shields, to shelves upon shelves of what looked like leather armour, trying to take it all in. By far, the most abundant type of weapon were the spears that she'd seen many of the men carrying before, but what her attention was really drawn to was the white horse motif that seemed to be everywhere. Had she been less overwhelmed she would have smirked – the white horse was the symbol of Kent, and her secondary school had used a shockingly similar design.

The man had said something, and the boys in front of her headed off to look at the weapons. Algar headed over to the rows of spears, picking one up and balancing it in his hand to check for something. Leax, his hand on the pommel of his sword, had headed towards the shields, and the two boys were dithering between the swords and the spears.

Noticing Kit's hesitation, the man beckoned to her, and she followed him to the back of the room. There, stacked neatly, where twenty or so longbows. She grinned, and needed no more encouragement, rushing past the man to get at them. They were unstrung, and it took her a long while to get back into the habit of stringing them without a stringer. She held her comb between her lips as she held one horn tip under the tip of her boot and she pressured the bow into curving with her hands. It took her several goes to get it low enough for her to slip the string into place, and just from that she could tell that it was too heavy for her.

After three attempts, the man took over, taking the bow she'd just unstrung and looking at the runes written above the leather grip. Riffling through the pile, he found one and handed it to her. Stringing it, Kit found it was better, but still far too strong for her. She knew that she was fairly weak, and suddenly realised that they might not have one that was light enough for her to pull. The man seemed to be thinking something along the same lines, and frowned as she let down the bow, taking it from her to replace it, while still thinking. After a moment, he took off, and Kit peered after him. She took the chance while he was gone to help herself to a leather quiver from a few which were hung up on the wall along side the bows, tucking her new comb into the pocket that was attached to it, and a bracer and tap from wooden pots. She was about to have a look for arrows, when he came back, a bow in his hands.

Taking it from him, Kit immediately noticed that it was a good foot shorter than the others. Already strung, it was actually about the same height as her. She wondered if it was a child's bow with a wry smile. Probably. Drawing it, though, she realised that this was as good as it got. It was fairly easy to bring it to her chin (unlike some of the others, which she hadn't been able to get half way), but she could feel the resistance that told her after an hour or so this would start to hurt. She grinned as she let the string down carefully, knowing that releasing it without an arrow would send the stored energy in the string down the wooden limbs. "Thank you!"

He smiled at her, and Kit realised that the boys, having finished arming themselves had been watching her too. Playfully, she pulled a face at Leax and Algar, before moving to let down the bow. The man held out a hand for her to stop, and said something. Kit looked at Algar and Leax, who just beckoned for her to follow them.

They were led back out into another courtyard, this one larger, where five targets had been set up side by side. There were only two archers there, and they looked up as the group arrived, frowning. Kit ignored them, and walked over to a bucket containing white fletched arrows, and pulled one out. Measuring it against her arms, she was unsurprised to find that it was far too long, but as all the arrows seemed to be about the same length she didn't have much choice.

Pulling another seven out, she filled her quiver, and moved to take her place on the cord that had been pulled across the courtyard to mark the shooting line. A sudden silence made her realise that they were all watching her, and she sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, before opening them to glare at the target in front of her.

Now. It had been a long time since she'd shot (two or three months at least) and then she'd been shooting on thirty yards, and with a lighter bow than this one. And she'd never been very good at guessing distances either. She didn't dare measure out the gap with steps though, and so estimated it to be between forty and fifty yards. A voice in her head told her that they might not even use yards, so it could be anything, but she ignored that as she knocked her first arrow.

Unsurprisingly, it missed, and the sigh from behind her told her that they'd already given up on her. Almost immediately, though, she had knocked a second arrow, and this time the musical twang of the bowstring was followed by the thud of metal hitting straw. It had hit white: the top left hand corner, but Kit took this in with a glance, and her third arrow hit the gold.

Ironically, that probably made it her best round in a year or so, she thought with a smile. Although her fourth arrow was back out towards the left hand corner (this time in the blue), her fifth was another gold, and her last arrow hit somewhere on the line between red and gold.

This seemed to reassure their belief in her, and Leax even came to slap her shoulder, grinning enthusiastically. The other archers (whose arrows were all golds, Kit noticed) didn't look as impressed, but Kit didn't care. That really was her best round in a year or so.

She was reluctant to leave, but it looked like they had other things that they needed to do first. After a quick glance at the other archers, who nodded at her, saying something, and already crossing the line themselves, she went over to her target and pulled out her arrows. She'd forgotten the force at which they could embed themselves in the straw, even from such a distance, but yanked out all five hits, and then dodged behind the target and scanned the ground for her first arrow. She was amused to find it caught in the thatch of a building that backed onto the training ground, but had to stand up on tiptoes and dislodge it with another arrow.

She hesitated back on the other side of the line, holding all of the arrows she'd taken in her hands. Looking from her quiver to the barrel she'd taken them from, she then looked at the others in the hope one of them would help her.

In the end it was one of the archers who pointed at the barrel for her. She nodded gratefully, and slipped them away, before trotting up to the boys, who were already following the man out of the yard.

As they were walking, she looked at the new boys. She guessed that they might end up spending quite a bit of time together, and she hadn't been introduced to them yet. However those first two days when she'd had to introduce herself to people seemed like a long time ago now, and she couldn't remember how to say 'I am'.

She was fighting to recall the words all the way back through the main courtyard, and through a door that Kit realised only after they stepped through was on one of the back walls of the great wooden hall that occupied the top of the hill. The other four looked slightly awed to be there, although Algar was hiding it better than the younger three.

The hall was dark and smoky, but Kit could see rich tapestries on the wall, lit by lanterns and candles. 'A fire hazard.' She couldn't help but think with a smile. As they walked, something on the floor rustled, and only by thinking back to her history geek sessions could Kit work out that it might be rushes. They were led through to what appeared to be some sort of backroom, where three tin tubs were placed in front of a large fire.

Shit. Well this was going to be fun.

Two young women came in behind them, carrying a heavy cauldron of water between them, the same design as two already balanced on top of the fire. Kit watched with some interest as they used rags to drag one off, tipping the steaming water into one of the tubs (which was already half full, Kit realised, belatedly). Algar and Leax had already moved to carry the cold cauldron onto the fire, which made the two girls blush, and curtsy their thanks. The other two boys were, at the same time, taking the second cauldron off the fire, and the girls directed them to one of the tubs, which they emptied it into.

Algar asked the boys something, and the elder one shook his head in reply, before commenting as well, which Leax agreed to. Then, turning their attention to the girls, the two boys picked up the cauldron again, and the four of them left. The man told Algar something, but by this point Kit wasn't even listening. She was trying to work out how she was going to get in the bath without being seen.

The man left, and by the time the door closed Algar and Leax were already half undressed. Kit wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. She took a little longer, looking around to see if she could spot any soap (and hopefully some shampoo and conditioner too, but perhaps that was hoping for a little too much). She tried to avoid looking at the two brothers, who were grinning at each other and talking animatedly as they stripped from the last of their clothes. From their enthusiasm, she guessed that a bath was a treat, and she guessed that she'd better take advantage of it while she had the option.

She eventually found soap on a ledge next to the door, along with a scrubbing brush that looked like it'd seen better days. She decided that she'd be better off (and keep more of her skin) if she just used her hands. Looking back at the tubs, she saw that the boys had left her the one furthest away from the fire, which probably wasn't entirely a bad thing.

Turning to face the wall, she stripped as quickly as possible, and practically jumped into the bath water before either Algar or Leax had a chance to look at her. Once in the warm water, she sunk down into it, sighing in relief. The warm water against her aching limbs was absolute bliss, and for a moment she completely lost herself in it, before she remembered that she had to be as quick as possible, before someone saw her. Pity. Normally she would have taken the time to enjoy the treat of a bath.

Sitting up a little, she scrubbed herself clean with the soap as best she could. It didn't lather, and she'd never liked the feel of soap, but at least she was getting rid of some of the muck of the last couple of days. She'd washed as well as she could in the stream whenever she'd had the chance, but that was no where near as good as having a proper wash.

After she was satisfied that she was at least fairly clean, she lay back to wet her hair, and after trying to wash it with the soap, she then took another ten minutes or so trying to get the soap out of the matted locks. During that time the two boys returned with the maids, who were giggling and stayed by the door, but Kit studiously ignored them and resisted the urge to turn over onto her front.

Algar stood up and got out of his bath, standing in front of the fire to dry himself, and Kit panicked. She waited for him to turn his back, and then jumped out, quickly shaking the worst of the water off herself, and then pulling her clothes back onto her wet body. Algar gave her a weird look when she came to stand in front of the fire fully dressed, but didn't comment on it (perhaps thinking that it would be too much effort to try and communicate).

~*~

Algar was quite amused by Kit's attempts for privacy. It wasn't something that really bothered him: in a single room house you can't expect that much. It did get him wondering, again, where the boy came from though. Since Leax looked like he was intending to drag his bath on as long as possible Algar had to get Kit to help him empty cauldrons of dirty water from their baths so that the boys could top them up with the warm, clean water. He didn't know whether to be surprised or amused when he realised that Kit hadn't known that this needed to be done, but tried to be patient as they struggled to understand each other.

The boys were sitting outside the door, giggling with the two maids, who Algar couldn't help but think must have had something more productive that they should be getting on with. They jumped up when the door opened, and the boys grinned, knowing they'd get their chance in the bath soon.

"We'll show you where to put the cauldrons." One of the girls said, as she brushed off her skirt.

"Wait a moment then, and we'll get the other one." The younger of the boys replied, and Algar cursed himself for what seemed like the millionth time that day for not being able to remember their names. They lived – had lived – on the far side of the village to him, and since they were younger than him Algar hadn't paid them much attention before. Leax probably knew, and he'd meant to ask him first chance he got, but the baths had distracted him.

By lowering his hold on the cauldron a little, he was able to get Kit's attention, and they put it on the ground while they waited for the boys.

"Your brother is taking his time." One of the girls commented.

Algar grinned. "Well, I can't remember the last time he had a bath."

"Captain Acwel said as much." She blushed when she realised what she'd said, but this just made Algar laugh.

"We did smell: a week of travelling isn't the best of times to think about such things, and anyway, the Snowbourne is cold at this time of year."

The girls laughed this time, and the one who hadn't been talking to Algar looked at Kit. "Did you have to travel far?" She probably meant it as a friendly question to someone who hadn't been seen to talk much, but of course Kit couldn't help that. He looked helplessly at Algar, who decided to answer for him.

"I don't know what you'd call far."

He was interrupted by the two boys reappearing from the room, carrying a second cauldron of dirty water. Kit and Algar quickly picked up theirs, and the girls led the way through the corridors, back towards the back door that they'd been led in by.

"I've never been out of Edoras." One of the girls admitted. "So any distance would be far."

Algar nodded. He'd half expected as much. "Our village is out in the Eastfold, but in the north."

"And we had lots of people with us, so it took longer than if it'd just been us men." One of the boys added, making Algar frown. He hadn't intended to bring that up, but for whatever reason, the girls didn't ask further.

They emptied the cauldrons outside without incident, and stacked them in a storage room. By the time they got back to the room, Leax was out, and drying himself in the warmth of the fire, and Algar told him in no uncertain terms to stop being lazy and get dressed so he could help.

The boys held off their bath for a little while longer so that once Algar was dressed the girls could come in to help. Between the five of them they managed to empty the third bath, Algar carrying a fairly empty cauldron by himself.

Normally, Algar wouldn't have waited for the two boys as they bathed, but partially because he still felt guilty for not being able to remember their names, and partially to show solidarity with the others from the village, once the girls had gone off to do other jobs (after instructing them to put the baths back in the room that the cauldrons had been stored in), he sat down by the fire to wait for them. As usual, Kit and Leax followed his lead.

By the time the boys had finished, they'd cleaned up the room and returned to the barracks, the lunch hour was in full session, and they were invited to eat. Algar was grateful for the extension to what would eventually lead to him having to show what skill he had with weapons. Even though he'd been training for this – or perhaps because of that – he was dreading it.