6. Archer
Charnel's bond given to the one called the Maid.
Maiden fair and silent servant she rides cold,
Her bones are black, her hair is pale, her lips are stayed,
Her bow strong, her sight keen, her sharp arrows bold.
—
A long time ago there was a brave and noble chief who was obliged to lead her armswomen to war. Therefore she entrusted her lands to the care of her sister in her absence. But her sister was wicked and jealous and a tyrant, who oppressed the people, turned all but a few into her serfs, and made arrangements to hope that the rightful chieftain would never return from the wars.
But the north lands are not easily oppressed. The white harsh cliffs breed a strong and resistant people. And from high in the mountains came the crusader the people needed in their dark time, to sing songs to remind the people of the true chieftain, to prepare for her return, and above all to fight with all her might for justice.
She was the Merry Maid. Some call her the Archer Maid. Once the evil chieftain announced an archery contest to draw the Merry Maid out of her hiding-place, and the Maid came in disguise as a humble beggarwoman. At the last only two archers remained, a tall and strong mercenary and the beggar. The mercenary aimed better than she had ever before to hit the exact centre of the target with a single shot. The crowd gossiped that this must be the Maid, for none could possibly better that. But calmly the Archer Maid prepared her own shot below her beggar's hood—and she split the first arrow with her own. And then the Maid's band fought to free her from the ambush, the mercenary joined them to become the Archer Maid's right-hand woman, and that day was the first victory of the legendary partnership between the Merry Maid and Tall Mikittok.
Some say the Merry Maid was only merry when she killed. For the evil chief had her family murdered while seeking her out; or some say it was her lover. Only when her arrows found a target in another's living heart did a smile cross her cold face.
The Archer Maid, or at least the real person who gave rise to her legend, may have lived two thousand years ago. It is certainly not of a date to overlap with the legends of the White Hunt, in which the great dragon Charnel was said to bear a pale darkened rider known only as Maiden. Both are alleged to be archers, and that is the limit of the similarity. The strongest legends are eternal.
—
I hated Sedna Smartmouth.
Sedna Stench.
Sedna Sullen.
Sedna Scurvy.
Sedna Small.
Sedna Soft.
And that dragon witch bosom buddy of hers.
Me and my Crew fight for what we have. We're all pitfighting rats. Boss Turuk owns our debt, and someday we're going to fight our way out of her pits and into the big leagues at the Citadel, and then Skylady's the limit.
Asdis, Kivi, and me. Iluq. Iluq the Frost Hunter.
The Frost Hunt are the best of Boss Turuk's guards. There's nobody can touch us in or out of the pits. We're the three she gives the tough stuff to, we're the three who raced the number-four mineshaft and got out alive.
Nobody until Sedna Smartmouth called me a coward, shot my dragon, and humiliated us when we found the incendiary.
So we waited for another chance up against her. Sedna Smartmouth and her dragon witch are going down. They just don't know it yet.
This is the story of how I learnt archery in two clawdays flat.
It started out a normal day for training. We take the slightly warmer part of the long winter nights to run around Ikiaq, up on the factory roof and across the town roofs strong enough to take our dragons, three full circuits around the whole town wall with the third to test all our gear. One of the reasons why we're the best is that we all know what we need to know, fighting and racing and mag gear, and I keep Asdis and Kivi in line and on focus. Then the three of us humans spar for an hour and head back before it gets really cold.
It was that day, frost hardening and whitening the ground, we saw the first of the sedition posters.
A cheap black arrow pinned them to walls and houses: the arrow pierced the top and the bottom was unrolled by a stone strung through the lower edge. Plain parchment without a signature but for an ink-blot drawing of barbed arrowhead. It was what they read that was the problem.
Boss Turuk is nothing but a cheap twobit tin tyrant!
She feasts and drinks every night while Ikiaq starves and dies.
Her thugs beat your money and food out of you and leave you to freeze in the streets.
Rise against her! There are more of Ikiaq than her small squad of bullies.
I stand to fight with you!
"What does it say?" Kivi spelled it out slowly to herself. "B-O-S-S...bath?" You don't need your reading to be good to fight. "I like the arrow at the bottom! It's very pretty."
"It's sedition is all you need to know about it," I said, and slapped her across the head. Asdis scowled at me. I ripped off the paper and tore it to strips, flung down the arrow into the street and snapped it halfway through. "We go find who it is. Wonder if that nithing's name begins with a S? Then we tell the Boss."
The scraps of paper bloomed through the city—someone had done it fast. Perhaps they'd shot from a distance, one and then the next, the arrow hitting and the parchment unrolling of itself by the stone at the bottom—
"There!" Asdis cried out. I would swear I saw it too: a black figure swathed in dark cloak and mask, a chroma-shifted dragon like a living piece of shadow. Kivi's Suinnak leaped up over the rooftops, the lightest of us; we chased as best we could and swore to the black frozen earth we'd get her.
We lost sight.
"I bet her name starts with an S—or maybe with a D," I said, my gloves tight around Ukkarnit's saddleropes. "I bet all we need to do's head up to wherever she burrows—"
"Paranoid, much?" Asdis interrupted. "We ought to speak with Turuk before any else does, in case she believes that we'd lend an ear to this nonsense."
"We ought to bring the seditioner in cords to her feet. She'll reward us. Ride with me. We surround the house of those lowdown brats." Ukkarnit wheeled around in response to me and I knew the other two would follow. They know I'm leader.
Sedna Sannakin lived somewhere up in the cliffs with the other dregs. We yelled out our errand to find out just where. It seemed she hadn't left her waste by where she lived. Then she and her dragon came tumbling out of their cave like the lazybones they were.
"We've been sleeping like anyone in winter. Bugger off," she said firmly, and dared to yawn in front of us. "Besides, there's nothing that sedition gets wrong."
The dragon witch oozed out behind her, folding her dark arms. She looked like the sunkissed lowlander she was, no Ikiaq native by far: skinny and a warm dark brown, her skin a contrast to her clean white teeth. She wore her brown hair set in smooth tight braids. The dragon witch showed her foreign lowlander self in her face and it irritated me beyond bearing. Sedna looks pure north selkyhunter, short and round and smoothskinned and black-haired, and she drew her wide moon face into a scowl. "Get out, no-one's daughters," she said.
Sanna the hunter, I'd heard Boss Turuk saying back in the day, pointing to her furs and ivories. Sanna the best hand with a spear or bow I ever knew—better than the worthless layabouts in the pits. Once we were close. Mourn for her, fools.
Sedna Sannakin.
"It was not I and you cannot demonstrate it," the dragon witch said, with a smirk that made me figure she was guilty. "Would you dare bring us innocent to Boss Turuk? Or would you rather—stop the spread of the truth?"
"You'll be hearing more of this, witches," I threatened. I held my javelin and it would have been so easy to start a fight. Ukkarnit shifted impatiently.
"You'll be stoned like old Hublu or broken below us again..." Asdis promised in a sing-song voice, swaying back and forth on dragonback and staring out of her unpatched eye. Sedna and the dragon witch both tensed.
"Leave us," Sedna repeated. "We'd flatten your faces in a second but we know you're bluffing."
And she turned her back like she wanted to make an easy target. I stopped Asdis from trying to make the shot.
"Next time, seditioners," I promised.
We went back down to Ikiaq and saw more of the posters blooming in town, like the blacksouled archer'd made time for more while we'd wasted our chat with Sedna and her pack. We tried to stop folk from reading, snatched it out of hands and tore the stuff down from walls—yet some must have remained. The eyes of the townsfolk were different today, harsher toward us and straightbacked somehow. I glared back at the dark hateful eyes, resenting them.
"Let 'em talk," Boss Turuk said. She tossed off ash from a cigar. "I've never said folk couldn't talk. Let them show who's got guts."
"But they're—they talk against you," I said, and tried to grab my courage to talk with her. "And it's about rising and standing to fight! I bet it's Sedna Sannakin somehow—the dragon witch with her. Will you put a bounty on their heads?"
"No bounty to swell down your debt. Not yet," Boss Turuk said, and beside her the dragon Muruak stirred as if Turuk's patience ran low with me. She held a big pit event the next day, down in the factory and up over roofs in the open air, and me and Asdis and Kivi won and gained coin. We could beat Fyarkin and Hild and Ekinak easy, and a new dregscrim challenger fool enough to race us with a red-sided spiked hunterdragon. Like all our recent victories it eased the humiliation of that day with Sedna and the dragon witch. It seemed most of Ikiaq came to view.
...a black arrow. The sedition signed with a black barbed arrow. It had swept through the back of my mind since; it stung something like an old story in me. Once I'd a grandmother my own before Witch Hublu started to call me Iluq Longear.
Then there came the call that Turuk's meathouse was on fire.
It was all the action the sedition had promised. Someone had stolen Turuk's stores and lifted them all out on dragonslung sled—there were witnesses—and raced up to dump a carcass on the doorstep of every poor family in Ikiaq. Then set the empty place on fire for good measure, all while everyone was watching the games.
This time we got close in enough to see her properly. Not much to see—the big dragon, spiked like a whitebone, the size of my Ukkarnit or so, fast, chroma-shifted to dead black. The rider in an outfit that looked like shadows, maybe a woman, black-masked and silk-shifted. Kivi threw a knife aimed at her shoulder; she dodged. We chased and this time we ran her along the town walls, for all we were tired out and Asdis' left arm bled from a pitfighting wound. We kept on the chase despite it and I could be proud of my team.
The rider drew an auxobow and shot behind. It winged above my shoulder. She made tracks on the snow—you could see them—then skipped down between the rocks and hollows. I yelled orders to Asdis and Kivi in only a few words and we split into three to surround her. She wasn't getting away this time. The treeline approached: me in the centre, Asdis left and Kivi right. The black-shifted dragon raced tirelessly, turned a sharp corner and jumped up past heavy tree branches. Another arrow hit a treetrunk and sheared close to Ukkarnit's left foreleg. Reminded me too much of the first time Sedna Sannakin shot my dragon. Then it was like a hail, a forest of black arrows—at least five all quickly after each other shot from dragonback, filling the air around me and Ukkarnit, and for all the fear we raced after her and a second later realised we weren't hurt—
It's almost as if she doesn't really want to hit us.
Then she is a pathetic weakling.
The black rider capered away into the trees. We kept hearing the footsteps even while we couldn't see her for long minutes. Her speed only grew faster while our dragons got tired and more tired. And though we looked at snow and trees for signs, it became as if the black rider and her dragon had melted into nothing but shadow.
Skylady curse it, we lost the trail. I got the nutriwater flask off the saddle and let Ukkarnit drink, warm water so he wouldn't be shocked; shifted the saddle blankets to cool his flanks down. Asdis and Kivi led their dragons to join me and rest. I traced back to where an arrow was stuck in a tree and pulled out the black barbed thing. Going through skin it'd stick there and leave a great gaping wound. It looked like it was carved of some ebony wood treated to make it stone-hard, all in one piece, the fletching feathers raven black. Some black liquid dripped from its point when I touched it and I wondered if it were poison. Pain for either human or dragon.
Then I remembered the name.
"Merry Maid..." I said. Asdis and Kivi looked blank. But I had my idea to beat her.
Boss Turuk heard me out. "Smoke her out that way. Two problems: first, if she's not stupid. Second problem, if the wrong one wins."
"I can fix that," I promised. Fool me and my big mouth. "She'll have to show up. If she's serious about the sedition of stealing and giving to the poor, what could be better than going for Boss Turuk's purse? Except she'll come in second place. This I swear to you."
Sedna Seascum claimed she'd been fishing out with the tall girl Inge and the kid while the Archer Maid raided the meathouse, the dragon witch was out negotiating for dried herbs in the marketplace, and the cripple was keeping the housefires going. There'd been no meat left by Sedna's cave, not after she'd won from us.
"Very well," Turuk said. She'd been firebreathing-pissed about the loss of her storehouse. Some bold folk had even dared to thank her on the street for the gifts. Needed a way to catch this new Archer Maid. "I hear you out." And she looked at me with her small black eyes.
"There's only one problem," Asdis said. "You don't know which end of a bow's up."
"I do know that," I said. "I learned a bit years ago. How hard can it be to get good? And if that doesn't work out..."
"Then we cheat," Kivi said, and giggled.
I got the finest auxobow I could find in the merchants' stores, made it the right size and weight for me. I'd thought I could handle something bigger than Sedna's—I was taller and stronger—but it turned out I couldn't pull one of those back. I'd found a tome on it lying in the junk of Nal Nalak's stall and it said to stick to something to easily draw. Stance even, weight balanced, nock and set and draw and aim like the drawings said—
I started consistently hitting the target on the second day of nothing but archery practise.
"One-and-a-half clawdays to go," Kivi said, and held up the device she and Asdis were working on. "We got the magdraw working the way you said. You aim in roughly the right direction, and the little signatures from your personal arrowheads go to the target centre as long as we're pointing it right. We're still working out the little squiggly bugs in it—"
I aimed off an arrow and it took a sharp right-angled turn in midair then flopped to the ground like a dying krawhal.
"Better improve it," I said, and on my next shot I made something near to a bullseye.
I can learn enough archery to beat Sedna in two clawdays. I have to. I'm Iluq. I can learn anything fast.
Javelin, Kivi's knives, Asdis' chain, twoswords, club, spear, poleaxe, barehands. I learnt fighting styles fast and taught myself how to wire a communit in less than a day. I remember everything I see. The dragon witch beat me once but I knew the moves of her staff now.
On the third day I started learning it on Ukkarnit's back, shooting targets behind while he ran the maze. It wasn't the same: you couldn't get enough draw strength or time, and you had to look at the target and shoot the arrow without thinking it. I rejigged the auxobow settings and got a little better at hitting one target out of every four. Over and over again, nothing else but shooting arrows and sleeping four hours a day to be at it again—
"You're hitting half the targets on dragonback and getting bullseyes one every thirty on a stationary target," Asdis said, the second last day. "Focus on the lengths for the competition—twentypace, fiftypace, hundredpace. And we get ourselves in position."
I loosed and this time the arrow shook itself to the target's centre, waving back and forth. Kivi raised up the handheld device she'd pointed parallel to the bullseye. "It works! Glorious and frabjous," she said, and did a cartwheel over the frosted ground. "Now let's me and Iluq practice hand-the-cheat-over-and-run!"
So came the day of Boss Turuk's archery contest. For the last night I ate a good dinner and had a long sleep, and didn't need to practice any more.
"One hundred and fifty gold drakkals for the best archer in Ikiaq." Boss Turuk dangled the small fortune in a leather bag. One gold drakkal was worth a full ferrdeny ingot. Seemed near everyone in town was interested. I caught Sedna and her clan and gave the word to Asdis and Kivi to watch them. Even weak Kesuk the nurse was out and drawing a bow. It's tradition to a lot of folk: but most don't work as hunters, or pitfighters.
In the first rounds I beat an old man easy. Kesuk was out then too; Sedna's crippled friend Cel tried to balance a bow on his crutches and made it through the first round at twenty paces, but lost at the fifty mark. I shot steadily and as good as I needed to make it up the rankings. Don't let the enemy think you're too good too early. Then I got Asdis and Kivi to start to help me win.
After the hail of arrows the best archer had to be the seditioner.
I learned the dragon witch tried to compete but dropped out in the second round. Sedna's clanmate Inge, the tall fair axefolk-looking one, made it into the fifth round with only eight of us left. This was the dragonback round: Turuk had her people set up a track to run in the open cold air, the sun still halfway through the short winter day, a maze with twists and turns and targets. 'Course, Kivi had spied on the setup for me and Ukkarnit and I knew the route by heart. Nothing to do but hit the targets—while Asdis and Kivi threw the device to each other and got me bullseyes.
And then I was in the final four and Inge Sednaclan was out. She accepted defeat with a tall shrug and stood aside to watch things with the dragon witch.
"Twenty paces. Immediate elimination."
My arrow shuddered into place—the distortion looked obvious to me, but it seemed none noticed. Three remaining, Sedna and me and a piefaced dark underfed-looking boy I knew was another hunter type.
"Fifty paces. The same."
The boy was out, the arrow furthest from the centre. I saw Inge, the tall fair girl from Sedna's lot, turn her head to where my team was in the crowd. I cautioned Asdis and Kivi over private comm to be on the lookout. And then there was a delay when someone's dragon started tramping madly around.
Last shot. Hundred paces. Sedna mockingly gestured to me to go first.
"Iluq! Device's out! Could be battery, could be—" Kivi said in my ear. I saw my hand shake on the draw. I snapped at her to make a fix even so.
"Too frightened?" Sedna said. "You'll fail again and you know it, Frostbite. You want me to go first to hold your hand?"
No point. Asdis and Kivi could not repair that fast.
"No," I said, and aimed.
Sedna Sannakin, it is you and it is me.
A perfect bullseye. One in a lot-more-than-thirty chance. Asdis and Kivi cheered, pumping fists in the air, and half the crowd did as well as if they wanted me to win. It felt different to the betmakers in the gladiator pits yelling at us to win their bets for their soft bellies. I'd won on my own terms and scored victory over her at last. I turned to Sedna to start my gloat.
"Let me have my try," Sedna said, shorter than me. Her parka's hood was ragged above her head like a beggar's. She selected a long slim arrow with a stilodart tip. There was quiet as she drew. Asdis whispered in my ear that the communit said my shot was mathematically perfect, dead centre on the target, of course I'd won.
I should have known it from the story of the Merry Maid. Sedna's arrow sheared through my tailfeathers. It split the shaft and landed in the point. Mine fell apart around her own. Another bullseye. Her face was serene and triumphant in its blankness as she turned to me.
"Sedna Sannakin makes the shot," Boss Turuk said, cold and level as ice frozen on a rooftop, and then there was deafening cheers.
"But I'm not done yet," I said. It was loud enough to let everyone hear. There was something that'd never satisfied me about that story about the Archer Maid. "Sedna and I both hit the bullseye. We're even," I said, and it was so plainly the truth that they agreed.
"Then see if you can do the same," Sedna said, scowling. "Raise the targets a hundred paces again. I fire first and see if Iluq Longear splits my arrow."
It took time to set it up again. Asdis and Kivi gave me the signal they'd got the cheat device back to working. Sedna prepared to fire. I knew she had to lose, had to be second. She shot.
Then I aimed as close I could. I mimicked some of what Sedna'd done, changing it to my body and my balance.
My arrow ended half an inch away.
"Sedna the Archer! Sedna the Archer! Sedna Sannakin the Archer!"
I could not face the cheers for her and I turned away. Frantically Kivi tried to apologise over comm, she hadn't got the calibration fine enough and she was sorry, oh so very sorry... I knew what would happen.
"To the greatest archer of Ikiaq," Boss Turuk said. "You take after your mother. I grant you the purse to the best archer..." Sedna held out her hands.
"It will be to Kesuk," Sedna said, Sedna spurning it. "We have enough to eat."
Too many to count cheered her on. I stared down at the ground and rested my head against Ukkarnit's neck. No choice, no choice, no choice—and she is the Archer Maid—
"And then my guards will take you, for you are the arrow-seditioner," Boss Turuk said. "Your shooting proves it." And I looked upward to see Sedna grow uncertain, as if she truly had been too stupid to expect it. Asdis and Kivi were ready to capture her and her clan in the crowd, Kivi saying she'd Inge in her sights, Asdis the dragon witch, me the main seditioner, and the kid and the cripple mattered not at all—
"The purse was to the greatest archer of Ikiaq, was it not?" said a voice from afar, rolling and deep as the mountain's black hearts, harsh as a fall of hail. She sat on dragonback as before, black-masked, black-rider: and she too held a bow in hand.
"I stand here at two hundred paces," she said. She raised her black bow and the ebony arrow skimmed toward the target in one swift movement. It sheared Sedna's arrow in two. It passed through that target and to the precise centre of another behind it, and again pierced to land dead centre in a third, ending and stabbing that last target all the way through. I stared in silence, just as all who were there. None, I thought, could stand against this Archer Maid if she willed it, none could have challenged her from the start.
There was only shocked, dead silence. The Merry Maid was black against the dying sun and sat as if she was one with her mount, legs moulded to the dragon's back.
"Give the prize money to Kesuk's hospital," she repeated. "This may be the last you see of me. But the Archer Maid lives only—" and there I felt as if there were some sadness in her tone, melancholy and black death following her like the tips of her frightful arrows—"to stand against cruelty." She raised her arm once to salute the town, and turned on her dragon's back and raced away like a shadow in winter's dark. She was gone.
"Give chase! You scrimming fools, get after her!" Boss Turuk yelled like the howl of an angry draghound deprived of his supper. "Sedna Tracker! You do it!" But Sedna flew to her dragon, stood there with her friend Inge and the dragon witch, and turned her down. There was nothing we could do.
All of it was over.
"Kesuk," Boss Turuk said, very slowly, walking to him on her own legs, though her dragon Muruak followed behind, giant and tall as always. "You've won this one."
He caught the purse she threw, and said: "Thank you, Mother."
For they were bloodkin, those two, strong Boss Turuk and the weakling nurse she should have left to the cliffs at birth. The same wide face and the same narrow eyes, the same large build and the same tousled dark hair. But you did not speak of it if you wished to be unhurt. She grunted and walked away. I stood in a mix of dirt and ice on the ground, muddy from all the tramplings.
"Iluq," she flung at us, "the purse goes into your debt. You knew this from the start."
For Boss Turuk owns us, body and soul.
We fight to win our freedom from Ikiaq.
And we never saw the Maid again, or at least not for a long time.
—