In the long empty stretch of grass beside the lake, along the shade of the treeline, Niabh nocked one of her new arrows and raised her bow, stretching the string to her ear. About a hundred paces ahead of her, a black-clad figure stood, its back turned to her.
She held still, breathing evenly. “Turn around, Mister White,” she said softly, and, as if at her command, he did.
She loosed her arrow. It struck him high in the left side of the chest, knocking him back a step. He roared in pain and rage, blood spurting around the shaft, and poised as if to charge her, but she had already nocked a second arrow and sent it after the first. The man in black abruptly faded into the dead, black tusk of an old, rotted tree stump.
Satisfied, she lowered her bow and nocked another arrow. Hm. Who else was there? Ah, there in the distance, the shopkeeper who had swindled them the other night, striding toward her with his suspicious eye all but branding her a thief to her face. Hanging from his right arm was a heavy iron-headed mallet, black and greasy-looking, potent with malice. Her fingers opened, and the arrow flew, and there was as always that sweet, endless moment where she could actually feel just where the shot would land and the arrow's impact in her own arm--just before the fire-hardened wooden point punched sickly through that hard scrutinizing eye and into his brainpan, the mallet dropping with a dull thump into the grass....before the shopkeeper, too, receded into the stump.
Niabh lowered her bow and headed across the thick, damp grass to the arrow-studded stump. She wrapped her fist firmly around the shaft, then carefully wriggled and twisted until the point dislodged. The wood was soft and punky enough that it wasn't much trouble getting them back out. She held one arrow to her eye and squinted up its length. Still looking pretty straight. The tips were a little blunted, but they were only wooden ones; she'd accepted they wouldn't hold up to much repeat use. At least they hadn't split. Probably not strong enough for a solid target…but then again, people weren’t exactly solid, were they?
She strode back to her mark again.
Who else? Kayden’s teacher. She had no idea what the man looked like, and so had to summon one up: a tall, broad man with tangled black hair, all cruel, sneering mouth and thick bull neck--not a little resembling a groom who had once slapped Niabh for teasing the yearling colts as a girl--stalking toward her with his hard, grimy hands twitching. The arrow went straight through the hollow of his throat. He dropped to his knees and clawed frantically at the quivering shaft, a raucous gurgle like a crow’s call rattling in the air. It took a long time, and Niabh had not patience to wait on him. She dismissed the glam, and good riddance.
She hated herself, but the sport was good. It let out some of the pent-in frustration of the past week--the past months, even. It hurt to always be so strapped in on all sides by the damn tultharian and all their customs and all their rules. It hurt to keep so sweet and demure and deferential all the time. Sometimes her cheeks actually ached from holding a smile. It hurt not to know what was happening back home, and being forced to wait and to wait, when by rights she should be there. She never should have agreed to go. They'd made her leave, but it felt more like they had left her--abandoned her to the tultharian. She really shouldn't feel that way. It wasn't as if she was suffering here. Miserable and unhappy and chomping at the bit, but hardly suffering. It hurt that there was nowhere she could go to clear her head of the smell of clochgorma...except for here, out in the open air, out by the very forest that were forbidden to her. The thought made her angry all over again. The one rule she understood completely...and, perhaps because of that understanding, the one she resented the most, the one that seemed to underline and sum up all the rest.
Now, who should be next? Oh yes: that tubby carter who had offered her a ride to the next town, then tried to squirm a hand down her trousers. She knew exactly where she wanted to shoot him.