Isobel

by Chloe Garner

  “Who do you think is going to get to use the shooting range this afternoon?” one of the boys asked, snatching bread out of a basket as it went by.

  “Not you, mate,” another answered, throwing a handful of beans at the first. “You couldn’t hit a dead cow at arm’s length.”

  The first stuffed the roll into his mouth and snatched the meat platter away from the second.

  “Wouldn’t need to,” he said. “I already hit it once.”

  A ceramic bowl full of potatoes went by and Aedan dropped one onto Allie’s plate.

  “Hot,” he warned. “I’m up for the shooting range today,” he said to the first speaker as they passed something over Allie’s head that she never got to see. “Haven’t been there in weeks.”

  “Like you could draw a bow with those little arms,” a fourth boy teased.

  “Broke your nose, didn’t I?” Aeden asked.

  “Twice,” Drude said through a mouthful of stew.

  It went on.

  A serving woman touched Allie’s elbow and lifted her plate from in front of her. Allie’s hands went with it, trying to get it back.

  “Isobel wishes your company,” the woman murmured. Allie dropped her hands, trying to figure out if she was disappointed or not. Sitting with Isobel was special, but she’d never gotten to sit with the boys before.

  She followed her plate across the room, sitting in a chair across the boards from Isobel. Rafa was the only man Allie knew who had separate tables in his dining hall. Some of the other clansmen teased behind his back that he couldn’t find trees tall enough, but Allie thought it was civilized. It meant that the women didn’t have to wrestle the boys for meat.

  She settled into her chair and started to eat. Isobel often invited her over on days that she got whipped, never saying anything. Allie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to make of it, but Isobel seemed to be more on her side than Gede’s. She chose to believe that it was a silent sympathy, and took it as an honor.

  “How old are you?” Isobel asked. Allie looked up, wiping broth off her chin.

  “I’ve seen fourteen winters,” she said.

  “Nearly a woman, then,” Isobel said. Allie shrugged. Winter after next, there would be a womanhood ceremony for all of the girls her age, and then they would start marrying. She didn’t think about it much. She chewed a hunk of meat from the stew and waited to see what Isobel was driving at.

  “What do you want?” Isobel asked. “Why are you always out at the practice arena?”

  Allie shrugged.

  “I want to fight.”

  “Gwen and I had hoped you’d grow out of that,” Isobel said. Allie was a little startled her mother had discussed it with Isobel. She shrugged again.

  “They killed my father,” she said, not lifting her face from her plate.

  “And your three older brothers, and two of your uncles,” Isobel said. “There are many women with the same story. They kill lots of people.”

  “Why aren’t I allowed to do anything about it?” Allie asked, looking up. The intensity in Isobel’s eyes made her drop her gaze again, and she shrugged.

  “I like to watch,” she said.

  “No matter how many beatings you take, you won’t quit, will you?” Isobel asked. Allie shook her head. Isobel wiped her hands on a cloth and stood.

  “Finish your food and meet me in my room.”

  Allie watched Isobel leave, speechless, then wolfed down the rest of her meal and dashed after the woman.

  Most of the women wore leather. The men wore a combination of leather and less-treated skins and furs. Isobel wore cloth. She wore her black hair down her back in a braid that went most of the way to her waist, like a Caledd woman. There was no specific reason to say that Isobel didn’t look Caledd, but she didn’t. Even in leather, she would have looked out of place. No one said anything to her, though, because no one said things to Isobel. Not like that.

  The woman stood over the pile of skins that constituted her bed as Allie entered. There were weapons on the skins.

  Beautiful ones.

  There was a longsword inlaid with silver in beautiful patterns, and a shortsword with a gold handle and three large colored gemstones. There were daggers and an artisan-worked staff. And a bow.

  “Whose are these?” Allie asked.

  “Mine,” Isobel said.

  “Yours?” Allie asked, seconds away from picking up the sword.

  “Yes, and they’re mine because I’ve earned them. Do you want to earn one?”

  One? She wanted all of them.

  The bow drew her attention again.

  She was drawn to the idea of bows. To be the unseen huntress, bringing death out of silence. Isobel followed her gaze and nodded.

  “I’ve missed them,” the woman said. “It’s amazing how little the rest of the world understands the power of a piece of wood and a string.”

  Isobel opened a chest and produced a shorter bow and an un-tipped arrow and handed them to Allie.

  “You come back to me when you can draw that the length of the arrow, and we’ll talk,” Isobel said. “Don’t let Gede catch you with it.”

  Allie nodded, weaving her arms over them against her chest. Isobel gave her a little nod.

  “Go.”

  She ran.

  Her heart raced as she got outside and into the safety of the woods, where she could safely practice. The bow was stiff in her hands, and the string barely budged as she tried it. Very quickly, her shoulders began to burn, but she kept at it, drawing the string back and looking down the shaft of wood at everything around her.

  She’d drawn a bow before. Weapons-making was a winter craft that both men and women were expected to sink much of their time into. She’d been taught since her fingers were nimble enough to fletch arrow shafts and attach stone or bone or iron heads to them. The little boys played with slings, ricocheting rocks off of everything when they got bored, but that had always been forbidden to her. But testing the draw of a bow. That was part of the workman’s tasks, and she loved the feel. The way the fibers twisted and strained under her fingers and the athletic flex of the wood. She could put a length of wood through a man with just that.

  Just this.

  She practiced until her hands barely held the bow any longer and her wrists were red with welts, then hid the bow away in the house she shared with her mother and sprinted toward the practice range to watch the boys with their full longbows. The idea of actually using one herself drove a new sense of urgency and interest as she studied them, determined to learn everything she could without actually having a bow in her hands.

  She wrapped her wrists in leather, adopting it as a quirk and refusing to answer questions about it other than that she liked it. And she did. She hurt herself the first day, waking up the next morning with sore shoulders and arms such that she had trouble getting out of bed, but her progress was steady. She spent more time at the training ring, more and more brash watching the practices, and more interested in the specifics of the training. Isobel had opened a door for her, and Allie wasn’t going to miss any opportunities just because she failed to think of them. By winter, she could pull the full draw of the short bow and Isobel got her a long bow. It was like starting over, but she guarded her time, finishing chores and disappearing before anyone could assign her more. She cooked, she cleaned, she prepared herbs and repaired clothing. She did all of the things she was supposed to do, and then she stole away, sometimes by the light of a clear moon, to practice with the bow.

  It was taller than she was, but not for long. She was putting on height at a pace that was normal for her people, but still shocking to her mother. Her joints ached when she woke in the mornings, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the growth or the training.

  Before the hard snows set in, the boys would leave to go home. They would come back in the spring with new stocks of weapons, six extra inches of height, most of them, and any younger relatives who were finally old enough to train under Rafa. She
would miss them, she knew, the noise and laughter and training, but at the same time, her load of chores would drop off sharply, and she would be able to steal more time by herself, practicing.

  The first boys had already started to leave, the ones who had the furthest to go, one day as Allie was out by herself, practicing with the longbow Isobel had given her. The boys had been given the day off, as many of them had to pack for travel and the weather that morning had been particularly drizzly and dreepy. Allie wasn’t about to let that stop her, though, and she took advantage of the training arena being open. The lack of underbrush meant that she could practice her stances, laying on her stomach in the dirt with her bow slung over her back, then springing to her feet to aim the arrow shaft at imaginary Romans.

  “How long have you been practicing?” a voice asked. Allie jumped, only just keeping control of the bowstring. It would have been a pain to have to go find the arrow in the wet underbrush.

  Again.

  She spun to look at Aedan guiltily, wishing she could hide the bow behind her back. He blinked at her, amused.

  “A few months,” she said finally.

  “Where did you get the bow?”

  She thought about protecting Isobel, but decided that the woman probably didn’t need it.

  “Isobel gave it to me.”

  He nodded.

  “They’re going to start looking for you soon. It’s lunchtime.”

  She looked for the sun, alarmed that she had lost track of the time so badly, and he grinned.

  “Too cloudy today,” he said. “We’ll need to run to make it back before they notice you’re gone.”

  She slung the bow over her shoulder and followed him back down the path toward the buildings, taking almost two steps for every one of Aedan’s easy lopes, but keeping up easily. He pointed toward a stand of rocks a few paces off of the trail as they came into view of the main hall.

  “Stash it there.”

  She frowned at him, wrapping both hands around her bow and shaking her head.

  “I’ll hide it inside, somewhere.”

  He laughed.

  “It will take a little bit of rain. They’re made to withstand the damp. We’ll come back out for it after we eat.”

  She perked and he laughed again, a noise that made her happy.

  “If you’re going to practice that hard, you may as well have someone tell you what you’re doing wrong.”

  She considered for a moment, then dashed over to the rocks and hid her bow, sliding it into a cleft along the ground where it was least likely to get too wet, then ran back to where Aedan was waiting for her.

  “You aren’t going to tell on me?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “Why? You aren’t breaking my rule.”

  She gave him a smile and he grinned, waving at Drude as his cousin spotted them.

  “Not like you to be late for food,” the bigger boy said. “I was getting worried.”

  “I’m not late,” Aedan answered. Drude winked at Allie and Allie felt herself blush as she turned her face away. The two of them ushered her into the main room and sat on either side of her at the boys’ table, talking over her head about things that were going on at Drest’s hillfort, the work that they’d be doing over the winter, the people that they hadn’t seen since early spring. Allie listened with interest as the boys talked, then Drude looked down at her.

  “What’s it like here, when we’re gone?”

  Aedan twisted to give her more space as he watched her. She shrugged.

  “We do all the things you do. Tend the animals and the equipment. Sing. Tell stories.”

  “I bet Rafa’s stories are the best,” Drude said.

  “He doesn’t tell any,” Allie said with a small frown. She cast a glance at the older man at the far end of the boards, but he didn’t appear to be listening to them.

  “Who does, then?” Drude asked. Allie twisted, looking at the table where the old men sat, goatherds and grooms, men too old to fight who had nevertheless gravitated to Rafa as warriors were wont to do. Some of their stories were terrifying in the dark of winter, as they sat with their mead in the shadows of a dying fire. Drude elbowed her jovially.

  “I wouldn’t believe a word they say,” he told her. “Old men don’t remember the past the way it really happened.”

  Aedan shook his head.

  “Don’t let them hear you say that.”

  “You think that my grandda was really eight feet tall and could lift a cow?”

  “He was a great king,” Aedan said.

  “But I saw him. I’ll be a head taller than he was by springtime.”

  Aedan laughed.

  “What does Isobel do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what she does, now,” Allie admitted. “Whatever she wants.”

  Drude howled with laughter and clapped her on the back.

  “I bet she does.”

  A stone slate piled high with steaming vegetables went by, and Aedan scraped a portion onto Allie’s plate before he handed it to Drude, swerving it out of the way of grabbing hands from across the tables. Someone jostled Aedan, complaining, and Aedan answered in similar, non-language tones. Allie smiled, filling her mouth as fast as she could chew. Gwen had entered the room with a familiar expression, and Allie wanted to be gone before her mother laid eyes on her and gave her more chores for the afternoon.

  She cleared her plate and elbowed Aedan.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she urged, ducking as Gwen’s gaze swept the boys’ table. Aedan laughed.

  “Flee now; I’ll follow you.”

  Allie ducked again, sliding over the bench and hiding behind Aedan, then making a run for the door to the whoops and cheers from the boys’ table. She made the front door without hearing Gwen’s voice and raced for the woods to retrieve her bow.

  Aedan found her in the practice arena again a few minutes later.

  “Not here,” he said, waving her out.

  She put her bow over her back again, looking at him with curiosity. He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder with a grin.

  “We need to get you something to shoot at.”

  Allie put her hand over her mouth, grinning behind it, and nodded quickly, hopping the arena wall and following him back down the path toward the archery range at a trot. Aedan followed her at a more reasonable pace, catching her as she started positioning her feet to line up her draw.

  “You need a broader stance,” he said, coming to stand in front of her. “Have you ever loosed an arrow before?”

  She shook her head, trying to move her feet without dropping her shoulders. He laughed.

  “Relax, relax.”

  He came to stand near her, putting both hands on her shoulders. She shivered.

  “How long have you been practicing on your own?”

  “A few months,” she said, the warm of his skin where it touched her exposed neck making it difficult to hold the string taut with her fingertips. He laughed again, the flow of his breath close enough for her to feel it.

  “Relax,” he said again, putting more weight on her shoulders. “You’re never going to be able to keep this up. You have to be able to breathe and wait for your moment.”

  She took a breath and let it out, feeling the tension flow out of her neck and shoulders. He nodded, face close, eyes confidential, serious.

  “You’re strong enough. Let it work for you. Find your feet.”

  She settled again, and he nodded a slow beat.

  “Breathe. Relax.”

  He notched an arrow between her fingers and settled it along the wood of the bow.

  “It won’t fly true without fletching. You can’t predict where it’s going to go. You understand?”

  She nodded, arm and shoulder beginning to feel the burn of the tension, but she didn’t give herself an inch. Not in front of Aedan. He nodded another breath, then took a step back.

  “When you’re ready.”

  She drew a breath and held it, looking down the len
gth of the arrow at the dirt piles at the end of the range with their painted targets stuck in the ground. When she couldn’t focus any harder, she let the string spring from her fingers, smacking the thick leather on her wrist, and the arrow was away.

  In that moment, it didn’t matter where it hit.

  She had used a bow. Actually used one. And she wasn’t off playing by herself in the woods, a silly girl. Aedan was taking her seriously.

  The arrow skidded into the dirt well short of the target and Aedan laughed.

  “What did I do wrong?” Allie asked.

  “They fall as they fly,” he said. “You have to aim above the target, depending on how far away it is.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” she growled, starting after the arrow.

  “Because it’s a touch,” he said. “You have to learn it. You’ve got the power. When you get taller, you’re going to be a beast.”

  They reached the arrow and Allie picked it up, inspecting the tip and length of the wood shaft. It seemed undamaged.

  “They’re made from good wood,” Aedan said.

  “I know,” she answered. “I make them every winter.”

  He laughed, putting his hand to the middle of her back as they walked back to the front of the range. She took half a dozen more shots, winging one of the targets in the second to last, to whoops from Aedan.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, slapping her on the back.

  “My arms hurt,” she laughed as they went to retrieve the arrow. He nodded.

  “It’s probably time to call it a day.”

  They were silent as they left the range and started back toward the buildings.

  “Drude and I are leaving tomorrow,” he said.

  “It’s still early,” she complained. “We haven’t even had the first snow.” It wasn’t technically true; it had snowed a number of times in the previous weeks, but this far north, there was an unspoken agreement that it hadn’t actually snowed until the ground underneath the trees was white. He smiled.

  “There are things going on back home. We should be there sooner than normal.”