Nathan barely got his daggers out in time to block the attack. Verin moved quickly. Not only were his sword attacks fast but he also moved incredibly fast laterally, attacking Nathan from one side then instantly attacking from the other. It was all Nathan could do to keep blocking the attacks and reposition his body to try and counter Verin’s quick movements. This differed greatly from the style of attack his father used against him, but Nathan’s training showed. He was able to successfully block all of Verin’s attacks. After five minutes of the fast-paced swords play Verin stopped.
Nathan was sweating and he already could feel his heart starting to pound faster. He took the opportunity to take some deep breathes and control his body. Verin watched as he did this. “Good, your father taught you well. The sword-breaker style daggers are not conventional but with your strength, speed and hand-eye co-ordination you defended perfectly. I can see now why he chose those weapons for you. The fact that you understand the value of controlling your breathing and heart rate is also good. One less thing to teach you, but eventually you are going to have to learn to do the breathing techniques while fighting and not just after. Controlling your heart rate and breathing is vital. If we had stayed fighting at that pace, you would have slowed down and been susceptible to quick attacks.
As he worked to get his breathing under control, Nathan thought about what his uncle had said. It was similar to the things he was working on with his father before he died. Nathan could almost hear his father saying the same things.
“Now, close your eyes,” Verin commanded. He waited a full two minutes before continuing, “In detail, describe to me your surroundings.”
Nathan did as he was told. He used his memory to describe the meadow, where Verin was standing, how far they were from the edge of the forest, every detail he remembered.
“Not bad. But what about the wind? What direction was it coming from? From what angle is the sun coming down. Are there any clouds in the sky that will change how much sun and shadow there is? Is the ground a clay or rocky under the grass? From what spots in the tree line would be most likely to find an archer waiting to attack? You must learn to be completely aware of your surroundings: what can be used against you and what can also be used to your advantage.” Verin smiled. “You have a good base of skills to start with. It won’t take too long to get you up to being a respectable ranger.” Verin paused then signaled the end of the lessons for the day. “Go teach the girls potions. Tomorrow, we will continue your lessons.”
Nathan smiled. He was proud that his uncle thought he was worthy of becoming a ranger. He was also proud that his father’s training was showing. Content with the lessons, Nathan headed towards the Dollan house.
When Nathan had talked to Suzie Dollan and the girls about learning to make potions, he had given them instructions to go into the swamp and look for several plants. That next day they had gone to the swamp. The girls taught their mother which plants Nathan was talking about, they also took Bert one of the single men left in the Village for protection. Armund had been helping the Dollans, and although he was not being pushy about it, it was easy to see he fancied Suzie Dollan. Nathan had given the girls only a small list of plants to harvest: skunk cabbage, white birch bark, black currents, cedar sap and lavender. Today, he would teach them a simple salve with those ingredients.
He stood at the table of the Dollan house with the woman and old Bends on the other end watching him. It felt a little bit intimidating to be teaching adults and he told them so.
Suzy said, “Don't worry. If you get too bossy and cocky and I'll let you know,” she laughed, putting him at ease. And on that note, the lessons began.
“First thing to remember, always have a clean workspace. Wipe the table and all your tools with lemon water before you start.” Nathan paused and waited while they followed his instructions. “Second get a pot of water and put it over the fire. You want it to be hot but not yet boiling. While the water is getting hot start crushing the plants. Suzie and Bends probably know what I am talking about but I will explain everything so Ava and Rose know for sure," said Nathan.
Ava smiled at Nathan. She was grateful that he was teaching Rose and herself in the same way as the adults.
“The mortar and pestle are the basic tools used for crushing plants. The mortar is a clay or hard wood bowl and the pestle is a little club shaped piece of wood. I brought four sets from my mother’s supplies for you to use. Today we will make a salve for cuts. It’s a simple one and the ingredients are easy to find in the swamp. It sells well with healers from the cities, so traders will always buy a few bundles when they come through.”
“First, crush and grind the plants and flowers—lavender, white birch bark, black currents.” As Nathan talked them through the lesson, they eagerly got to work using the mortar and pestles to crush and grind the plants. The combined scents of the plants filled the room. “Next, add the ground plants to the hot water. Make sure you use the right amount of water or you will waste time waiting for more water to heat, or for too much water to boil off. As you do more potions you will get a feel for how much water to use, depending on the amount of dry ingredients you are using. Add the cedar sap into the water. Now, lower the pot so the water boils. Keep stirring the mixture. As the water boils off, you will have a thick oily paste. Let it cool and scoop the salve into the skunk cabbage leaves. Only put a small hand-sized scoop onto each leaf so the leaf can wrap several times around it. If you can’t find skunk cabbage, swamp lily also works,” said Nathan.
Nathan watched as they worked on their potions. Everyone seemed to understand his lessons. He had worried that he wouldn’t be nearly as good a teacher as his mother had been. “Tomorrow, you will go back to the swamp and get more ingredients. I will teach you another potion, but the basics will be the same as today. Good job ladies."
Everyone enjoyed the lessons, particularly Ava and Rose, who appreciated the fact that Nathan was a patient and thorough teacher.
Ava smiled and flirted with Nathan. “Now that our lesson is done, can we go to the pond and I will teach you how to play splash.”
Nathan laughed. “Ha! We shall see who teaches whom.”
…
Verin, too, was a patient and thorough teacher. Early the next morn, back in the meadow, he told Nathan, “Your black steel daggers are excellent weapons up close, but not all battles are fought up close. The bow is a valuable weapon for a ranger and is the main tool of a hunter. So today we are going to start your bow work.”
Verin held up two different style bows, “A long bow and a recurve bow,” he explained, while showing Nathan the two weapons. The long bow was exactly as it sounded: a sturdy-looking bow almost as tall Nathan, with a slow gentle curve. The recurve bow was a little smaller in length and when Nathan held it, the ends were bending back away from him.
Verin continued, “Long bows are easy to make quickly, are a perfectly fine weapon, and are the most common in this part of the world because of that. The recurve bow is harder to make and is harder to pull, which is a negative for some. But it also gives more energy back, so a smaller recurve bow can fire as far as a bigger long bow. Because you are such a strong lad and are only going to get stronger, we are going to build a bigger recurved bow.”
Nathan liked this idea. He was proud of inheriting his father’s strength. If building a bigger bow would take advantage of it, he would certainly do so.
“At first, it will be difficult to pull but, once you get the hang of it, it will give you range beyond any normal bowman. Northerners are not known for being fond of the bow, yet those who do have great range. However, range without accuracy is useless. We shall practice with both bows while you learn. Once we get a good piece of wood, we will build you a proper bow that takes full advantage of your strength.”
Verin set up several targets at different distances in the meadow. Each large chuck of wood had targets painted on with three rings. A ring about foot in size, a smaller second ring half that size inside it,
and finally a small bull’s-eye the size of a coin in the middle. Verin took the long bow and quickly, with a smooth singular motion, pulled the arrow back and released at the first target. While the first arrow was still in the air, Verin launched the second arrow, and again the third arrow with speed and precision.
Nathan retrieved all three arrows from the targets. All were in the bull’s-eye.
Verin was an excellent marksman to no surprise. Verin handed Nathan the long bow and an arrow. He held the grip with his left hand, cocked the arrow into the nocking point with his right and then pulled back until the string was touching his cheek. He looked down the arrow at his target and adjusted his left arm to bring the arrow into line with the target. Slowly exhaling, he released. His arrow flew true and hit the target with a thud. He had hit the edge of the second ring.
Verin approved of his first attempt. “Good. Exhale slower as you shoot. You want to be as steady as possible when you release the arrow, but once you have fired, give it just long enough to clear your bow then begin notching your next arrow. Watching your arrow is not going to help at this shorter distance. Work on precision, then speed.”
After a few hours of working with the bows, they stopped and went on the next lesson. Hunting, whether for game or enemies, involved learning to read the signs on the ground. Broken branches, bent grass, depressions in wet ground, all help to show a path where someone had traveled. A skilled hunter reads the signs like a book. A lot of this was already known to Nathan because his mother had taught him so much about the forest and how to read the scat and trails of forest animals. But Verin’s lessons were much more focused on the small details. Nathan learned how to recognize each animal’s prints, how shod horses had unique markings and how to recognize individual horses and how they moved. Nathan’s days alternated back and forth between working with Verin and teaching the Dollans. The days were long but fulfilling.
…
“Perfume is going to be your best seller. My mother, Velaina, had an excellent reputation for the quality of her perfume, even though she tended not to make a lot of them. She preferred to make more useful things like salves. But for you, I would make more perfume. It will keep traders like Nedd coming back,” said Nathan.
As he passed his students a vial to examine, he continued the lesson. “Perfume ingredients are basic and it is easy to make. The trick is getting the ratios right and blending it well.”
For a week, Nathan had been teaching the Dollans mostly about medicines and remedies that would be useful to them as well as be something to trade. Today, he was going to start with perfume. Good perfume was hard to find in the cities despite how easy it was to make. Few had the inclination or knowledge of plants to make it and even fewer were willing to go into the swamp lands and forests to gather the necessary ingredients. Most importantly, being able to make a pleasant long lasting scent was a bit of an art form., Nathan had learned from Verin, that even at a young age, his mother had an excellent nose of the art and made her own perfumes. It was only when she and Soron moved to Elderwood that she began selling them.
“All perfumes we make will be mostly a combination of almond oil and sunflower oil. These are the carrier oils that are good for the skin. The extra oils are added to the carrier oils to change the scent. Different oils not only smell different but also have different potency and longevity. Lemon oil is light and easy to notice, but it also doesn’t last very long. Cedar oil is not as strong smelling but lasts for a long time. Lavender and jasmine are in the middle. The perfume we are making today is mostly scents of rose, lavender and jasmine with a little bit of lemon and cedar.”
As he spoke, he carefully added small drops of oil to a vial. Five drops rose oil, eight drops jasmine, eight drops lavender, three drops lemon oil and three of cedar oil. This filled the vial about a fifth of the way up. The rest of the vial he filled with half sunflower and half almond oil.
Rose wrinkled her little nose as if exercising it for the perfume testing. Old Bends laughed. Rose did the wrinkle thing with her nose again, and they all laughed.
Putting a piece of cork in the vial, Nathan started shaking it. “It takes a few days for the oils to blend properly, so make sure to not sell blends you just made. Quality control is vital to making a reputation of being a seller of good perfume. For each perfume vial, shake it daily and remember to it out of the sun. Mother had three different perfumes that seemed to sell really well in Progoh and two that sold really well in Venecia. This is one for Progoh and Salma,” explained Nathan.
For several weeks, the routine stayed the same. Nathan would spend most of his time with Verin sparing, practicing with the bow and then going out into the forest hunting and learning to track. When Nedd, the first trader, arrived in town they had plenty of goods for him to buy. Nathan explained to Nedd that Suzie and the Dollans made most of the potions and would continue to do so in the future. Nedd, seeing that the quality of the goods was still very high was more than pleased to agree to keep returning to Elderwood. During the weeks while Nathan and Verin were out hunting and working on Nathan’s woods-craft skills, they were also keeping tabs on all the human tracks they encountered. They now had a pretty good idea of where the bandits were coming from.
When Nedd arrived in the village, he was greeted warmly by the remaining citizens of Elderwood. His supplies were a welcome sight. Nedd seemed quite pleased by the quality and quantity of perfumes and salves the girls made under Nathan’s supervision. He promised to return for more.
When Nedd traded his goods with them, he also gave them information on the bandit situation. Often the bandits traveled in smaller numbers, like those who had attacked Nathan on his return trip from Birchone, and seemed to have one main camp in the mountains, which was the base of operations. From Nedd, they had learned that the bandits had been becoming increasingly dangerous and brazen in their attacks. Besides Nedd, who had been willing to risk the trip for he had given his word and had customers lined up for a very healthy profit, very few were willing to risk traveling in the area. The time had come to deal with this problem.
During their suppers and before sleep, Verin would often talk to Nathan about Balta, or the southern cities, teaching him about how the politics in the cities worked and how he should behave as a young member of royal bloodlines. Sometimes they would discuss the bandits and what would be the repercussions of Verin and Nathan attacking them. While Nathan had previously had combat with bandits, he had never been in a battle like the one that was to come and he had never had to kill anyone. It was a depressing topic but Nedd’s recalling of the harm the bandits had been doing lately solidified the idea in Nathan’s mind. They must stop the bandits and that would mean killing them.
…
It was Sunday. No lessons from Verin, no teaching potions to Ava and the rest of her family. Today Nathan and Ava were back at the pond in the forest having a lazy day to themselves.
Nathan didn’t want to admit it but the lessons were coming along well and soon he would be out of things to teach them. Soon it would be time to leave. As excited as Nathan was about the prospects of going to Balta, he dreaded the idea of leaving Ava behind. As they sat in the meadow grass looking up through the trees into the sparsely clouded sky, Nathan looked over at Ava. She was picking dandelion heads and blowing them into the sky and then letting them fall onto her face. She would wrinkle her freckled nose, puff a breath of air up to blow the particles from her face then repeat the process.
Ava turned and threw a handful of the dandelion heads at Nathan. “All right, spit it out.”
Nathan had been trying to figure out how to broach the subject of his coming departure; obviously Ava had sensed something was up. “What? I said nothing,” exclaimed Nathan.
Ava sighed. “Exactly, you haven’t said a word in the last hour. Even for you, that is way too long. Something is bothering you, so spit it out.” Ava had known Nathan long enough to know all his moods; it was obvious Nathan had something to say.
“Well, I guess you are right. I just don’t know what to say.” Nathan was unsure how to proceed.
Ava, frustrated by the way the conversation was going blurted out, “You’ve been thinking about it for over an hour and that is the best you can come up with? Why not start with the fact you have been practically teaching the same lesson for the last three days, or fact that you are going to leave with your uncle soon. Why can’t you just admit you are stalling and don’t want to leave, that you are going to miss me.”
Nathan was floored; everything he had been struggling with trying to find the words to say, Ava had just covered in one mouthful. “If you knew what I was thinking, why did you let me sit here and struggle with it?”
“Because you were supposed to say it, you big dummy. If I mean so much to you that you are delaying leaving, the least you could do is say it.” Ava leaned over and wacked him on the arm, emphasizing her point.
“I’m sorry Ava. This is hard for me. I still miss mother and father a lot and being around uncle Verin has really been nice. I want to go meet the rest of my mother’s family, but I also am not looking forward to leaving you. You are my best friend and I don’t know what I will do without you.”
Ava moved over so that their bodies were touching. She grabbed his arm and pulled it around her, forcing him into a warm cuddle. “I understand your wanting to be with family, I just don’t want to lose you. I’m afraid that when you get to Balta, you will never come back.”
Nathan couldn’t imagine never seeing Ava again; the idea hurt him just to think about it. “Ava I promise when I go to Balta I will come back.”
Ava turned so that she was looking Nathan in the eyes “Say it again.”
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