Archery: A Sinister Turn

With a grumble at the need to humiliate himself more, Liam moved into one of the lanes, his quiver of arrows in hand. It wasn't as though he'd had high expectations for himself in the class – he had always been awful at hunting and shooting – but to be outperformed by women….The shame was almost too much for him to handle. But what else could he do? If he couldn't hold his own, even poorly, in the classes, how long would it take for the White Tower to ask him ever-so-politely to leave? He doubted it would extend asylum to someone like him, even if he begged for it.

So he stood with apparent patience, even though he seethed inside. He hadn't expected the others here to possess this much skill. Of course, the bow was a common weapon, something even farmhands learned to use. Once he got the chance to get show his ability with a gentleman's weapon like the sword, his confidence would return. His right hand squeeze into a slow fist at that thought, knowing it would need the work and training just to get back to where it needed to be.

His icy blue eyes studied the trainees before him, watching to see if there was some technique he was missing. The stance, the concentration, the release….he could find nothing. It brought back memories of his father trying to teach him the bow, his fathers arms around him as he moved his arms into the right places, a faint whiff of ale on his breath. Though Betram never scolded or belittled him, Liam had felt the weight of disappointment from the man, one more brick in the wall that separated them. Old as it was, that weight still tugged down on him, perhaps moreso now that he considered the Sansalas estates as falling fallow and unused.

When it was his turn, Liam eyed the targets. He had little hope of hitting any of them, but he had no choice but to try. He exhaled, calmed his fidgety nerves, and pulled an arrow from the quiver. The motion he used to draw the bow was as smooth as any of the other trainees, but the result was not. The arrow flew wide to the right of the target, and he swore under his breath in anger. Before he could snatch another fletching from the quiver, however, Talaban stepped up to him.

"Are you certain you're shooting from the correct side?"

With a frown, Liam shrugged as he looked the instructor over. There was no derisiveness in his expression, only a teacher's honest question. "I have no idea. This was the way I was taught to shoot, but I've always been this appallingly bad at it."

Talaban took the bow from him and laid it on the ground. "Make a triangle with your hands, like so." He demonstrated for Liam, his thumbs and forefingers touching so a small triangle of space appeared in the middle. When he did as instructed, Talaban said, "Hold them up so you can see the bull's eye of the target in the middle." Easy enough, Liam thought, and did so. "Now, close your left eye, and then your right eye." He waited until Liam was finished, and then asked, "Which eye did the target not move in your vision when it was open?"

"My left eye," he answered, beginning to see where this might be going.

"Then it's no wonder you can't shoot straight. You need to shoot from the other side."

Liam's mouth hung ajar in surprise. Shooting from the left had never occurred to him, nor to his father. Light, but it made sense. As a boy, he had done most things with both hands until his tutors had made him choose one or the other. Everyone else had done things with the right, and the right felt more natural to him in most regards. Honestly, though, he couldn't do any worse, could he?

He tugged off the arm brace off of his left and switched it to his right, and then did the same with the glove. Talaban handed the bow back to him, which he took with more than a touch of apprehension. He'd never even attempted a left-handed shot before, so it was unlikely he'd be any better than he had been, but it was either that or knowingly look like a fool.

As calmly as he could, he plucked an arrow from the quiver and took his time to get into the correct position. Knocking the arrow felt odd, but not wrong, although the bow was not made for a left-handed shot and it kept trying to slide off of the ledge. After a moment, though, his elbow was cocked back, the arrow held back by his chin. He exhaled, cleared his mind, and focused. A twang rippled in the air as the arrow flew true. It fell just short of the middle target, but it was on the right line to have hit it. Liam stood in stunned silence as Talaban patted his shoulder. "Well done. Continue with the rest of the lesson." Then he walked off.

With a shake of his head, Liam took aim six more times at the middle target, striking the bottom of it twice and close to the center once, and then at the others. He missed all eight tries to the left, but struck the target all but once to the right. The more he worked from the left, the more his confidence grew. He was still far from average with the bloody thing, but at least he wasn't a complete embarrassment, either.

Soon everyone had completed their aims and began retrieving arrows. Liam grabbed up twenty and waited again towards the back of his line for Alisse Sedai. He liked his portion of the class least of all. He'd seen his father do similar exercises, but those had all involved the servants tossing plates. He watched as the Aes Sedai lobbed them around with obvious use of the One Power. Gooseflesh prickled along his pale skin at knowing what she was doing. He doubted he'd ever get used to that, even here among women and men who did so all the time.

Finally, his turn came, and he nodded to her. She began with a simple toss. He marked its passage and let fly with an arrow. He missed, but not by much. The second one he clipped enough to send wobbling but not enough to break. He hit the third one, a strange arc off to his left, dead center, and it shattered mid-air. Something akin to a genuine smile creased his face, easing the lines there for a moment. Then more plates came, and the pleasure melted away into concentration. Overall, he hit about half of them, shattering three, and missing the others completely.

Still, he mused as he left his place at the front of the lane, it was something.