With the better part of the afternoon ahead of us I didn’t waste any time in making preparations. I stripped most of my equipment, repacking my pack that felt considerably lighter without the emotional weight of carrying the Empire’s rarest and most irreplaceable jewellery inside it. with that simple task completed I decided to use the time available to us to exercise the weeks of captivity out of my joints.

  Dressed in little more than my tunic and pants with the leather belt from the hauberk holding it all together on my midriff I went outside into the Priory yard. It was early afternoon, barely past the 2nd bell by my estimate and I found myself whistling as I carried the collection of quivers and their contents in one hand while the other held my unstrung bow over my shoulder. With every step the quivers would bounce lightly off the scabbarded sword at my side and I looked around for a suitable place to do some practicing.

  With some assistance from Brother Piner, an Imperial and the youngest of the monks at the Priory I managed to move the garden’s straw stuffed scarecrow to the far side of the grounds. Propping the haphazard amalgamation of ancient clothes and stuffing against a tree on the edge of the forest I counted thirty paces until I was nearly up against the side of the tiny chapel. Carefully I sorted the arrows out into their different types and stuck a handful point first into the soft earth at my feet.

  The burns made drawing the bow exceedingly difficult and each time I nocked an arrow, and pulled back on the double recurved bow liquid fire would explode under the scabs, rocking its way along my arteries and causing me to grimace and groan every time I pulled it back past half nock. Even with the reduced power, thirty paces was point-blank range for someone who had grown from a child with a bow in hand. The ridiculous looking stuffed dummy had soon sprouted a handful of spikes in its chest, the fletching waving the breeze.

  I took my time, pulling an arrow out of the ground, drawing the bow back with a single smooth pull, holding it steady as I controlled my breath before loosing it with the familiar plucking sound that was shortly followed but the smack of the arrow plunging into the target’s chest. After the first five my arm was almost reduced to uselessness, the wounds cracked and bleeding where the muscles had contorted, pulled and split. Slowly getting into a rhythm I would fire five shots at what passed as a casual speed to me, carefully run my left hand over the wounds and lightly heal them with magicka, walk over to the target and retrieve the arrows I had shot before walking back and repeating the whole process.

  By the thirtieth shoot I could feel the tenseness of the wounds fading while the exhaustion of drawing back on the bow began to build. The knotted muscles of my right shoulder and arm, obviously larger than its opposite were beginning to tire rapidly. It was as I attempted to massage some of the soreness away I saw Viconia leaning against the corner of the chapel watching my actions dispassionately but with a little curiosity.

  “Shouldn’t you be resting your arm?” she said after I fired another arrow right into where the dummy’s heart would’ve been had it been flesh and blood.

  I shrugged, feeling the movement flare up a slight amount of pain. “Wounds such as this would heal in weeks, if not months if cared for normally with poultices and maggots. Any restoration mage worth his salt would have them healed in minutes, but that would mean that the muscles would be highly susceptible to weakening at best, mutations and tumours at worst.”

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  Gesturing over the wounds I showed how the light application of restoration magicka was healing the burns, but from the deepest regions outwards. “This way the body heals naturally, the muscles don’t wither and will regain their former strength. In the meantime however, I’m not stuck being unable to hunt and fight in the coming weeks.”

  “You’re expecting to have to fight then?”

  I glanced at her as I nocked another arrow, breathing in and out through my nose and releasing it with a solid slapping sound. “What do you think?”

  She remained silent, watching me go through the motions again and loosing another arrow.

  “May I try?” she asked suddenly, stepping forward and pointing at the bow.

  “Have you ever used a bow before?”

  A shake of her head and some strands of snow-white hair fell out from under her hood. “Only hand crossbows.”

  She stepped in so close that the smell of her leather and ragged cloth clothing was overpowered by her own scent. Being so close to her suddenly made me feel extremely uncomfortable and I quickly handed the bow to her and stepped back hurriedly.

  “Beginners have to start at a very young age, usually as soon as they could walk.” I began, pulling one of the bodkin arrows out of the ground at our feet and handing it to her. I grinned slightly as she pulled back on the string experimentally and raised an eyebrow at the bow’s strength. “Over the course of their lives they would train with gradually larger and larger bows so by the time they reached adulthood they could draw even the greatest of bows.”

  “And is this one of the greatest of bows?” she replied mockingly, feeling the weight and power and bouncing on the balls of her feet slightly.

  “No.” I shook my head, watching and silently laughing inside my mind at the thought of her using my bow. “The Bosmer utilise bows with draw strengths anywhere up to 110-120 pounds. The Legion Standard for Foresters are 100 pound bows.”

  I pointed to the bow in her hands as she looked over to the target and steadied her breathing. “That is at least a 90.”

  The grin I was struggling to contain broke out as she heaved back on the string, barely even moving it back any further than half a hand’s span. The look of surprise on her face was the most amount of emotion, and in fact the only emotion other than anger and arrogance I had ever seen her show.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eyes as I snorted with amusement, the glare stopping me dead and making me choose to remain silent instead. The threat in her look turned into a sudden snarl of determination as she raised the bow with her left arm outstretched, and heaved back with her right and forced it to bend a full thirty centimetres back.

  “Impressive.” I stated, honestly as she held the string back with barely a tremble. “For a beginner that’s…”

  Stopping in mid-sentence I openly gaped as she heaved back even further, her face tightening with the effort and eyes squinting as she looked at the target thirty paces away. In one strong continuous pull, straining at the weight and sweat suddenly beading on her brow she kept pulling back with arms filled with tightening muscles stronger than ebony. She did not stop until her coiled fingers holding the arrow were drawn past her ear, where she held it carefully and for several heartbeats before releasing a breath and the arrow at the same time.

  The arrow thundered into the target with armour shattering and bone breaking force. The bodkin punched through the target until the fletching was hidden in the depths of the scarecrow’s chest and the arrowhead imbedded deeply into the tree.

  She simply gave a grin, a true grin of pleasure with a single corner of her mouth, pressing the bow into my chest as I stood there staring stupefied at the quivering dummy and the arrow punched clean through it.

  “Good lesson Jaluk.” She stated simply, turning and walking away without further word and leaving me to ponder just what sort of being I had found myself as a traveling companion.