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Javan had been up before dawn. He crept out when all was still dark and only the faintest sign of morning could be felt in the air. He gathered the arrows and the bow he used while teaching the two younger boys their lessons and went out towards the horse pasture. A twilight lay over the world when he reached the horses. He had a rope halter and with it, he caught his horse and brought him away from the herd and to the fence. There, he clambered up onto the horse's back and rode him away from the other horses.
The sun was just beginning to rise. Javan imagined that over at the camp, people were beginning to stir. He had a little bit of time before breakfast. He strung his bow and set and arrow to the string. Today, he wanted to teach Garmund and Cnebba something new, but he had to find out for certain if he could do it.
It had been a strange and unexpected consequence for fighting...Javan still wondered why they all had decided in making him teach the two boys the skill of archery. He had been told, yes, that it would help draw them together in some sort of friendship bond, but was that really all of it?
“Well,” he said, as he knocked an arrow to the string, “p’raps it has made us friends. Some.”
It hadn’t at first, though. He thought back to the first day they had tried it. The boys had been surly and quiet and Javan himself was unhappy with the situation. Cnebba and Garmund were slow to understand what Javan thought to be the very basics. They had come within inches of fighting several times that first day, and only Thornden’s threat of a thrashing had kept Javan from starting a fight.
But, the archery sessions were short, due to so much work having to be done in Scarburg. They continued day after day and it had not been long before all three of them actually began looking forward to it. The two younger boys loved to learn, and Javan discovered new things as he taught. However, the grown-ups’ plan of them becoming good friends had not as yet seemed to work. Javan seemed only to tolerate the two younger boys, and that was all they seemed to do in return.
The arrow sped from his string. The horse stood perfectly still, not even his ear moved backwards. Javan nodded in satisfaction when the arrow struck the target and he moved his horse forward into a walk.
The boys had learned to shoot on the ground, and then they shot with horses beside them, and eventually they had learned to shoot fairly accurately sitting on their horses. Today, he had decided, they would shoot while moving.
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