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“Then be off with you.” He shooed me away with a hand-flap. “Timed target shooting begins in one hour.”
The hour passed absurdly fast. I kept to myself, chewing my lip raw, keeping my head lowered beneath my hood. Avoiding gazes, peeking out from my hood at the competition.
A few tall men swaggered past me, boots squelching in the morning mud, and shouldered me out of their way.
I wanted to snarl at them like a savage, but resisted. I’d grown rather feral in my time away from Nottingham. People were everywhere, and I couldn’t start a scene. I’d made a promise to my guys to stay out of trouble, even if it came sniffing for me.
“Since when they let whelps whose balls haven’t dropped into these kinds of things?” one of them laughed on his way by.
“Little Lackland is getting desperate for coin,” his friend said. “The prince will let anyone enter.”
“I put my money on it being the Sheriff. Man’s got no scruples.”
Then they were gone. Prince John was insultingly called “Lackland” because, well, he lacked land. As the youngest son of Henry II, he didn’t gain an inheritance of provinces. Lucky him, then, that he pilfered some land due to the absence of his brother, King Richard.
A deep voice called across the field, listing off names of the first group to participate in the timed target shooting.
I was one of the names.
So was another name that made me tilt my head.
“Oliver of Mickley,” said the voice, and I furrowed my brow. It was a familiar name. I couldn’t remember from where.
I was surprised to find “Oliver of Mickley” wore not only a hood to hide his hair, but a black mask that covered the lower half of his face, only showing his eyes.
I scoffed at the maneuver. That’s one way to stay anonymous. I suppose I should have thought of it.
Oliver wasn’t that uncommon of a name, and Mickley, though a small village, shouldn’t have raised my hackles. Yet it did.
I shook the distracting thoughts from my head when we came to the shooting range. Targets were set up in three intervals—closest to furthest.
The competition began without preamble, a man behind me yelling “Time!”
My heart thundered in my chest when I raised my bow for the first time that morning. There were tall men on either side of me, and Masked Oliver stood a few stalls down. He had perfect posture. It brought out the competitive spirit in me.
When I loosed my first arrow and saw it strike the closest target nearly dead-center, a few men looked my way and grumbled. The crowd behind and around us let out “ahhs” and “oohs” as arrows were flung from their bows, all of us shooting in tandem.
My heart raced, the first target falling back onto the field from the force of my strike. I raised my arrow and took aim at the middle target, straight ahead, and loosed.
A few fingers to the right of center, but it did the job. The raised target fell, leaving only the final and furthest one.
I took a deep breath, remembering my training, and leveled my bow. I stared down my forearm, quieted my rushing heart, and took aim, closing one eye.
My tongue skimmed my lips—a tell the Merry Men always said I did when I was concentrating on a shot. It was a feminine look, and I hoped my hood hid enough from the spectators.
My arrow whistled from my bow, flying straight and true, nearly a hundred feet away in front of the tree line of Sherwood Forest.
The target thudded, fell, and I squinted to see where I’d hit it.
Nearly dead center again.
I let out a soft sigh, smiled, and a smattering of polite applause rose from behind me. A few people murmured and whispered to themselves. I heard one say, “He’s a good shot for a young lad. Should keep an eye on him.”
“Aye, almost beat the entire crop in time.”
“Sure, but that Oliver of Mickley fellow beat him in time and accuracy.”
I paused, whipping around, my cloak billowing.
