Free 01 - The Price of Talent by Peter Whittlesey Page B

than weeding.”
     
                  “Kid, you ever been hunting before? Can you shoot a bow with any accuracy? Can you walk through the forest without making any noise?”
     
                  “Um… I’ve never tried it before, honestly.” I was forced to reply.
     
                  “That’s what I thought. If you want, after dinner while the light still holds, I’ll take you to the targets and start teaching you how to shoot a bow. But it’s going to take a lot of practice on your part before I am going to be willing to take you hunting. Right now, you’ll probably just scare away the game and shoot yourself in the foot.”
     
                  And with that she walked back to the hall to wash up for lunch. With nothing else to do, I did as well.
     
                  Lunch was similar to breakfast, except there were fewer people there, what with half the people having headed out to the next ambush site looking for tax collectors and merchants to waylay. Moira didn’t say two words to me while she was eating.
     
    It was only after she was done that she said: “You just do the weeding and if you have time man the irrigation pumps to water the crops. I will be back before dinner, and if I have game, I will teach you how to butcher an animal. If not, I will begin to teach you how to shoot.”
     
    And with that, I was left on my own to take care of my assigned tasks. The afternoon sun was out, if obscured by clouds, and the temperature was mild. All in all, it was not bad weather to be outside. My chores took me less time than I thought. I should have realized that a farm designed to feed a handful of people would have smaller fields than my parent’s farm where most of the food was sold at the town market to merchants heading for the larger settlements and big cities.
     
    The afternoon passed quickly and evening soon arrived. Moira returned with a deer on a litter and a couple of rabbits. There was enough time before dinner for her to show me how to kill, skin, and gut the animals, a process I found mildly disturbing. You would think growing up on a farm I would have seen this before, but the reality was that we brought our animals to market alive; mostly because when they are alive, they walk themselves there. What little butchering we did onsite was usually small game birds and chickens that would no longer lay eggs. Nothing that required skinning. Small distinction in hindsight, still it did make a difference to me for some reason.
     
    This experience almost put me off my dinner. Almost. A day of labor in the field gives you a powerful hunger, which will quickly overcome any squeamishness you are experiencing as a result of watching a deer get skinned.
     
    The evening’s archery lesson went a little better. The basics of shooting an arrow are pretty straightforward, and we were standing barely 25 yards from the target. Moira showed me how to stand, how to pull the string to be near, but not touching my cheek and how to properly sight down an arrow. I even managed to hit the target a few times before the light gave out. Moira, on the other hand, rarely missed the bullseye, and when she did, it was because she was telling me what to do and not concentrating as hard on her shots. It also taught me why I was farming and not with the others waiting to waylay rich travelers. If I could barely hit a stationary target at 25 yards, I would be worthless hitting a moving target at further distance.
     
    Over the course of the next week, my days followed much this same pattern. I would grab a quick breakfast, spend the morning and afternoon minding the farm work, and then in the evenings get lessons on properly butchering a kill and meat preservation techniques. If there was still time after that, we would spend it shooting targets with the practice bow and arrows until the sun gave out.
     
    It was these late evenings that I enjoyed the most. Then most people