cot, he left the building and walked across the dim yard inside the military base to where he hoped to find some dinner — food of any sort was appealing in his state of hunger.
Kestrel sat alone at a table in the empty commissary room chewing desultorily on the food that the server provided as he wondered at the notion that he had been sent to carry a message to a spy, and had sat in a room with one, talking candidly, revealing all of his new secrets. He would surely be seen as some kind of freak, a part- human, part-elf plaything of the supernatural powers, unstable and dangerous, Kestrel surmised about himself.
He wondered darkly how long he would be held in Center Trunk while the spies tried to decide what to do with him. There was no telling what he was going to face, and the unpleasant irony of his situation was that he had gotten himself into it by successfully putting out the forest fire that the humans had started. He rose with a sour disposition and returned to his room, where he settled into an uneasy sleep in the strange quarters that were to be his home for some time to come.
Chapter 10 — Arrows for the Tourney
When Kestrel awoke in the morning, he felt tired. His sleep had been fitful, disturbed by dreams that he had turned into a spy himself, sneaking round among the humans to find out what plots they had planned to launch against the eastern elves. He shook his head, which failed to clear any of the cobwebs away, then lazily trudged to the commissary, where he was one of the first to have a plate of hot food.
He looked around and saw a table of four soldiers wearing red hats, but they glanced at him with a cold, unfriendly stare that drove him away. Instead, he sat alone, and listened to the conversation of a different nearby table, where a half dozen guards of both genders discussed plans for the festival day.
“We have to work late shift on duty,” one complained, nudging his partner. “There’s no point in us starting the archery competition.”
“We’ll shoot a couple for you — the ones that miss!” another guard jeered.
Kestrel listened with interest. He was a good marksman among the elves of Elmheng; his human heritage gave him strength to draw a stronger bow than the other elves, giving him an advantage that grew in value when the distance to the target increased. He had no plans for the day, or for the next several days, and felt a sudden, impulsive boldness sweep through him. “Can I go with you?” he called to the adjacent table.
All heads in the other group turned to look at Kestrel, and he saw nothing in their expressions warmer than curiosity, though there was no outright hostility as the guards examined his humanesque features.
“Who are you?” one of the guards asked.
“Kestrel, from Elmheng,” he replied. “I came here as a courier and have to wait for my new assignment.”
There was a round of glances exchanged. “Are you human?” one of the women at the table asked.
“Partly,” Kestrel answered. “Mostly elf,” he added.
“A bow isn’t a human weapon; they use swords,” another guard chimed in.
“And I’m an elf,” Kestrel clarified.
“Let him come along,” the woman decided.
“Got a taste for something exotic, Vinetia?” one of the other guards chided her immediately. “You have to take him as your doubles partner.”
“Oh for the love of branch and leaf — grow up, Hitchens!” Vinetia growled. “Are you any good?” she spoke directly to Kestrel.
He studied her, a stout elf guard who was studying him in return. “I think I‘m pretty good,” he answered.
“I’ll trust you on that, for now,” she answered ominously.
“Vinetia, look at it this way, even if you don’t win the competition, the two of you can still try to win the scariest couple contest,” one of the other guards jibed, but Kestrel could hear the humor in the man’s voice, and recognized the camaraderie of squad members who had served together.
Everyone started to rise, and Kestrel stood as well. “Go on, go get your bow and arrow. I’ll meet you outside the commissary,” Vinetia told him, starting Kestrel off on a jog back to his room to retrieve his weapon. Minutes later he was among the group that left the guard compound to walk through the city towards the competition grounds.
Center Trunk felt vast to Kestrel, after having spent his life in Elmheng. The walk to the competition grounds took him through both busy commercial areas and crowded residential areas, where he realized more elves lived than he had ever seen together before. The end of the stroll across the city was a large field where few trees grew. Ropes and barriers created numerous separate competition areas, and several competitions were already underway around the periphery of the field, with the twang of bow strings constantly sounding throughout the area.
“We register here,” Vinetia told Kestrel as she grabbed his arm and led him towards a line that waited at a table. “We’re going to register as individuals, and as a team,” she told him. “That lets us compete both ways — so if one of us has a bad match, we can stay in competition, provided the partner has a decent match.”
“How big is the field for a match?” Kestrel asked her.
“For these qualifying matches this morning there will be twenty five shooting in each match, and the top five will go on to the next round,” Vinetia explained as they inched forward. “The ones who don’t qualify get a second chance, but only the top competitor from the consolation matches goes on.
“Then this afternoon, everyone who made it through the morning goes through the second round — along with their partners, if they have one, where the organizers move the targets back further, and the game starts to get challenging. Only the top three of each match move on, and eventually the tournament comes down to a final field of a dozen or so, where we get a winner to be the princess’s champion for the year,” she summed up as they reached the table and completed their registration, the official at the table giving Kestrel an unfriendly look before distributing colored arm bands that denoted their competition fields and starting times.
“Is there a place to practice?” Kestrel asked, concerned that he hadn’t used or even checked his equipment in several days.
“No time for that, rookie,” his partner told him. “We did that this morning before breakfast. You’ve got to do your homework in advance.”
“You go that way, I’m over here,” Vinetia gave Kestrel a gentle shove. “After the match, let them know you’re my partner, and meet me over there,” she pointed to a solitary linden tree. “That’s where our squad usually meets; if there’s a fight, which has been known to happen, stick with our side — the judge has a son in our squad,” she winked at him, then sent him on his way. “There’s the red flag flying over at the far field — that’s you! Get over there and hit your targets!”
Kestrel hustled across the competition spaces to get to the target range where the red flag was flying, and arrived barely in time, as some competitors were already shooting their first arrows.
“Hurry up, hurry up,” a proctor told him as he raced down to a vacant spot at the end of the line. “If you don’t get you first shot off before one of the others fires his second shot, you’ll be disqualified.”
Kestrel hurriedly pulled an arrow from his quiver as he ran to his spot, and dumped his equipment on the ground. He saw a competitor already sighting his second shot, and he realized he would have to get a shot off without any hope of scoring the target. He raised his bow, placed his arrow on the string, took cursory aim at his target, and released his shot. A split second later he saw the second arrow fly from the competitor’s bow.
“You got it off; you’re in the competition,” the proctor told him, standing behind him. “For now. You’ve only got eight shots in this competition, and you’ve just wasted one of them,” he nodded across the green space that separated the competitors from their targets. Kestrel turned and saw that his arrow was stuck in the ground just in front of the target.
Kestrel realized that his circumstances were dire; losing one out of eight shots in a competition was a difficult handicap to overcome against good marksmen. He examined his bow, tightening the string slightly and adjusting the mark he used to sight his target, then carefully looked through his arrows, selecting one that he knew was his straightest, truest shaft. He carefully took his time aiming his second shot, and when he released it,
