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."Where'd you learn to use a bow?" Alyssa asked as he rode back up afterretrieving the arrows."The same place I learned to ride a horse," Herzer said with a rueful grin."Stupid me, I kept all my stuff off-line rather than at my house or something.Or I'd be fully decked out.Lu, I had a beautiful bow," he added sadly."Did you do horse archery?" Kane asked."And what kind of bow?""No, I didn't really fight from horseback at all; I'd dismount," Herzerreplied."And it was a long recurve, hundred kilo draw.""Ahundred?" Alyssa said, her jaw dropping.Page 205ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Well, I couldn't shoot it a lot," Herzer admitted."But when I hit a fiskingorc, it stayed dropped!""You weren't a reenactor, though," Kane said with a frown."I.no I wasn't," Herzer replied."I had some physical problems up untilrecently.I was training to start being a reenactor.Then the Fall hit.Andhere we are.""Well, if you'll help me string this thing, you can carry Alyssa's spare.""I think I can do that," Herzer said."And you'd better get me out one ofthose pig-stickers, too.""You said you hadn't trained on horseback," Kane said with a frown."I haven't, but I'm thinking of the origin of the name," Herzer replied with agrin.* * *The capture corral had been established where the Little Shenan met the bigShenan, just to the side of the main bridge for the Via Apallia.In fact the"funnel" fences, split logs mostly tied to trees, extended over the road.Their own corrals were just to the south so it was a short ride up to whereeveryone had gathered.Buildings had been erected along the main road andthere were now steel kettles being filled with water and A frames beingerected in front of them."For the slaughtering," Kane said."Get the water boiling hot, dip a pig inthe water to loosen up the bristles.Other animals, too.And the frames arefor slaughtering.""Are they going to slaughter all the pigs?" Herzer asked."They're importantanimals for a farmer.""Wild pigs aren't anything for a new farmer to be handling," Kane pointed out."We're not to kill any of the young ones.And the people along the fences aregoing to try to capture any that get through.But we're going to slaughter all the big ones and smoke them.We don't haveenough salt to smoke them properly, but if you give them enough of a smokingthey'll last a while.Unless there's a huge number of animals we're going togo through the food pretty quick.There's two types of deer that are going tobe coming out, white tails and wapiti.The white tails will go right over thefences; kill any of them you can.But the wapiti can't cross them so we're going to collect them."There were four smaller corrals off the main corral, planted so that herdanimals could be driven in.Herzer, having seen how "easy" it was to drive animals the previous daythought them optimistic.He tied off his two spare horses to the corral and took up his position, onthe "outside" corner and waited for the first animals to come in.There werepeople starting to line the fences, many of them with spears made fromsaplings.He saw Shilan in his sector and waved at her, then spotted Rachelwalking along the line, a bag slung over her back.That brought him back tothe fact that many of the animals that were going to be coming in were notgoing to be exactly friendly.He thought about riding over and talking butstayed in his place instead, trying to figure out what his "good" lines offire were.If he missed a shot the arrow would just keep going and eventuallythe entire line of fences were supposed to be manned.That was going to makeshooting problematic.That being the case he left the bow and the spear wherethey were.Kane rode over with a coil of rope in his hands."Can you tie a knot?" heasked."A few," Herzer admitted."There's a slip knot in the end," Kane said, handing over the rope."Ifsomething gets killed, drag it off to the side; somebody will take care of itfrom there."Herzer took the rope and found a place to tie it on the saddle.He wasn't surePage 206ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlabout dragging something with Diablo, much less with Butch or Duchess.Butchand Duchess tended to wander away when he dismounted, among other things.He didn't have much time to worry about it, though, because shortlyafterwards, to a general cry, a deer jumped over one of the fences and intothe open area.It was well outside his sector so he didn't bother to try touncase his bow and get a shot and it quickly bounded across the open area.Butwhen it saw the line of people along the fence it turned towards him.He kneed Diablo towards it to get it turned, then saw it was ignoring thehorses.He was just starting to get the bow out, not easy on a trotting horse,when an arrow from the side took it down [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]