‘Now!’ yelled Geralt, seeing the guards fleeing from the gallery, dropping to the floor, hiding from the deadly arrowheads. Only the three bravest were still shooting.

An arrowhead thudded against a pillar, showering Milva in a cloud of plaster dust. The archer blew on her hair, which was falling over her face, and bent her bow.

‘Milva!’ Geralt, Angoulême and Cahir had reached the arcade. ‘Leave it! Run!’

‘One more little shot,’ said the archer with the fletching of an arrow in the corner of her mouth.

The bowstring slapped. One of the three brave men howled, leaned over the balustrade and plummeted downwards onto the flags of the courtyard. At the sight, courage immediately deserted the others. They fell to the floor and pressed themselves against it. Those who had arrived were in no hurry to come out onto the gallery and expose themselves to Milva’s shooting.

With one exception.

Milva measured him up at once. Short, slim, swarthy. With a bracer on his left forearm rubbed to a shine and an archer’s glove on his right hand. She saw him lift a shapely composite bow with a profiled, carved riser, saw him tauten it smoothly. She saw the bowstring–tightened to its full draw–cross his swarthy face, saw the red-feathered fletching touch his cheek. She saw him aim carefully.

She tossed her bow up, tightened it smoothly, already aiming as she did so. The bowstring touched her face, the feather of the fletching the corner of her mouth.

‘Harder, harder, Marishka. All the way to your cheek. Twist the bowstring with your fingers, so the arrow doesn’t fall from the rest. Hand tight against your cheek. Aim! Both eyes open! Now hold your breath. Shoot!’

The bowstring, in spite of the woollen bracer, stung her left forearm painfully.

Her father was about to speak when he was seized by a coughing fit. A heavy, dry, painful coughing fit. He’s coughing worse and worse, thought Marishka Barring, lowering her bow. More and more horribly, and more and more often. He started coughing yesterday as he was aiming at a buck. And for dinner there was only boiled pigweed. I can’t stand boiled pigweed. I hate hunger. And poverty.

Old Barring sucked in air, wheezing gratingly.

‘Your arrow passed a span from the bull’s eye, lass! A whole span! And I’ve told you, ain’t I, not to twitch when you’re letting the bowstring go? And you’re hopping about like a slug’s crawled into your arse crack. And you take too long aiming. You’re shooting with a weary arm! That’s how you waste arrows!’

‘But I hit the target! And not a span at all, but half a span from the bull’s eye.’

‘Don’t talk back! How the Gods punished me by sending me a clod of a lass instead of a son!’

‘I ain’t a clod!’

‘We’ll soon find out. Shoot one more time. And mark what I told you. You’re to stand like you were sunk into the ground. Aim and shoot swiftly. Why are you making faces?’