Chương 25: Book 1: Chapter 9 - The Crows [Part 2]

Archery, however, produced faster gains. Isobe Tadayasu taught them in a field below the castle wall. He was an elderly samurai with a narrow chest, a powerful back, and one clouded eye. His good eye missed very little. He gave Shimon a long asymmetrical bow, a leather thumb glove, and three arrows.

"A sword may forgive a strong fool," Isobe instructed.

"A bow remembers every lie in the body." The young man had no idea what he meant, but he did not need to. To him, it was all just some ancient asian mumbo jumbo that had no meaning. Shimon's first arrow struck the ground several paces short of the straw target. The string slapped the inside of his forearm, causing Tarō to laugh at him. His own first arrow sailed over the target and vanished into the embankment, and Isobe struck him across the calf with a cane. The chip began measuring.

[BALLISTIC ANALYSIS ACTIVE] Range: 34. 7 m Wind: 2. 1 m/s lateral Draw consistency: Poor Predicted impact deviation: Severe A pale trajectory appeared in Shimon's vision, augmenting the reality he saw. He raised the bow, corrected his elevation, and tried again. The second arrow struck the lower edge of the target. The third landed closer to the center. Archery suited the biochip better than sword fighting. An arrow did not feint or alter its intention halfway through an attack.

Once released, it obeyed measurable conditions: draw, angle, wind, range, gravity, and the movement of the target. It also had the distinct advantage that whatever happened, happened much further away than a sword or spear. The chip could calculate where the arrow should go, however, it could not make Shimon's body send it there. At least not entirely. Isobe pressed two fingers into the muscles between his shoulder blades.

"Open here. Do not haul the string with the arm." The master's good eye narrowed.

"Again." The distances increased over the next several days. The targets grew smaller. Later, attendants suspended straw bundles from ropes and pulled them across the field at changing speeds. The chip measured the rhythm and supplied the lead. Shimon began hitting four shots in six, then five when the movement remained predictable. His skill rose quickly, all the way to Bows [6].

The System, or whatever it was, had given him the basic memories of drawing and releasing a bow when he had advanced into the Samurai class. The chip refined aim and corrected for the world around him. Between the two, he had an advantage that swordsmanship did not allow. A skilled swordsman could lie with his whole body; wind and distance, however, could not. Still, his technique remained inconsistent. When he tired, his left shoulder rose. His drawing hand plucked at the release, and the bow turned in his grip.

The chip could identify each failure, but only practice and ingrained muscle memory could prevent it. His biochip could show him the path, but his body still had to learn it. On the final afternoon of the week, Isobe took them beyond the lower wall to practice at the archery butts. In a distant field, an aetosaur dragged a plow through the earth while its owner urged it onward with occasional taps of a stick against its armored back.

The animal moved with the weary patience of a beast that had long since resigned itself to human demands. They loosed their arrows across uneven ground while the wind rose and fell in restless gusts. When a rabbit suddenly burst from the grass, Isobe pointed after it with his cane.

"Take it." Shimon hesitated just long enough to lose the first clear shot, then raised the bow as the animal veered toward the ditch. [TARGET TRACKING] Estimated speed: 14. 2 m/s Path variance: High Lead calculation updating A blue marker appeared ahead of the rabbit, and Shimon drew and released in what he considered a reasonably smooth motion. The arrow struck the earth behind it, sending the animal veering sharply aside.

He reached for another, drew the string to the side of his face, and followed the marker as it shifted with the rabbit's course. His shoulder sat too high, and Isobe would have found fault with the release, but the opportunity was already slipping away. Sometimes, adequacy had to serve where mastery was not yet available. The arrow struck behind the foreleg. The rabbit rolled through the grass and lay still. You have learned Bows [7] Tarō lowered his own bow with a shake of his head.

Isobe reached the small creature first, knelt, and ended its suffering with a quick twist of the neck. He examined the arrow, then looked back at Shimon with his usual severity. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Too slow on the first shot, and your release could have been smoother." He tucked the rabbit beneath one arm and gave a grudging nod.

"Still, you adjusted. Well done." The rabbit went to the kitchens.

The following week, the messenger arrived at breakfast wearing an expression Tarō distrusted at once.

"We are not going to the dōjō," Tarō put forth. The boy's smile disappeared at once.

"How did you know?" Kume grunted.

"You looked far too pleased." Shimon studied the messenger. The boy had come for them nearly every morning for nigh on two weeks, yet neither of them had asked his name.

"What are you called?" The boy straightened.

"Sano Gōtarō, Ayanokouji-sama. Fifth son of Sano Hanzaemon, chief clerk in Lord Satomi's household." The surname was familiar.

"Shinnosuke is your brother," the young man queried.

"He is my eldest brother," the boy answered dutifully.

"I see, the one who defeated Tarō."

"He did not defeat me," Tarō tried to rebut pathetically. Gōtarō looked down before his face betrayed him. This time the boy led them away from the training ground and into the administrative quarter. Clerks passed carrying document boxes, account books, and bundles of wooden tags. One building stood slightly apart from the others, quiet behind a narrow garden. The room within smelled of ink and old paper, dominated by an elderly man sitting behind a low desk.

His body was thin, his back straight, and his white eyebrows extended far enough beyond one would consider normal. He looked up as Gōtarō announced them.

"Ueda Sōan," the old man offered in introduction.

"Sit. Please" Brushes, inkstones, paper, wooden tablets, folded letters, and account ledgers lay arranged around him. Shimon sat. Tarō did so with the grave suspicion of a man approaching an ambush. Sōan pushed paper toward them.

"Write your names." Tarō took the brush in a fist and did as he was bid. The old man examined the result, shaking his head.

"A spider has drowned in the ink." Tarō's expression hardened. Shimon picked up his own brush more carefully. He had studied calligraphy during childhood visits to Japan, mostly because his grandmother believed he wasn't Japanese enough. The brush bristles were softer than he remembered they should be. Real hair instead of synthetic fibers. The ink spread differently, and the paper made him know it. Worse, many of the forms before him differed from the characters he knew.

Formal hands, cursive abbreviations, variant kana, and the written conventions of another age confused him. In the corner of his mental vision, the chip opened a discreet overlay. [TEXT ANALYSIS] Premodern cursive forms detected Variant characters present Modern correspondence: Partial Contextual assistance active Shimon wrote his surname, and in his estimation, wrote it well enough. Sōan placed it beside Tarō's effort.

"Kume cannot write," he accused. Tarō stared pointedly ahead.

"Ayanokouji is not much better, he writes like a foreign drunk copying letters," Master Ueda judged. The judgment was unpleasantly accurate. The morning passed in brush control, stroke order, and the preparation of ink. Sōan corrected Shimon's tendency to work from the fingers rather than the elbow and shoulder. The resemblance to sword training became irritating. The lesson widened in scope over the following days.

Sōan taught them the forms of warrior correspondence—the position of the addressee, the phrases suitable for a superior or equal, the placement of a signature and kaō, the folding of the sheet, and the words that could raise or lower a man by implication alone. Sōan also instructed them in audience manners and the formal conduct expected in a retainer's household. He was assisted twice by Fumi, the widow of a former household officer who had spent many years supervising young pages in Nagai's residence.

She corrected posture, entrances, exits, and the precise depth of bows. She also introduced them to the elementary service of chanoyu—not the private mysteries of a celebrated tea master, but enough that neither man would disgrace himself when a superior placed a bowl before him. The lessons alternated with martial training for another week. Sword, spear, bow, yawara, writing, tea, and household conduct divided the days.

In the grappling hall, they learned how to fall without breaking a wrist, how to control an armored sleeve, and how to use the hips to put a larger man on the ground. Every successful position ended with a wooden knife driven toward the throat, armpit, groin, or some other gap in imaginary armor. Tarō excelled at turning a clean exercise into an ugly fight. Shimon improved faster in the formal movements.

His feet no longer betrayed him, and his reflexes had begun to rest upon trained responses rather than desperate improvisation. Matsuda moved him into the intermediate group near the end of the week.

"You are no longer an immediate danger to the men beside you," he grumbled. Shimon bowed.

"Thank you, sensei."

"That was not praise." It was close enough. In Ueda Sōan's room, the difference between Shimon and Tarō widened in the opposite direction. Tarō continued to assault paper. Shimon's hand steadied as the chip assembled a dictionary of archaic expressions and linked cursive forms to the characters he knew. It also compared the movement of Sōan's brush to his own, though too much assistance produced writing that was technically sound, but strangely lifeless.

Tarō watched him complete a short report, a look of frustrated jealousy lingering in his eyes.

Near the end of the month, just as Shimon was reviewing his progress on his main status page, Nagai Morichika invited him and Tarō to his residence.

Ayanokouji Shimon [Human] Class: Samurai Level: 5 Health: 29/29 Mana: 19/19 Stamina: 25/25 Exp: 43/120 Main Attributes: Body 30, Mind 19, Spirit 16 Sub Attributes: Dexterity 184 [Enhanced], Fortune 28, Charisma 17 Skills: Lightning Reflexes 15/20, Analysis 14/20, Spears 7/20, Pain Tolerance 3/20, Swords 10/20, Ranged [Bows] 8/20, Hammers 4/20, Axes 5/20, Unarmed 7/20, Spirit Boost 1/20, Mind Boost 1/20, Body Boost 2/20, Heavy Armor 3/20, Medium Armor 3/20, Light Armor 4/20, Iai 4/20, Riding 1/20.

Spirit Break: Yae Ikazuchi. Shimon made a note of his improved skills, nearly across the board, and organic gains in his attribute points. Not bad for level five he thought to himself along the way for he had grown in leaps and bounds. He felt as strong as two men, and his status reflected it.