Nava's Story

Chapter 12: Training

My dad and some of the men spent a day taking it easy and resting before going outside and training. They are using our fake swords and toy boys to practice. My dad is training them. Me and the other kids are watching them and some of the boys are copying there moves.

After lunch my dad walks over to me. He tells me "I don't want to do this but I have to."
I look at him confused. What does he mean? He has me follow him over to his real weapons. He picks up his bow and tells me "I'm going to teach you how to use my bow. I want you to be up in the trees and use to bow to kill some of the mercenaries. Can you handle that?"
I nod my head in agreement. He grabs his quiver and puts it on my back. We walk over to where the other men are standing. My dad pulls an arrow out if his quiver and holds his bow. He shots an arrow and it perfectly hits the toy practice targets. He shows me how to hold his bow before handing it to me. He helps me hold it correctly. This is way heavier than the toy bows. He can see I'm struggling some and he apologizes. He tells me "It was made personally for me to use. And it's Elven medal."
I finally can hold the bow on my own so he has me practice pulling the string back. After I got that down he hands me an arrow. With his help I get it onto the bow. He tells me "Whenever you're ready, you can shot."
I take a couple breathes and then pull the string back. The arrow fires and it hits the middle of the target perfectly just like my dad. I lower the bow and look at him. He's speechless. I look around and everyone else is speechless. Some people's mouths are dropped open. My dad tells me "I've never seen anyone do it perfectly there first time."
I shrug and tell him "I'm a fast learner."
He walks over and grabs the arrow he fired into one target and the arrow I shot into the other target. He walks back and hands my arrow back to me. He tells me "Do it again."
I get ready and shot it again. This time it's a little off.

I spend the next couple hours practicing with my dad's bow. After being able to shot one arrow my dad hade practice grabbing arrows from the quiver and quickly shoting them. After I got that day he makes a target and hangs it from the trees. He moves the target around with the ropes and has me try to hit it. Most of my arrows hit the target while it's moving. My dad is very impressed with how fast I can use the bow. After eating dinner he tells me "I'm going to show you how to use my knives in case the mercenaries get near you."
I ask him "Why won't you train me how to use a sword?"
"Because that takes a long time to learn. And this is a one time thing. I don't want you to keep practicing after taking the town over again. I want you to focus on school and learning other useful skills."
We finish eating in silence. He shows me different moves with his knives and then he gives them to me to copy. I pick that up very fast. It helps that I've been practicing how to fight in secret for years. And the Human boys teaching and play fighting with me.

When it's dark outside we head back into the cave to get some sleep. We are lucky the Human women are taking care of our horses for us. And that the horses aren't making a lot of noise. We are going to attack the mercenaries in the morning. Hopefully none of the Humans get killed trying to take the town back.

*Picture at the top of the chapter is one of Nava's dad's knives*