Gods and mortals

Struggles

A.N.
Surprisingly, I'm managing this pretty well, which is a surprise considering school just started again.
Anyways, here we go once more.

Asgard, training grounds...

Brogr steadied his breath, tensing his upper body, arms taut in preparation.

His fingertips were aching from pulling at the bowstring and feathered end of the arrow.

He angled his line of sight with the shaft of the deadly object, which rested on his thumb, targeting the hay dummy placed a couple dozen feet away.

The smith stilled for a moment, exhaling and releasing the vice-like grip of his fingers, the tempered wood softly moving across the skin of his exposed digit with the speed of lightning.

Time seemed to slow down as the arrow sailed through the air, unwavering like a knife slicing the soft tissue of meat.
It flew straight and true, accelerating, only to nick the side of the dummy's head and continue on its path.

The young man sighed in disappointment at yet another failed attempt.

Beside him echoed the sounds of other arrows being let loose, while others were being continuously nocked.
He gave a short glance around him, seeing as his fellow trainees tried their marksmanship with varying degrees of success.

Most of them were able to hit the target at the torso and limbs, with the occasional hit to the head here and there; however there was still a large abundance of missed shot, as seen by the tens of darts sticking out of the brown ground in front of, and all around, the targets.

Of this cohort, there was a group of fifteen or so practicing farther down the target area.
These were the recruits that actually had some genuine talent and were somewhat decent.

Their targets in fact were dressed with armor consisting of hard leather and chain mail, so the goal was to target the exposed weak points, such as the joints near the armpits, legs, throat and naturally, the face that wasn't covered by the protective helmet.

It did give Brogr some relief to see Cnut among those fifteen elites: at least he could hold his own... so much for being a simple peasant as some of the others had insisted.

One of the trainers observing the group stepped up behind him and mercilessly whacked his head upside down, yelling at him to continue.

The recruit gritted his teeth in both anger and pain, wanting nothing more than to pivot on the heel of his foot and return the favor.

But of course, the blacksmith didn't dare retaliate: he was already standing on very thin ice since Vidkunnsson's warning from the previous day.
He had made an effort to mask his feelings and keep an emotionless face, a thing that was hard to do at times when being stared down from the grown adults here at the training grounds.

Not even half a day had passed and he could already feel the spying glances from some of the instructors; no doubt they knew of the recent talk, and they were probably waiting for him to falter and make a grave enough mistake to be misplaced with treason.

It really was a wolf's den here, where the strong preyed on those considered to be weak, and yet the commanding authorities had the nerve and audacity to praise and talk about companionship and honor. There was no honor in blood, Norns, the commanding class behaved like animals, worse yet, the lowborn believed it to be all good! But all in all that wasn't too shocking given that he did live under the rule of a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Absently he picked out another arrow from the near empty quiver that was strapped onto his back.
The movement was obviously a bit clumsy, bordering on being sluggish as he nearly snapped the shaft in two when trying to remove it.