The Archery Contest

Prompt: descriptive detailing with sports

  He shuffled forward, one dirty boot before the other, mud squelching through the worn cloth. Brown mud covered the ground, drowning the limp grass, and deep up to the ankles. The sky above was cloudy but not dark.

  He carried in his strong, gnarled hands a bow of sleek maple strung with pig’s gut, and a single straight arrow, smoothed and fletched perfectly with white goose feathers.

  All around him were noise and colors. To the right, with his bleary vision, he saw hues like that that of a rainbow. He’d seen a rainbow when he was young – three times. These were the colors the rich wore – the lords and ladies of castles great and not so great. On the left were the raucous crowd of serfs, peasants, and squires. These were a mass of brown and grey and green.

  His hearing was not so good, but he heard the call, and the tall, strong men around him moved forward into position. On either side were burly men, one had on clothes of a peasant, the other had the finer clothes of a poor knight.

  He shuffled into place and wiped his nose on his sleeve for good luck.

  The men around him spread their legs and set their arrows. He carefully set the notch in the string and rested the arrow shaft on his thumb. He drew it back. The gut-string stretched tight, the arrow slid against the maple wood, the iron tip touched his knuckle, and his hands shook. His whole body shuddered at the strain but he tipped the bow upward, aiming for the mark.

  The mark was small in the distance, and very foggy. But he knew where it ought to be, and that’s where he aimed. He held the arrow between his two fingers as he stared intensely at the mark. He licked his grimy lips slowly and swallowed.

  He released the arrow when the rest did.

  He stood trembling. His arms ached from the strain, but they clutched the empty bow.

  “You didn’t even make the mark, old man.” The peasant brute said kindly to him.

  “No?” He said. His voice quivered in its aged tone, “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be,” he apologized.

  He turned and shuffled away, one ragged cloth boot before the other.



  A cry went up from the crowd, one of the guards had fallen, an arrow in his eye. The arrow had no marks of identity like the other archers had painted on theirs. It was just smooth maple wood, perfectly straight, polished by years of handling, and four white goose feathers tipped it.

  “A clear shot,” One guard remarked, he was livered in yellow and brown, “And he’s dead as a squished rat.” He said this remark with some satisfaction; no one had liked this man.

  “Who done it?” A young guard squeaked, eyeing the people about him suspiciously.

  “There was an ole scruff who didn’t get the mark,” the third guard remarked gruffly, “A surf, or a peasant numsuch.”

  The first guard raised his eyebrows, “Didn’t get the mark,” – he looked down at the dead guardsman – “Did he?”

(Word Count: 530)