The Fortress

The recruiters traveled from Nat's home, to all the neighboring villages. At each village the whole day was spent loading taxes, mostly grain, into the wagons and then recruiting all the young men. By the end of the month we had collected a whole caravan of taxes (close to a hundred wagons of grain). At each village we stopped and got more boys and more wagons. The Quartermaster and his men had the recruits build wagons. Those were some of the first lessons. The recruits were shown how to quickly build an effective wagon within a couple hours by working together with the right tools. They also gained many more recruits. About 700 young men were recruited in our little region of Marovia. What kept them together? The fact that the Sildinian forces were an ever looming force, ready to invade Marovia and rob her of her lands and citizens, according to the officials. Rumor said that Sildinian raiding parties slaughtered everyone and took no prisoners. These rumors led people to rely on the Empire of Marovia for protection and through them the King had a tight grip on the country. So now 700 young men traveled, willingly for the most part, off to learn how to fight in an army. Every night the recruits pitched camp and Nat, Dylan, and the others would fetch fire wood, cook their meals, and during the wait for the food practice archery until dark. A prize was promised for the best archer when they arrived at the fortress and this caused great excitement. Nat spent hours practicing. While traveling he would choose targets while walking and shoot them with a couple arrows before retrieving them without a break in pace. Soon Nat found he could nail the center of a target a hundred paces distant (roughly a football field) ten times in a row.

One evening, while practicing his archery, a soldier came up to Nat and said, "Here sonny, le' me show ya 'ow it's done." With that he took Nat's bow, nocked two arrows, drew them both smoothly to his cheek and released. Both arrows hit the target dead on punching a deep hole in it. "Ya gotta learn ta do dat if ya wanta drive 'em straight t'rough any Sildini'n armor." Fascinated Nat began practicing this new technique. After discussing it with the soldier he found that it was used two ways. To improve the power of a hit or to increase the rate of fire. This tactic was used in many sieges to double the amount of arrows flying in the enemy's general direction. At first double loading proved too awkward but gradually Nat improved his skill until he could almost shoot as well as that soldier. Usually both arrows hit the target or targets about every other shot by the time they began approaching the final destination. The fortress of Chiriath Mul.