Read Arms-Commander for Free Online Page A

Suhartyn, the closer two of whom wore officers’ cold-weather jackets of a dark green wool.
    One inclined his head. “You’re the arms-commander?”
    “I am. Saryn. And you?”
    “Lygyrt, Captain of Horse. This is Undercaptain Whulyn.”
    Lygyrt was young, barely twenty local years, while the grizzled Whulyn looked to be a good ten years older than Saryn… and probably wasn’t. Saryn marked him as the equivalent of a noncom who’d come up through the ranks, even more rare in Candar than in the UFA.
    “Then you both should find the demonstrations of interest.”
    “I’m certain we will,” Lygyrt replied.
    Whulyn nodded brusquely.
    Ryba stopped in the middle of the field. Almost as she did, the twenty riders of Hryessa’s first squad, two abreast, started down the stone road at a quick trot. Lygyrt and Whulyn immediately began to watch the guards. The other two Suthyans, more richly dressed in golden brown leather coats with black brocade-trimmed sleeve cuffs, did not survey the riders but kept their eyes on Ryba and Suhartyn.
    Saryn glanced to Catya, the nearest guard, then inclined her head toward the two civilians, both with short-trimmed beards, doubtless the equivalent of Suthyan gentry—or dressed to convey that impression. Catya nodded and dropped back slightly, easing gradually westward so that she took position behind the two. Another guard—Trecya—joined her.
    Whulyn’s eyes flickered toward the two guards as they shifted position, then back to Saryn, before returning to scrutinize the mounted squad as the riders turned onto the packed gravel on the west end of the arms field.
    Just before the southwest end of the field, the column turned, and the riders urged their mounts into a canter, then a gallop, with the guards on the north side holding their mounts back just enough that each file was staggered, but with each rider maintaining the same interval between mounts.
    Each target received two flung blades, released from ten yards away. Every one struck the torso area of the designated target.
    “Rather impressive,” offered Suhartyn, “if not terribly practical in large battles.”
    “They’re not finished,” said Ryba.
    At the end of the field, the squad turned right and headed back westward along the south end. They continued due west up the long slope that served as the archery range.
    “Bows?” asked Whulyn, looking at Saryn.
    She nodded. “At two hundred yards.”
    Near the top of the slope, short of the cliffs that formed a natural backdrop, the squad turned and re-formed. Barely had they done so than their bows were out. Each guard loosed three shafts.
    In instants, every single target had sprouted shafts.
    “You will notice that every shaft penetrated a vital area,” Ryba said conversationally.
    “Picked squads can do that,” noted Suhartyn.
    “Have you ever seen one that could do what that squad did?” Ryba looked hard at the Suthyan.
    “I’m certain it is possible,” Suhartyn said pleasantly.
    “Indeed it is. We just proved that. But have you seen any other squad do that?” She paused. “Still, we have another demonstration.”
    Two guards ran across the field carrying a leather-covered sphere slightly less than a yard across. They set it on the ground twenty yards in front of the Marshal, then ran back to their positions with a squad to the east of the Marshal.
    “Do you see the ten archers on the road above the smithy?”
    Suhartyn turned. “Yes.”
    “They are a different group, and the distance is about three hundred yards.” Ryba raised her arm, then dropped it.
    In instants, the wicker globe became a hedgehog of feathered shafts.
    “One hundred shafts in a target a yard across at three hundred yards in little more than a score of heartbeats.”
    Saryn could sense the concern and the tension in the two Suthyan officers, but none from Suhartyn. Didn’t the envoy have any idea just how accurate the archers were?
    “That is most impressive marksmanship,”