"Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!"

Will let them celebrate for a while longer. Then he climbed onto a tree stump where he could be seen by all of them and waved his arms for silence. Gradually, the chant died away and they crowded closer around him, eager to hear what else he had to tell them.

"That's all very well," he said when they had quieted down. "But first, there's the small matter of beating the Temujai. Let's get to work."

Halt and Erak watched as Will supervised the issuing of arrows to the men. Unconsciously, both men nodded their approval of the boy. Then Erak turned to Halt.

"I nearly forgot, Ragnak had a further message for you. He said if we lose this battle and he loses his slaves as well, he's going to kill you for it," he said cheerfully.

Halt smiled grimly. "If we lose this battle, he may have to get in line to do it. There'll be a few thousand Temujai cavalrymen in front of him."

W ILL CALLED THE LAST GROUP OF TEN MEN FORWARD TO THE firing line. The preceding group moved to the rear of the waiting ranks and sat down to watch. He was working the men in small groups at this stage. That gave him a manageable group to work with as he tested their ability to follow his orders and shoot at a predetermined elevation.

"Ready!" he called. Each man took an arrow from the bin in front of him and nocked it to the string. They stood ready, their heads turned toward him, waiting for his next order.

"Remember," he said, "don't try to judge the shot yourself. Just go to the position I call, make a full draw and a smooth release when I call it."

The men nodded. Initially, they hadn't liked the idea of having their shooting controlled by someone as young as Will. Then, after Halt had encouraged his apprentice to give a demonstration of high-speed pinpoint shooting, they had reluctantly agreed to the system Will had devised.

Will took a deep breath, then called firmly: "Position three! Draw!"

Ten arms holding bows rose to a position approximately forty degrees from the horizontal. Will quickly glanced down the line to see that each man had remembered the correct position. He'd been drilling the four different elevations into them all day. Satisfied, and before the strain of holding the bows at full draw became too great, he called:

"Shoot!"

Almost as one, there was a rapid slither of released bowstrings and a concerted hiss of arrows arcing through the air.

Will watched the small flight of shafts as they arced upward, then nosed over and plunged down to bury themselves up to half their length in the turf. Again he called to the waiting line of men: "Position three, ready!"

As before, the ten men nocked arrows to the strings, waiting for Will's next call.

"Draw:shoot!"

Again there was the slithering slap of released bowstrings hitting the archers' arm guards, and the sound of the wooden shafts scraping past the bows as they were hurled into the air. This time, as the arrows came down, Will changed his command.

"Position two:ready!"

The line of left arms holding the bows extended and tilted up to a thirty-degree angle.

"Draw:shoot!"

And another ten-shaft volley was on its way. Will nodded to the ten men, who were watching him expectantly.

"All right," he said. "Let's see how you did."

He began to pace across the open field, followed by the ten men who had just shot. There were markers set out down the middle of the field, marking 100, 150 and 200 meter distances. Position three, with the bow arm elevated forty degrees from the horizontal, should have equated to the 150 meter marker. As they approached that marker, Will nodded with satisfaction. There were sixteen arrows slanting up from the turf within a ten-meter tolerance of the mark. Two had gone long, he noticed, and two more had dropped short. He studied the long shots. The shafts were numbered so that he could assess how each member of the shooting line had performed. He saw now that the two overshoots belonged to two different archers.

Moving back to the arrows that had undershot the target, he frowned slightly. The arrows were both marked with the same number. That meant the same archer had dropped his shot short of the mark both times. Will took note of the number, then moved back to view the results of the final volley. The frown deepened as he saw that nine arrows were well grouped, with one falling short by the same margin. He didn't really need to check, but a quick glance showed him that, once again, the same archer had undershot the distance.

He grunted thoughtfully.

"All right!" he called. "Recover your arrows." Then he led the way back to the firing point, the ten men following behind him.

"Who was at number four position?" he asked.

One of the archers stepped forward, hesitantly holding up a hand and looking like a nervous pupil in school. He was a heavyset bearded man of about forty, Will noticed, yet his demeanor showed that he was totally in awe of the young Ranger facing him.

"That was me, your honor," he said. Will beckoned him closer.

"Bring your bow and two or three arrows," he said. The man picked up his bow, and selected two arrows from the bin that stood by his firing position. He was nervous at being singled out and promptly dropped the arrows, scrabbling awkwardly to retrieve them.

"Relax," Will told him. "I just want to check your technique."

The man tried to smile in return. He'd seen they were his arrows that had fallen short and he assumed he was about to be punished. That was the way life went for a slave in Hallasholm. If you were told to do something and you didn't do it, you were punished. Now the brown-haired youth who was directing the session was grinning at him and telling him to relax. It was a novel experience.

"Take a stance," Will told him, and the man stood side-on to the firing range, left foot extended, left hand holding the bow at waist height.

"Position three," Will said quietly, and the man assumed the position that had been drilled into him all the previous day, his left arm holding the bow at forty degrees-almost maximum distance. Will studied him. There seemed to be little wrong with the man's stance.

"All right," he said. "Draw, please."

The man was using too much arm muscle and not enough of his back muscles to draw the bow, Will thought. But that was a minor fault and the result of long habit. There would be no way of changing that in the time they had left.

"And:shoot."

There it was, Will thought. A fraction of a second before the man released his shot, he relaxed the draw length slightly-letting the arrow ease down a little before actually letting his fingers slip from the string. That meant that at the moment of release, the arrow was at something less than full draw, which in turn meant it was receiving less than the full power of the bow behind its flight. Halt and Will had tested all the bows to make sure they were similar in draw weight and the arrows were all exactly the same length to ensure results were as consistent as possible. The main cause for variation would be little technical errors like this one.

He looked down the range to where the colored flights of the arrow were visible against the brown, sodden grass of the spring thaw. As he had suspected, it was short again.

Will explained the reason for the problem to the man, seeing from the surprised expression that he had no idea that he was relaxing the draw at the crucial moment.

"Work on it," he told him, giving him an encouraging slap on the shoulder. Halt had impressed on him the fact that a little encouragement in matters like these went a great deal further than scathing criticism. Will had been surprised when Halt had put him in charge of the archers' training. Even though he knew he'd be directing the archers during the battle, he'd assumed that Halt would supervise their training. But the Ranger had repeated his earlier sentiment.