Legon Awakening: Book One in the Legon Series by Nicholas Taylor

shirt and brown pants. He pulled on some socks
and boots and walked out of his room into the hall. Sasha’s door
was open and he could hear her downstairs. When he got downstairs
he could see her flitting around the kitchen, making breakfast and
humming to herself. Her red dress spun as she turned to smile up at
him. He could tell that she hadn’t slept well last night either,
though it didn’t seem to slow her down. M aybe I was snoring
really loud last night and kept us both from a good sleep, he
thought.
    He walked in front of the mirror for his normal
pre-day inspection. There was a dark spot on his chin, and for a
moment his insides squirmed with excitement. He reached up to feel
the stubble… and his fingers slid across his smooth face and
smudged a spot of dirt. Feeling stupid, he looked at Sasha in the
mirror to make sure she hadn’t seen his mistake. She was too busy
scooping eggs onto plates. He breathed a sigh of relief.
    “You look tired this morning. I didn’t keep you up
snoring, did I?”
    She looked up at him, her eyebrows furrowed in
thought, and said, as if she was having a hard time remembering,
“No, I just had a hard time falling asleep. You weren’t snoring…
although I kept hearing you say something like ‘Sasha is the most
beautiful girl in Airmelia and so smart and funny and…’ oh, I can’t
remember the rest.”
    Legon shook his head. “No wonder I’m so tired - I was
delirious last night.”
    Sasha laughed and said curtly to him, “Rude!”
    They sat down and Legon ate his eggs. They were good,
but not as good as Sasha’s pies were. After they ate Sasha washed
the dishes and took off her apron, then went upstairs to get her
money pouch. Legon walked to the space under the stairs to get
their bows. Kovos was always up for shooting, and they hadn’t
gotten the chance yesterday. Legon grabbed Sasha’s hunting bow and
his combat bow.
    Legon, like most of the men in town, had two bows,
one that was for hunting and the other for combat. A hunting bow
usually had a fifty to sixty pound draw weight on them, perfect for
bringing down all but the largest animals but underpowered against
armored targets. Chain mail was expensive, so very few people had
it, but bandits and soldiers that didn’t have chain mail wore a
thick doublet that was made of layered cloth and leather. The
doublet would not be able to stop an arrow cold at close range, but
it could from a distance. For a hunting bow to penetrate the armor
at close range the shooter had to be about ten feet away. It was
for this reason that combat bows were significantly stronger.
    The average man had a bow with a draw weight of one
hundred and sixty to one hundred and eighty pounds, which gave it
an effective range of about two hundred yards and the power to go
through leather armor and punch through chain male from about
eighty yards away. Combat bows were too over-powered for hunting
but were a necessary precaution. With them, most men got to the
point where they could fire between ten and twenty arrows a
minute.
    Legon, however, was unusually strong, and his bow had
a two hundred pound draw weight. A beautiful weapon, it was made of
yew and as was as tall as him. He could hit a head-size target nine
times out of ten from one hundred and eighty yards away and could
fire eighteen arrows a minute. Only two other men in town, Brack
and Arkin, could fire such a bow, but neither could claim Legon’s
accuracy.
    Legon walked over to the door and waited for Sasha.
She came down the steps and they walked outside. The town was alive
at this time in the morning, and people were moving in all
directions in the streets. They began to walk in the direction of
Kovos’ house. They waved and said hello to townspeople as they
passed, and soon they were walking by the town carpenter’s house
and shop. As they passed, Sasha touched Legon’s arm. “Let’s go say
hello to Arkin. I haven’t seen him in awhile.” Sasha liked Arkin.
He was the only