TW01 The Ivanhoe Gambit NEW by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online Page B

began to grin broadly and act as though he had already won. Indeed, he had no reason to believe otherwise. When Bobby took his stance and drew his bow back, the crowd fell utterly silent. No one believed that there was any way the tinker could match the shot, much less beat it, but they respected his determination.
    "He'll never best that shot of Hubert's," John said confidently. "I'll teach that Saxon cur a lesson in manners yet."
    Bobby made a show of aiming, then let the arrow fly. The moment the shaft left the bowstring, Finn depressed the button activating the guidance system. The arrow was halfway to the target when the ferrous metal detector picked up the presence of Hubert's iron arrowhead just ahead of it. Fortunately, there were no other iron objects near enough to confuse the system and the arrow flew straight and true, the fletching adjusting itself imperceptibly until Bobby's arrow hit the end of Hubert's shaft precisely, splitting it right down the middle until it came up against Hubert's arrowhead with a shock that sent it halfway through the butt. There was a moment of complete, unbelieving silence and then the crowd roared.
    Hubert's jaw dropped in astonishment. He could have sworn that the tinker's aim was off.
    "By God, the man's a devil, not an archer!" John swore in amazement, forgetting his annoyance with the tinker. "Any man who can shoot like that, I'll have in my service!"
    He would have made the offer, only a mob charged out upon the field to congratulate one of their own, thrilling in a Saxon's victory over a Norman. When the tumult died down and the crowd dispersed, the black garbed tinker and his friend in lincoln green had disappeared. They did not show up to claim their prize. Vexed, John pronounced the man a craven coward and said that he hoped his Norman knights would make a better showing than his pathetic archers. Hubert left the field, looking miserable.
    John flourished his truncheon and ordered the jousting to commence.
    The Saxon boy was quite impressed with the tinker's performance. He could not contain his joy.
    Lucas thought that Bobby had showed off just a bit too much. It had been risky. Obviously, the last arrow had been a guided one. Lucas conceded that Bobby had no choice, since the Norman archer's shot would have been impossible to beat any other way, but still, he hadn't liked it very much.
    Fortunately, Bobby had been able to retrieve the arrow and melt away into the crowd. That, at least, had been prudent of him. The guided arrows were equipped with a fail-safe mechanism that would fry the circuitry inside the shaft if anyone was curious enough to examine them too closely, but he was still glad that Bobby had managed to get his arrow back and disappear. It had been an impossible shot. John might have decided to order him to duplicate it just to see if it was luck or skill. If it happened again, it would have been clear evidence of skill—superhuman skill. It was well to draw attention to themselves in order to curry sympathy with the locals and to flush out the renegade ref, but there was such a thing as carrying it a bit too far.
    Now, his turn was coming up. Lucas decided to wait as long as possible to see how the competition shaped up. His nysteel armor would keep him fairly safe, but he could still be unhorsed and the whole idea was not to let that happen. He had no intention of risking a broken neck.
    As the heralds announced the rules for the passage at arms, he sized up the other knights, watching as they were lifted up onto their horses. The rules were fairly simple. A challenger would ride through the lists to the opposing side and use his lance to touch the shield of the knight he wished to joust with. If he touched the shield with the butt end of the lance, then it was polite competition, lance points tipped with wood. It was still possible to be hurt, but at least the chances of getting skewered were somewhat diminished. However, if someone touched the shield of