How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book Two by V. Moody

a couple of small axes and a mallet. Swords were a bit more expensive and none of us knew a good one from a bad one, so we bought the cheapest ones for now. I already had one, so didn’t need another, and Maurice was happy with his spear, so we bought three.
     
    At the rear of the store, there were racks of bows of all sizes. From teeny ones suitable for a child, to giant ones that would dwarf even the tallest person. Other than the man behind the counter, the area was deserted.
     
    “Can we try these out somewhere?” I asked the man.
     
    “What do you mean?” He was tall and bald, with a very neat beard and a depressed look on his face.
     
    “I want to buy a bow,” I explained, “but I don’t know which would suit me best. So, can I try them out?” It seemed fairly self-explanatory.
     
    “Try them out how?” said the man.
     
    “Is there somewhere I can fire off a few arrows?”
     
    “No.” He didn’t seem to be taking me very seriously. “That would be dangerous.”
     
    “Look, the five of us all want to buy a bow. That’s five bows, plus a ton of arrows. But we have to be able to test them first. Otherwise we’ll go somewhere else. Now, is there an alleyway or something where we can safely shoot some arrows? We’ll pay for the arrows.”
     
    He’d remained so impassive as I spoke, I thought maybe he hadn’t heard any of what I’d said, but he suddenly walked out from behind the counter and over to a door. He held it open and nodded.
     
    I stepped through the door to find a narrow alley, bricked up at one end and leading to the street at the other. Apart from some trash, it was empty. I went back inside.
     
    “That’s fine. Now we just need a target.” I looked at him. Nothing. “How about a bale of hay? Is there a stable nearby we could borrow one from.” Still nothing. “Or buy. I’ll pay.”
     
    He let out a shrill whistle and a boy, maybe ten years old, came running across the store. The man told him we needed a bale of hay and the kid ran out of the door into the alley. While we waited, we selected a bunch of bows and paid for a quiver of twenty arrows.
     
    The kid returned in about five minutes, balancing a huge bale of hay on his back. He was told to put it down at the far end of the alley.
     
    We all stood in the alley and I aimed an arrow at the bale. It was hard to even draw the string back, and when I did finally let it go, it missed the bale by a good margin and smashed into the back wall. The arrow broke, obviously. I could tell this would waste a lot of arrows.
     
    “How much does a bale of hay cost?” I asked the man.
     
    “One chob.”
     
    That was nothing to a bunch of money-bags like us. I looked at the far wall and measured roughly how many bales it would take to entirely cover it. “Please send for eleven more bales.”
     
    This got me a single raised eyebrow, but he whistled again and sent the boy off. He returned with a bunch of little friends, and they piled up the bales until there was a wall of hay at one end of the alley.
     
    I tried one of the other bows—this one was smaller and a lot easier to draw. My aim was still terrible, but it did land in the hay. I walked down and pulled the arrow out. It wasn’t broken.
     
    After that, we all tried different bows until we each found one that suited us. There were a few more breakages as arrows hit the wall or went straight into the ground, but mostly they found their target.
     
    Everyone apart for Dudley chose one of the smaller, more compact bows. They were easiest to use, and to carry. Dudley preferred a larger, more powerful bow that was quite tricky to use, but had a bigger range. He had some natural talent and his arrows were neatly grouped together.
     
    The salesman almost smiled as we paid for our bows and arrows. I asked him to leave the bales where they were so I could come and practice. I arranged to pay him a small fee for this, which seemed to both confuse and delight him. The idea of a