Chapter 63: Unexplained
The snow wasn’t gone but it was the warmest day they had so far.
That morning, the apprentices woke up to a promising day with a blue sky and snow on the ground revealing patches of yellow grass or mud. When they went to the practice yard, they saw Sir Gunnar bringing out a bit of gravel with a wooden wheelbarrow to make the area less muddy so that practice wouldn’t have to be delayed.
However, the apprentices didn’t mind getting muddy. All of them were eager to have fun outside while the sun shone.
A few overconfident ones like Felix came out without as much as a cloak on, certain they would warm up enough that they wouldn’t need it after a while. Indoor duties had resumed for them, after all.
Even though they practiced as usual, Gunnar had a bit of a surprise for all of them, inviting each apprentice to stay outside for longer that day and practice places they believed they lacked. However, he didn’t give Irene a choice when he approached her with her horse and said she knew what she ought to work on. He even asked Felix to wrap a post with hay so that she wouldn’t go through arrowheads by damaging the ones Samson had dropped off before winter fell over them.
It had been nearly an hour of practice on the back of Sorrel and Irene was breaking a true sweat for the first time in a few months. It felt good but she was also extremely frustrated, finding her progress not to be satisfactory to her expectations of herself.
"Ah!" Irene shouted as she nearly fell off of Sorrel.
Instead of falling off the horse herself, the girl tossed her arrow and bow in opposite directions so she could use her hands to stabilize herself on top of the horse.
"I fear your balance is worse than I was expecting," Felix observed from where he had been tying a new straw practice dummy to a post. "Your promising career as an acrobat for His Majesty is all for nothing."
The girl glared at him.
"What are you on about now?" she snapped, but then she noticed her tone and decided to lighten up. "I’m afraid there isn’t room in His Majesty’s court with a jester as big as you are already there."