Simply asking Jeran and Petras actually worked. Not only could they teach her how to wield a bow, she could follow them around and serve them. She was not the only one there. Petras and Jeran's children were all squires in their own right now. They had been pages for quite some time. Brawler, Boxer, Battler, Bruiser, Ren and Len were all at the squire stage. Molly was not deterred from being a knight. She had seen what it meant to be a page and then a squire with her brothers. She also had been training her body for years. Because she was going to be an archer, I bought her both a short bow and longbow for practice. "You need to be able to draw your weapon like it was extending your arm. It has to be that natural and quick. Boys are stronger and faster than girls on average. This means being quick is not going to be enough. I don't want to see you as fast for a girl. You need to be able to be faster than all the boys." I told her. She nodded her head. "I also want you to meditate on your bow. You should be just as calm and peaceful firing as you are stretching." I added. "I will be!"
The knight training took her 2 full years. One year was spent as a page with the centaur knights. The second year was spent exclusively on learning the bow. Since she was a girl, we had to build her strength. Longbows needed a lot of strength to knock an arrow to its fullest extent. But once it was let loose, it could go over 600 feet in optimal conditions. That was compared to a little over 200 feet for a short bow. Training her on both was very important to me. I wanted to make sure that she was ready whether or not she could use the longbow in combat. Having her get used to meditation was good. She was able to time her firing of arrows between her breaths and even her heartbeats when she mastered it. She was even better at it than the boys were. Meditation helped them focus, but it seemed that they were unable to clear their mind and focus on weaponry at the same time. They were more passionate and their hearts ran faster than a standard humans. It was why they were also warmer to the touch. The boys were better with the swords and the throwing knives than her though.
I was fine with that. I was confident in her prowess in archery. My sons would be demoralized if Molly was better than them at everything so soon. I taught her how to use the throwing knives. She was much better at using them in a defensive stance than she was at throwing them on target. That was fine. Molly also had her magic. There was no problem with her having a different skill set. As long as she could pass herself off as a knight, it was more than alright. She was taught the code of conduct for all knights forwards and backwards. She knew how to care for leather armor and adventuring gear. She learned how to cook from both her parents. Training was wonderful, but she had no one to face in order to test herself. Her brothers all went easy on her for understandable reasons. The centaurs were not human. It was not a good match up. The court of the Swifthunts had some hunters. They could at least keep a challenge going. She was not the best at hitting the bullseye from a far distance. She was able to hit all targets with the short bow. The big longbow's reach was not fully there.
