A couple of days later, Cerdic went to find Jon. He couldn't find the old Storm Voice anywhere, but an attendant at the Orlanth temple told him that the retired priest had left a message to meet him at the old butts, outside the city. It was a fair walk, but Cerdic was still thinking about the demonstration with the wine so he didn't notice the distance.
He didn't know what to expect when he found Jon. He was quite disappointed to find him emptying a quiver of arrows into a bail of straw about 50 yards away. The arrows thumped into the target at a steady pace. After he'd finished he turned to Cerdic.
"I thought you'd turn up." He said. "You Esrolians are like gall stones:
You always pass one when you least expect it." At the mention of gall
stones, he looked pained as if he was remembering a particularly painful
moment of his life.
"Good shooting," Cerdic said, nodding at the bail of hay which looked
like some half spined hedgehog.
"Ah, you should see my friend Arion," Jon said, his eyes taking on a
distant, fond, look. "He's even shorter than I but he could put an arrow
through that bail from here."
Cerdic frowned. "Is he the Mreli that comes to see you every fire season?" Jon nodded. Cerdic's grasp of Aldryami was poor - he was an historian, not a linguist - but he knew enough from plant classification to give a translation a stab. "Little Oak?" he ventured.
Jon smiled dryly. "Not a clue. You expect me to talk to vegetables?"
"Well he's your friend! I assume you talk to him."
Jon gestured to Cerdic to follow him and began striding off towards the bail of hay. "He is a good friend." They reached the bail of hay. Jon began plucking the arrows out of the bail. "He once showed me a trick. Want to see it?"
"Is it important?" Cerdic countered.
Jon finished pulling the arrows out of the bail. "No, it's not important at all. It's about just as important as finding Glorantha in your ale mug."
"Show me then!" Cerdic almost pleaded. He couldn't help the feeling of
being drawn in by something, something that he needed to know. Nothing
mattered more to him than knowing what Jon had to tell him.
"Okay then." Jon pulled out a knife and started to top and tail the
arrows. The bronze heads feel at his feet in a heap with a clink while
the flights spiralled down gently in the breeze, like sycamore seeds.
When Jon had finished, he was left with 20 sticks, stuffed in his
quiver, each about a half meter long. He then used the heel of his boot
to mark a series of parallel lines in the dirt, about 1 meter apart. He
then scuffed the dirt in alternate stripes he'd made, so Cerdic it
looked like a western strip farmed field with every other stripe
ploughed.
When Jon had finished, he sighed theatrically. "The preparations I have
to make to show the unreceptive youth of today things," he lamented.
"Now," he said, pulling the arrow shafts from his quiver. "If I were to
chuck this lot onto there," - he indicated the stripy pattern - "How
many do you think would miss the ploughed up Earth altogether and just
land on the unploughed?"
Cerdic hadn't a clue. He said so. "No imagination you lot," Jon said grinning. "I reckon that about 15 of them will land with a part of them on the ploughed ground and 5 will miss altogether." With that he threw the shafts at the pattern. As it turned out, 14 were on the ploughed ground, 6 weren't. "Near enough!" He gathered the sticks up again and repeated the throw. This time 15 and 5 were the numbers.
He gathered the shafts again and handed them to Cerdic. "You think this is like playing dice?" He asked.
Cerdic nodded. What was Jon trying to tell him? Jon smiled, not his usual cynical grin but something a lot more companionable. "It is like playing dice. Try throwing the arrows a few times yourself." Jon did. Usually there were 15 or so shafts on the ploughed soil, the rest completely clear of it.
"Now," Jon said. "The question is: I can tell roughly how many arrows
are going to hit the ploughed land. But I can't tell which arrows in any
particular throw is going to hit which bit of ground. I can predict the
proportion, but I can't say with any degree of certainty which arrow is
going to land where."
Cerdic wondered what the question was, it didn't sound like a question. Jon picked up a shaft from the soil and held it out to Cerdic, his voice low and thoughtful. "This arrow here. If it could be anyone in the world, who could it be?"
He didn't know why, but Cerdic heard himself answer with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach: "Me."
<End of narrative>
Game Mechanics
This riddle can be presented in any situation where some element of probability is involved: Rolling bones, drawing cards from a deck or something more elaborate, as presented here. It all depends on how mystically onanistic you want to get.
Candidates for solving this riddle are Craft(Bowyer), Throw or Any Bow Attack. Take your pick.
Ash
Powered by hypermail