Strong Soft Wood Longbow of Peril

Strong Soft Wood Longbow of Peril rests on a rough-hewn crate, its stock a pale, honeyed grain that glows when sun slants through the market canopy. The wood has a soft warmth to the touch, yielding a gentle give at the grip, yet the limbs carry a quiet sturdiness, as if the trees themselves had whispered a warning to would-be targets. The bow’s edges are smoothed by hands that have walked many roads; the leather wrap around the grip is dry and crackled from travel, smelling faintly of smoke, river mud, and old campfire stories. The string is taut, a silver thread pulled tight, and the riser bears a line of sigils—simple runes weathered by time—that locals say were pressed there by a hunter who walked peril lines between caravan routes. Locals tell of a hunter who learned to treat peril as a partner rather than an enemy. The bow’s name, they claim, hails from a night when a caravan was saved from raid and cliff by a single patient shot that pierced a flapping banner and halted the ambush’s rhythm. Since then, every mark the bow leaves behind seems to carry that memory: a clean hole through leather, a bright arc in dry air, a recoil that steadies the arm of a hunter who knows danger’s rhythm. In the hands of such a shooter, it feels like a guide through twilight alleys and sun-scorched forests alike, a quiet companion that returns the favor when the world grows loud with peril. In practice the bow rewards patient aim as much as quick reflexes. The soft-wood core yields a forgiving flex that helps arrows bite true when fired from concealment or over low stone parapets, and its balance makes standing shots feel almost ceremonial. A skilled archer finds it forgiving through long ranges, especially against lightly armored foes, while a misstep in timing can break a run of shots as surely as weather can break a line. The weapon doesn’t scream power; it earns trust through the steady rhythm of precise, counted strokes that carve a path for the hunter to slip from one shadow to the next. At the Saddlebag Exchange a stall keeper hung the bow with a careful tag, two gold and seventeen silver, and murmurs slid through the crowd about peril and luck. Traders spoke in hushed tones of road-worn hands and the memory the wood kept, trading stories with the price as a kind of currency. The tag’s numbers drifted as hands traded coins and opinions, and the Exchange itself felt like a chorus of paths crossing—the buyer’s road meeting the seller’s, the road beyond meeting the road within. If you listened closely, you could hear the bow answer in a faint creak, a promise that the peril in the wood would meet the peril in the buyer’s heart, and that a good shot might turn fear into a safer day. For those who carry it, the bow is less a tool than a companion for the road ahead, a quiet talisman in perilous times.