Page:The Russian story book, containing tales from the song-cycles of Kiev and Novgorod and other early sources.djvu/191

 challenge." Then without further delay they went out upon the open plain and began to shoot at an oak tree standing at a distance of about a mile. One shot and another shot, one struck and another missed, the shooting was good and not so good, and the old oak merely shook its smaller boughs as if a summer breeze were blowing.

Then it came to the turn of the ambassador from the stern King Yetmanuila Yetmanuilovich, and stepping forward the envoy said, "I will not shoot with one of the heroic bows of Kiev. I have within the fair white linen pavilion in which I have lodged my brave body-guard a little bow which I always carry with me when my royal master sends me upon an embassy across the open steppe." Then at a hail from the envoy the brave body-guard brought out the bow. Five of them carried it at one end and five at the other, while the remaining thirty bold youths dragged along the quiver filled full of flaming arrows. Then the ambassador took the little travelling bow in her hand and fitted to the bow-string a flaming shaft of steel.

The cord twanged, Prince Vladimir stepped quickly aside, the arrow sang a journeying song and shivered the trunk of the ancient oak, so that the sun streamed through it.

"I will prove this ambassador once again," murmured Prince Vladimir in his royal beard. "If he (she) be a woman he (she) will have no taste for a wrestling match."

Then he got together his strong wrestlers and