Ok, definitely got better today. Played a couple hours this afternoon and afternoon adding four cavalry guardsmen (or something like that) to my group, in addition to Nizar, it got a whole lot easier. When you have a group of 15 and you spot a group of 19 deserters in the wild and it says "Running away from...", it means they are afraid of you.
Then it got better when I leveled two levels at once for guiding a caravan or merchants from one town all the way accross the land to another town. Only got 200 gold or so, but got tons of experience for it...
I'm still highly frustrated with my bow when riding my horse, but my two handed sword has been good to me.
FM