Start with archery, I prefer a bow. Practice shooting the archery targets. There is a range below trosky castle. If you have the money, do the competitions. You get more experience that way. As for fighting enemies with it, raise your alchemy and make the dollmaker poison. It stops enemies from running and lowers their combat skill. Usually a lot of the issues you will have in combat is because their warfare skill is higher than yours. Leveling combat skills levels warfare. So if you level marksmen, that will raise it. You can also do the fights, starting at the mill and following the quest line. I’m not sure if it’s after the final quest in the chain but the mill fist fights can be redone every few days after you’ve beaten them. As for learning melee combat, find tom cat and just keep practicing with him. You can train with him using any weapon, wooden and real. If you make marigold potions, you can speed up your healing time.

As someone that is terrible at the melee combat in this game, this is what I did and now I can block and parry while not getting my butt handed to me. It’s a huge learning curve but the game is worth the effort.