The Hunt Begins
The road to the hunting grounds was far from dull.
Unlike Ahor, who spoke only when she had something worth saying, the elf women were perfectly happy to fill the silence with idle chatter.
And if you judged by entertainment value alone, that kind of talk was actually more fun to listen to.
Not that there was anything in it worth learning.
Uushun usually started it. Aruk would pick it up. And every so often Asmur would open her mouth and needle them both at once.
A triangle of gossip, complete only when all three were present.
This time, too, Uushun spoke first.
"Since Vesta is here, we ought to try that."
"That?"
Perhaps because Vesta was with them for a change, Uushun singled him out.
"Vesta. We have three elf maidens of marrying age gathered right here, do we not?"
"Yes."
"Which of us looks like she'll be the last to marry?"
Vesta didn't even hesitate.
"...Uushun, you're the only one who's unmarried, aren't you?"
Uushun didn't answer right away. She clicked her tongue.
"Did you hear that from the Captain?"
"No."
"Then how did you tell at a glance..."
Aruk burst out laughing at Uushun's reaction.
"What's so funny. I'll clock you."
"You look like a spinster even at a glance. That's why I keep telling you to dress up a little."
"Th-that wasn't what I meant."
The reason Vesta had known was the earrings the other two were wearing.
You could tell from the patterns engraved on them.
Surely no unmarried woman would etch a fertility motif into her jewelry.
"I'll give you some precious information you couldn't buy for any amount of money."
"Would you stop with the useless talk and just help me with this?"
"It's how to tell a married elf woman from an unmarried one. Interested?"
"Please just drop dead."
If it hadn't been for his Master, whose life's ambition was an international marriage to an elf, it was a piece of elven culture Vesta would have gone to his grave without knowing.
Uushun, for her part, had never imagined he would know a custom that trivial—and for a moment, her confidence in her own looks wavered.
"I know a fair amount about elves, so I guessed from the earrings."
"...Whew. That's a relief. Then again, you do speak Elvish that well. I thought my flower had already been plucked."
"Where's the flower. Did it all blow away because you're a dandelion?"
"Did you injure your eyes? It's right here."
Asmur cut in.
"Looks a bit too heavy to have blown away."
"The two of you are a matching set of menaces."
Uushun clicked her tongue and turned her gaze back on Vesta.
She was riding a horse as well-built as her own massive frame, and the way she looked down at him from that height was rather intimidating.
"As you can see, I get shoved around by women who've already got themselves a man."
"...If you wait, a good match will come along, Uushun."
"No. Having stayed single this long, I don't think that's how it works."
Uushun sighed.
"Fate doesn't come looking just because you wait for it. You have to seize it with your own two hands."
"Mine just rolled right into my lap, though?"
"Oh, piss off. You got together with your childhood friend—that's different."
"And how do you plan to seize it?"
"I'll go to the Wilderness. I'm going soon."
"That kind of seizing?"
"It is seizing, all right."
The Wilderness. As if there were only one stretch of land on this vast steppe that deserved the name.
And yet, strangely, he understood. The meaning assembled itself almost before he had to think about it.
It'll be like the place I was kidnapped from.
A place where bride kidnapping ran rampant, without a doubt.
Uushun, in the most literal sense, intended to seize herself a love.
Vesta couldn't quite laugh. He scratched his head.
"Just bring a net, huh?"
"That's enough, Uushun."
At Ahor's word, Uushun nodded.
"You're my comrade, Captain, so I'll listen. Captain—you won't abandon me, will you?"
"That's low. Why are you dragging the Captain into this too?"
"Dragging her into what? Am I a pit or something? Is being unmarried a crime?"
Ahor shook her head and put distance between herself and Uushun.
"Captain, where are you going."
"You're too loud."
"If even you leave, Captain, I'll be all alone. That's why. The Khan's gone now too."
Even so, Ahor kept walking, unmoved.
"There are goats."
It was the Khan and Asmur who spotted them.
"They're standing in a nice spot to hit."
"Want to make a wager?"
"...Isn't that too far?"
For Vesta, it was an impossible distance.
The Khan shook her head.
"We mustn't forget our purpose. Right. Considering Vesta's skill, we'll need to get closer."
"Given the wind and the angle of their vision, we should circle around that way."
It was Asmur who answered the Khan. She had the look of someone with no shortage of hunting experience; she reached her conclusion in a single breath.
The Khan nodded and gave the order.
"Asmur. Guide Vesta."
"Understood. Vesta?"
"Yes. I'm listening."
"How close would you need to get to make the shot?"
"About twenty paces, I think."
"Heh. We'll have to get you some practice."
"Understood."
The skill he'd just admitted to was embarrassing enough that he regretted saying it out loud—but Asmur offered no comment. She simply nodded.
"Just follow me and copy what I do."
Vesta followed Asmur in toward the goats.
Asmur was tall, and she was wearing a great deal of gear, yet she left behind a startling absence of sound. The way her long, compact frame dropped low and flowed forward was like watching a hunting cat.
She stopped once, midway, and drew in close to Vesta.
"Can you see them clearly?"
"Yes. They're big."
"People hear 'goat' and think they're an easy mark, but one of those will kill a man without breaking a sweat."
It wasn't an idle scare.
The thing was practically a war chariot on four legs. Four-pronged horns. A thick neck. Leg muscles ridged with veins. You couldn't picture it standing among a flock of sheep, quietly cropping grass.
No wonder the tips of those horns look red.
Its horns swept long and far back, the points sharp even at a glance. They had developed that way to deal with predators coming from behind, most likely. If it threw its head back and drove those horns in, the wound would be fatal—that much was obvious. And even if you weren't gored, a body-check on a rocky hillside would send you tumbling until you were nothing but rags.
"We'll close in further. From here on, be careful even when you step on stones. Step on the ones that are already set in the ground first."
Asmur took the lead. She was, without question, a practiced hunter. Whenever Vesta looked as if he might fall behind, she eased her own pace to match him.
They went on like that for a long while.
"......"
Asmur stretched a palm back toward him. A halt. They had drawn close enough to the quarry that even a spoken word was too much.
She froze exactly as she was, hand still extended behind her, and held it so long and so quietly that anyone watching would have started to fidget.
She was waiting out the wind.
Then her signal changed. Vesta eased his body up over the crest of the hill.
In the instant the wind blew toward him—
in the instant the goats' wide field of vision did not hold him—
inside the blind spot Asmur's eye for the land had carved out of their senses, Vesta drew the string.
The goats' scent came riding in on the wind.
The backs of their heads and their necks lay open and clear.
He drew a short breath and loosed.
Thrum.
The arrow seemed to be sucked into the goat's body.
And in that instant—inside Vesta's over-focused mind—a sound went ping, ping.
Stretching thin as a drawn line. A sound like the faintest hallucination.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Holes punched through both lungs, and a savage sound of bursting flesh rang out.
He was stunned.
By the time Vesta came back to himself, every one of them had taken a single arrow and been mortally wounded.
The elves on the far side must have loosed.
Only one animal fled without being hit.
The shock of the arrow storm lasted only a moment. Determined not to let it get away, Vesta raised his bow.
He sent the arrow before he had even properly aimed—and in the same breath, he was certain it would hit—
Crack!
Something unbelievable happened at once.
Vesta's arrow burst apart in mid-flight.
He turned his head with dazed eyes, and there was the Khan, a hazy figure, waving a hand.
"Just now, the arrow."
Was she saying she had shot his arrow out of the air?
"It was carrying young. That's why she stopped it, I expect."
Asmur did not look particularly surprised.
"Doesn't that astonish you?"
"I've gotten used to it. You will too, Vesta, soon enough."
That was all she said.
"It was the season when they should all have dropped their young, which is why we came out to hunt—and still there was one carrying a kid."
"Is it an unspoken rule to let pregnant game go?"
"As much as possible."
Well. Even fishermen did not cast their nets in the season when the fish were spawning.
If the elves hunted without any law at all, every animal on the steppe would be hunted to nothing.
"Now that it's time to marry, I find my heart catching on such things more than it used to."
The Khan looked at Vesta with those deep eyes of hers.
"...Is that so."
"It's still too soon to know. Still too soon, I mean."
An awkward silence stretched for a moment.
"Today."
It was Vesta who peeled it away.
"Thank you for bringing me out like this."
"It's nothing. Did you get a feel for it?"
"I think it's the first time I've truly shot a bow."
"Is that so. Then it was worth coming out."
The Khan's hand came reaching toward him. It paused a moment beside Vesta's head, then moved again and stroked his hair.
White and slender, and at the same time firm. That hand swept down through Vesta's curls.
"If there's something you want to do—and if there's somewhere you want to go—tell me."
"You mean you'll take me there yourself?"
"Yes. I will."
"...Yes."
"I'll take you anywhere. I'll lead you there."
The hand did not linger long.
Though the warmth it left behind stayed quite a while.
"Vesta."
"Yes."
The Khan, who had already turned her gaze back toward the distance, called him again.
"Since we're already out, would you like to practice a little more before we go?"
"I will."
"Then get ready."
"Pardon?"
"Hungry things that have caught the scent of blood are on their way."
The Khan spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"Shall we begin the second lesson?"