Summer Approaches
Vesta stepped outside for the first time in a while and stretched, letting the cool wind wash over him.
His horse, too, seemed in unusually high spirits. Leaving Vesta to his own devices, it wandered the prairie on its own, even mixing in among the wild horses that grazed with unhurried calm.
"Don't go too far."
Vesta was out on a mission with Orolbai: watching over the young livestock as they ventured forth. The little ones had put on flesh through the spring. Now they had to leave the fence, and they were being trained to find their way home even if they wandered far.
Kids that had once trembled on their hind legs were already walking about just fine. They lived on a different clock from humans.
...Do I look like that to the elves?
Even to Vesta, it was a distinctly unsettling thought. Fortunately, it didn't last.
Ganshinbae, who had been racing about in high spirits, came hurrying back with an urgent look in its eyes.
"What's wrong?"
It wasn't only the horse that had grown restless. Vesta swung into the saddle and rode over to Orolbai.
"What's going on?"
"A gryphon has appeared."
"A gryphon?"
Vesta had heard the name, but he had never seen one. Helping Orolbai drive the livestock clear, he looked up—and a vast shadow fell across the grass.
A lion's body. An eagle's wings. A predator of unmistakable majesty. A gryphon. In the Empire, with its fierce martial spirit, the creature was regarded as an auspicious omen, and its appearance was every bit as imposing as the stories claimed.
A panicked whinny tore through the wild herd.
The worst natural enemy they could have.
Against a gryphon, the horses had no means of fighting back.
"Gryphons are fond of horse meat."
Hearing Orolbai, Vesta understood at once why Ganshinbae had come running back to him.
"You came to me because you're scared of that thing?"
He gave the horse a tap on the neck. Ganshinbae tossed its head as if the question were a nuisance.
"Come on. I can see right through you."
It seemed the horse had come to trust him, at least a little.
"I'm grateful you believe in me. But there's nothing I can do either."
How was anyone supposed to bring down a beast that flew?
I can't even shoot a bow.
And it didn't look like a few arrows would finish the thing anyway. Wait until it landed and take a sword to it? Vesta had some claim to skill against wild beasts, but betting his life on a reckless fight was not a hobby of his.
"It seems it's already time for them to return."
"Return?"
"When the weather turns cold they fly south, then come back to the steppe once it warms. Similar to eagles, though a little later in the season."
"So they're migratory birds."
Then the gryphons people claimed to have seen in the Empire were winter gryphons?
The hunt succeeded. One of the wild horses went down in a heap.
The smell of blood.
"This has become a problem."
Drawn by the horseflesh, harpies came flocking in. They circled the gryphon, watching its mood, hanging back. Perhaps because they resembled people, they looked for all the world like children begging for alms.
The gryphon loosed a piercing cry and beat its wings, and the harpies scattered in a rush.
Orolbai stroked his chin.
"Seeing them return, it seems spring is already drawing to a close."
Which meant summer was coming.
"It looks as though it's time to pack."
For those who wandered the steppe, those words meant only one thing: it was time to move camp.
"Yes. It's about time we moved."
"I see."
"We have wounded, so it won't be easy just yet."
She smiled, a light, knowing curve of the mouth.
"What, are you looking forward to your first move?"
"I'm curious, at least."
He had heard that nomads shifted from place to place with the seasons, but he had never actually seen it.
"Moving a household of this size is quite the spectacle."
He couldn't quite picture it. The tribe on the march would look like a great merchant caravan stretching away down the road.
"Honestly, it's a chore. I wonder if anyone on the steppe actually enjoys moving."
Well. They've packed how many times already.
Packing up a household was never easy. Anyone would grow sick of it.
Walking as he talked with the Khan, Vesta caught sight of Ganshinbae, turned loose beyond the camp. The horse saw him too and came ambling over.
"Oh. You've grown rather close."
"We're comrades, in a way."
They bickered more often than not, but this was still the horse that had fought beside him against the orcs.
I should change that name soon. Ganshinbae doesn't suit it anymore.
It was no name for a horse that had refused to abandon a comrade on the field.
"Hmm?"
Ganshinbae seemed to be coming toward Vesta—then stretched its muzzle toward the Khan at his side instead. She stroked the horse's neck with easy affection.
"More honest than your master, this one."
A pleased nicker.
"?"
Betrayed, Vesta decided then and there to leave the name Ganshinbae exactly as it was.
Stung, he produced his secret weapon.
"Think you can still pull that after seeing this?"
Rock salt. A small lump of it. Instinct won out; the horse craned its neck. The grains were too small to lick, so it crushed them between its teeth.
"That's right. Don't be stingy—eat plenty. There's lots of salt."
All thanks to the salt the Khan had granted as a reward.
"I was given more than you could ever finish."
He had been startled, when the sack arrived, by just how open-handed she could be.
"Well. You have only that one horse to look after, so you'd have salt to spare."
The Khan went on, still stroking her chin.
"You may sell it when the caravan comes."
Vesta ran the numbers. If salt fetched anything like the price it did in the Empire...
I could even buy a slave.
He had no intention of doing any such thing. But that was how much the stuff was worth.
"If not, how about raising livestock? With salt, there's little you couldn't do."
Salt was as good as power over the herds. There was even a saying that you raised livestock with salt.
Animals that lived by grazing had no other way to get salt. Unlike wild beasts, they could not trek across the land in search of it, and so they had no choice but to bind themselves to people. That the elves could turn their herds loose and still wield such influence over them was because they held the water—and the salt.
"It's like farming with salt."
"An interesting way to put it. Indeed, if you want livestock to bear fruit, they must eat salt."
The fruit a herd bore was its young. Livestock starved of salt could not even give birth properly. The number of offspring fell, and the milk to feed them dried up. For nomads who lived by their animals, salt was as close to a wellspring as anything on earth.
When Vesta asked where they produced so much of it, she answered simply.
"There are salt lakes, and mines."
Mines, she said, where they cut rock salt from the earth.
"The elves must control them, then."
"In terms of influence, that's true enough—but the elves do not own them."
"Someone else owns them?"
On this steppe, was there a people who could hold a salt mine over the elves?
Then it wouldn't be strange if war broke out over it.
"No. No one can. That is not land people can possess."
Curiosity must have shown on his face, because the Khan gave a quiet laugh and reached out to stroke Vesta's hair.
"To me as well, that place is the North. As one would expect, it is cold and harsh—no country for people to live. A land of bitter frost."
The steppe was already a country of cutting winds and cold. Winter here beggared the imagination. The North, where the mines lay, was said to be another order of cruelty altogether. A salt mine in midwinter was a place where the world itself seemed to freeze.
"Of course, such things are no obstacle. The hunger for salt cannot be quenched even by bitter cold."
She went on, more carefully now.
"When the weather turns, livestock of every kind flock there to break and eat the rock salt. The centaurs do the same."
"Ah. So that's why."
Her words were enough; he had the shape of it.
Centaurs lived in herds, but they did not form great communities—nothing like a nation or a tribe. In that sense they were not so different from orcs. They could exist as the steppe's formidable mercenary cavalry, but they could not become a mighty power in their own right.
The elves had a community that held. There was no reason to fear centaurs scattered across the grass.
But if there were a place where the centaurs gathered as one, that would be a different story.
Where thousands—tens of thousands—came together, no one would dare ignore them.
"So it's because of the centaurs."
"Hmm? No. That isn't it."
"Then there's another reason?"
"Think larger. I said plainly that beasts of every kind gather there. Not only the centaurs—spirit-beings of every sort gather as well."
And then:
"A dragon..."
No further explanation was required. A land people might govern, but never own. Who in the world would want a seat at a dragon's table?
"If you wish to see it, shall we go sometime?"
The Khan smiled, playful as a secret.