The Endless Woolen Nebula (1)
Dawn broke.
I never did get a proper night's sleep.
It was hardly a situation in which anyone could have slept. From the conversation he had shared with the Khan to his master, whose fate remained unknown, the problems crowding his mind were too many to count.
"I wonder how Master's faring..."
Vesta believed his master was still alive.
Just because he was taken by orcs doesn't mean a man like that would die.
He would come swaggering back alive and start going on about elves again, no doubt. That was simply the kind of man he was. Even if Vesta had watched him die with his own eyes he wouldn't have believed it—and the man had been carried off without a single bone broken. He would be fine. He had to be.
"Hey, do that properly over there!"
The sounds of bustle rose outside. Even at this early hour, the steppe's day was already beginning.
Vesta stretched and folded away his bedding.
"Are you awake?"
It was Ahor's voice.
"Yes."
"I see. The Khan requests that you join her for breakfast."
"...I'll be there."
Breakfast, was it. The benefits at his new place of employment didn't seem half bad. A wise master fed a slave before putting him to work, after all.
Though sharing a table with the master is a bit much.
He stepped outside and greeted Ahor.
"Good morning."
"Yes. Did you sleep well last night?"
"Thanks to you."
Ahor nodded and fell in beside him. Meaning to accompany him, then.
Come to think of it, what am I supposed to call her?
"Um..."
He remembered the nickname Ahor well enough, but that couldn't be her real name. They were going to be seeing a great deal of each other; he ought at least to know what to call her.
"Did you have something to say?"
"Ah, yes. I was wondering how I should address you."
"Ahor will do."
Ahor. Small Falcon. Had the nickname the Khan had given her become her true name by now?
He looked at her a little more closely. Large, round eyes and long lashes.
She really might take after a falcon.
One pictured falcons as imposing, majestic creatures—but they were smaller animals than people tended to think. Just like Ahor.
Cute-looking, and yet so brave.
Put that way, the two of them had quite a lot in common.
Ahor inspected Vesta's belongings, then admitted him to the Khan's quarters.
"Come in, Vesta."
"...Good morning."
"The night wasn't too cold, was it?"
"You had a fire laid for me. I spent it quite warmly."
"I'm glad. Catching a cold would be no small matter, so always keep yourself warm."
It was a warm concern—soft at the edges, as if the surfaces themselves had gone round and gentle. Something Vesta was unused to. Feeling faintly embarrassed, he sat down.
They spent a moment in silence. The Khan seemed to be savoring the ease of it; Vesta looked merely awkward.
Breakfast arrived looking like a pale, watery soup.
"Do you know of süütei tsai?"
"Ah, yes. I do."
Milk tea, she means.
Tea boiled with milk and tea leaves. On the steppe, where water was precious, there was a tendency to drink the milk of livestock in order to keep water consumption to a minimum. They had Spirit Arts, true—but not so much water that they could afford to waste it.
Otherwise they'd be farming.
"It's a porridge made by stirring grain flour and powdered jerky into süütei tsai. Easy to eat in the morning."
"It certainly is."
Compared to the oat gruel serfs ate for breakfast, it looked close to a complete meal.
"Did you purchase the grain flour?"
"We did. We neither farm, nor could we if we wished to. Not in bulk, but we keep a little on hand."
Perhaps it was the chill in the air outside. The warm steppe soup felt like a restorative tonic.
"I hope you aren't disappointed that it's such a modest meal."
"Not at all. Truly."
Compared to oat gruel, where the eating itself was little better than an ordeal, this was a thoroughly fine meal.
"We are a people who raise livestock, but the milk we drink in spring is precious food as well. Don't take it amiss."
"I see."
She wasn't wrong. Spring was the season when newborn livestock grew on their mothers' milk. In such times, people did not casually steal the milk meant for the young. Seen in that light, this was something of a luxury.
"Still, a distinguished guest has come. We ought to treat him properly. Ahor, are you outside?"
"Yes, Khan."
"Come in."
At the Khan's word, Ahor entered. The way she answered the summons could not have been more natural.
"We'll hold a small welcome feast this evening. Have a generous number of sheep slaughtered."
"It shall be done."
"For the consort, a young lamb would be best."
"I'll inform Altaia."
"A reliable soul. See to it."
That Vesta was the guest of honor at the welcome feast went without saying. He could feel, quite distinctly, that he was being welcomed.
In truth, the Khan's hospitality exceeded anything he had imagined. Nomads drove great herds, but they did not slaughter livestock at just any time. To kill a sheep was to forfeit every product that sheep would have yielded from that day forward. And so, when livestock was slaughtered on the steppe, it was generally the old ones—those whose productive years were behind them. A lamb still young and green was slaughtered only when a guest of true importance was to be honored.
Had his master been here, he would have startled and made a tremendous fuss. The guest of honor himself, however, merely looked awkward.
When the meal was finished and he stepped outside, Ahor was waiting. She meant to show him around, as the Khan had asked. Vesta made a wide circuit of the tribe with her.
"There aren't that many households."
"No. If too many people and livestock gather in one place, the grass and water run out before long."
"That would follow."
"This place is, in effect, the residence of the Khan alone. Those of us here, myself included, are servants charged with looking after the Khan and her herds."
Put that way, it was by no means a small establishment. It was not the fief itself, but the castle grounds of a lord—only here, horses and camels wandered the grounds.
"Those under the Khan's banner live apart, each in their own clan, and gather here when the order is given."
"You called yourselves servants. Are you people drawn from the clans under her command?"
"Most of us, yes."
Talking as they went, they arrived at a pen where the sheep were gathered. Inside, lambs tottered about on trembling legs, almost painfully cute. The ewes watched their young from outside the fence; presently an elf rode up and drove them off into the distance.
"You don't let the mothers tend their young?"
"We send the mothers ahead so they can graze. Once the lambs have finished nursing, we separate them like this every morning."
At that, he looked more closely at the lambs and saw the white traces of milk still on their muzzles.
They're adorable.
There was a real pleasure in watching them. He looked from the sheep back to Ahor, and found her scanning the lambs and kids one by one with unexpectedly sharp eyes.
For the consort, a young lamb would be best.
Is she about to slaughter a lamb right now?
Ahor climbed into the pen, and the lambs scurried about on their stubby little legs. But Ahor was far quicker than they were. Without hesitation she scooped up several of the young, tucked them under her arms, and came back.
Maa...
Even their cries came out as feeble little bleats.
For some reason this doesn't feel like someone else's problem.
Watching that helpless display, Vesta was reminded of his own pitiful state—captured by elves.
"These are the ones who haven't had enough milk from their mothers."
Now that she mentioned it, they did look a little smaller than their fellows. Perhaps they had been born weak to begin with, and had been crowded out by the healthy ones.
Her eye is remarkable.
To pick them out at a glance among so many animals. For all her girlish looks, you could tell she had a great deal of experience.
Is she older than she looks?
Carrying the young, Ahor walked to a particular spot and set the lambs down with care. They tried to totter off in all directions, but she caught them at once.
"You're feeding them milk separately?"
"Yes."
Ahor tilted a leather pouch, meaning to feed them. But the scent must have been unfamiliar; the lambs twisted their heads away.
"They won't take it."
"There's a way. Would you hold them for a moment?"
He did as he was told, pinning the lambs that kept trying to bolt. Ahor returned carrying something of a curious make.
"What's that?"
"A horn bottle. A goat's horn with a teat cut and fitted to it."
That's a wild-looking baby bottle if I ever saw one.
"We use it when we need to nurse a person or a lamb by hand."
A child raised on a bottle like that would surely grow up strong. Like those slavers who had driven off the orcs and kidnapped Vesta.
So that thing is mass-producing criminals, then.
The thought made it feel like a cursed object.
Ahor put the criminal-factory bottle to a lamb's mouth as if she were handling a human infant. Her rigid expression eased a little, and a smile followed—one that even seemed tender. The sight struck him as something new.
So she could smile like that.
"They need to be well fed now, if they're to come through the castration rite in good health."
"...I'm sorry?"
Unless he had misheard, she had most certainly said castration rite. A word that was not merely inhumane, but almost blasphemous.
"Livestock used in farming are castrated as well. We simply have greater numbers of them."
She said this while stroking a lamb that was squirming with white milk smeared around its mouth.
"Once all the young have been born, we gather them in one place and castrate them. All of them, save a few of the healthiest."
"That's a terrible thing to..."
Vesta had picked up a fair amount of miscellaneous knowledge from his master, but he knew nothing at all about raising livestock.
"Doesn't castration hinder you from increasing the herd?"
"Ah. You're not well acquainted with livestock, I see. It isn't quite like that."
Ahor kept stroking the lamb. It squirmed, as if it had had enough.
"The number of females is limited, so having more males does not mean you can increase the herd without bound. It is far more advantageous, in the end, to leave the breeding to a few with superior bloodlines."
Maa...
The lamb trembled all over. Perhaps it was shaking in fear of the future that awaited it.
"Uncastrated males are so fierce they're difficult to manage, and in the worst cases they fight one another to the death. The castrated ones live longer—and they taste better, besides."
"...I see."
It made sense when she put it that way, but even so—a mass castration rite? He had a feeling he was going to have nightmares. The details were already assembling themselves in his mind: a dream in which Vesta himself, stripped of his status as fiancé and of any remaining use, was castrated by the Khan and her elves.
And then, without hesitation—wham.
Vesta trembled all over, just like the lamb.
"?"
Ahor regarded him as if he were being strange. The moment did not last long; her gaze returned to the lamb.
Maa—
The lamb thrashed and bleated just like that.