The Frozen Land of Tears
"A sky snow leopard?"
Night had found them still together, talking in low, easy voices, neither one willing to pull away.
"That's right. I've hunted one."
"I see."
Vesta had taken every manner of beast himself, but a snow leopard that cleaved through the sky was something else entirely. That, he had never hunted.
"Snow leopards, you see, are a troublesome opponent."
Ashtien went on in a low, murmuring voice, as if she were reading him a fairy tale.
"In my estimation, they're a far harder quarry than even a bear."
"In what way?"
"They're cowards."
Cowards, huh.
The more fearful a creature, the more cautious it tends to be. And a cautious predator does not readily show itself.
"They're like ghosts. Their bodies are so astonishingly light you start to wonder if they even belong to this world. If even an elf's eyes and ears can't catch them, they might as well not exist at all."
Ashtien offered him a proverb of the steppe.
"Would you go snow-leopard hunting on a day of falling snow?"
"What does that mean?"
It was, she told him, what you said to someone staking their life on the impossible.
Well. On a day of falling snow, finding a snow leopard would only be harder.
"I was rather famous for my hunting even as a child. Back then, you know, I was quite the tomboy."
"That's unexpected."
The Ashtien of now was a composed young lady. A tomboy couldn't have been further from her.
"I overestimated my own skill, too. I wanted to accomplish what others deemed impossible. So I climbed a snow mountain on a day of falling snow."
"You were a gutsy little brat."
"I was, wasn't I. No fear in me at all."
She was smiling as she told it now. But things, she said, had gone quite badly.
"At first I meant to take a snow leopard the very day I climbed and come straight back down. But things began to go differently from my plan."
She had lingered, she said, with nothing to show for it.
"A day. Two days. I chased the snow leopard's traces. As the snow piled up, the tracks and droppings vanished, and I, still green, had to blunder through a great deal of trial and error."
What kind of princess has ever lived through something like this.
It was astonishing that the person telling him this was a princess at all.
"That was reckless."
Ashtien conceded she had been a child without sense.
"If you'd been stirring up a predator's territory for days, the master of that place would have caught on."
"Yes. It would have noticed me first. It was probably watching from a distance."
Because the snow leopard had spotted her first, she had surely been circling without result. That was how Ashtien remembered it.
The thought of it was enough to raise the skin. Isolated on a snow mountain, she had already fallen under a predator's gaze.
"Just as I studied its traces, it would have been studying me just as closely."
It didn't rush her at once. As Ashtien had said, it was a coward. It would have conserved its strength, waiting for the perfect moment.
A troublesome opponent indeed.
"And then?"
Vesta pressed her for the rest. Ashtien stroked his hair as she went on.
"It was a day of heavy snow. Unusually heavy. The finest stage it could have asked for. And it came for me."
Vesta swallowed.
"Snow leaves a sound, just as rain does — a muffled, deadened sound. The snow erased the leopard from the world. Shape and sound alike. It became a ghost. And I was the one in a ghost's sights."
Even Ashtien's ears, she said, had caught no footfall.
"But I knew. If it was a hunter, it wouldn't let a chance like that slip by. Because I wouldn't have, either. I nocked an arrow and waited in silence."
"My fingers nearly froze and fell off."
"Something shimmered near me. Like a ghost. Or like a gust of snow. I knew it, and I didn't wait. There was no time. I loosed without even aiming."
"Did you get it?"
"Even ghosts bleed, it turns out. Bright red blood."
"Wow..."
The snow leopard she took that day, she said, still decorated her quarters.
"I think I've seen it."
"It's the trophy I cherish second-most. Even now, I don't think I've ever had a hunt as hard as that one."
"Second, even after a hunt that hard? Then what's the first?"
Hadn't she spent days suffering on a snow mountain, and nearly lost her fingers besides?
Ashtien answered tartly, as if to say didn't he already know.
"You don't know? Why, the werewolf hide you gifted me, of course."
"What?"
Speechless, Vesta stared blankly at her. Ashtien rose from her seat and gave his head a few light pats.
"It's summer, true enough, but tonight will be a little chilly, I think. A sign we're drawing nearer the north. Mind you don't catch a cold."
And with that, she walked unhurriedly toward the tent.
"...Hah."
Vesta stayed where he was and let out a helpless laugh.
"Whoa. This is no joke."
Once they began the mountain path in earnest, a stir rose from the vanguard. Uushun's voice of disbelief carried back.
Is someone blocking the road?
He went forward to see what had so startled Uushun.
"...It's a centaur."
A centaur's corpse lay discarded on the path. Even in pieces, the bulk of it was considerable.
Ahor, Bia, and even Ashtien joined them to examine the body. Vesta, of course, was something of an expert at reading a corpse himself.
Doesn't look like it tumbled down the mountain. And it wasn't a blade that killed it.
By his estimate, it had been killed by a predator.
"A sky snow leopard."
"It's a sky snow leopard."
"This appears to be a sky snow leopard's work."
The hunters of the steppe reached a clear conclusion.
"How can you tell?"
"Look at the bite marks. Two holes punched through, see? Wounds from the canines. Almost no other tooth marks left."
"Yes. I see them."
"A bear's teeth or a werewolf's couldn't leave a wound like that. The claw marks tell the same story."
"You're right. Those aren't wounds a bear or a wolf would leave."
Coming from Ashtien, the expert, there was no room for doubt.
It was still somewhat unexpected.
"A leopard hunting a centaur..."
The strength of centaurs was renowned in the Empire and on the steppe alike. Even a bear would struggle in a head-on fight.
And a leopard had done it.
"A leopard could drive off an armed man without much trouble, though..."
Vesta clicked his tongue. Bia heard him and shook her head.
Knowing centaurs as well as she did, she could judge the situation more objectively.
"This is a mountain path cut into a cliff face. The trail is so narrow a centaur couldn't move freely. And it didn't attack from the front or behind — it came from above. Even a centaur wouldn't have stood a chance."
"Ah. You said sky snow leopards drop on their prey from the air."
They glided on the membranes between their legs, she'd told him. Hearing her explanation, he understood — it had been the worst possible situation.
"It didn't carry the body off. The resistance must have been fierce. The beast looks to have been rather shaken itself."
Ashtien lowered herself and closed the centaur's staring eyes.
"You fought well."
Her mourning was brief. And yet that brevity felt, if anything, like the proper honor due a centaur.
Yes. A warrior's farewell ought to be given in silence.
"Kid. When I leave, don't make a fuss. Send me off the way you'd send the wind — as if it came, and then it went."
Those had been the words of a centaur friend who had taught Vesta about the steppe.
He had died only a few days later.
What did I even say to him then.
He couldn't quite remember.
Ashtien rose as she spoke.
"A snow leopard that doesn't hesitate to take a centaur. A calamity."
A beast that would hunt a centaur would fear no other race. And a beast without fear was bound to harm people.
And then there was this.
"If we leave it, it'll devour dozens of people before this summer is out."
"...Yes."
"We'll have to take it."
In the end, it would be hunted by people.
"I shall select those with leopard-hunting experience and handle it."
Ashtien gave a faint laugh.
"Is there anyone here who knows more about hunting snow leopards than I do?"
"......"
"I'm joking. Ahor, Uushun, follow me. We'll settle this quickly, without delay. Bia, you'll take command of the Keshik in the meantime."
"As you command."
"I'm counting on you."
Vesta's name had not yet been called. He looked into Ashtien's eyes.
Are you confident?
There was nothing to fear. He'd fought beasts more times than he could count.
"Rumor has it the prodigy from the Empire is quite the beast-hunter. Shall we see what you can do?"
Vesta grinned, full of confidence.