A Crisis for Death — Death, That Is!
I glanced sideways at Eliza, who stood waiting in disguise outside the shop, and our eyes met almost at once.
As if she had sensed something, a faint smile crossed her face, and she stepped inside.
“Oh dear. I take it my little brothers and sisters were giving you trouble?”
Eliza's voice flowed out with the ease of long practice. Hans shook his head with a smile.
“Not at all. They were entertaining customers, honestly. Especially the young master over there — oh, dear me. The little one asks remarkably sharp questions.”
“I see. Well, we really must be going. Terin, Tasha, wait for me outside.”
Guiding Natasha toward the door first, Eliza leaned in and murmured something meant for my ears alone.
“I half expected you to strip the shelves bare like last time. Very restrained of you. Well done.”
I gave a small nod at her words, but it still felt only right to repay a little of Hans's kindness.
So before following Natasha out of the shop, I turned back to Eliza and pointed at a blue-tinted glass cup.
“Buy that one there and have it wrapped for me, if you would.”
The thing I had pointed at was the very item Natasha had shown interest in. For an instant, Katerina's speech had slipped out instead of the commoner boy's, and I winced inwardly — but thankfully Hans didn't seem to have caught it, and Natasha was already outside.
Once out on the street, I found Natasha gazing at the sights of the town. To keep her attention occupied, I chattered away about this and that.
“Hey, look at that. That blacksmith swings his hammer like he's trying to kill it, doesn't he?”
While Natasha turned to look, Eliza stayed behind inside, talking with Hans. She was handing over roughly twice what the glass cup was worth, a gentle smile on her lips.
The moment we stepped into the market lane, the mingled smells of fresh bread and roasting meat pricked at my nose. Street vendors lined both sides of the road, each hawking something different.
Soft pretzels straight from the oven, honey-glazed wafers. And the thickest crowd of all had gathered around the pie stall.
The pie vendors were handing out steaming-hot pastries, their flaky crusts packed to bursting with meat and vegetables. Laborers ate standing up, pie in one hand, staving off their hunger.
“What's that?”
Natasha asked, eyes wide with curiosity.
“Only one way to find out — eat one!”
The taste of those pies came back to me with startling clarity through Katerina's memories. I walked straight up to the vendor without a moment's hesitation.
“Two lamb pies!”
The moment I paid, two pies came out of the basket. Inside the crisp crust, lamb and onion lay heaped together.
“Here, take it!”
“Th-thank you……”
At first Natasha hesitated, as if unsure about eating with her bare hands — no doubt the product of all that etiquette training drilled into a noble daughter.
But the moment she took a bite, her eyes went round as saucers.
“This is really…… delicious.”
Natasha said it in a voice full of astonishment. Every expectation she'd had was written plainly on her face as overturned.
“Cooked this long, the lamb should have gone tough…… oh, I see. The meat was minced very fine and simmered together with the onions.
And the pastry dough is much richer than ordinary flour, too. They must have used a great deal of butter. And there's a faint herb note…… rosemary, perhaps? Or……”
Midway through happily savoring her lamb pie, Natasha had abruptly switched over to analyzing it. Watching her, I couldn't hold back a smile.
For such a diligent, clever young lady, that urge to understand and dissect everything was honestly rather adorable.
But more than anything, I could feel how genuinely she was enjoying this very moment, and it lifted my own spirits along with hers.
She really is a sharp one, our Natasha. Unlike a certain someone……
“See? Tasha's so clever! I'm a little jealous, honestly!”
The compliment burst out of me, laced with Katerina's own self-interest. At my words, Natasha flushed faintly.
“That must be the livestock market.”
From the place Natasha pointed to came the cries of beasts, and with them a wave of dust and animal stench rolled in on the wind.
It's been a while since I've been here.
The livestock market rose up in Katerina's memory. She used to stop by fairly often on her secret outings.
The eye-watering reek of manure meant even the fun-loving Katerina hadn't come that frequently, but watching the cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, and chickens had made for decent enough entertainment to kill an hour or two.
Today, though, the crowd was unusually thick. A tension hung over the auction grounds set up at the edge of the market — you could practically feel it in the air.
“They're holding an auction for northern bison, apparently. A great many ranchers seem to have gathered in hopes of acquiring a new breeding sire.”
Eliza quietly filled me in. At her words, a smile spread across my face all on its own.
The northern bison was, in a sense, the living symbol of the Grand Duchy. Far larger than any ordinary farm cattle, it was distinguished by a shaggy mane running down to its shoulders and black fur across its chest.
Come to think of it, it looks a lot like the American bison I used to see on the internet. Except the northern ones are bigger.
Let's see. Converting to Earth's metric system…… whoa.
Northern bison resembled Earth's American bison, but grew even larger. A full-grown bull was said to weigh anywhere from nine hundred kilograms to a ton and a half — roughly one and a half times the size.
Being wild animals, domesticating them for farming or labor was, of course, practically impossible. But there was more than one way to use them: raise them half-wild on vast ranches and harvest their meat and hides.
Katerina had apparently just accepted it as the way of things, but seen through a modern person's eyes, bison ranching across the enormous expanse of the Eisenmark Grand Duchy was actually a rather profitable business.
“Ah…… so those are northern bison. This is my first time seeing one in person. Our territory lies in the southwest of the Grand Duchy, you see, so we never had the opportunity.
Northern bison are raised half-wild on open grazing land. They're far hardier than ordinary cattle and tolerate the cold remarkably well, and aside from brown bears or tigers, they have no natural predators among wild beasts. So even if you simply leave them be, they say, they grow up just fine on their own.
Of course, they're difficult to handle, so I hear specially trained herdsmen manage them.”
“I see……”
Listening to Natasha — who most certainly claimed she had never seen a northern bison before — rattle off all this in considerable detail, our little group made its way toward the auction grounds.
When we finally arrived, there stood a pen built of iron bars that looked sturdier than most, and inside it was a bison of almost unbelievable size.
“Whoa…… whoaah…… it's enormous!”
The other bison were already big enough to draw gasps, but this one stood out from the rest unmistakably.
“That's the star of today's auction.”
As I marveled at the giant beast, the chatter of merchants nearby drifted over to us.
“Wild bull they caught up in the mountains. Huge, and with a temper like you wouldn't believe. Breed him and you'll get some fine calves out of it.”
“They say his nickname is the Mountain King.”
The moment that name reached me through the merchants' chatter, laughter bubbled up before I could stop it.
That's a name for someone insanely good at basketball, but who — plot twist — gets blindsided by some hopeless underdog team and knocked out of the tournament early.
I was chuckling to myself at the stray thought when Natasha's voice beside me brought me back to my senses.
“But how on earth did they capture a bison that size? And how did they even transport it……?”
Natasha's eyes sparkled with curiosity. She glanced around as if hoping for an answer, but soon closed her mouth again — apparently too intimidated to approach the rough-looking merchants and herdsmen inside the auction grounds.
“I'll go ask. Wait here!”
I walked up to the keeper standing at the entrance, a stack of papers in his hands.
“Hey, that big ox over there. The Mountain King, right? How'd you catch the thing and haul it here?”
Ugh, why on earth do I keep failing to use polite speech? It's been slipping me all day.
The keeper looked at me — disguised as a commoner boy and talking down to him, no less — and snorted.
“Mind your manners, brat. This is no playground. Grown men are conducting serious business here. Now run along if you understand. Shoo.”
At that moment, Eliza slipped smoothly forward. She pressed two silver coins into the keeper's hand, smiling gently.
“Our young master is quite the enthusiast when it comes to bison. Would you mind telling us a little about it?”
The instant the keeper closed his fingers around the silver, his attitude flipped a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
Wait……?
No — one hundred and eighty degrees.
Where did this idiotic thought even come from? Is this one of Katerina's?
“Well, well! If the young master's interested, why didn't you say so! My apologies for not recognizing him, heh heh.
Now then, about that Mountain King fellow……”
While I silently scolded myself for the kind of harebrained thought Katerina would have come up with, the keeper — silver coins safely pocketed — launched into his tale with all the warmth of an old friend.
The hunters who had wandered the mountains for over a month trying to catch the Mountain King. The herdsmen, riders, and hunters who had chased him in three-day shifts, wearing the beast down. The specially made net that had cost a fortune to weave. And the three wagons that had shattered to pieces in the process of hauling him back.
Natasha listened to the keeper's account with utter seriousness. The delight of gaining new knowledge was plain on her face.
Then — an earsplitting roar, and screams erupted from the crowd.
“AAAAAGH!”
“The Mountain King's broken loose! Run!”
“Guards! Where are the guards?!”
The Mountain King had snapped the iron chains that bound him clean apart.
