Group Performance: In the Far North
1
A number of totos-pulled wagons were advancing along a rugged mountain path, which was coated in pure white snow. They were currently passing through the bottom of a ravine in the Tarless mountain range. The trail they were on was just barely passable by wagon, and on either side of it were black cliff faces dotted here and there with snow.
Much of the tremendous abundance of the Western Kingdom of Selva was owed to this rugged mountain range, which shielded Selva from the worst of the ice and snow that came down from the north. The mountains themselves were a part of the territory of the Northern Kingdom of Mahyudra, and they cut straight across the map. To the north of them was Mahyudra, and to the south was Selva.
The journey to reach this point from Aboof, the northernmost fortress city in Selva, took just two days, which meant it wasn’t rare at all for Mahyudra and Selva to fight each other in the area. That was the dangerous region that Shumiral Zi Sadumtino’s Silver Vase was currently racing to get through.
There were ten members in total in the merchant group, and they were driving five large, boxy wagons, each pulled by two totos, with two merchants to each wagon. It would soon be four and a half months since they left their homeland of Sym. In their wagons, they carried all sorts of goods from their home nation, as well as a variety of merchandise that they had purchased later on.
It had been roughly a month and a half since they had left the town of Genos, which was a vital center of trade in the western kingdom, and it was now the fourteenth of the ashen month. If you were to travel directly toward the Tarless mountains from Genos, it would only take around a month or so, but along the way they had stopped for several days to do business in places like Aboof and Behett.
Of course, the most important trading destination for the Silver Vase was Selva’s capital, Algrad. The second was Genos, naturally. They generally stuck around for a whole month to do business in those two locations. Anywhere else, they would only stay for a few days, but coming to Mahyudra like this was also an essential part of their business.
The nations of Mahyudra and Selva had been enemies since long ago. The only things exchanged between them were blades filled with hostility, and they most certainly never did business with one another. The only thing tying them together was the people of the Eastern Kingdom of Sym, with whom they were both friendly.
“Shumiral. The sun, has descended,” his comrade holding the reins of the head wagon called out from the driver’s seat. Since knowledge of the western tongue was a big boon for the Silver Vase, they took care to avoid speaking the language of their homeland as much as possible, even in their everyday lives. “The path, is dark. Will we, be able, to arrive, at our destination, today?”
As he talked, his breath came out white. The climate was cold around Aboof, but it was like another world entirely here in the Tarless mountains. Shumiral and his companions were even wearing fur under their leather cloaks in order to stave off the cold.
Shumiral poked his face out of the wagon next to the driver’s seat, and as he felt the cold wind blowing fiercely on his cheeks, he took a quick glance around.
“It won’t be, an issue. We’ll soon arrive, at the settlement, of Munapos.”
“The mountains all look, the same. But you, can tell?”
“I can. I’ve traveled this way, many times now.”
Shumiral had traveled this path many times since he was a child, when he had come with his father. They would go from their homeland of Sym to Genos, then on to Aboof, followed by Munapos, and then the capital of Selva, Algrad... Shumiral’s father had established this trade route over the course of many years.
After roughly a year, they would return home, where they would remain for half a year. He had been living this way for over ten years now.
However, in another four months or so, he would find out whether or not there would be a significant change to that way of life.
What is Vina Ruu doing right now? Shumiral thought to himself as the wagon swayed along the mountain trail.
Before they had departed from Genos, Shumiral had confessed his love to Vina Ruu, a woman of the forest’s edge.
He had also said he wanted her to think about her response as he spent half a year traveling the continent. During that time, he would pave the way toward becoming a hunter of the forest’s edge. That was what Shumiral had said to her when leaving Genos.
Is Vina Ruu living a happy and healthy life even now? I hope that no unforeseen misfortune has befallen her... Shumiral thought, right before the wagon shook in a strange way.
At first he thought a wheel had gone over a rock or something, but instead it seemed that the totos had stumbled.
“Shumiral, what was, that?” his comrade asked from the driver’s seat, his voice a bit lacking in restraint. As he was even younger than Shumiral, he was easily shaken.
With a silent nod, Shumiral slipped past the driver’s seat and jumped directly onto one of the totos. He kicked up the metal bit affixed to the leather belt around the large bird’s torso, setting it loose from the wagon. It seemed Shumiral’s comrade had managed to safely bring the wagon to a stop before the remaining totos hurt its legs.
At any rate, Shumiral rode the totos forward in order to investigate.
Now free of its load, the bird rushed down the mountain trail far quicker than before. Upon sensing the weight of a human on its back, any fear it was feeling had vanished, because after all, this totos had been Shumiral’s traveling companion for a long time.
So that’s it?
The totos had stumbled because of something that had descended down the cliff face to their right.
It was a massive dark-gray figure, about twice the size of an average human... A muffur bear. The huge beast charged them, sending the white snow flying into the air. Its five-clawed paws alone were surely bigger than Shumiral’s head.
With a deep, growling roar, the muffur bear came leaping toward them. Despite its massive frame, it was shockingly agile. However, a totos would still come out on top in terms of agility. As Shumiral manipulated its reins, the giant bird’s head leaned left.
The massive bear’s claws just barely grazed Shumiral’s cloak. The merchant and his mount plunged ahead to the left, coming up to the cliff wall in just three steps.
Since totos couldn’t see too well in the dark, Shumiral used the reins to guide it and gave it a kick on the left side of its torso. With that, the totos eagerly pushed off the wall with its left leg, and leaped into the air like a bird taking flight.
The muffur bear was not far behind them, hot on their trail, until Shumiral hit the totos’s right side with his foot, and the bird swung its right leg down through the air, landing a kick right on the bear’s face. Its talons must have dug into at least one of the beast’s eyes. After all, the huge bear was now stumbling backward and wailing in pain.
Shumiral and the totos landed on the ground, facing toward their assailant.
With dark-red blood gushing from its face, the muffur bear started to raise both its arms over its head. However, it suddenly froze mid-movement. Letting out a breath of air that made a white cloud, the huge bear suddenly fell over backward onto the ground.
On the other side, Shumiral could see another of his comrades riding a totos.
“Shumiral, are you, all right?”
“Yes.”
The figure atop the totos was quite tall. It was the second in command of the group, Radajid Gi Nafassiar. In his hand, he held one of the blowguns from Sym that he specialized in using.
“This is, a problem. If we don’t, move the bear, our wagons, can’t pass through,” Radajid stated while properly suppressing his emotions.
As someone who had also spent many years in the Silver Vase, a mere muffur bear would never be enough to shake him. However, he didn’t seem to have sensed what Shumiral had.
“No worries. They will carry, the muffur bear,” Shumiral stated.
As Radajid returned the blowgun to his breast pocket, he glanced around the area. Soon, a number of figures sized similarly to the muffur bear came sliding down the cliff face.
“Why, if it isn’t our guests from the east! It seems the prey we let slip away from us caused you all some trouble!” a voice called out in the northern tongue, echoing throughout the mountains. It had come from one of several particularly large fellows from Mahyudra, who looked practically like muffur bears themselves.
The five men walked over to Shumiral. Their hair was golden, their eyes were purple, and their skin was like tanned leather, red from snow-burn. Though easterners tended to be taller on average than westerners, northerners were even taller still, and had highly muscular builds to boot. Since they had on clothing made from muffur bear pelts, from a distance, they could almost be mistaken for the beasts.
“Yeah, these guys are definitely easterners. But we have to follow the law, so could you start by providing proof?”
“Of course,” Shumiral replied in the northern tongue as he brought his fingers together. “I, Shumiral Zi Sadumtino, swear here and now, that I am a child, of the eastern god, Sym.”
Westerners weren’t permitted to set foot in northern territory. However, if someone had mixed blood from the east and west, it could be difficult to determine their background from their appearance, so it was always necessary to prove you were an easterner when here in the north. That meant that if Shumiral were to marry into the forest’s edge and become a child of the western god Selva, he would never be able to do business here in the north ever again.
“Hmm. You managed to take it down with just the two of you? That’s quite a feat, but that poison you used won’t make it inedible, will it?”
“It will not. Banagiuz poison, disappears, when heated,” Radajid replied, using the northern tongue as well. Since the Silver Vase primarily did business in the western kingdom, only the three longest-serving members of the group could speak the northern tongue. The other seven members only knew enough to swear to their god.
“Ah, so you’re the Silver Vase? That’s good to hear. The chief will be real happy to see you. I’m sure you brought along all sorts of interesting goods again, right?”
“Yes. I hope they’ll be, to your liking.”
As Shumiral was talking with that one man, the other four hurriedly slit the huge bear’s throat and began bloodletting it. The people of Mahyudra often ate the meat of those man-eating muffur bears. Since westerners avoided eating carnivorous beasts, that might have been part of the reason they saw northerners as “barbarians.”
“All right, we’ll guide you from here to Munapos. Welcome, merchants from the east,” the man said, his face like tanned leather breaking out in a broad grin.
And so, Shumiral’s group was welcomed as guests of Munapos.
◇
The settlement of Munapos was located just half an hour from where they had met up.
It had been roughly half a day now since they had entered the Tarless mountains. This was one of the closest settlements to Selva in all of Mahyudra territory. Still, the only way to reach the settlement was through the ravine they had just traversed. There was nowhere to hide along the path, and man-eating bears frequently appeared in the area, so Selva hadn’t invaded along that route in decades.
The settlement itself was a small one, with only around 150 people living there. But since they served as lookouts keeping watch for incursions by the forces of Selva, it was an important location for Mahyudra despite its size. Supposedly, whenever its population decreased, the capital ordered people to move there from other settlements.
Even if the last several decades had been peaceful, before that, the area had been on the front lines of the war. Back then, it had been Mahyudra that was trying to descend the mountains and invade western territory, which led to the establishment of the fortress city of Aboof. Ever since then, Mahyudra had moved the focus of their invasion elsewhere. From that point on, Munapos had found a new purpose as a point of contact for commerce with the eastern kingdom.
The chief of the settlement was the head of a bloodline that had lived there for as long as anyone could remember, a man in his prime by the name of Uraya Fal.
“Thank you for coming, guests from the east. If I recall correctly, your name is Shumiral, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Shumiral Zi Sadumtino.”
Shumiral had visited this settlement every year and a half. Over the last ten years of following that cycle, Uraya Fal had always been the chief of the settlement.
He looked to be just over forty, and like the majority of northerners, he was a large man with golden hair, purple eyes, and a reddish face. He was even taller than Shumiral, and easily twice as wide. His attire was made from a dark gray pelt, and he wore fang and claw accessories around his neck and arms. All of the men of Mahyudra living in the Tarless mountains worked as hunters.
“You can make yourselves at home here for the night. Are you planning to head out as soon as morning arrives?”
“Yes. We have business, to take care of.”
People who did their business primarily in Mahyudra would continue all the way north to the nation’s capital, but that wasn’t the case for the Silver Vase. For them, the chief of Munapos, Uraya Fal, was their one and only business partner in the land.
“You lot don’t show up very often, but when you do, you always bring along more interesting and unusual goods than any other merchant group does. Obviously, that includes food from the west, but then on top of that there were the blades and glass jars you sold us last time. They got a lot of praise in the capital.”
“I’m honored. Even we, have heard tell, of the handiwork, of Mahyudra,” Shumiral stated, adjusting his posture. “And I am glad, to hear you say, our blades earned, a fine reception. After all, this time, we have an excess, of them.”
“Ooh, that’s unusual. You merchants from Sym treat your iron as quite precious.”
“Yes. A promise, to purchase, the blades, was broken.”
The business agreement they had with the noble Cyclaeus in Genos had been unilaterally broken off by the other side. As he thought back on the matter, Shumiral wondered to himself whether or not the people of the forest’s edge had settled things with the man by now. That thought shook him a bit once again, though he didn’t let it show.
“Hmph, that’s what I’ve always told you... Those westerners aren’t worthy of your trust. They’re all frail and crafty, real good-for-nothing folks,” Uraya Fal said with a displeased snort as he gulped down some wine that had been poured into a glass cup. That cup had been purchased from the Silver Vase, but the wine must have been some kind of spirits made here in Mahyudra. “All right, why don’t you go ahead and show us your goods before dinner?”
“Yes, very well.”
With that, Shumiral gave the members of his group a look, and they started carrying over the luggage that had been set down by the room’s entrance.
They were currently in Uraya Fal’s house. The inner walls were lined with layers of pelts to keep out the cold, and there was a bright flame burning in the fireplace. The light from the fire also served to illuminate the numerous goods.
They included cups and vases made with glass from Sym, clay plates, beautifully adorned wooden bows and blowguns, hatchets with black stone blades, bundles of woven fabrics, accessories made of silver and precious stones, chitt seeds and various herbs...and a full thirty cooking knives.
Additionally, they also had the various goods they had purchased from around the western kingdom.
Karon and kimyuus leatherwork, giba and gaaje pelt rugs, casks of mamaria fruit wine, mamaria vinegar, fuwano flour in bags, karon dried milk, dried aria, and even karon, kimyuus, and giba jerky. The majority of the goods were ingredients from Genos, which had an abundance of such items. All told, it was enough merchandise to fill two of their five wagons. The settlement of Munapos always made a purchase of around this size.
“Ah, right. Your group never brings gyama meat or dried milk.”
“Correct. Munapos, is far, so foodstuffs like those, would spoil.”
The Silver Vase’s route started by passing to the south of Mount Morga and visiting the town of Genos. That meant it took several months for them to arrive at Munapos, so they sold off all the gyama jerky and dried milk they brought along from their home country along the way.
“I’m real fond of gyama dried milk myself. And the fermented milk too. The stuff made with karon milk just isn’t the same.”
“Do you not, want any, karon dried milk?”
“Oh, we still do. Even if it’s not my favorite, we’ve got some folks in the capital who are eagerly waiting for it. There are always eccentrics out there.”
“I see. This time, we also brought, giba jerky. Do you have, any interest?”
“Giba jerky? They’re the beasts these pelts come from, right? They’re softer than muffur pelts, which makes them a hit with the women, but this is the first I’ve heard anything about their meat.”
“Yes. It is, very delicious, so we bought some. The price, is the same, as karon jerky.”
After Shumiral looked his way, Radajid pulled out a knife and sliced off a sliver of giba jerky, then placed it on a wooden plate and held it out toward Uraya Fal. The chief didn’t show any hesitation at all, popping the slice of meat into his large mouth, and then his already big eyes shot open even wider.
“This is delicious! It’s just as good as fatty bear meat, and doesn’t have any sort of stench about it.”
“Yes. It was, reportedly made, using chest and back meat. I believe, the price will rise, in the future.”
It was nonsensical that such delicious jerky was priced the same as the stuff made with karon leg meat. In the future, giba meat would surely end up costing as much as karon torso meat. As a merchant, Shumiral was confident that that was how things would play out.
“Yes, I can’t imagine the folks from the capital having any issues with this stuff. I’m thinking I’ll probably buy a lump of it for myself. But as for the knives, we may not have enough here to pay for that many.”
With a hearty clap of Uraya Fal’s hands, the men waiting off to the side of the room began lining up a wide variety of goods in front of Shumiral’s group.
They included the expected casks of spirits, ground powder from a yellow berry called a meles, a blue fruit known as an amantha, rare herbs that could only be harvested in Mahyudra, smoked fish that came solely from the icy sea to the north, little fish pickled in salt, white salt made by purifying seawater, iron axes meant for hunting, and the sorts of stone and fang necklaces the women made.
The majority of it must have been delivered from the capital for trade. It was enough to fill the Silver Vase’s empty wagons back up to full.
“We also have a very small number of silver coins from the capital. This feels like it’s just a bit short, but what do you say?”
Shumiral went ahead and checked the contents of the cloth bag Uraya Fal had handed him. Then he calculated the worth of the goods in front of him and swiftly responded, “Yes, it does indeed seem short, though just, by a little. We could, reduce the number, of knives, to ten, or otherwise, reduce the amount, of the other goods.”
“I see. That sounds fair to me too,” Uraya Fal replied with a hearty nod, but then his eyebrows drooped a bit. “Still, blades from Sym are valuable, so it’s a shame to just let them slip away. We can prepare as many bear pelts and as much meat as you could want here, but still...”
“No. Since it is warm, in the western kingdom, pelts don’t usually, sell much. And since, we will be traveling, around that warm land, jerky can, spoil easily.”
Bear meat had a stench to it, and westerners would never eat meat from a carnivorous beast to begin with. If they headed straight back to Sym after this, then they would be able to sell it, but it was still over half a year before the Silver Vase would be returning to their homeland. If the jerky wasn’t high-quality stuff, it would surely go bad along the way.
“It’s so annoying, how those weaklings from the western kingdom don’t have the guts to eat bear meat! I hate to have to give up on the goods you brought from the west, but I guess there’s no helping it.”
“Yes. We merchants all, have our own businesses, to be mindful of.”
The merchant groups that primarily did business up north could sell gyama meat and dried milk, and had the opportunity to purchase bear meat and pelts in return. Those who focused on the west couldn’t do that, but they were able to bring the bounty of the west to Mahyudra instead. Both routes were equally good.
“Well then, we’ll buy everything you’ve got except for twenty of the knives. My apologies that we weren’t able to live up to your expectations.”
“No. Having more, blades left, works fine for us.”
They would surely be able to sell the knives in the capital of Selva. After all, delicious meals and the ingredients needed to prepare them were valued just as highly in Algrad as they were in Genos.
“All right, then let’s put this all away and get started on dinner! Tonight, we feast!” Uraya Fal loudly declared.
This would be the first time in a year and a half that Shumiral’s group had attended a feast in Mahyudra. For Shumiral himself, it would surely be his last.
Though he didn’t let any emotion show on his face, Shumiral gave a small sigh as he thought of his beloved in that far-off land.
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