Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 23 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3: A Festival of the Hunt for the Small Clans

1

It was now the third day of the gold month.

Eight days had passed since Shin Ruu’s victory at the Genos swordsmanship tournament, and we were at last holding our festival of the hunt, of the sort that were held by each clan roughly three times a year. This was the second time I had done one at the Fa house.

It was unusual to hold such an event with those who weren’t blood relatives. Therefore, the last festival of the hunt we’d held was just me and Ai Fa enjoying a slightly more elaborate dinner than usual. With just one chef and one hunter, there had been no contests of strength or dances in search of a marriage partner. But it had taken place right after the whole matter with the house of Turan had come to a close, so we had wanted to just have a private celebration of our efforts anyway.

This festival of the hunt would be a different story. I had been the one to make the proposal that we hold it together with the nearby clans, even if they weren’t related to us, for the simple reason that those clans would naturally be entering break periods at the same time as we did.

When giba found an area that was abundant with fruit, they would settle down and make that their territory. Then, once they had eaten all the food that was available to them, they would move on to the north or south. Afterward, the giba wouldn’t come around again for a while, which meant that the local hunters could take a break to rest up from their usual harsh workload. And on the first day of such a break period, a festival of the hunt was held.

At such events, the men would fight in contests of strength in order to display their skill as hunters to the forest and their relatives. And the women would dance, seeking marriage partners, though that part wasn’t taken as seriously as it was at a marriage banquet. Furthermore, a luxurious meal made with giba meat would be prepared, and everyone would deepen their bonds with their relatives and share their happiness with one another. That was a joy I wanted to share with the other clans that were near us.

There were five clans that lived close enough to the Fa clan to share a break period with us: the Fou, Ran, Sudra, Deen, and Liddo—all clans who helped out with our business in the post town. Among them, only Toor Deen and Yun Sudra actually came to town, but the rest helped out with prep work and procuring the necessary giba meat. Plus, I also gave all the women from those clans cooking lessons, and I had them help with stuff like the time-intensive production of jerky and sausage, as well as with giba soup experiments.

Between my lessons and the assistance they provided us, the women visited the Fa house on a daily basis. They were important comrades to me, just as much as the Ruu clan was, so it felt only natural to share in a festival of the hunt together, and the various clan heads all readily agreed.

The one unfortunate part of all this was that the clans we had been trying to get closer to before the revival festival—the Gaaz, the Ratsu, the Beim, and the clans under them—didn’t have the same break period. Their settlements were closer to the Suun to the north or the Ruu to the south, so their breaks came at completely different points.

Thanks to our totos and wagons, we had ended up having a lot more interaction with them. And during this time when the six clans near us were going on break, they were our lifeline that ensured we would always have a supply of giba meat available. The Gaaz, Ratsu, Beim, and Dagora also provided workers to help with our business in the post town, so I felt quite close to them. But they would never accept shifting their break periods just for the sake of having some fun with us, and if they did, it would make it quite difficult for us to secure giba meat. Although the Gaaz and Ratsu clan heads had looked quite disappointed about how things had to be, there was just no helping it.

Those were the circumstances that had led us to the present festival of the hunt.

We were also going to be receiving guests from some of the other clans—specifically, a few members of the three leading clans and the Beim. It was against the customs of the forest’s edge to hold a festival of the hunt with unrelated clans, so they were coming to determine whether or not our actions were acceptable.

That was even more of a concern considering that the Deen and Liddo fell under the Zaza. The Beim clan head had nominated himself as well because he already watched over the meetings between the three leading clan heads and the nobles, alongside the Fou clan head, Baadu Fou.

It felt a bit overblown to me, but as the one who’d come up with the whole idea, I wasn’t in any position to tell them what they should think about it. I decided I would just have to hold my head up high and be sure not to do anything that would make us look bad to the observers.

At any rate, the day of the festival was already here.

When the sun hit its peak on the third of the gold month, chefs from six clans gathered at the Fou settlement, adding up to thirty-five in total. That was every single chef we had in our clans. However, infants and children under the age of ten weren’t part of that count. While the eight-year-old Rimee Ruu from the Ruu clan did work as a chef, the general custom among the smaller clans was not to let such young children take on jobs involving flames and blades.

Of course, since kids that young couldn’t be left at home alone, the chefs had brought them along when they came here. The boys under thirteen who weren’t yet hunters had already gathered, and with these other kids added in, we had roughly thirty youngsters running around. There were hardly any old folks, though, so the average age of those present felt quite low.

“Welcome to the Fou settlement. We’re looking forward to working with all of you today,” Baadu Fou’s wife said with a smile. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked over the small children. “Children under five will be looked after in that branch house over there. The men will move to a different house, so you can all play with each other as much as you like.”

At that, five of the women started moving in that direction along with the young children. They would be taking turns looking after the kids for the next while.

There were a number of folks who weren’t chefs still around: the girls between the ages of five and ten, and the boys between the ages of five and thirteen. They were the ones old enough to participate in a banquet, but not yet old enough to help out as chefs or take part in a contest of strength. After taking the children under five out of the equation, there were still sixteen of them. We ended up having that group handle odd jobs such as splitting the firewood needed for the ceremony, and building simple stoves and bonfires around the plaza. As their jobs were being explained to them, I went ahead and bowed to Baadu Fou’s wife.

“Thank you for everything today. It seems like you’ve done quite a bit of preparation with the plaza.”

“Yes, we got some work done here and there whenever we had time on our hands. It would have been quite difficult to get it all done today.”

The Fou settlement had a plaza about half the size of the Ruu’s, but it was still the largest that any of our six local clans had, so we had decided the joint festival of the hunt would be held here.

There was already a huge mountain of firewood in the center of the plaza to be used in the ritual flame. Then in front of the pile was a flat stage constructed of logs and planks. It didn’t even reach a full meter high, had a fur rug stretched atop it, and was adorned with flowers here and there.

“That’s the seat prepared for the winners of the contest of strength, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right. Normally, it’s much smaller, but we’re set to have five contests of strength today, so we had to make it bigger in a hurry.” The contests of strength today would be a little different from how the Ruu clan did them. A few days ago, the heads of the six clans had gathered at the Fa house to decide on the format.

“They only do a combat contest at the Ruu settlement, correct? The Sudra add tree climbing and archery on top of that.”

“The Fou and Ran compete in archery too, as well as combat and pole tugging. What about the Deen and Liddo?”

“Combat, pole tugging, and weight pulling. For the Fa... Ah right, you only have one hunter, so I suppose you don’t have contests of strength.”

“Indeed. But when my father was alive, we did combat, pole tugging, and tree climbing,” Ai Fa explained.

Apparently, the way they all ran their contests was the result of them having a wildly different number of people than some other clans did. The Ruu clan had around fifty hunters under them in total. That was why they had preliminaries where you needed to win three matches in order to advance, which meant that their combat contests basically lasted all day.

However, the smaller clans didn’t have enough people for that. Clans like the Fa and Sudra that had no branch houses or subordinate clans were extreme examples, but the Fou and Ran combined only had thirteen members, and the Deen and Liddo had just fifteen hunters between them. With numbers that small, a combat contest would be over in a flash. That was why the smaller clans generally tended to do three different types of contests.

“Perhaps the Ruu and Suun came to prioritize combat matches so highly because of the fierce enmity between them. But I think archery and tree climbing are just as important as combat for a hunter.”

“Yes, but it isn’t like they neglect everything except combat contests. The Ruu clan holds various kinds of contests regularly. Ludo Ruu once did an archery competition against a guest of the Ruu, Jeeda, and both were quite skilled,” Ai Fa said.

“I see. At any rate, what do you think of competing in other contests for our festival of the hunt?”

None of the clan heads that were present had any objections, Ai Fa included. And so, the end result was that they would be organizing contests of all five types that the six clans engaged in: combat, pole tugging, tree climbing, weight pulling, and archery. Each of the contests would be held as single-elimination tournaments.

That was going to have an impact on us chefs too, though. For the young men, the contests were a great chance for them to show off their strength to the women, meaning it was important that the women not miss out on watching.

Up until recently, cooking for banquets hadn’t taken all that long. The women could just throw ingredients into a pot and then go watch the competing men for a while. Their workflow had been really relaxed, to say the least. But now everyone knew about the joy of eating delicious food, so we had to show off our skills too. That was why we had gathered here in the Fou settlement early, when the sun was still high in the sky.

The sun was currently at its peak, while the men were going to be gathering at around the lower first hour. We would be finishing up the minimum necessary preparations for the meal within the next sixty to seventy minutes, and then we were going to take an early afternoon break. It would be evening by the time all the contests of strength were finished, at which point we would split up into three groups and prepare all the cooking.

“Well then, let’s get right to it. I’m counting on you, Toor Deen and Yun Sudra.”

There were thirty-five chefs—or thirty when you subtracted the five who were watching the young children—which I divided up into teams of ten, assigning Toor Deen and Yun Sudra as team leaders.

My team was in charge of the soup. With nine women accompanying me, I headed to the kitchen of the main Fou house, where there were already three large pots heating up on the stoves. They each had a metal lid on top, which of course meant that they had come from the Fa house. Naturally, we had ordered the lids from Diel. When I uncovered them, a rather powerful aroma filled the kitchen. It was giba bone soup, which had been boiling since morning.

“No matter how much work you’ve put into it, the smell it has at this stage hasn’t improved. And to be honest, I have a bit of trouble dealing with it,” said Saris Ran Fou, Ai Fa’s childhood friend.

Turning her way with a chuckle, I said, “Yeah. But the stock we get from all that boiling is fantastic, isn’t it? Thanks to all the work everyone’s put in, we’ve come pretty far in figuring out how to handle this recipe.” Whenever I had the nearby clans work together to produce smoked meat and sausages, I also had them help with my giba bone soup research. It was something we had been working on for about three months now, ever since the day I had first invited Mikel to give a lecture on making smoked meat.

I had my work with the stalls to attend to, so I had been paying them to help me out with this. Every day, they experimented with various things like the amount of bone and water, the intensity of the flames, the heating time, and what ingredients they could use to remove the stench, which finally resulted in a stock I was satisfied with.

These pots boiling at the main Fou house were ones I had put in place three hours ago. We were using thigh bone and spine, which had been parboiled in simmering water to wash them off. Once all the bloody bits had been cleared away, we cut open the round bits at the ends of the thigh bones, added fresh water, and continued to boil.

For the past three hours, we had been stirring the ingredients to ensure they wouldn’t burn and removing the scum from the surface, and now we had a huge amount of stock to work with. No doubt, it would have been just as hard to make if we had used the bones of pigs and boars from back in my home country, but this giba bone stock was definitely worth putting in the effort.

“All right, the stock should be good now, so let’s add the ingredients that are for counteracting the stench.” Said ingredients were aria, myamuu, nenon, and ramam. Swapping in the equivalent ingredients from my home country, that would be onions, garlic, carrots, and apples, respectively.

The bones had been parboiled and then boiled for three hours. Now we were adding ingredients meant to remove the stench, and next they would be boiled for another six hours while we continued to add fresh water. As for the strength of the flames, they were kept to a midpoint between high and medium. I had considered trying other ingredients or using different bones, but this was the best we could manage at present.

For this recipe, I was utilizing techniques I had learned back in my home country. I liked tonkotsu ramen so much that I had wanted to add it to the Tsurumi Restaurant’s menu, so even back home, I had experimented with how to make pork bone soup when I had the time. And now I was able to put the knowledge I had gained back then to use here in this land.

“I’m seriously grateful to all of you. I never could have taken on such time-consuming work all on my own,” I called out to everyone present. I had tried to equally distribute the members of the five clans aside from the Fa across the various teams, and all of the women had some experience with experimenting on the giba bone soup.

Back in my home country, you could use a pressure cooker to drastically cut down the boiling time, but such things weren’t possible here at the forest’s edge. And so, their assistance had been completely indispensable.

“You’ve been letting us take the finished broth back home with us, so we should be thanking you, Asuta.”

“That’s right. Many of the men have been absolutely elated with the broth.”

I was truly grateful to hear everyone say such kind words. “Well then, let’s go ahead and cut up the necessary ingredients now. Could I have two of you help me get them from the wagon?”

With that, I exited the kitchen, Saris Ran Fou accompanying me with a smile.

“It feels kind of strange, having you and so many women from other clans cooking in the Fou kitchen.” Saris Ran Fou was a neat and tidy young woman who maybe looked a little fragile, but she had a strong heart at her core. She was already the mother of a young child, even though she was the same age as me and Ai Fa.

“I’ve been visiting the Ruu settlement almost daily for a long time now, so it just feels natural to me, but that’s not exactly the norm, is it?”

“No. However, I wouldn’t say I dislike having you all here, even if it is a little embarrassing, perhaps.”

“I agree. I’ve been working with the others at the Fa house or in the smoking hut so often lately that it doesn’t feel strange to me in the least anymore,” a young Ran woman chimed in. Saris Ran Fou had originally come from the Ran clan, so they must have known each other since childhood. They had been happily smiling back and forth at one another for a while now.

“Still, there are only around eighty of us between our six clans, aren’t there? It’s pretty impressive that the Ruu clan has over a hundred.”

“Yeah, but that’s because the Ruu have seven clans under them, so it’s only natural for them to be so much bigger,” I said. “But the Fa only have two members and the Sudra just nine, so the other four clans must all have a fair number to compensate, right? There are roughly five hundred people of the forest’s edge and thirty-seven clans, so on average, each clan should have around thirteen or fourteen members.”

“Thirteen or fourteen, you say? Excluding the children under five, the Fou have eighteen members.”

“The Ran have fifteen. The Deen and Fou took in a number of people from the Suun, so I believe their numbers are higher.”

It was true that Toor Deen and her father had belonged to the Suun clan before being taken in by the Deen. However, there was something else that caught my attention. “When I heard the six clans had eighty-four members in total, I thought that seemed like quite a lot. But mostly it makes me realize how amazing the Ruu clan is to have forty members without even counting their subordinate clans.”

“Yes, it’s truly incredible for a single clan to have forty members.”

“The subordinate Rutim clan also has over twenty members and the Lea have nearly twenty themselves, so in total, the Ruu actually have something like 110 to 120 members or so. The first time I was asked to man the stove for a Ruu banquet, I thought it was pretty weird how quickly the hundred meals I prepared just disappeared into thin air,” I said.

Saris Ran Fou tilted her head and remarked, “Oh? That’s quite a large amount. But what of it?”

“Well, since I’ve been told that the Ruu have a little over a hundred members and they turned out to really have around a hundred and twenty, when folks say there’s a little over five hundred people of the forest’s edge, I have to wonder if the real number isn’t actually much higher. If it’s something closer to six hundred, the difference would be more than just ‘a little.’”

The numbers for the Deen and Liddo under the Zaza also pointed me toward that conclusion. At the previous clan head meeting, Gulaf Zaza had said there were around seventy people under his clan, and even after they had accepted ten members of the Suun branch houses, they couldn’t have more than ninety now. If the Deen and Liddo each had twenty members, that would only allow for an average of seven members each for the remaining five clans.

It was true that some of their subordinate clans might only have a few members to their name, like the Ririn under the Ruu. Still, considering how feared the northern clans were throughout the forest’s edge, it was hard to imagine them only being composed of a small number of elites. In which case, it might have been the method of calculation that was the issue.

For example, the Ruu and the small clans didn’t count children under five. The northern clans might have also had a custom of not counting children below a certain age. For example, perhaps they excluded those under fifteen who weren’t allowed to marry, or those under thirteen who couldn’t yet be trained to work, or those in the age range of ten and below, before boys and girls were treated differently... But whatever standard they used, I definitely suspected that they had a higher cutoff age for who they counted than the Ruu and the smaller clans.

While I was theorizing without sharing the details of what I was thinking, Saris Ran Fou eventually spoke again, looking a bit puzzled. “Yes, I can’t imagine how the northern clans could be so small. But I’m sure that if you include their younger children in their total, that would make their numbers larger than the Deen and Liddo. Then the Zaza would have over a hundred to their name.”

“So then, the actual number of people of the forest’s edge really could be closer to six hundred than five hundred.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t find it particularly surprising if that were the case. After all, whether there are five hundred of us or six hundred, it makes no real difference in our daily lives,” Saris Ran Fou said, answering in a way that was pretty true to the nature of the people of the forest’s edge. Well, perhaps calling it their nature was going too far, but they did tend to not worry too much about the fine details. Personally, I thought the difference between there being five hundred or six hundred people of the forest’s edge was a pretty big one.

There’s also the fact that they tend to not concern themselves with the affairs of other clans. Plus, they might think that saying something is more than it actually is would be dishonorable, so perhaps they prefer to round their population number down rather than rounding it up. Their lack of interest could change in the future, but I thought that their preference to not inflate things was a virtue. Still, I did feel that it was important to have an accurate tally of their true numbers. I should consult with Gazraan Rutim or Raielfam Sudra about that. They should be able to understand my concerns, I thought as I started cutting up the vegetables we had retrieved.

Time passed by smoothly, with hunters steadily starting to trickle into the Fou settlement. And perhaps it was only natural, but my beloved clan head was the first one to show up.

“Ah, Ai Fa. Welcome to the Fou settlement,” the sharp-eyed Saris Ran Fou called out, and Ai Fa gave her a solemn nod from the entrance to the kitchen. “I think this might be the first time you’ve been invited here since I joined the Fou clan. For some reason, that makes me feel really happy.”

“Hnn...”

“You’ve been dropping off extra giba pelts here for some time now, but you’ve never come inside the house.”

“I have no memory of doing any such thing,” Ai Fa stubbornly insisted, turning away in a huff. She had allegedly been helping the Fou out in secret by leaving pelts for them, even before their relationship had been repaired, but she still hadn’t acknowledged that fact.

Not that the lack of acknowledgment did anything to dampen Saris Ran Fou’s happy smile. Being around Ai Fa always made her act more childlike. “Please come inside, Ai Fa. I welcome you into our kitchen as a member of the Fou clan.”

“Me coming inside would just make it more cramped. Besides, it is almost time for the contests of strength.” With that, Ai Fa sent a glance in my direction before turning around. “I’ll be waiting in the plaza. You can gather there once your work reaches a stopping point.”

“Right. Good luck with the contests of strength,” Saris Ran Fou replied with a smile, seeing her off. Ai Fa departed without making a sound. “Ai Fa is an excellent hunter, but I still have to wonder how today’s contests of strength will go. I feel like the larger hunters are going to have a big advantage in the contests that require arm strength.”

“That’s true. She’s told me before that there’s no way she’ll be able to defeat the men in events like weight pulling,” I said.

Saris Ran Fou narrowed her eyes and said, “I see. But I’m still looking forward to it. Ai Fa competing with the Fou and Ran men, almost like they’re relatives... I feel overcome with emotion just imagining it.” Circumstances had led to Saris Ran Fou and Ai Fa growing estranged for some time, so this was undoubtedly a deeply poignant moment for her. “I truly am grateful to you, Asuta. It’s all thanks to you that the bonds between the Fa and Fou were repaired, and that we are able to celebrate the hunt together now.”

“It wasn’t just me who did that. Like I said before, it was your clan head, Baadu Fou, who decided to reforge those ties without fearing the Suun,” I replied with a smile. “And the same goes for this festival banquet. I just brought it up, but Ai Fa and the other five clan heads were the ones who made the decision.”

“Yes. I’d like to offer my thanks to both you and the clan heads.” Saris Ran Fou set down her cooking knife and brought her fingers together in front of her chest. All the other women broke out in gentle smiles as well.

Meanwhile, all of the hunters had now gathered out in the plaza. It was finally time for the contests of strength to be held.