The preparations were done right quick thanks to everyone’s help—help that included Eldan, Peijin and his attendants, and even the traveling performers. And boy, the square was even more extravagant than I could have imagined.
There were pillars erected around the village square with rope connecting all of them. On that rope were colorful pieces of fabric, flowers both real and fake, and pretty bundles of white grass. And to light it all up and make it even prettier, we had a big old bonfire in the middle of the square.
The cavekin had whipped up a stage for all of us to dance on, and we had carpets and chairs for people to rest when they needed a break. Then there were tables lined with food and a whole heap of alcohol that Goldia had brought along as a matter of course.
There was also a dedicated place for the performers to keep on doing their thing and a marketplace for Peijin-Octad to sell his own wares. In fact, the party area grew so big that we had to move some of the yurts to make more space for everything.
This was no banquet. It was a whole dang shindig!
Some of the people that worked at the eastern and western border stations had turned up to enjoy the night too, and the square was jam-packed. It felt like a totally different world from what we were all used to.
I was watching over everything in my formal attire, and all the grandmas around me were dressed in beautiful red fabric. I guessed Ellie’d had a hand in that.
“Alna’s outfit is going to take a bit longer yet,” said one of them, “so you can go mingle with your residents, young one.”
Alna was getting dressed up for the occasion, and apparently that was a whole thing. It even required help from Lady Darrell, Ellie, Fendia, and all the grandmas to get her makeup and whatnot just right.
All I could really say in response was “All righty.”
I started walking, but I wasn’t actually sure where I wanted to go at first. Fortunately, I heard a lot of commotion coming from the knife-throwing area. A contest or something was taking place and the lostblood brothers were at the heart of it, so I headed on over to take a look.
✦ ✦ ✦
Two separate groups of travelers had arrived in the village, both to celebrate the construction of a temple that worshipped baars. One of these groups had come with a veritable mountain’s worth of tributary goods, and so the village had decided to throw a banquet. It was a massively lively event, colorful and bright, and it sure looked like a whole lot of fun.
In a way, if one looked at it from the right angle, it could have been said that the banquet was being thrown in honor of the baars, and it was perhaps for this reason that the wild baar couple were overloaded with shock and excitement. They were as happy as they were filled with pride.
The husband of the couple snorted something about it being amazing that they would be worshipped to such an extent, and his wife butted him in the side with her horns.
“Don’t let it get to your head,” she bleated.
He was trying to heed her words, to be sure.
“But look at it all,” he bleated back. “Look at this grand banquet.”
“None of which is celebrating your achievements, mind you,” replied his wife. “Of which you have a grand total of none anyway.”
She’d hit the nail on the head, and with authority to boot. All the wind in the husband’s sails seemed to dissipate, and he began to consider what possible conquest might lie before him. Eventually, he found an answer.
In the village they stayed at, there were several leaders, and these leaders served a nation, which was made up of other similar villages under the command of other leaders. But there were also many nations...and as the husband came to understand the scope of the world around him, he felt that it was the duty of wild baars to unite.
The husband had heard that wild baars stayed in this village over the winter and that they were ensured safety and security until spring in exchange for wool—an exchange that was determined via negotiation.
The husband had thus come to a conclusion—wasn’t it necessary to have a representative for the wild baars? One baar among them to ensure that negotiations were fair and that their wool wasn’t stolen wholesale?
The husband baar snorted as he thought, and his wife read him like an open book. She let out a sighing bleat and noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A number of men, four of them, were gripping the reins of some of the horses that had come from the forest a short while ago and were quietly, stealthily, leading them back along the road towards the forest.
The men were all armed, and the wife recognized them as priests, but all the same she could not fathom why they were leaving. After all, the villagers were all celebrating and enjoying the party, and even the village leader—a man of keen instinct—was wrapped up in entertaining the village’s young. With preparations for some event just about to start, he had little time for anything else.
And so the baar watched as the four priests disappeared to the east, then turned her attention back to her husband, knowing it was her duty to keep him from doing anything stupid.