“I know we can’t just send our forces over the border,” Seki told me once I’d finished moaning. “I know it’s complicated too. But keep in mind that the Peijins are asking out of desperation. They and many in the beastkin nation are worried about turmoil and chaos in the future. If we can’t mobilize troops, that’s not the end of the world. They’ll be happy with any support you can provide, in whatever capacity.”
I moaned again, then said, “Hrmm... And I do want to provide support in whatever way I can...outside of mobilizing our forces. But is the situation really so dire that they have to resort to calling on help from a foreign nation?”
“In a word? Yes. With winter creeping closer every day, this is the worst time for an uprising. The domains preparing for action and those preparing for the fallout are both expecting food shortages—which means they’re requisitioning the villages’ winter stockpiles. The lords inciting trouble want all of the unrest, however—they see it as increasing their chances of victory.”
“But that’s so reckless,” I replied. “When a country is left weak from internal conflict, they’re risking outside invasions too. Neighboring nations don’t usually sit idly by when there’s an open door in front of them.”
I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed by any means, but even I knew that much. If these insurgent domain lords in the Beastland Kingdom were even duller than I was, then their chances of victory were probably as low as one in a million.
“But the whole reason they’re taking these risks is because that neighbor is Sanserife, and they’ve deemed it no threat.”
Seki knew we couldn’t just march our military over the border, but we were talking about his home—he looked exasperated and helpless. I’d never seen him like that before. It was clearly giving him a real headache, and I ruffled his hair with a hand to reassure him a little.
“I know I don’t need to tell you, but I’ll make it clear all the same—we’re not going to attack the Beastland Kingdom. I’ll swear that on my parents’ graves. But civil war is just not a smart move. Does that kind of thing happen often over there?”
“Not often, per se, but unlike Sanserife, the Beastland Kingdom doesn’t have a dynasty... Is that what you call it? What I mean is, it doesn’t have a royal family like the one here. Instead, the nation’s king is the leader of the strongest clan, or whoever wields the most authority.”
Seki said that in the beginning, the beast kings were elephantkin, and then after three generations it was a bearkin, followed by another elephantkin, and so on.
“Because of the way leadership can shift so suddenly, every clan believes that if the circumstances are right, they, too, can rule the country,” Seki explained. “My parents are of the belief that the elephantkin should found a proper dynasty for the sake of stability, but others think differently.”
It seemed that many believed the precarious state of the nation kept everybody on edge and at the ready—a steel-sharpening-steel kind of idea.
“But the truth of the matter is that the heir of the elephantkin tribe, their princess, is missing. Even if they wanted to establish a ruling dynasty, they couldn’t do it without her.”
When Seki laid it all out for me, I couldn’t help getting a real bad feeling about everything. I just felt like if they stuck to the path they were on, the road ahead was going to be a rough one. My gut told me that the situation was all set to spiral out of control. I didn’t want to think too much about why I felt that way, so I changed the topic.
“The state of the Beastland Kingdom’s royal lineage is something we’re going to keep our noses out of, even more so than talk of mobilizing forces,” I said. “So let’s turn our focus on what we can do. I’m guessing that the Peijins sent us these fine horses because they’re in need of help, right?”
“That’s the gist of it. The horses are called...heshirs, I think. In any case, they’re as strong and durable as they look, but they’re also placid and hardworking. That said, they’ve got big appetites. I’ve heard that some trading companies have gone bankrupt because they’ve had too many heshirs in their stables. I think the Peijins thought it best to put them in your care because of the threat of food shortages. They know how much Alna loves horses, so it’s also likely they thought that this would be a good way to nudge you towards helping out too.”
Well, that certainly clears things up, and it does sound a lot like what the Peijins would do. I wonder what Alna will make of it though.
Alna and the onikin in general liked horses that were fast and a bit on the wild side. Horses that were a bit...slimmer than these heshirs. I folded up the letter from the Peijins, put it in my chest pocket, and walked over to get a better look at our new horses.
From a distance I’d guessed there were about twenty, but in total there were twenty-five. They were big animals with thick fur and strong legs, and they made Balers and the other horses look like foals by comparison. Naturally, they had big old faces to go with their bodies and a kind of tranquil look in their eyes. In their gazes there was a clear mix of smarts, kindness, and calm.
The eiresetters and sheps were quick to run out and look after the new horses, and boy did the heshirs love that. I knew that if I kept looking at them all indulging in the care I was only going to get sleepy, so I kept on moving through them. But then I walked straight into something that stopped me in my tracks.
“Wh-What are you doing?!”
It was a group of onikin women, and they were clinging to the heshirs, their faces buried in the horses’ thick fur coats. They turned to look at me and I recognized them as the women who were helping out at the border stations. They were living there on account of being engaged to the soldiers on duty, and I’d thought they were all busy with wedding arrangements.
But here they were, hugging heshirs.
“This one is mine!” one of them proclaimed.
“Oh, I, uh... I see,” I said.
And, well, we had gotten the horses brought in for the weddings, and they were for my war buddies and the onikin women they’d be living with, so in that sense, yeah, they did have a rightful claim to ownership. I just didn’t think they had to be so assertive about it. I realized then that the women were looking for a connection with the horses, and when they found one, they didn’t want that particular horse to be taken from them...hence the hugging.