I continued on my way through the plains until I was sure I’d put a good distance between myself and the yurt, and then I undid the string that was tied around the leather bag of matani dust. It was full of a fine brown powder, and it had a sharp, unique scent that wasn’t like any grass I knew.
So if I spread this around, then I draw in wild beasts. But uh, how much of it do I use? Alna never said anything about the amount. Guess I’ll just use all of it?
My first thought was to spread the dust around by my feet, but I didn’t think that would do the job. I wanted a lot of wild beasts, and I figured that meant launching the bag. If I did that, the powder would be carried far and wide on the breeze.
And that’s exactly what I want.
So, with the leather bag still open, I waited until the wind picked up speed and then pitched the bag into the sky. It went exactly the way I hoped: most of the dust was taken on the wind and flew through the air. Any that didn’t came straight back to the ground along with the bag and got all in my hair, but I figured it was still a job well done.
All that was left now was to wait for the animals to come running, then hunt them.
Hm... How many wild animals do I have to hunt for a yurt, I wonder? Surely one wouldn’t be enough. Maybe five? No, probably ten, I’d say. That means for, uh, ten yurts, I’ll have to hunt a hundred wild animals.
There was no way I was going to be hunting a hundred wild beasts in a single day, so I’d have to spread it over a number of hunting trips. Fortunately, I didn’t mind hunting for days at a time, so I’d just keep going until I had enough for the yurts I needed.
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While I was thinking about this, I realized that the matani dust must have done its job, because I heard a rumbling from the distance. I looked towards the noise and saw a herd of black shapes drawing closer. I wondered what kind of beasts I was looking at. Whatever they were, they certainly made a racket with their running, and it sure looked like there were a lot of them.
That’s not just ten or twenty; that’s way more! Just how many of them are there?!
The bull-like beasts were covered in black hides, with two horns sprouting from their heads. There were more than I could count at a glance, but more importantly: where in the world did they even come from?
Man, that matani dust sure is something. If I can hunt this whole pack though, then maybe I’ll hit my first goal in one fell swoop!
I felt the enthusiasm swell inside me as I lifted my axe up and readied for the hunt. The beasts were coming straight for me, and the distance between us closed in just moments.
The hunt had begun!
I raised my axe and I swung it, over and over, and over and over. With each swing of my axe, I felled yet another of the rampaging wild animals. That was how I fought—I left everything to brute strength and instincts, and swung. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a new recruit for the war, I was pulled aside one day and told to train. An instructor taught me how to use a variety of weapons—swords, spears, and bows among them—but none of them really felt like they fit me, and in the end I settled on the battle-ax.
The axe was far less complicated than all the other weapons—no need to aim for weak points, and no need to look for gaps in the enemy’s armor. I wasn’t cut out for reading my opponent’s movements and working out tactics to defeat them. I was far too simple for such things.
But the wonderful thing about the battle-ax was that I didn’t have to think. I just had to set my sights on an enemy and swing. If there was a shield in my way, then I took out the shield, and if there was armor in the way, then I pulverized that too. I didn’t think there was any weapon quite as wonderful as the battle-ax.
That instructor told me that I was racing to my death with the way I fought, but me and my battle-ax survived the battlefield that day. And after I’d made a small name for myself in war, I didn’t hear anyone complaining about my fighting style. Either everyone recognized it for what it was, or they just didn’t think it was worth it. In hindsight, I think it might have been the latter...
In all honesty, my approach to fighting did have a glaring weakness. See, I was so rough with my axe that I ran the risk of breaking it completely during battle. And make no mistake, nobody’s taking out an armored enemy with their bare hands. I’d broken my axe and almost died more times than I could remember.
However, I’d overcome that particular weakness when I acquired an axe I could truly call my own. I’d earned it in battle when I defeated a soldier from another country—a “shogun” or some such, I think he was called—and, well, it’s durable beyond belief. I can swing it with everything I’ve got and crush my enemies and it doesn’t break or shatter. Better yet, it’s got a real strange power: whenever it gets fractured or chipped, the axe repairs itself over time.
The truth is, after I beat up that shogun or whatever he was called, I’d only picked up his battle-ax because I liked the lion design on it. I had never imagined it would have strange powers to boot. The first time I saw the axe repair itself, I really thought I was dreaming. I even slapped myself on the cheek and told myself to wake up.
In any case, that’s the story of how I overcame the weakness in my fighting style. As soon as I knew that I wasn’t going to break my weapon in the middle of combat, I swung it with even more ferocity than before. In time, everyone came to praise me for my war efforts.
That’s what I was reminiscing about as I swung my battle-ax at all the wild beasts, and when I took a look around, I saw that I’d taken down about half of them. The bulls were simple creatures with only very basic attacks, so it was easy for me to get lost in my own thoughts.
Just as I was wondering how best to approach the rest of the herd, they took a look at the impromptu graveyard around me and began to back away. I could see right away that chasing them down one by one and hunting them was going to be a world of trouble, so I relaxed my stance and lowered my axe, at which point the wild beasts turned tail and fled.
As I watched them disappear over the horizon, a thought dawned on me. I’d just hunted a whole heap of wild beasts—which was a good thing—and I’d be able to trade them for yurts and food—which was also a good thing—but given how many of them there were...
How was I going to take them all back to my yurt?
I looked around at the wild beasts strewn across the plains, still more than I could count, and it occurred to me that I didn’t have any easy way to transport them. Going back and forth carrying them one at a time, well, that was going to take forever.
I put my thinking cap on and I thought about it but, as expected, I didn’t come up with any good ideas. That meant I’d have to go back and ask Alna for her advice. Keeping that in mind, I picked up one of the slaughtered beasts and hefted it on my back as proof of my success, and I started the walk back to my new yurt.