“Okay! It’s almost time for the contests of strength between the hunters to begin! Make sure not to get started on anything you can’t finish in time so you don’t leave it half-done, all right?” the Liddo clan head’s wife energetically called out, she being the one in charge for today. She was about as tall as me and seemed to be about fifty percent more muscular. Fittingly for the wife of such a cheerful and openhearted guy, she was every bit as spirited as Mia Lea Ruu as well. “What do you think, Asuta? We should be on schedule for the moment, yes?”
“Yep. It looks like everything we’re working on right now is progressing as it should.”
“In that case, I’ll have to go check on things in the other kitchens! Ah, I’m so busy!”
As usual, I was the one who was really in charge. But not wanting to put all of the burden on me alone, from now on we were going to have a woman from the clan that was organizing the festival in command, at least officially. Radd Liddo’s wife seemed quite excited to have been given such an important task, and it looked like she was really enjoying herself.
Before long, there was a signal to gather out in the plaza. It was now the lower first hour, when the contests of strength would be starting. Now that we had finished the first half of our work, we felt ready to head outside.
As we did, Tia limped along next to me with her crutch. Once we reached the plaza, I quickly saw that the hunters of the six clans had already gathered there. Two young hunters had turned thirteen since the last festival of the hunt, so there were thirty-five of them in total. Those hunters-in-training who were participating for the first time had a mix of pride and nervousness on their youthful faces as they stood among the others.
Once the women who were taking a break from cooking and the young folks over the age of five were added to that, there were around eighty attendees in total. Among them, Sufira Zaza was the only one who didn’t belong to one of the six clans, instead acting as an observer. The other leading clans and the Beim had decided that watching our last festival of the hunt had been sufficient, meaning that in their judgment, there were no serious issues with having unrelated clans hold such an event together. The Zaza had probably only chosen to send an observer this time because two of their subordinate clans, the Deen and Liddo, were participating. In fact, Geol Zaza was supposed to come too in the evening after finishing his hunting work.
“Thank you for your hard work today, everyone! Now it is time for the contests of strength to begin!” Radd Liddo loudly declared as the one in charge for today, his gaze fixed on Tia. “But before that, I suppose I should offer an explanation regarding the red savage. I’m sure everyone has heard about this by now, but many of you have not seen her yet. Asuta, could I have you bring her over here?”
With that, Tia and I stepped forward closer to him. After looking down at the young girl with a smile, Radd Liddo turned his gaze back to the gathered crowd again. “As you all know, this girl is currently in the care of the Fa clan. Though we couldn’t officially invite her to this festival of the hunt, we don’t expect that she’ll get in the way, so she is permitted to stay here by Asuta’s side. From what I’ve heard, she’s banned from taking part in the banquet the Ruu clan will hold soon, but that’s only because townsfolk will be there, so it shouldn’t be any issue for us to do as we please.”
Radd Liddo was talking about the friendship banquet we would be inviting our acquaintances from town to. The date for that had been set for the first of the blue month, and Duke Marstein Genos had repeatedly told us not to allow Tia to participate. He had not extended that to today’s festival of the hunt, though, leaving that matter for us to decide based on our own judgment. He also hadn’t objected to our plan to allow her leg to heal before returning her to Mount Morga, so it seemed he generally trusted us to make the right decisions.
“If she causes any trouble, though, we’ll bind her hands and feet and toss her into a house! Make sure you keep that in mind, savage child!”
Tia looked out over the crowd with her usual guileless gaze, then gave a little bow of her head. There was a bit of murmuring among the people who hadn’t seen Tia in the last four days, but nobody seemed to be concerned or upset. That was no surprise; it wasn’t like any of the other clans had objected to the decision the leading clan heads had reached. On top of that, even when faced with this many people of the forest’s edge, Tia wasn’t intimidated in the least, maintaining her usual straight and resolute posture as her red eyes sparkled like those of a proud beast.
“Well then, that’s enough about the savage girl! Thank you, Asuta!”
“Of course, Radd Liddo.”
After taking a moment to glance at Ai Fa, I returned to the crowd of spectators. My clan head was, of course, focused on the contests of strength, and she had a serious look on her face.
“Now, we will begin with the target shooting contest! Everyone, please move over that way!” Radd Liddo said.
The crowd shifted over to the edge of the plaza. For this competition, they would be aiming at targets dangling from trees using bows and arrows.
“Last time, the champion of this contest was Cheem Sudra, head of a Sudra branch house! Let us all challenge him now, to see if his strength remains worthy of that title!”
Whether they were part of a large clan or a small one, the winner of a contest wasn’t considered a true champion until they demonstrated that they could emerge victorious repeatedly. Having Radd Liddo’s brash grin directed at him seemed to be making Cheem Sudra rather tense.
“I would like to start the event, but do you need a moment to ready yourself again, Ai Fa?” Radd Liddo asked.
“No. I have been using a bow regularly ever since we got our hunting dog, Brave, so there is no need for that.”
“Ah, of course! Then you must be even more skilled than last time! I’m looking forward to seeing how this goes!”
Last time, Ai Fa had lost to Masa Fou Ran in the semifinals of the single-elimination tournament, but for that match, she hadn’t used a bow and arrow in over two and a half years. She had also had excellent results in the other competitions aside from the weight pulling, so people seemed to be expecting a lot from her in the target shooting competition now.