45 – Cow Shopping
I heard Tado’s cows had had calves only a few weeks ago and had wanted to wait until they were a bit bigger before I thought about buying any. I thought there was little point in buying one until they had grown a bit, and it was clear they had no issues with their health.
My old man said it was good to be patient with that sort of thing.
It was a bright morning when I made for his farm, and I found him tending to some of the posts of his fence. He glanced up a bit, shifting the smoking pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Mornin’, Amon,” he bluntly greeted.
He’d become a bit more friendly to me over time, but only a bit. I’d given him a good bit of money and had saved Tiode from the Snake Flower and Inumi’s bandits (even if nobody spoke those facts aloud), but I was also still a foreigner and a potentially dangerous cultivator besides. It balanced out, and I didn’t much mind.
I’d rather people be wary than overly familiar.
“Problem with the fence?” I asked.
He shrugged at me. “Woodbugs, I think. Some of the posts have been gnawed on. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“Mm. Nature loves to try and reclaim the land. It’s a constant battle,” I said. My old man had complained enough about bugs, weeds, and the elements and I’d known a bit of that struggle in my youth too.
“Just as the old stories go. The kodama are restless little bastards, and you can never let your guard down for too long.”
“Mm. Sage wisdom.” I didn’t know what kodama were and didn’t care to ask. “Heard you’ve had some calves recently. Any you’re looking to sell?”
He looked up from the fence and gave me a wary look. “Thinking of becoming a beef farmer?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted.
He wrinkled his nose a bit at me. “Selling... milk?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. Milk would be a part of it, anyway. But mainly I wanted to have butter again.
“You’re an odd man, but I suppose there’s no harm in it. The barn’s a little full anyway. Come on.” He led the way up hill, through a path that divided his rice paddies, to the broad expanse of his barn.
The cows inside were a bit different to what I was used to. The beasts back west were generally black and white, with the males either being all black or deep red. These eastern cows were a little larger and covered in a layer of shaggy sand brown fur. The horns on the brows were also decently big. Even the females had them, unlike the ones back home.
I walked behind Tado, mindful to breathe through my mouth. “So how’re things on your land?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Getting by,” I said. “I’m still expanding, these cows are a part of that. Also started brewing my own alcohol.”
“Oh?” Tado raised his brows.
“Not ready yet, of course, and I want to test it myself to see if it’s any good, but it’s a brew from back home. I reckon it will do well out here.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Right, they’re here.” He led me to a pair of stalls populated by two smaller cows. They stared up at me with blank eyes, one chuffing lazily. “I had four recently. But these two should be good for your needs.”
I quietly examined the two. Clearly they still had room to grow, and feeding them would add an extra cost to my funds. Still, it would be worth it.
In my mind’s eye I was able to envision the barn I had made for them, and if they grew as large as their parents then they’d still have a lot of room to move in. I didn’t much care for people but I still wanted to do right by animals if I could help it.
They were a lot more helpless and innocent, after all.
“This’ll work,” I told him. “You think you could throw in some feed for me?” The rest of it I could either get from Mikan’s shop, or from the traders now regularly passing through the village.
“Not for free,” Tado said.
“Of course not.”
I reached for the pouch of silver on my belt and unhooked it. I’d come prepared.
“Let’s talk price.”
Come the late afternoon, as I led my new calves home, I had the distinct feeling that Tado may have fleeced me a little bit on the price.
But, well, I was hardly an expert when it came to the price of livestock. And anyway the amount I had paid for them wasn’t going to break my finances.
I led the two, both females, by lengths of rope and they followed me with little in the way of protest or issue. Which was good, since I was hardly in a mood to lift them and carry them on my shoulders... the last thing I needed was to do something else to draw attention, particularly with Asquith just up the road from me.Still wasn’t sure what to make of that bloke.
Smoke was waiting for me by the gate and perked up at my arrival.
“Milk beasts?” he asked, managing his best approximation of a grin.
“Cows,” I corrected.
“But they have milk?”
“In theory most things with fuzz have milk. We want to get ‘em settled first, and then we can start milking them.” Smoke would get his portion, like a lord claiming taxes, and the rest would go to either being made into butter or... sold in town?
I frowned to myself. Now that I thought about it, the easterners were incredulous about drinking milk.
That could be a problem, but... well they liked the potatoes well enough, so they’d try anything if it was pitched right to them.
“Come on.” I gave the ropes a light tug. “Let’s get these two in the barn.”
Far afield, Yomi the huntress had her cassowary in high gear. His taloned feet hammered upon the dirt road, and the young woman had her head raised to scan the distant horizons. “Fuck, fuck,” she said through clenched teeth.
Horses had some advantages over cassowary. They could haul more weight and were far sturdier as cavalry in warfare. But the cassowary was bound to be faster, and could run for longer without needing a break.
And Yomi’s was a cut above the average cassowary, that was for damn sure.
“Keep going, keep going,” she said, her jaw set in an agitated grimace. “Come on Hagure, a little bit further.” It was always just a little bit further.
But Hagure did not protest, his avian eyes narrowed into focused slits. Hagure was damn good at his job, the best bird a woman could ask for.
She could have outran him on her own feet but the problem with that was that it would eat into her qi, and she had a feeling she would need every last angstrom of her own power to hand if she was going to deal with this.
Even from afar she could still feel them. Still feel him as he made his way southward.
That flock of tengu, and the bastard leading the entire pack of them.
Inumi had been bad, a monster, but manageable. But this... this was so much worse. She was willing to bet he was making straight for the local sect of Tiode, and from there his people would likely spread out and destroy the nearby village and anywhere else they could reach.
Yomi sucked in air through her teeth.
She wouldn’t let it come to that.
“Almost there,” she told herself. A comforting lie, with the headstart they had on her it was possible she’d be too late to stop them. But sometimes you had to lie to yourself.
She put her heels to Hagure, and his pace picked up again.