The easternmost end of the Neosiakis mountain range is connected by hundreds of square kilometres of fertile grassland, 70 kilometres to the south-east along the edge of which you reach the foot of the mountains at the northern foot of the Pai plateau. A few campfires are lit and most of the caravan sits together around them, a rare moment of relaxation.
If you were lucky, you would see the young dancers from the troupe come out and perform their new choreographed dances, and there would be applause everywhere, even if it was just a few steps or a simple song, it didn't matter, there would be no sarcasm, no sarcasm, because anyone who did that would be thrown out of the camp by Master Leipas and never allowed to return until the campfire had been lit.
Many of the caravans still wore their heavy winter coats, but the long winter and the long journey had made the men in the caravan look like a bunch of stinking beggars, and the stinking men would sit in two piles, with Master Payles joining in with the gossip, always with a faint smile on his face, he never laughed even at the funniest things, he was such a measured man! He was such a measured person. He didn't mind you, even if you hadn't had a bath in over a year and your leather jacket was tanned and shiny on the collar and cuffs, he wouldn't frown, he would still talk to you.
The women of the troupe are also alone together at this time, laughing and talking over dinner. They rarely sit with the men, and even if one of the dancers has found a mistress on this lonely journey, they would never dare to sit together openly at this time, the matron of the troupe is always very strict about such things and always has a say in the troupe. The rules are always a simple constraint. It was only during these twilight evenings that the most prominent and famous dancers of the company came out of their caravans, and it was said that in a company of over three hundred people there were more than thirty dancers who were called dancers. Uncle Fred had met a great dancer called Xiu Xiu, who was said to be beautiful all over, with skin as soft as sheep's white jade, eyes like a clear lake, and eyebrows like the mountains in the northern foothills of the Pai plateau in the distance. I was afraid of getting caught. The consequences of making a mistake in the Merchant's Guild can sometimes be too much to bear on your own, and I cherish what I have now.
The women's dinner consisted of lamb soup and cold wild vegetables, each with a burnt wheat cake. The smell and stink of the broth carried far and wide, along with those tempting wheat cakes. During the week, the merchants could not bear the temptation to trade their coins for the leftover food of the dance group. This was not too much of a problem for the head of the dance troupe, and it was not too much to ask that the women trade their saved food for some Imperial coppers.
Tonight was definitely an exception, as the dance troupe was originally given some fresh antelope meat, a daytime haul from the mercenary hunters, by someone. Perhaps it was just to get a smile from one of the dance masters. It's not every day you get to eat fresh meat on a journey like this, even if it's as high up as Master Payles or the highly placed dance masters. Every time there was a dinner like this, the men of the merchant guild would exchange their poor coins for bowls of hot, delicious broth or aromatic wheat cakes.
Tonight, however, the men of the entire merchant guild were gnawing on the coarse black bread in their hands, and the copper pots in front of each of them were filled with stewed meat, the crispy stewed meat mixed with the clear, crystalline vermicelli, the sweet and salty aroma of the spices conquering almost everyone. Half a basin-sized loaf of black bread eaten with a small pot of braised pork and vermicelli stew could have stretched a grown man to the point where he could only half lie by the campfire and savour the soft, smooth flavour. After the main course and bread had filled their stomachs, there was a bowl of lightly scented wild vegetable soup in each hand and the men of the merchant group gulped it down, beads of sweat beading on their foreheads, and the beautiful evening didn't seem so cold. The talk of the night in the men's camp was uniform: a delicious dinner.
Old Kulu would sit quietly outside his tent, where a small coal stove would be lit and the old man would sit on the edge with a stone mound, a pot of herbal soup always on the stone stove, a pot of braised pork and vermicelli stew warming on the stove, me too full to stuff my belly with even a grain of rice, Kurtz too full to grunt as he lay on the hard cowhide mattress, old Kulu sitting like a weathered stone in front of the coal stove. He was silent the whole time. He looked up at me for a long time, a wavering look in his cloudy, yellow eyes, and then asked me in Orcish, "Did you come up with this?"
I shook my head honestly, looked at the delicious food steaming over the coals and said, "I don't know exactly why. It's as if I remember the taste and an invisible hand has been guiding me and I don't even have to think hard to know how to make it, it's delicious, isn't it?" I had to put it down to divine guidance, I really couldn't explain it, it was a bit difficult.
"You were only so big when I picked you up." Old Kuru spread his hands to about half a metre, then said with a slight reminiscence, "You couldn't even speak then, either Imperial or Orcish, Dwarven. I know you didn't understand any of it. At that time your bone age told me you were almost five years old, I would have thought you weren't too bright to have learned any language, I even suspected that was one of the reasons you were abandoned."
I didn't know what to say, and the words stuck in my throat as I opened my mouth, but they didn't come out.
"I have since discovered that both your bloodline talent and your ability to comprehend and learn are among the best I have ever seen, bar none." The undisguised appreciation in old Kuru's eyes made me a little ashamed that I had cheated!
"Giga, you brought this to us, do you know what it means to me and to the Orcs?" Old Kuru's eyes were fixed on the red meat and vermicelli stew glowing with oil on the clay oven and he looked a little excited.
Was he talking about the braised pork or the vermicelli, or was it this dish? I was totally confused, where was this coming from? What does a dish as good as this have to do with the orcs? I've been talking about my talent recently, which makes me a little excited.
"Teacher! I didn't actually do anything." I told the truth, obviously I don't think I any excellence, continued, "Actually Kuz also helped me a lot, we are very happy that everyone recognized us."
Kuzzy, who was propped up and unable to move but still nodding vigorously to the side, trying to get the old kuru's approval, was busy saying, "Master, I put in a lot of effort too. But then again, this vermicelli is really good. Giga, you say this ground potato ..."
"Hey!" This kid can't keep his mouth shut after all!
The air froze instantly and I had the intense vertigo of time stopping, my chest was so tight I couldn't breathe and my heart stopped in the blink of an eye. Kurtz's mouth opened wide, but no sound could come out, and he and I were eerily like a photograph, completely frozen in this second.
He sat quietly in front of the clay oven, his hands darting in a variety of fantastic hand seals, a pale blue glow coming from his fingers, forming a strange and complex picture in front of him, and he kept muttering the old orcish language, I could clearly distinguish his pronunciation but had no idea what he was saying, as if he was praying.
Oh, is that a spell? It struck me that the patterns formed by the blue light in front of the old kuru looked like some complex array of shapes, with the blue light flowing slowly through them. It was a rounded hood like a small bowl upside down, shielding our little camp, and the formation only appeared for a moment as it formed, then disappeared, and Kurtz and I recovered as soon as it was gone. Kurtz continued his unfinished sentence with his mouth open unchanged, "How can you make it so good?"
Kuz wanted to go on but was interrupted by a stern look from old Kulu and said, "Kuz, you must not say those words again, even if we communicate in orcish, we are not the only ones in the merchant group who know orcish. Of course I know that those delicious vermicelli are made from ground potato by Jijah, and the method of making them involves some use of herbalism. It's not that we witch doctors and scholars who have mastered pharmacology can't do it, but we've never thought of doing it. It is not that we, the witch doctors and scholars of potions, cannot do it, but we have never thought of doing it. The plant has always been unacceptable to the mainstream societies of the human kingdoms, the dwarf kingdoms and the elven dynasties. The proud White Elves scorn all creatures of the earth, and the human and Dwarven worlds have followed in the footsteps of the Elves and made the ground potato, the ghost mushroom, a food only eaten by slaves. Hey, if those people in the caravan knew that these vermicelli were made from ground potatoes, you two boys would be sent to the gallows. Those people don't care what I think, you two have already broken the law of the human kingdom. My boy!"
I had no idea that such a statement could be made, and stared round in surprise at old Kuru.
"The monks in the temples of the human kingdom believe that a plant like the ground yam desecrates one's soul and makes one impure and corrupt. Oh, the funny thing is that some of the poorest orc tribes on our Pai plateau still rely on the ground potato plant to survive the long cold winters. So these ground potatoes were eaten only by slaves, except for the poor orcs. It is a sin to eat ground yams unless it comes to the point of the greatest hunger and cold where life is at stake." What the old kuru said sent a little chill down my back and I really wondered if anyone in the caravan knew that I made these vermicelli from ground potatoes.
Kuzi was also a bit scared and then asked Old Kulu, somewhat confused, "Master, don't we usually have to eat some during the winter, it tastes a bit worse but it's good to quench hunger and thirst."
It was only then that it occurred to me that Kuzi was after all a child of the orc tribe, and there were many things he didn't understand. Then I winked at old Kulu, "We didn't actually eat the ground potatoes!"
It was at this point that a smile appeared on old Kulu's face, "Indeed we didn't! Those vermicelli are actually the most unique thing the beast gods have given us, they are actually a grain, unique to us orcs."
"Yes, and then Kuz and I gave these vermicelli, a speciality of the Orcs, to the people in the caravan for a most delicious dinner. But these vermicelli were not too many ..." I understood what old Kulu meant, and he held up his magic shield as fast as he could in that moment to tell us about the ground potatoes and what the vermicelli meant to the Orcs.
Old Kulu blah blah blah next.
The Pai plateau of the orcs is large and most of them live a nomadic life of half herding and half hunting, but this life of living by the gods is very precarious and the tribes of orcs who can meet large flocks of sheep or cattle and follow them obviously do well, they don't worry about food and every orc is a natural hunter. But if some tribes lost their wild flocks and lived only on their own tribal cattle and sheep, there would obviously not be enough food and the long winters would leave the whole tribe open to famine, so the ground potato, grown anywhere, has long been the life-saving food of the orc tribes through famine. No orc has ever felt bad about eating it.
The Pai plateau occupied by the orcs did not produce much, but it was still self-sufficient. But as the human caravans continued to enter the Pai Plateau, they brought cotton, hemp, fine ironware, fine wine, fine flour and the enchanted weapons and equipment that were sought after by the orc nobility, which were exchanged for the rare metals and raw gold and silver that the orcs had accumulated over the centuries on the Pai Plateau, as well as for large quantities of magic antelope skins and low quality herbs. I don't know when it started, but old Kulu found that the nobles in the orc tribes were living in more and more luxury, while the ordinary orc tribes were gradually becoming poorer and poorer.
It was more than 20 years ago when the shamans began to realise this problem, and the old kuru had been working on a problem: how to exchange resources reciprocally, instead of being plundered by the human dwarves and elves in a peaceful way. Commerce was a major issue, and almost to his despair, there was no interest in the output of the Pai plateau except for rare metals, gold and silver ores, leather and herbal orc slaves. This is why Old Kulu has been with the human caravans all these years, willingly working as an orc witch doctor, looking for a way out for the whole orc world.
Here I gradually understood.
There was a glimmer of hope in old Kulu's cloudy eyes. Looking at the steaming braised pork and vermicelli stew on the clay stove, he said, "This dish is delicious!" It was as if he was asking me, but also as if he was talking to himself.
Old Kulu looked up at the cheerful crowd sitting around the campfire outside, and then turned his head to look at me, "It tastes like they all like it."
I knew what Old Kru was thinking and then said with a grin, "Maybe we can trade the vermicelli for their wine and all that!"
Kuzi stared at me and old Kulu with uncomprehending eyes, before saying to me half-heartedly, "Giga, I want another bowl of wild vegetable soup!"
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