It's a Horse All Right, but Can You Even Ride This Thing?

[Before the Library Dungeon]

With prospective settlers trickling in here and there, the population grew slowly. Then one day a girl with horse ears came to see Marie.

"My name's Haruna. I heard you were looking for horses, so I figured maybe I could earn more than as a packhorse hauler."

She wore a woman's kimono and hakama. Her face was long like a horse's, but her head was human, with no mane, just plain black hair. As far as could be seen, her ears, tail, and legs were a horse's, that is, horse-legged, and she wore straw sandals. Her hands were human, so plainly she couldn't go on all fours. Looking closely, her pupils were long and horizontal. In short, her lower half, eyes, and ears were a horse's.

For the record, a packhorse hauler is a hauler who carries cargo loaded onto the back of an actual horse, or who, in the case of horse-beastfolk and the like, hauls it on their own back.

"A horse…?"

"A horse. A horse. No way you'd take me for a deer, from any angle. I've got no antlers either… Sure, my coat color's bay, but… I'm not a deer, am I?"

Does don't have antlers either. Cattle do (depending on the breed). And while the coat may be bay, the mane, tail, and the lower part of the horse-legs (below the knee) run very nearly black, so when the face isn't a horse's and she's wearing clothes, it becomes hard to tell her apart from a black-coated horse (what's called blue or blue-bay). Brown hair is chestnut, white hair is gray, and a bald spot is… what was it again.

"A horse's work is heavy labor, carrying a knight in the cavalry, plowing fields, pulling carriages, and so on…"

"It's fine, it's fine. I've got confidence in my strength!"

"In time we intend to breed and increase our horses… that is… if you were to…"

"If possible, a prince on a white horse would be nice."

For an instant the horse's face went red… She is a horse, right? Not a prince riding a white horse, but a prince who is a gray horse-beastfolk, surely.

[Tier-Group 4, 1st Floor Reception Room]

"General Rāja, Knight Commander. She hardly seems like a warhorse, but I'm thinking of taking her on at the dungeon. What do you think?"

"I was born in Gunma."

"So you were a warhorse after all. Let us breed her, organize a cavalry, and send every last bandit to hell."

"… Breed…"

"Isn't it 'Gu-n-ma,' not 'Gu-n-ba'?"

The horse's face was bright red, and a misunderstanding had obviously taken hold, so Commander Kishi cut in.

"Gunma is far to the north of here in Adachi, beyond regions like Ōsato, Hanzawa, and Kodama, and a different country besides. It's apparently an area with comparatively many beastfolk."

"That's quite far. Weren't you afraid of pirates and such on the road?"

"There's hardly ever a pirate on horseback, and even if there were, I'd outrun them."

"You're fast, then. A horse of a thousand ri?"

asked Rāja, but of course a horse-beastfolk carrying light cargo is faster than a horse ridden by a mountain bandit (who call themselves pirates).

"A thousand ri is beyond me, but ten or fifteen ri a day, easy. Twenty ri tires me a little."

"I'm called Rāja. A pleasure. Erm, your name is…?"

"Haruna. So, I just carry this long-haired one here around the battlefield, right?"

"Either me, or Commander Kishi here."

"Um, carrying the old guy is… that's a bit too much for me, honestly."

"Then I'll ask it of Rāja. We'll need to prepare tack. And for Harima-no-suke-dono, let us find an actual horse."

said Marie.

"In the otherworld, too, there's a saddle called a jinba-gura, used by Nakagawa Hisakiyo, lord of Oka domain. But if it's for the battlefield rather than mountaineering, the direction should be reversed."

A commander facing backward on the battlefield won't do. Better to survey the field from over the horse's head… Though as for the picture of a general riding in the carrier-frame on a horse-beastfolk's back, well, one wonders how that looks.

"It's settled, then. As they say, oxen drink and horses devour, so a single ration won't be enough. First twenty hyō, no, a hundred hyō and five rations' keep. We have no rice for a while, so it'll be substitute food, but…"

"What a lavish handout."

said Commander Kishi. A low-ranking samurai of the Edo period got something like thirty hyō and two rations' keep (forty hyō), but Haruna-gō was the equivalent of a hundred and twenty-five hyō. That said, in Edo terms this was only enough for two retainers (a spear-bearer and a footman) and a maid, which was modest for mounted-rank status.

"If you want a horse of a thousand ri, you should treat the horse-beastfolk, not the horses, generously. Do that, and the horses will come to you of their own accord."

"I have heard the saying 'buy the bones of a dead horse.' Haruna-gō is alive, of course."

"Alive or not, there are scary merchants out west. 'Ōmi thief, Ise something-or-other,' as they say. Watch you don't get your eyeballs plucked out by one of those."

If horse-beastfolk came trooping in one after another, and not a single one would carry Commander Kishi, well…

"Beastfolk" in most worlds have animal heads, but since that would get confusing with Ox-Head and Horse-Head, here only the lower half (and the eyes and ears) is horse, making them resemble a Silenus type. The trade-off is that they don't get a wide field of view… And anyway, can Ox-Head and Horse-Head even speak, anatomically?