That year, Ignis City's Harvest Festival ran into a few surprises.
The beast tide that brought a bountiful harvest every year did not come; all that came back was Flamebearer himself, along with a great heap of game already cooked.
"The Snake God felt that making everyone hunt each year was simply too much trouble, so He went ahead and cooked the game Himself and had me bring it back."
So Flamebearer answered the people's puzzlement.
As for why this cooked game was so much less than usual, Flamebearer had his own explanation too: on the one hand there was bound to be loss in the processing, and on the other, after years of hunting, the beasts in the mountains had grown far fewer. The people of the city grumbled a little, but seeing Flamebearer's sincere face, they accepted the account in the end.
The haul was a bit smaller, but something was better than nothing.
And once all this was done, Flamebearer breathed a sigh of relief.
"Smoothed that over at last."
Indeed, Flamebearer was far cleverer than his father. Faced with a situation like this, his father might well have died outright up in the mountains.
But he had managed to settle the matter, and managed it so that no one had a word of complaint.
"Father said the offerings are only the people's thanks to the Snake God; the Snake God doesn't actually need them...... so in a pinch like this, using the offerings as the Harvest Festival's haul ought to be no problem."
His father, Lightbringer, had after all met the Snake God many times, so on the point that the Snake God needed no offerings, Flamebearer could be quite certain.
And now he had merely added a little of his own interpretation atop that established fact.
"I hope the Snake God can understand what I've done...... this winter won't be an easy one."
Flamebearer soon put the matter out of mind, for there was a more troublesome thing waiting for him to handle.
That was the problem of the food shortage.
In years past, every Harvest Festival brought in a great haul of game, vastly enriching Ignis City's stores of meat — eaten sparingly, it was even enough to last the city thirty days and nights.
But this time, the little batch of offerings he'd brought back disguised as a haul was only enough to feed the people for a single day.
If they ate freely, it wouldn't stretch to even one meal.
"A gap in the food supply......"
Flamebearer's head began to ache — this was a problem his father's age had never once met. The previous generation had left no experience behind, so for the moment Flamebearer hadn't the faintest idea how to cope. The pastures yielded a fixed amount; whatever food could be gathered had already been harvested before winter set in.
Put simply, he needed to turn up some extra food, and turn it up fast.
"And if next year's Harvest Festival goes the same way......"
Flamebearer had a bad feeling about it.
To get hold of more food, he could only look to the surrounding lands — and it was just then that Flamebearer came to marvel at the Snake God's foresight. This time he hadn't been able to report the explorers' intelligence to the Snake God as his father had, but those tidings sent back from afar became the very thing that saved their lives.
"The east has been explored to its end; over there is nothing but endless water, and by the explorers' account that water is bitter beyond drinking...... there are many great fish out there, but waves vaster than a river changing course, too. Not a good place to go.
"As for the south, an explorer nearly died in that miasma-choked jungle. It looks rich in resources, but it's far more dangerous than the east...... when the explorer came back, his body was covered in swellings, and cut one open and there were white worms inside; heaven knows how a thing like that burrows into a man.
"The west...... the west is the sacred mountain."
Flamebearer gave his own head a smack.
The Snake God had never said outright that sending explorers to the sacred mountain was forbidden, but his father — that Lightbringer — out of respect for the Snake God, had chosen not to let explorers go into the western mountains.
"Then I'd best not do it either...... after all, I've never once truly met the Snake God face to face."
He still remembered the words his father had charged him to keep in mind.
Don't overthink, and don't dream things up.
So until he was sure of the Snake God's wishes, he would make no unnecessary moves.
"That leaves the north......"
Flamebearer thought on.
The tidings the northbound explorers brought back were rather intriguing. Some explorers said the north held towering giants, the shortest of them taller than two Ignis men stacked together; others said the north held nothing at all, only empty frozen tundra and a sky full of driving snow — and one explorer even said that, amid that snow, he had seen the presence of a god.
Not, however, the god the Ignis people revered, but another — an existence that could stand on a level with a god.
Yet when Flamebearer pressed him further, the explorer couldn't describe what the god looked like, standing there stammering for a good while without making clear just what it was.
"Another people, with a god at their back."
Flamebearer's brow furrowed slightly.
By the explorers' reports, the danger of the north was no less than the other directions: frozen tundra ill-suited to survival, giants taller than the Ignis people, even an unknown god...... all of it meant the north was even more troublesome than the miasma jungle or the towering waves.
But just as Flamebearer was racking his brains over where to find a breakthrough, an explorer came fleeing back.
The explorer who fled back was covered in wounds — he was even missing an arm.
"The giants in the north hacked it off!"
The explorer wept as he reported the news he'd gleaned.
By the explorer's account, he had met those giants on the northern tundra. Seeing people other than Ignis folk for the first time, the explorer found it all rather novel — so, wishing to communicate with these giants, he took out the dried mammoth jerky he carried.
This was the portable ration the Ignis people prepared for their explorers; the curing method, so they said, had been learned by the Nineteenth Sage King himself from that Snake God of the harvest. Not only did it stave off hunger well, it had a full, smoky flavor besides.
The giants enjoyed the meal happily; they seemed to like the delicacy very much. But just when the explorer thought everyone was full and content and ready to communicate normally, the giants strung him up.
Speaking some unknown tongue, the giants beat him — and at that point, language barrier or no, this body language that all but amounted to torture had already made the giants' meaning clear to the explorer.
The giants wanted to know where this meat came from. And they wanted more.
"If I couldn't give it to them, they'd turn me into meat too."
The explorer pointed at the stump of his arm.
"This is what the giants hacked off."
"You're saying — they mean to eat us?"
That snapped Flamebearer's head up.
"That...... could work."
As though struck by a thought, Flamebearer's eyes narrowed.
"It really...... could work.
"They want to eat us...... so we can go eat them instead!"
And then the people of Ignis City were all called together.
At Flamebearer's summons, the hunters and mages readied their gear — only this time what they were to kill was no fierce beast, but another people, come from the frozen tundra of the north.
"The enemies of the god mean to storm our sacred mountain! We will defend our homeland!"
"Defend our homeland!"
At Flamebearer's call, the hunters and mages sallied forth, and on the killing skills honed in their daily work they ambushed the marching giants at the first opportunity, seizing a great haul of jerky and great sacks of plant seeds.
Before the attack, they had seen the giants stuffing these plant seeds into their mouths and eating them as food.
Which meant that Ignis City's food crisis was, in part, resolved.
And Flamebearer, having tasted the sweetness of it, did not stop there. He meant to fight the whole winter through, making up for the shortfall of a botched Harvest Festival with the spoils of slaughtering these giants.
Only, what Flamebearer never imagined was that this war would last far more than a single winter.
Until more than two thousand days and nights had turned — until the day he himself died on the battlefield — this war would never once cease.