In May, Northern Youzhou was warm enough. But as the sun sank westward, a distinct chill crept into the evening breeze.
For someone well fed and warmly dressed, sitting outside their front door, that little breeze was nothing. To anyone taking a walk after dinner, it might even help settle the meal.
But for people who had spent half the day galloping on horseback, their backs drenched in sweat from nerves, the wind had a decidedly bone-piercing bite.
A group of people dressed in mourning clothes galloped down the main road.
Their horses were neither especially tall nor uniform in color, but every hoof was white as snow. These were Snow-Treading Steeds, horses bred with the blood of the Fierce Beast known as the Snow-Hoof Antelope.
Unlike Snow-Hoof Antelopes, which developed fevers as soon as they left the ice and snow, Snow-Treading Steeds could live in merely cool surroundings. That severe limitation came with astonishing endurance: one could carry a fully armed rider for four or five days straight, doing little but running, eating meat, and drinking water, with almost no need for rest.
There were plenty of crossbred horses with such endurance. Among them, Snow-Treading Steeds were the cheapest and cost the least to feed. Ordinarily, they could eat a diet of thirty percent meat and seventy percent grass; they needed an all-meat diet only when running flat out.
Many people of the Martial World in You Province rode these prized steeds.
And when a whole group rode Snow-Treading Steeds at a gallop, they naturally had urgent business.
That was not uncommon in You Province. But for every rider in the group to be dressed in mourning clothes was rare indeed.
After all, even people rushing to a funeral usually changed clothes only when they arrived and were about