Following the Trail (9)

The Goat clan, which I had been taught was in charge of trade.

But I couldn't connect goats with trade at all, and when I tilted my head in puzzlement, Gauba explained why during our journey.

Apparently, the Goat clan only began overseeing trade after the beastfolk settled in the northern wilderness.

In other words, this happened sometime in the past few hundred years, after the humans of the western region had embraced the Quoram Faith.

Before that, the Goat clan had overseen mapmaking and the delivery of letters.

They revered goats as ancestral spirits, and were themselves hardy on a meager diet and skilled at traveling through rugged terrain.

From my perspective, if I entrusted a letter to a goat, I would expect the animal to eat it, but apparently the beastfolk were sensible enough not to do that.

For that reason, the Goat clan visited the settlements of other beastfolk scattered throughout the western region, bringing letters and maps from distant places.

But after the Quoram Faith was established, the nonhuman races moved to the northern wilderness to escape its reach.

The northern wilderness was a harsh environment, with wide temperature swings between day and night...