If you want the liveliest, most energetic, and also the most chaotic spot in Wildfire Town, it has to be Black Street.
Black Street is not an official name. In fact, whether it was the Byzantine Empire or Odin, neither ever held Wildfire Town for long — so briefly that there was never even time to register all its streets and buildings in the rolls. The more benighted Odin, by comparison, never bothered to count the population at all.
Black Street is a name that simply came into use by custom. It sits on the western edge of Wildfire Town, the street closest to the outer boundary. The street was originally quite broad — the widest in town, wide enough for two carriages to drive side by side. A road that size is a rare sight in a backwater like this; even in the civilized, advanced Byzantine Empire, it's standard issue only in the big cities.
But remember, I said it could "originally" fit two carriages side by side — that is, if the street weren't so crowded with peddlers squatting all over the roadway.
Everything strange and outlandish from every corner of the continent, north, south, east and west, gathers here. Anything you can imagine, you can find on this street.
And of course, if there's something you want to buy, no matter how rare or outlandish, you need only come to this street in Wildfire Town and hang up a sign saying you're buying. Within half a day at most, some fellow in a filthy robe, face unclear, manner furtive, will come sidling up and ask how much you're willing to pay.
These people aren't swindlers, and they're certainly not beggars. They're the contacts for the mercenary tribes.
There are countless tribes, large and small, out on Wildfire Plain — the big ones number a thousand or more, the small ones a hundred or so. Some of these tribes do mercenary work, but more of them are bandit gangs.
With these tribes it's very hard to tell whether they're mercenaries or bandits. That depends on their mood.
The Byzantines have a saying about how to tell a mercenary corps from a bandit gang:
"If you hire mercenaries as bodyguards, then when the job's done you just pay them. If they happen to be in a bad mood, they'll take your money and rob you of everything else while they're at it — and at that point, they're a bandit gang."
Naturally, that saying met fierce resistance from the Trade Guild in the royal capital, which keeps insisting that only registered mercenary corps are legal and legitimate. These proper mercenary corps obey the law and follow the rules. The fellows who play both mercenary and bandit are all illegal black gangs.
But it's precisely these black gangs out on Wildfire Plain that have done people enormous favors. They'll take on any job, and they're willing to do any job!
Pay them enough, and they'll dare to take on plenty of jobs that put their lives on the line! Catching dwarf slaves, for instance — the proper mercenary corps won't touch that kind of work. But these black gangs... heh heh. How much are you willing to pay?
Harsh as the natural conditions are, you have to admit Wildfire Plain is a place brimming with business opportunities! It's the buffer zone between the Byzantine and Odin Empires, and the only trade road between the two great empires. Whether it's an Odin merchant group or a Byzantine one, anyone wanting to do business in the other country has to pass through here.
The vast, geographically brutal Wildfire Plain is dangerous everywhere you go. North of Wildfire Town lies the Blue Basin — territory belonging to the short-tempered, ferocious, and thoroughly unsociable dwarves. If you're a human caravan, you'd best stay away, or before long your skullcap may be made into lacquerware and hung on a shelf in some shop on Black Street.
Only a very few merchant groups that have earned the dwarves' trust can approach dwarf territory and trade with them.
If the dwarves can still be called law-abiding — as long as you don't go over there, they mostly won't come provoke you — then goblins are the ones that really give people headaches. Like field mice, they breed nest after nest across the north of Wildfire Plain, and these things are the true robbers: they steal everything — food, clothing, supplies. They'll even eat anything.
If you're unlucky enough to be caught by them, then congratulations.
Your flesh will be dried into jerky, your bones ground into powder for soup, and your hair will be woven by the goblins into blankets! In short, goblins possess one truly excellent quality, something humans sorely lack: thrift and frugality!
Trade across Wildfire Plain is extremely dangerous — and extremely profitable!
Fine armor and weapons made in the Byzantine Empire, horses, cattle and sheep, ore, artworks...
The finest furs from the northern Odin Empire, along with every kind of crystal and every kind of sculpture. (What irony! The Odinites have always been synonymous with rudeness and ignorance, and yet it's this very ignorant kingdom that possesses the world's most masterly carving craft — a fact that has kept Byzantine sculptors hanging their heads for generations. Still, to show their disdain, the Byzantine explanation is this: those Odinites divide their entire lives into three parts — one third spent fighting, one third spent mating, and one third spent carving idols and then praying to them.)
But only those merchant groups with truly formidable resources have the means to run this trade.
If some small caravan wants a piece of it, then first of all you'd better show the nerve to carry your head on your belt.
Of course, faced with such enormous profits, plenty of people are willing to gamble their lives. At least half of the ones who come running to Wildfire Town arrive clutching dreams of getting rich.
And every so often, one or two lucky devils come out the other side alive by the skin of their teeth, cross Wildfire Plain into the other country, pull off their trade, and become rich overnight. Which only lures more people to Wildfire Plain with their get-rich dreams.
There's a saying out on Wildfire Plain: walk outside the town, take an iron spade, and scoop up a random shovelful of earth in the wild — whatever's buried underneath is an adventurer's bones.
Xia Ya Leiming's back was ramrod straight as he walked into Black Street. Mostly because he had filled his belly — thanks to that idiot conman from out of town.
Black Street was no different from any other day, except that the bandit gang occupying Wildfire Town had been driven off some days earlier, and now the warriors of a mercenary corps patrolled the road. People in Wildfire Town were used to that sort of thing. And this new mercenary corps that had taken the place over was quite proper about it — they hadn't raised the tax rate.
Incidentally, the tax rate in Wildfire Town is very simple. There's only one tax here: the entry tax! No matter who you are or what your station, when you enter town you pay one copper coin per head.
Beyond that, there are no commercial taxes or any other taxes here.
Today, when Xia Ya Leiming entered town, he handed the last copper coin in his pocket to the warrior at the gate.
So if he couldn't find work today and earn some money, he really would be joining the Beggars' Guild...
Black Street was packed shoulder to shoulder, and quarrels and shouts kept spilling out of the shops and street stalls on either side... The people here were tough and fierce; most of those who dared travel a thousand li to try their luck in a place like this were no lambs. So it was: there were no good men in Wildfire Town. These hard-natured fellows even haggled as if they were cursing each other out.
Now and then a drunk got tossed out of a tavern along the road and dumped in the garbage heap at the foot of a wall.
And shifty-looking characters wove in and out of the crowd, furtive as could be — these were all "golden fingers" — pickpockets — at work.
Luckily, not a single pickpocket paid Xia Ya Leiming any mind. He looked worse off than a beggar.
Xia Ya Leiming drifted along with the flow of people, looking this way and that, searching for work that paid. His plan was simple: first he absolutely had to earn some money. His plan was to try his hand at a demon hunter's work to start with.
Demon hunter and hunter are two different professions. The work is broadly similar, but the quarry is not the same.
A hunter goes after rabbits, foxes, pheasants, coyotes and the like — all you need is to know how to shoot, and the know-how to set snares and traps.
But a demon hunter takes only one kind of quarry: magic beasts!
Back when the old geezer was alive, he had forbidden Xia Ya Leiming to hunt magic beasts, but Xia Ya Leiming had no intention of spending his whole life as some hick hunter holed up in the mountains. A demon hunter's life is full of adventure and thrills, and it pays, too — that's what a young man longs for.
So he had gone behind the old geezer's back and slipped out to do that kind of work several times, and he had even managed to kill a few magic beasts. Unfortunately, he'd never managed to save any money; most of the earnings turned into liquor and went into the bellies of the two drunks in that house.
At last, Xia Ya Leiming found a target.
At the far end of Black Street, a sign hung over the door of a small shop.
"Top price paid for magic beast cubs..."