Northeast from Shnududishgu is a journey of ten days to the village of Ushgidush. This crossing entails switching watersheds from the lower reaches of the Shgudulus over to that of a significant tributary of the Shgutu that flows almost perfectly east-west known as the Shgutumum. The land here is flat and pleasant, with many thin streams, high grasses, and a significant concentration of Kharal clans. The thin tributaries leading across the steppe to join the major rivers water livestock well, supply drinking water, and provide a breeding ground for valuable small game such as ducks and frogs.
Violence is common in this region, for there is much interaction between Kharal and Nikkad, and tensions spark between them wherever the boundaries of their respective dominions are contested. However, during the late summer period when the Dragon Expedition made this crossing all were busy and conflict was minimal. The Kharal were engaged in the transformation of milk into a great quantity and variety of butter, cheese, and yogurt, especially various hard-dried forms that outwardly appear more like bricks than food, for use during the long winter months. Others were readying for the fall slaughter and the immense labor attendant to that. As such, the herders were far too occupied with their daily tasks to threaten outsiders. Their carts, broad single-axle things consisting of little more than a flat frame to which they tie heavy goods when moving, lay idle beneath the baking sun. I was told that these are always driven by women, often in long trains, pulled by laboring teams of oxen.
As ever, there are no roads anywhere in Shdustu, but the path here was well trod and easily followed. Merchant caravans were common upon this route. Our progress carried us past several going the opposite direction and we even overtook one moving significantly slower than our own progress due to their continual stops to trade with those Kharal who had recently returned from concluded summer gatherings and carried valuable artworks, especially woven scarves and pressed leather-work, with them. The route followed by the expedition to this point shared its path with that of the trade caravans. These generally proceed north to Ushgidush and then turn east following the course of the Shgutumum River from one Nikkad settlement to the next until reaching the city of Snushgud in the southeast of this region. For those merchants who overwinter in Shdustu, it is preferred to spend that season in one of the two major southern cities. None wander during the winter, for that is the time of year when the Kharal ride to war.
The Kharal populous, busy with their work and in most cases too few to accommodate a group of the expedition's size, spoke and traded with us as we passed, but did not extend the hospitality of their yurts. The open terrain, limited threat of violence, and large nearby population induced Erun to dispatch various members of the expedition to speak with the Kharal nobles whose camps we passed in the hope of gaining news of the dragon or information regarding the Khagan's view of arrivals from the Sanid Empire. Up until this point the expedition had largely advanced ahead of news of its coming, for though Kharal riders ranged far and wide bringing word to their lords, they had not yet returned south at such speed. The pause at Shnududishgu allowed word to filter outward such that most persons within the khanate had, by the time we reached them, at least heard that representatives from the Sanid Empire had entered the steppe in search of the dragon. While few Kharal herders or Nikkad farmers had any real understanding of the Empire beyond it being something from the distant west, curiosity extended towards visitors motivated by a purpose other than trade was significant.
Having learned that we had come from truly far away and were not simply merchants, the Kharal revealed a somewhat unexpected curiosity of their own. They would ride along as we walked and ask many questions regarding the Empire, mostly centered on the Emperor himself, often called the 'Khagan of the Far West' which I believe was intended to be a gesture of respect, or on that most universal of interests: food. Erun issued no directions on how to answer such inquiries, instead allowing those of us able to communicate, admittedly a small group indeed, to exercise our own judgment. Most simply avoided questions or were protected from speculation by a focus on the specialized nature of their professions.
The Lady Indili, despite being a canny conversationalist, was never approached by the Kharal on account of the attire that marked her out as a sorceress. The herders consider this title considerably more august and terrible than any peasant from the Core Provinces does. Possibly this is a consequence of their minimal literacy. While even in the Core Provinces the common people have little access to scholarship, each village generally includes a handful of bright youngsters who can read simple texts and a priest and headman with sufficient mastery to keep basic records and relate the teachings of the Enlightened Revelation. They may not understand deep philosophical principles, but they can encompass such concepts within the boundaries of their dreams. Kharal, by contrast, often live their entire lives without even so much as glimpsing printed letters and the simple act of writing out my nightly notes left many of these riders, including ferocious veterans with multiple kills to their credit, fascinated and humbled. The sort of training necessary to become a sorcerer or wizard lies completely beyond the scope of their mental landscape.
For my part I avoided questions regarding warfare, easy enough as I was not, and have never been, a warrior. Such questions were usually directed at the members of the Winged Cavalry often assigned as my escort when riding across the steppe. Erun wished for them to gather intelligence regarding Kharal movements by listening to such conversations. Those soldiers are very well trained in maintaining stony silence, though young children had a tendency to swarm around them in fascination at their weapons and armor. The huge horses of the halberdiers were also an endless source of interest by Kharal of all ages, for these animals are much larger than the ponies of the steppe. I am told the khagans have a small stock of imported mounts they give to their personal guard for use in battle, but these are carefully guarded in secure pastures and few have the chance to see them up close.
The Emperor, who I referred to in conversation as the Sanid Khagan, seeing this as a superior translation compared to using the word in their language describing the princes of Nikkad cities, was a common source of conversation, and answering those questions was much easier. Husun the Fifth was a skilled administrator, wise judge, and proper custodian of the Enlightened Revelation. Having been a ruler during a peaceful, prosperous period he had few military achievements to his name, which was somewhat complicating as this was the question most often asked by the Kharal. After a fair amount of trial and error, I settled on saying that the lands of the Emperor are so vast and his generals so mighty that any enemies are defeated long before he can ride out to meet them in battle in person. This is in some sense even true, as no enemy penetrated to the Core Provinces during the reign of any Husun Emperor, though the Kharal do not quite fully understand the concept of border garrisons. Permanent patrol is simply impossible across much of the steppe, the available grass lacks the capacity to support it.
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The Nikkad, I might note, found the very fact that the Emperor could proclaim his reign the Era of Enduring Peace without facing mockery terribly impressive.
Food was the easiest of conversation topics, one that revealed surprising commonalities. The Kharal eat many of the same foods consumed in the empire, the difference being primarily a matter of proportions, though there are several fruits and vegetables unique to Shdustu not found elsewhere that are significant in their diet. Mutton is the most common meat in the Core Provinces and in Shdustu, and common preparations such as stews and sausages are little changed. The Kharal are inclined to air dry jerky in thin strips, which they hang from the supporting poles of their yurts, rather than smoke or salt it, though they will use salt to preserve meat where it is abundant. The flesh of horse is favored over that of cattle, a reverse of the Sairn preference, but this is mostly a matter of commonality. The Kharal have many horses and few cattle, the reverse of conditions among the Sairn. I shall speak of their dining practices at greater length elsewhere, when the opportunity arose to eat among them.
In return for the answers they required, I collected many anecdotes regarding the structure of the khanate and the reports of mystic beasts throughout Shdustu, more than simply the dragon we sought. Tugun Khagan, the ruler of Sunshtagus, was a man of about forty and had held his office for eight years, having inherited his august position following the passing of his father. That man, Shtakudun Khagan, had ruled for a mere three years after he overthrew the rule of his dissolute uncle, a man obsessed with spending every night with foreign-born concubines who allowed the khagan of Mumsassim to push southwest of the mountains and take control of considerable territory near the headwaters of the Shgudulus River. Shtakudun Khagan perished in battle against this enemy, and though he failed to retake the territory, his willingness to repeatedly offer battle before his foe bled the warriors of Mumsassim sufficiently that they did not press further. Tugun assumed authority following a brief struggle for power with his brother, Ugushdum. This battle, like most such struggles among the Kharal, was fought within the camp of the khagan in the immediate aftermath of the ruler's passing. Tugun claimed, successfully, that his father proclaimed him as heir despite being a younger son. Tradition among these herding people is that the superior, not the firstborn, son, should inherit. Shtakudun's proclamation was not made public and therefore may well have been fabricated, but the collected shamans of the khanate, who hold an authority that is in many ways greater than that of a proper priesthood, supported Tugun's claim, and the violent elimination of his brother secured it. This seems to have been sufficient to convince those of the khanate, as there is no sentiment that Tugun is illegitimate or support in favor of rebellion. Instead, critical sentiment is primarily that he drinks too much, especially of date and grape wines supplied through trading with the Nikkad. Such substances, though not forbidden by any law or dictate, are considered inferior in prestige to the fermented mare's milk that is their primary alcohol and the khagan's preference for such is believed to project weakness.
It is an amusingly mundane complaint to have regarding a ruler, one that speaks to the immediacy of interaction between this herding people and their overlord. There were, I estimate, somewhere between three hundred and fifty and four hundred thousand persons under the rule of Tugun Khagan. A significant number, certainly, but less than the population of Crisremon and its immediate environs. Despite this, that number means something different here, for every one of the Kharal is a horseman and archer of consummate skill. The warriors I spoke to claim that, when Shtakudun sent for a summons to every warrior bound to him to come and fight against the Mumsassim forces, over one hundred thousand fighters answered. Given how every male between the ages of twenty and sixty with fitness to fight would have gone to war, I confess that such a thing is not unbelievable. They did not, of course, all fight in one place. Each Kharal warrior rides to battle with four or five horses and possibly a camel or two, making it difficult for the steppe to support more than twenty or thirty thousand soldiers in any one place long enough to give battle, but they joined the warbands of their generals and fought in many places at once.
Rare is the Kharal old enough to be married, a state they generally achieve at the age of twenty-one, who does not have at least one battle scar from an arrow that pierced through armor to find flesh. Such injuries are considered simply a matter of course, similar to an animal bite, a broken bone from a fall, or any other injury attendant to life in a hard land. Warfare is, to these people, an ordinary part of life, nothing extraordinary at all, something that alternates with the seasonal hunts the khagans call in years when they do not send out a summons to battle. Many of the older men recalled going off to fight in more winters than they did not. However, since many such battles are little more than massive livestock raids and it is not uncommon to never even see the enemy, much less engage, this impression of constant warfare is somewhat overstated.
Tugun Khagan, aside from his drinking habits, seems to have been reasonably popular among the common Kharal herders within his dominion and to have retained the favor of the majority of the nobility. He was aided in this by a general sense of piety, a trait that his much-maligned great uncle had notably lacked. The previous decades, when that khagan ruled, had seen little support shown to the shamans who form their equivalent of a priesthood. As often happens when rulers neglect to stand behind the Revelation, as its teachings wisely instruct, the unfortunate and desperate stray from the proper path and fall to heretical teachings such as those of the Sunfire Cult.
Significant efforts to reverse this outcome were made by both Shtakudun and Tugun Khagan, including the declaration of a hunt against the cult in response to the sighting of the dragon a year earlier. This was effective, and one noble I encountered outside of Ushgidush proudly displayed before me a shattered pair of curved blades of the type commonly used by Sunfire Cultists. A curious thing, to be able to meet such delusional fools in the open, rather than seeking out evidence of strange slogans and forbidden symbols before leading the inspectors on raids of secret meetings and suborned country estates. In the steppe, it seems, stealth takes different forms.