Meanwhile, the Forhuch had reported back on their mission to the Salt Sea.
...
The bloody nomads the People had been fighting had wandered over there and claimed the title of "Protector of the Sacred Salt". Now that they had better access, the People had a better picture of the situation. There was a religious society that was apparently ancient and unchanging that lived in the mountains bordering the shores of the salt sea, and the nomads basically left them alone in exchange for access to the salt and sacred sites there. The Salt Sea itself was by all accounts essentially dead, but there were all sorts of rivers and streams that fed into it so people could live in the region - it was still either rough mountains or steppe all around though - so the priests had little ability to oppose the nomad tribes around them, but they didn't, they just offered up the title of "Protector" and offered significant benefits to the strongest group, and never contested it when the title changed hands. It sounded like the latest chieftain of the nomads had decided to play nice after his father had earned glory fighting against the People and then got out while the getting was good.
And apparently if one Sailed across the Salt Sea or walked the steppes north of the mountains, there were even stranger lands beyond that, with various exotic goods coming across the sea. To the south of the mountains and deserts there was another mysterious land that the Harmurri spoke of as the source of cotton. This made Alyxunmyn think of all the various strange things that the People had only barely explored. They had only had very loose contact with the Khemetri in centuries - most word of what they were up to came through Freehills by way of Saffron Island traders, which meant that in recent years even that contact had dried up - and Amber Road continued to be an outpost in the middle of nowhere that brought in a trickle of rare goods from the far north from the various tribal groups. Those groups were pretty lucky that the People were disinclined to conquer them, given that many had no native metalworking capacity, and those that did were still mostly working in soft metals.
Huh. Given that the Saffron Islanders were giving Freehills a hard time, they had to have iron, if only from trade. Alyxunmyn had never heard anything particularly impressive from the far west, so he wondered what might have happened out in that direction with iron equipped warriors with no compelling reason not to conquer up against small tribes armed with bronze at best and stone most of the rest of the time.
Huh.
That could be a problem now that Alyxunmyn had the full set of reports to think about it.
