Koma

Fire horses are the prized horses of the Ahfal Oma, a people of the Yukata Plains in southern Aquafa. Their importance in the novel reaches beyond breeding and husbandry: the Zolian conquest forbids the Ahfal Oma to raise them, while a toxic hybrid crop kills the horses and contributes to a chain of events examined during an epidemic investigation. Their history shows how conquest can alter both a people’s livelihood and the ecological conditions on which animals and communities depend.

The Ahfal Oma and Their Horses

The Ahfal Oma bred fire horses that were regarded as the pride of Aquafa. Their connection to the animals was significant to Tomasolle, whose fascination with living creatures included an exceptional devotion to the horses. In his younger days he traveled to the Yukata Plains to live among the Ahfal Oma and study their animals whenever he had the opportunity. That sustained interest later shaped his response to the political changes imposed on the region.

After the Zolians conquered Aquafa, they prohibited the Ahfal Oma from raising their steeds and converted the plains into pasture for sheep. Tomasolle was furious at this change. Before the Zolian army could take possession of the horses, he paid a large sum to the Ahfal Oma to buy twenty of their best stallions. He would have bought all the horses if he could, but financial and political constraints made that impossible. Luliya reported that the head of the Academy of Deeper Learning severely reprimanded Tomasolle for his obsession, revealing that his effort to preserve the horses also brought him into conflict with his own institution.

Husbandry, Custom, and the Hounds

The horses’ place in Ahfal Oma life is also preserved in custom and inherited song. Cheehana recounts a command attributed to the god Kinma: healthy horses that died were not to be buried, lest wolves dig them up and acquire a taste for horseflesh; horses that died of sickness, by contrast, were to be buried so that wolves would suffer from eating them and avoid horses thereafter. The account links animal disposal to a practical aim of protecting the herd, expressed through religious tradition.

Shikan continues the chant’s story of a pregnant bitch whose pups were sired by a wolf. In the tale, she eats from a mound of diseased horses, falls ill, gives birth, and dies; her pups grow into strong, loyal hounds. Shikan explains that when fire horses were numerous, the Ahfal Oma buried horses that died of illness and later dug up the carcasses to feed to pregnant bitches. In practice, he says, the bitches survived and their pups grew loyal and strong, and did not succumb to sickness. The tradition therefore joins the care of horses to the breeding of hunting dogs, with an inherited account giving meaning to a deliberate husbandry practice.

That custom becomes relevant to Tomasolle’s inquiry when he recalls that horses killed by poisoned rye were also buried in a mound and fed to pregnant bitches. The possibility that their pups might have carried disease seems at first to offer an explanation, but Tomasolle rejects it on the basis of what he witnessed: the bitches produced no pups and suffered and died. The evidence redirects attention from a suspected animal-borne chain to the effects of the poisoned grain itself.

Toxic Grain and the Horses’ Deaths

The account given by Taya identifies a more complicated agricultural cause. The fire horses ate Aquafa wheat cultivated by the Ahfal Oma, but that wheat appears to have crossbred with rye brought by the Zolians. Taya says the hybridization was unintended, probably caused by rye pollen carried on the wind. The resulting grain could be toxic, and its poison was potent. The horses’ deaths thus followed not from a deliberate attempt to poison them, but from the unintended mingling of crops in a landscape transformed by migration and settlement.

The toxic grain harmed the newcomers’ sheep as well as the Ahfal Oma’s horses. Sheep that ate it leapt as if dancing before going into convulsions, a condition called sheep-dancing sickness. This shared exposure complicates a simple division between native victims and settlers: the same agricultural change devastated the fire horses and killed many sheep. Yet the consequences were not politically equal. The Ahfal Oma had already been barred from raising their horses, and the deaths intensified the crisis surrounding their loss.

Political Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Tomeh recalls that the deaths of the horses led to a major uproar and that the Ahfal Oma burned one village in revenge; it was not his own village. He describes the destruction as terrible, while Taya confirms the grain’s role in killing the horses. The sequence connects imposed limits on Ahfal Oma husbandry, the spread of toxic hybrid grain, the loss of the animals, and retaliatory violence. The horses are therefore not merely a treasured breed in the background of the story: their fate makes the material consequences of conquest legible through food, livestock, and the livelihoods built around them.

Their story also gives the disease investigation a concrete test of competing explanations. The inherited custom of feeding buried horse carcasses to pregnant bitches offers a plausible route to suspect, but Tomasolle’s observation that the bitches bore no pups and died prevents that account from serving as a confirmed explanation. Taya’s account instead establishes that toxic hybrid grain killed both fire horses and sheep. The horses’ history brings local ecological knowledge, religiously framed animal practice, and the consequences of introduced crops into the same investigation without treating an unverified suspicion as fact.