Kunbuha led the captain Abul, crossed Galipo, and tracked northward.
They first found large hoof prints. Many of them had no traces of hoofs, and they were obviously the group of Tatar trackers that Kunbuha had seen before.
The hoof prints are clearly visible on the surface of the salt-alkali wasteland. If not covered by the yellow sand in autumn, these marks will remain until the beginning of the next spring, when the water in several lakes rises.
Riding sideways along the hoof prints was much more convenient than the previous large-scale search. Abel was worried that the Tatar people were fierce and untamed, so he sent two people back and urged his centurion to send reinforcements.
He and Kunbuha and others continued to chase.
Two or three days later, the hoofprints were suddenly in chaos, and there were many traces of arrows shot down. From the looks of it, a cavalry team suddenly appeared from a fork in the road nearby, and the people who followed did not hesitate to launch a cross attack.
Attack, shoot and kill the Tatars.
"There are corpses, at least twenty...and there are more behind them!" Kunbuha shouted loudly and ran behind a thorn.
Abel followed after a few steps, crossed the thorns, and saw the scene of the fierce battle a few days ago. In the semi-dried salt brine, dense hoof prints were everywhere, and brown blood clots condensed in large pools, and the salt brine was strewn with streaks.
There were many corpses scattered around.
In late autumn, the weather begins to cool down. Although the sun is still strong during the day, the salt brine everywhere offsets the rotting effect of the sun. Therefore, except for a thin layer of ash, there is no change on the corpse, and even the wounds can be clearly distinguished.
Some were shot to death by bows and arrows, some had their heads decapitated by sharp blades, some were trampled to death by war horses, and some were injured and fell to the ground and had their heads and necks cut off with a last-ditch knife.
"All those who died were Tatars. They had no armor and no decent weapons. They were like rabbits killed by wolves. They were no match for those who came after them."
Kunbuha rummaged around for a while and pulled out a deeply embedded arrow from the wound of a dead man: "The people who came later were well-equipped and used fine iron arrows. After the war, they were too lazy to take back the arrow clusters!
who are they?"
Maybe it's a subordinate of the Golden Family, or maybe it's a Jingqi secretly raised by a thousand households deep in the grassland?
Thinking of this, Abel suddenly felt chilly and couldn't help but shudder: "Damn it, what kind of noble role is this guy? Why did the people who came to find them come so quickly and attack so harshly?"
He raised his eyes and looked into the distance carefully, but unfortunately wherever he looked, there were either vast white rocky beaches or undulating barren mountains and steep cliffs.
"Fifty horses, a thousand sheep...is it worth it?" he murmured.
"Captain Ten, these people are one day ahead of us, do you still want to pursue them?" Kunbuha walked back from the front and asked with some horror.
After all, none of them are the kind of Mongolian warriors who kill people like crazy.
Abel used to be, but after breaking an arm, he was treated as a useless person and despised for several years, which wore away his spirit. A search that only required a little hard work turned into a fight, which made him subconsciously want to avoid it.
open.
But……
Abel couldn't help but cursed again: "Damn it, we are too poor..."
Since Genghis Khan's Western Expeditions, a large number of the best of this thousand families have been mobilized, and those who remain are old and weak who are looked down upon by outsiders. In previous years, the supplies brought by the Khan's plunderings have long been exhausted, and they can hardly even maintain their own pastures.
Every now and then, they are being robbed secretly. Since this year, a few children in a thousand households have wanted to drink fresh goat milk, but the goats have not been able to get enough.
If this continues, in a year or two at most, the entire Thousand Households will be gone! Everyone will have to work as slaves for the nobles of other Thousand Households!
Finding the missing Haner nobleman and devoting him to a powerful Qianhu Nayan like Belgutai or Yeligasi was almost the only way Abel could think of to save his tribe.
Abel took out the leather bag from his waist, raised his neck and drank the last bit of bad wine: "Catch up and have a look. Didn't you say those two guys are going to Usha Castle? Let's go to Usha Castle!"
Maybe you can gain something!"
"But……"
"Be careful on the road and use the same spirit as when hunting... The grassland is very chaotic at the moment. We only need to follow from a distance. If we can catch some clues and hand them over to Qianhu Nayan in the future, we will be credited!
"
Everyone around me heard that they could follow from a distance, so they all relaxed and said, "We listen to the commander of ten."
Now the group of people continued to go north.
In order to avoid colliding with the ferocious cavalry team later, they did not dare to gallop along the way. Most of the time, they led the horses and walked on the salt flats. They only made sure that the hoof prints left in front were completely dry and the distance between the two sides was widened.
Under such circumstances, he rode in pursuit for a while.
Two days later, they crossed the deserted beach, crossed the rolling hills, crossed the patchwork meadows, and gradually penetrated deep into the grassland. They approached the northernmost point of Usha Castle that was controlled by Dajin in the grassland when it was at its peak.
The salt pond has long been left behind, the water vapor in Galibo cannot be felt, and a rough smell begins to appear in the air. This is a vast grassland, with no roads, no houses, and no traces of human transformation of nature.
This was the truly active environment before the rise of the Mongols. Further north, there are terrifying deserts and wastelands, where even the Mongols usually do not regard the tribes living in the northern desert as their own kin.
The relationship between the grassland peoples and the grassland is like the wolves or sheep on the grassland. They are part of the grassland and never want to transform the grassland. Therefore, after many Mongolian tribes arrive in the Central Plains, they will propose to destroy all the cities in the Central Plains.
They killed all the Han people and turned the fields into desert for grazing cattle and sheep.
But when Abul and Kunbuha came here, they didn't feel any comfortable.
Perhaps it is because they once went south to the Central Plains and experienced the prosperity and splendor of the Central Plains, and then returned to the grasslands and felt what life was like far away from the output of the Central Plains.
Abel was distracted while driving his horse.
When he was young, he was a fierce man who relied on his own strength. He always felt that his centurion Naminfu thought too much and was not like a decisive Mongolian hero. But later he broke his arm and could no longer fight with a sword.
When he died, he was abandoned by everyone. The drastic change in the environment made him an alcoholic and made him think about many things that he had never thought about before.
At this moment, he suddenly discovered that compared to the familiar grasslands, places with official roads, villages, canals, restaurants and teahouses, and a constant flow of farmers would make people happier and live a better life.
get better.
In fact, most people on the grasslands will come to this result if they think about it seriously.
If you have to find some advantages, in Abel's eyes, the scenery on the grassland is pretty good. However, people have to live and stay alive. No matter how beautiful the scenery is, it is so hard to graze for many years, and the black and white disasters that occur every now and then are also a problem.
How terrible?
If the Mongolians all think that the grassland is the most beautiful home, then they should be content with living in the grassland for generations, why bother to fight and plunder everywhere? While they want to enjoy the output of the civilized world, they also try their best to despise civilization and try to turn civilization into
To destroy and replace it with barbarism is a completely twisted mentality.
In this case, what are all the people doing by persisting on the grassland and living increasingly poorer lives?
Or maybe a man as talented as Genghis Khan understood all this, but tried his best to promote the nobility of the grassland people, in fact, in order to keep everyone barbaric, so that everyone will always be a beast driven by the Golden Family?
Abul was thinking about it when he suddenly heard Kunbuha shouting from the side: "Captain Ten, hide quickly!"
"What?"
Abel was stunned. At the same time, he heard the sound of many people running in large strides on the other side of the rolling hills and depressions.
How could people suddenly appear in such a desolate place? The murderous pursuit cavalry is still ahead, and the targets being pursued, the two Han nobles, should have arrived at Usha Castle... We are obviously very careful!
Abel didn't have time to move his horse to hide, so he simply turned his hand and pressed the handle of the knife at his waist, looking towards the direction of the footsteps with a grin.
The next moment, what appeared in front of him was a group of beggar-like people. Everyone was in ragged clothes and looked haggard. They were all thin and staggering. It seemed that a strong wind could blow them down. But each of them was strong.
While running with all their strength, some people kept running with their feet dripping with blood, while some people fell to the ground while running, then got up using their hands and feet and continued to move forward.
"Who are these people?"
Abel asked subconsciously, and then reacted: "These are Han slaves deep in the grassland!"
