At dawn in the morning, the sun rises from the sea and the mountains and forests are revealed again. The two Kotermyan hunters said goodbye in a hurry and wanted to return to their tribe in the northern mountains. The exploration captain did not stop him. Instead, he smiled and gave a parting gift to the chief of the mountain tribe. The hunter Mulu secretly opened it, dipped his fingers in it and tasted it. It turned out to be two bags of blue salt!
"Ancestor! It's precious salt! This Luba's Haibu is really as powerful and rich as Luba!..."
"Mulu, this is the salt that the Haibu leader gave to the old grandmother. Don't spill it! Tie it up and don't let it leak out!..."
Hunting captain Mu Quan tensed up, carefully tied the salt bag, and wrapped it tightly in deerskin. In extreme northern Asia, where winters are brutally cold and fuel is scarce, the cost of boiling salt is too high. Salt is a commodity valued by all ministries! It is perfectly normal for the tribe to fight over a few bags of salt and two people die.
"Yes! Captain Sage!..."
The two Kotelmen hunters maintained a leisurely trot and soon entered the pine forest and disappeared into the mountains to the north. It wasn't until their figures disappeared that exploration captain Zuvalo took a long breath, looked at the sun in the clouds, and prayed sincerely.
"God bless you! May this mountain tribe be a friend of the kingdom, not an enemy!..."
After praying for a moment, Zuvalo squinted his eyes and looked at the somewhat dark sky. He quickly became solemn and gave instructions to everyone on the shore.
"Witness the Lord God! Look at the sky, it's going to snow!... Hurry up and make the camp tighter, and dig the hole half a person deep for warmth!..."
"yes!…"
The snowflakes in November fell from the gloomy sky and spread on the gray earth. It had been snowing for two days, the temperature was always below zero, and the snow quickly reached the ankles. The cold north wind froze the entire coast, causing more and more floating ice to condense all the way to the bay.
The kingdom's warriors and tribal sailors were busy in the wind and snow, cutting down trees, collecting dead logs, expanding shore camps, and transporting winter supplies from the longships, especially the most important food and coal!
Two hunters from the Kotelmen Mountains were gone for four days and reappeared from the north. This time, they showed up with ten sleds and forty dogs. And there were four palms sitting on the sled, that is, twenty tribal hunters from the mountain tribe!
"Aow! Aow! Aow! Aow!..."
Hearing the continuous howling like a wolf, the exploration captain Zuvalo suddenly woke up. He put on his leather armor and fur, took the copper ax, and climbed onto the simple and sturdy log lookout. From a distance, he saw the dogs running on the snowy fields in the north, as well as the tribal sleds dragged by the dogs.
"Huh?! These tribes in the mountains can actually tame... white wolves? To pull the sled?"
Exploration captain Zuvalo stared with wide eyes as he watched the howling dogs running closer, revealing a silly and simple wolf face and a strong and powerful wolf body. This was the first time he saw a Siberian husky, a sled dog specially domesticated by the Kamchatka tribes!
But soon, his curious eyes were attracted by the mountain hunters on the sled, and his face instantly became alert.
"Lord God! At least twenty elite tribal hunters? Are they all carrying recurved bows and arrows?"
Twenty mountain hunters sat on sleds and drove the dogs. They traveled several miles in a short time and arrived at the kingdom's camp by the bay. If you look carefully, you can see that these mountain hunters are all carrying compound recurve bows, wearing inner leather armor and outer wing armor, and carrying heavy stone axes and stone knives. They were all wrapped in warm and thick deerskin robes, but they moved very quickly. And those chubby, simple faces, although they were blown red by the blowing wind and snow, were full of vigor and fearlessness!
This kind of early winter with seven to eight degrees below zero is not cold at all for the Kamchatka tribe, but it is a suitable time for travel. Especially after a layer of snow falls on the ground, the hunters of the tribe can get on sleds pulled by reindeer or dogs and become a nomadic people on the snowfield...The speed of travel can be instantly increased several times, and they can even run in a day. Travel two to three hundred miles!
"Witness the Lord God! Ah! They moved so fast on the snow! This... is this the nomadic northern tribe that His Majesty said?"
Exploration captain Zuvalo looked surprised and estimated that the running speed of the dogs pulling the sled was at least six or seven times faster than walking! Thoughts were swirling in his mind and orders were issued decisively.
"Shi Jian! Let the kingdom's warriors put on bronze cloth masks, let the tribal sailors carry their spears, and get ready for battle!..."
"Yes! Captain!"
"Aow! Aow! Aow! Aow!..."
A quarter of an hour later, at the camp gate in the snow, the leaders of both sides met again. Exploration captain Zuvalo, with forty heavily armored kingdom warriors and fifty spear-carrying tribal sailors, lined up outside the camp. The hunting captain, Mu Dog, led twenty mountain hunters with bows on their backs and led the dogs down from the sled.
"The spiritual ancestors witness! Friends of Kaibu, we meet again!..."
"The Lord God bless you! My fellow brothers in the northern mountains, the Lord God is shining on you, and also on your dogs!..."
Hunting captain Mu Quan held his head high and led the tribe's most elite hunters with a confident smile on his face. And it wasn't until he saw the white-gold heavy armor of the kingdom's warriors that his confident expression suddenly froze, revealing real surprise!
"Ah? Ancestor!...Is this? Is this...Mabu's bronze armor? Kaibu actually has so many bronze armors!..."
As one of the tribes fighting in the snowy plains of Far North Asia, the hunting captain of the Mountain Tribe, Mu Dog, naturally knows about metal armor, whether it is copper armor or iron armor. Although there are very few metal armors in Kamchatka III, and the extremely cold climate is not suitable for ordinary iron armor, they still have the knowledge that all North Asian tribes should have.
The nomadic Ewen people and horses thousands of miles away in the west have some bronze armor and iron armor obtained from further south. Some of them have even been passed down for dozens of generations, inherited from the nomadic empire that perished hundreds or thousands of years ago. .
"God bless you! Brothers in the northern mountains, you came to the camp...well, do you want to have a bowl of hot whale soup together?"
Exploration captain Zuvalo was smiling and gesturing enthusiastically while sizing up the tribal hunters in front of him. There was no murderous intention on the faces of these hunters, but they all wore wing armor that spread out like wings during battle, and they held the bows and axes in their hands tightly, as if intentionally or unintentionally, they wanted to show the strength of a certain tribe.
"Blessed by our ancestors! Friends from the East, Kaibu. We, Yamabu and Kaibu, have been relatives for generations!..."
The hunting captain, Mu Quan, looked serious and said what the old grandmother told him to say. Then, he stretched out his hand, patted a tall man behind him, and commanded in a deep voice.
"Wuhai! They come from the islands in the eastern sea...just like your father! Go, use the language your father taught you, and tell them the invitation from the old grandmother!..."
"Yes! Captain Sage!..."
The tall Wu Hai nodded and took a step forward. He blinked and looked curiously at the Unanga tribesmen in the camp who were wearing armor and carrying spears, but he spoke in Aleut mixed with the local language!
"Ancestors witness! The sleeping giant rests at our feet... My dead father came from the Grandmother Island in the northeast. He mentioned the tribes further east, the tribesmen that are hard to find on the sea..."
"People of the ancestral island chain! You came here in the longest ship that has ever been seen before, to our mountain territory!... The wise old grandmother of the tribe said that the mountains and the sea have never fought. , on the contrary, starting from the oldest ancestors, they often intermarry..."
"Spiritual ancestors, protect us who have the same ancestor! Haibu people who came from the sea, you showed goodwill and shared campfires, meat and salt... You are friends of Yamabu, brothers we have been apart for too long! Wise The old grandmother invites you and your leader to the winter camp in the northern mountains to make a warm bonfire together and drink the blood of the same deer!..."
