Early the next morning, the dazzling sunshine shone on the lush grassland.
When the wind blows, the grass under the sunlight becomes even more sparkling and beautiful.
A large group of herdsmen started grazing as usual today, but if you look closely, you can see that their herds of cattle and sheep are not very large, but they have a lot of horses.
Normally, for their daily needs, herdsmen would not raise horses to a level that would allow them to be bred on a large scale.
After all, horse meat is not as delicious as beef and mutton, and beef and mutton can be eaten and made into clothes, so its economic and practical value is not very good.
But this small tribe of 500 people raises nearly 600 horses. Excluding some old and weak people who don't need horses at all, there are still many vacancies for these horses.
The number of cattle and sheep is about a thousand. Herdsmen with sheepdogs are already riding horses to drive the sheep and cattle to graze in farther and richer pastures.
Little Boke is the son of an ordinary herdsman from the Xiaohezi tribe. Compared with other herdsmen's sons, he appears to be somewhat stunted.
Already eighteen years old, he is only 1.7 meters tall, and his body is not as strong as that of ordinary prairie people. He looks like a thin dog among a group of strong men.
"Eji, I understand, this is just grazing and there will be no problem."
Little Poke smiled at his mother.
His mother would give him several instructions almost every day when he went out, and he knew why her mother paid so much attention to it.
Because Abu died in their camp, they were often bullied by fellow tribesmen from other camps in the tribe.
If the sheep and cattle are not careful, they will be snatched away by others. As long as they don't know where they are, it is useless to go to the chief shepherd of their tribe.
The chief shepherd is fair, but he will also be biased. There are so many things in the tribe. If you have less, others will have more. Why don't you have a few men in your family?
Of course, the chief shepherd will definitely take care of the superficial matters, so little Poke can only guard his own flock every day.
Because they did not dare to herd their sheep further afield, their sheep never grew very fat, and their size was far less than that of other camps.
Driving a flock of twenty or thirty sheep, Bok began grazing two miles away from the tribe.
A purebred mastiff started to run around, and began to herd the herd with some clarity. After making sure that the herd stayed within the designated area, it barked at its owner Pork, and immediately lay on the ground sticking out its big tongue.
This is not a Tibetan Mastiff, but a Mongolian Mastiff. The running speed is not very fast. This is because they have very thick hair on their bodies and are large in size. It takes a lot of energy to keep running.
Pure-blood Mongolian Mastiffs are still very loyal and will not have unstable temperaments like later hybrids.
They are also good at herding. Due to the excessive pursuit of large size, mastiffs in later generations have big fluffy hair and will be out of breath after running for a few steps.
But in fact, a pure-blooded person would not fall down tired from just running around.
Some wealthy herdsmen often keep 2-3 mastiff dogs in their homes, which can effectively protect the sheep from the scourge of wolves.
However, at this moment, the mastiff suddenly started barking without warning.
This barking immediately frightened the sheep and started running back. Seeing this movement, Pork suddenly became alert.
His dog didn't know how to bark. He first looked around, then quickly turned over and dismounted, keeping his ears close to the ground.
"Chirp~!"
His expression suddenly became serious, he quickly mounted his horse and blew a whistle.
The mastiffs were ordered to run quickly and quickly drove the sheep towards the tribe.
Da da da! ~
But soon a dense sound of horse hooves came quickly from far to near like war drums.
The ground began to tremble, as if an earth dragon was turning over.
Pork turned his head and looked, his eyes wide open. He saw a large group of black cavalry at the end of the horizon, rushing towards this direction at high speed.
As Pork was less than a mile away from the tribe, there was also movement in the camp.
I saw rows of Xiaohe tribe herdsmen who quickly armed themselves and got on their horses with bows and knives on their backs.
Soon nearly two hundred horsemen were armed. Under the whistle of Chief Shepherd An Xin, a large eagle circled high in the sky and landed on his shoulder.
That is the large flowered eagle raised by the shepherd, also called Zha Tang Wuba.
It seems that the big eagle has passed the message to the shepherd.
Pork almost watched the herdsmen and warriors in the tribe pass him by.
At the same time, a sentence came to his ears.
"Pork! You are also a tribal warrior, come with us!"
Hearing this, Bok was tangled for a while, but he still gave the message to his mastiff to drive the sheep home alone. He turned his horse's head and followed the large army to charge.
Poke doesn't want to fight, he is an outsider here.
Moreover, every time the tribe goes out to trade, his family almost never gets a share. The ones who can eat and drink with the chief shepherd are those families with one or two strong laborers in the family.
It's like a pyramid. The upper level exploits the middle level, the middle level exploits the bottom level, and the bottom level can only suffer in silence.
At this time, the two sides were getting closer and closer, and Pork saw that the tribal warriors in the front row had begun to set up their bows and shoot arrows.
Because he couldn't see the situation in front of him from behind, but soon a series of intensive gunfire sounded.
He was no stranger to guns. There were also guns in the tribe. They had exchanged them for them. They had just exchanged them a few days ago and planned to sell them to Outer Mongolia in a few days.
But almost all the warriors in the tribe were not used to using this thing. They thought it was too bulky and the accuracy was not as good as their arrows.
Poker didn't know the details of the previous battle. He only knew that after completing two waves of salvos, the two sides directly entered hand-to-hand combat. The cavalry of both sides directly crossed into each other's formation.
Miserable howls began to appear, as well as the sound of sharp blades breaking through the body.
Pork was also among the crowd. After a while, the enemy rider came to him. He could even see the cold and silent face of the other party.
These enemies were very unusual, and it was not like he had never heard anyone mention them before.
Once the two sides engage in close combat, they will shout loudly to intimidate and boost morale.
But the group of enemies in front of them were so indifferent and terrifying, they didn't say a word at all, like silent hunters.
I don't know if he was lucky or not. After the enemy cavalry who faced him head-on killed a tribesman, he ran out of energy and killed Bo Ke directly without swinging the sword again.
Poker experienced fighting for the first time, and he was at a loss what to do, let alone fight back.
In the first wave of charges, the two sides completed the change of positions.
But when Po Ke turned around and looked around at his own people, he was a little stunned.
The nearly two hundred tribesmen were reduced by nearly half as if they had been sifted through a comb.
The other party also suffered some damage, but not much.
What kind of people are these?
Pork couldn't help but swallow, because the difference in the number of people on both sides was not big.
There were slightly more people on the other side, but only a few dozen more people.
With dozens of extra people, the casualty ratio between the two sides reached 20:100.
