Ride and Cut

In order to express her gratitude to Gao Shanbao for her selfless help, Anne proposed to use two carriages of goods as a reward. Li Cha pretended to decline several times with a shy face, but in the end he couldn't stand the other party's sincere enthusiasm and repeated invitations, so he reluctantly accepted.

In front of others, he was too embarrassed to ask what it was pretending to be. He secretly imagined that it would be tea cakes, which are very valuable hard currency in the wilderness.

As a result, when Second General Heng Ha pulled the carriage up the hill and began to unload the goods into the warehouse, he was surprised to find that it seemed a bit unexpected.

I poked a hole in the sack with a dagger, and what flowed out was a powder with white flowers and a simple aroma—this was refined wheat flour. Another car lifted the cover, and it was simply a whole box of black coals. And judging from the bits and pieces scattered on the other carriages, the entire caravan carried these two kinds of goods.

Li Cha rubbed his chin, a bit puzzled.

Due to the huge demand brought by the pioneering nobles and natives, the wilderness trade has always been quite prosperous. The goods that flow into the wilderness every spring and autumn are worth at least hundreds of thousands of gold coins. On the return journey, they are exchanged for a large number of livestock, furs, and even magic materials. This is a very important trade route for the Pompeii Empire.

But the types of wilderness trade have always been very fixed. Tea, cotton cloth, and even smuggled ironware are the most popular and profitable commodities. I have never heard of anyone selling refined wheat flour and coal.

Wilderness people have no habit of eating wheat flour at all, let alone the price of at least one silver coin for a sack. No one cares about coal. The most commonly used fuel here is dried animal manure, which is inexhaustible.

Even if wheat flour and coal can barely be sold, the profits may be questionable. Voya Trading Company must have rich trading experience, why did they make this choice?

Li Cha briefly explained these conjectures to the barbarians. The content about trade and profits made each of them look as painful as a choked fish, but he still managed to understand that the boss was suspicious of the caravan.

"Then what should we do?" Gunther held a pinch of white flour, thinking that he would use this pancake to fry until the edges were slightly crispy. It would be delicious and delicious. It would be even better if he could catch a rabbit to make meat stuffing.

"Observe and observe." Li Cha waved his hand, urging the troll to quickly load these goods into the cellar. Whether he's weird or not, it's mine when it's in the warehouse.

"We'll bake pies tonight, and I've had enough of the black bread like a rock."

The savages let out a roar of laughter that could pierce the eardrums, expressing their demands for food in a hurry. At this moment, everyone suddenly heard a sharp and piercing copper whistle at the same time.

"alert!"

The savages standing guard on the roof were shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Oh, today is really not peaceful!" Li Cha sneered. First goblins, then gnolls, and now some ghosts and monsters came. The prosperity and chaos in the wilderness opened his eyes.

The relaxed smiles on the faces of the barbarians disappeared without a trace in an instant. They picked up the weapons they had just put down and began to enter the battle state. A kind of excitement spread silently among them.

"Follow me!" Li Cha drew out his long sword and waved his arms, leading the barbarians to the outside of the wooden building aggressively.

The sentinel standing on a high place is pointing the direction with a spear. The relatively higher hills have a very wide field of vision. Looking in the direction pointed by the spear tip, one can see a boundless sea of ​​grass rippling with blue waves. There are vague black shadows slowly moving towards the direction of the Alpine Fort.

Li Cha narrowed his eyes and counted, twenty one.

"Can you see clearly?"

"I can't see clearly, but it looks like cavalry." Gunther's head shook like a rattle.

There was a small commotion in the caravan camp at the foot of the hill. They also heard the warning from the sentry, but they couldn't see where the danger came from because of poor vision. A lightly armed shortstop tried to investigate the mausoleum, but was held down by the barbarians with eyes sharper than knives.

Hyenas are not fit to be with lions, this group of big and three rough guys never looked down on these mercenaries from the beginning to the end!

As time passed, the black shadow got closer and closer to the Alpine Fort, and more details became clearer.

They weren't cavalry, but Gunther could be forgiven for thinking of them as such. The limbs and body are exactly the same as those of a horse, but at the base of the neck grows the upper body of a human—this is a group of centaurs.

Centaurs are recognized as a powerful fighting race. Physicians discovered through dissection that most of their internal organs are distributed in horses. The human body is almost entirely composed of musculoskeletal except for the head, so its strength is far stronger than that of humans in the same proportion.

Their unique body structure enables them to have both the impact of cavalry and the flexibility of infantry, and adult warriors often have good archery skills. This makes the centaur's tactical organization extremely flexible and changeable. It can be used as a ranger to harass, and when the time is right, it can also be immediately transferred to close combat.

In the northwest of the Pompeii Empire, those large centaur tribes have been invading year after year, even making it difficult for regular legions to cope.

but……

Li Cha licked the melon seeds, and the fallen skin was swept into the grass nest by the wind and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

To attack Gaoshan Fort with only twenty-one centaurs is undoubtedly the most outrageous dream. No matter who has such a wild idea, what he gets today can only be a lesson that he will never forget.

"Throw a spear."

Immediately, a barbarian delivered the spear to his lord. Li Cha stretched out his hand, weighed it twice, and threw it in the direction of the centaur.

At this moment, the distance between the two sides is at least 400 steps, which is even longer than the effective range of the crossbow. With Li Cha's level of long-range weapons, if he could hit directly, it would be like meeting the undead.

The thrown spear drew an unusually straight arc, and slammed into the ground three hundred steps away, splashing a handful of soil and flying away.

This is called shooting arrows as a boundary, which represents a warning—once the boundary marked by shooting arrows is crossed, the two sides will no longer have any buffer, and will directly enter a state of full-scale war.

The centaurs obviously saw this scene and understood its meaning, but they continued to move forward, only at a slower speed.

Li Cha's eyes narrowed tightly, and his eyeballs slowly turned following the centaur's footsteps.

When approaching the dropped spear, the leading centaur suddenly picked up a dusty rag. Then, as if he had obtained some protection, he pulled out his spear and continued to move forward slowly.

"What are they doing?" Li Cha felt that this looked like some kind of traditional witchcraft, but even so, it should not be underestimated. Although the shamans in the wilderness are very primitive, there are also some powerful ones who truly master the mysteries of elemental power.

This humble piece of cloth may be some kind of witchcraft blessing.

"It seems to be a white flag..." Gunther said uncertainly.