Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Chapter 751 751 55 Confrontation

?Chapter 751: Chapter 55: Confrontation Chapter 751: Chapter 55: Confrontation The sparse stars twinkled in the dawn’s blue-gray sky, while a pale white mist swirled and spun over the Big Horn River.

Without the presence of humans, all this was but a typical early winter morning.

But beneath the tranquil scene lurked deadly intentions.

“Boat.”

“Boat.”

Sounds like the slap of a fish tail against the water echoed across the river’s surface.

Shortly, the silhouette of a sheepskin raft emerged from the thick fog, then a second, and a third…

These sheepskin rafts were small, each capable of carrying only five or six people.

Among the five or six, two were sweating profusely as they paddled. The others, armed with horn bows, knelt still, daring not to move their lower bodies as they looked around.

Fear, excitement, and greed mingled on each person’s face and in their eyes.

Without signal fires, battle cries, nor arrows and bullets, eight sheepskin rafts crossed the Big Horn River without any resistance, smoothly making their way into Iron Peak County, within the boundaries of Wolfton.

“Sweetwater! We’ve made it!” A young Herder named Stone Arrow could hardly contain his delight as he whispered to another young Herder, “The Two-Legs haven’t spotted us!”

The young Herder known as Sweetwater, with a scar across his nose, hissed at the speaker to “shut up!”

The former immediately fell silent.

Sweetwater moved closer to another elder Herder and whispered his order, “Old Baldtail! Count the men. Sound the horn, and signal for the rest to come over.”

The elder Herder named Old Baldtail, with deep wrinkles etched on his face, nodded. He took out a deer bone flute and gently blew into it at his lips.

“Wooo… Wooo…”

The sound of Old Baldtail’s playing was like the call of a deer—not very loud, but incredibly piercing.

Across the river, another young Herder named Green Horse waited anxiously.

Suddenly, Green Horse heard the sound of a deer call coming from behind the dense fog, signaling that Sweetwater and the others had successfully crossed the river.

“Drive the horses into the water!” Green Horse ran and shouted, ordering slaves and subjects, “Drive the horses into the water!”

The horses began to move, their slow, small steps building up to a thunderous noise.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” Green Horse lashed out with the sheath of his knife at the sluggish slaves and subjects, his mean, narrow eyes revealing a fierce light, “Don’t let the horses drink! Keep them moving! They’re not made of salt; they won’t dissolve! Move! You sneaky lazybones!”

The chill of the early winter river water pierced to the marrow, and the horses huddled together, reluctantly stepping into the icy currents.

The Herders shouted, waving their long whips to herd the horse crowd.

The leader of the horse herd—a large, light chestnut horse with a white stripe down its nose—took the lead and began to swim.

This wasn’t the horse leader’s first swim.

The river’s waters battered its robust body, and the horse leader struggled to breathe, its chest swelled larger than usual, its body floated on the water, with its neck and back emerging above the surface.

The rest of the horses followed their leader, parting the water and slowly stepping forward until their hooves no longer touched the riverbed, and then they began to paddle and tread.

About a dozen Herders rode on three sheepskin rafts following behind the horse troop. Each man carried a lasso pole and rope, ready for any emergency.

But an accident still happened; an old horse with a white forehead ran out of strength and suddenly lost balance while swimming.

The uncontrolled body of the old white-foreheaded horse turned sideways, and it drifted away from the herd, caught by the river and carried downstream.

The Herders on the raft hurriedly threw out lassos, but the incident unfolded too quickly; the old horse had already disappeared into the fog in an instant.

Green Horse, livid with rage, his eyes aflame with fury, shouted, “Blind fools! Don’t paddle forward! Have the herd angle against the current! Don’t let the water sweep them away!”

Not far downstream, the eight sheepskin rafts that had crossed the river earlier rowed back again. During the back and forth, it was inevitable that they drifted downstream by several hundred meters.

The old white-foreheaded horse just happened to float past them, but it was no longer able to continue.

The paddling Herders silently watched as the horse rose and fell in the gloomy waters.

The first trip was for the people, the second for the horses, the third for the horse saddles, weapons, and armor, and the fourth and fifth also for people.

After five exhausting trips, they had transported around a hundred riders and more than two hundred horses from the west bank of the Big Horn River to the East Bank.

The leader of this hundred-man troop from the Terdon Tribe was “Helge Grey,” meaning Sweetwater.

The narrow-eyed Green Horse and another young man named Stone Arrow were Sweetwater’s “attendants”—the full-time warriors of this small tribe.

The rest were Sweetwater’s subjects and slaves, like the old slave Old Baldtail, who had been given to Sweetwater by his grandfather when Sweetwater was still too young to walk.

By lineage, Sweetwater was of notable heritage. He was the son of his fire-maker’s granduncle’s grandson, his fire-maker’s first cousin once removed.

But in terms of strength, Sweetwater had only a little over a hundred riders and more than two hundred horses cobbled together, with old and young among his followers, making his combat force rather meager.

For the Herders, being the vanguard was a great honor, with the custom of receiving a larger share of the spoils. Therefore, by all logic, Sweetwater should not have been the one to lead the charge.

But who made Sweetwater the fire-maker’s kin?

The fire-maker took care of his property-less nephew, allowing Sweetwater to become one of the vanguards and arranging his marching route up the Big Horn River.

The day after the night battle at Shovel Port, Sweetwater quietly arrived at the border of the lower Iron Peak County with his hundred-man troop.

Crossing from upstream of the Big Horn River was much easier than from downstream of Shovel Lake.

Sweetwater first found a place with gentler water flow, then promptly prepared animal hide bags and rafts overnight and, the next morning, took advantage of the thick fog to successfully force his way across the Border River.