Warlord: King of All Clans

Leo felt it necessary to visit the Tarhan tribe and learn more about this neighbor behind the scenes, so he agreed to Arina's invitation.

He left the track survey convoy behind and followed Arina south with only a few personal guards.

Ulanggar, the main city of the Tarhan tribe, is more than 500 miles south of the rock mine.

In the middle, they have to pass through several small tribes, including a tribe of thousand men and a tribe of centurions.

The so-called Centurion Tribe is a nomadic tribe with only one hundred households, and its actual population is even smaller than that of the Corner Flag Territory in the north.

Some small tribes did not even have their own pastures and could only rely on other thousand-man tribes and exchange the right to graze for the service of their young and strong men.

As Leo's team headed south, the nomadic tribes along the way had already received conscription notices.

Teams of skinny, poorly dressed herdsmen, carrying food and tents on their horses and leading a herd of cattle and sheep, followed the cavalry north to serve.

By this time the weather had turned cold, and people and animals were shivering in the chilly wind of the grassland.

When you are recruited to serve as the Grassland Burke, you will not be provided with food and lodging. The herders must bring their own dry food and tents. When they arrive at the construction site, they are lucky enough to receive a tool.

In fact, this is the case throughout the Orlantis Empire. Imperial law stipulates that every civilian has three months of civil service obligation, and needs to provide their own food and tools and perform compulsory labor for the lord.

However, in the two northwestern regions, the lower-class civilians did not have enough savings to meet their food and clothing needs during the conscription period.

You can still survive by repairing roads and canals in your own village, and repairing city walls, lord's castles and so on in the town.

If you want to launch large-scale infrastructure projects, the civilians will have no choice but to flee.

The reason why Hewan can continue to launch infrastructure construction is very simple, that is, food and accommodation are provided on the construction site.

Without even having to pay wages, the young and strong conscripted laborers came in droves and could not be driven away.

As for other lords' industries, as long as there is food to eat, there are people willing to work for them even at the lowest salary.

Leo originally planned to persuade Arina to prepare some food to provide to the young and strong people in the Western Territory, but seeing that she turned a blind eye, he did not say a word.

Having grown up in an environment where the strong prey on the weak, who would care about the suffering of the people? Not everyone is as kind-hearted as Olivia.

It took the group three full days to reach the core area of ​​the Tarhan tribe.

A branch of the Borok Mountains extends westward, hundreds of miles deep into the grassland. The mountain springs here converge into a river and flow southward.

At the confluence of several rivers, there is abundant grass and water, herds of cattle and sheep, and patches of red wild chrysanthemums are blooming on the grassland.

These wild chrysanthemums stretch to the end of the horizon, dyeing the entire earth red.

On the red land, there is an earthen city.

This is Ulangar, the “City of Red Wind” in the ancient language of the Western Border.

Ulanggar is not very large, and its city walls are lower than those of Isenbol. The paint on the outside of the city walls is mottled and peeling, making it look very simple and old.

The town population here is not as large as that of Isonborde. There are only herdsmen nearby, and only some farming areas at the foot of the mountain, which cannot support too many town populations.

But on the grassland, having a city is good enough. Because of the climate, people can only live near water and grass in many places, and even cities cannot be built.

Arina felt embarrassed about bringing her boyfriend back to her hometown in the countryside. She pointed at Ulangaar from a distance and explained, "Although Ulangaar is small, it has everything. It now has a firearms workshop and 3,000 elite soldiers stationed there. No one in the entire grassland dares to spy on it."

"The Tarhan tribe has gathered 20 thousand captains under their command. They usually live as nomads. As long as my father gives the order, they can immediately form 20,000 cavalry and conquer the western border."

Leo smiled secretly in his heart, the Western Territory had fought even harder than the Northern Territory in recent years, the centurions and senior cavalrymen under Burke in the Western Territory had suffered heavy losses, and many centurions actually did not have many regular cavalrymen, and could only fill the ranks with young and strong herdsmen who had not received military training.

Of the so-called 20,000-strong army, more than half were unarmored herdsmen, and among the armored cavalry, more than half were leather-armored conscripts.

Leo had to praise him for his strong martial virtues for being able to gather 3,000 regular armored cavalry.

However, in the Western Territory, such strength is indeed impressive, enough to rank among the top three of the ten divisions in the Western Territory.

When Leo and his party arrived at Ulangar, a messenger had already rushed to the lord's castle to report.

Several members of the Talhan family stood at the city gate to greet Leo.

Today, Leo is no longer the small local warlord he used to be, but a dignified Earl of the North.

According to the hierarchy of the imperial nobility, the Earl of the North is more noble than the Burke of the West.

However, Shilatu was proud of his age and the fact that he had just annexed the Yuezhong tribe. Of course, he was unwilling to go out of the city to welcome him. He just set up a banquet in the lord's mansion and waited.

When a group of people saw Leo stop his horse, they all bowed their heads and saluted, "Good health, Lord Earl!"

Leo imitated the etiquette of the Western Territory and replied with a bow on his horse, "Everyone is well."

When he looked at the crowd, he found that Ajina's younger brother Yue Gechaer was also among them, grinning at him foolishly.

This young man was jokingly called the shame of the Talhan family by Arina. As the son of Berk, he couldn't even lift the standard cavalry scimitar at the age of sixteen.

Shilaotu has many children. Although none of them are as dazzling as Arina, they are all carefully cultivated talents. Several of his sons are extraordinary and very brave in fighting on the battlefield.

Only the youngest son seemed to be too well protected by Arina. Apart from the wolf nature in his bones, his appearance and temperament did not look like a grassland man.

Seeing that he was almost an adult, Ajina took him with her to fight in two battles, but she found that this useless brother could not even hold a knife steadily and did not have the courage to kill anyone. She became discouraged and threw him back to the main city.

When Ajina followed her father to fight in the western border, Yue Gechar hid in Ulanggar to study firearms, or was sent by Ajina to Hewan as an envoy. As a result, he became very familiar with Leo.

The people around him were all extraordinary Qiexue. In addition to the scimitars on their waists, they also had a flintlock pistol on the side of their waist bags.

The finely crafted, gold-painted and silver-plated flintlock pistol has limited power, and is more of a status ornament than a weapon.

Leo was very familiar with the performance of muskets. With a caliber and length like this, the bullets fired could only kill unarmored targets at close range, and were normally quite effective in single combat.

If it were used in the military, it would be an unqualified weapon.

Yue Gechaer was very happy to see Leo's independently developed flintlock pistol, and took the initiative to help him hold the horse.

Leo could only grab the dragon scale horse's mane to prevent the bad-tempered dragon scale horse from biting to death the young man from the West who suddenly approached.

Yue Gechaer had no idea that he had escaped a disaster. He walked by the reins and whispered to Leo, "The Great Witch of the Western Territory is against firearms, saying that they are the power of the devil. He also wants to unite all tribes and prohibit our Talhan family from using firearms. There have been many voices of opposition in the city recently, so I created this portable pistol for promotion."

"If every warrior in the West Territory holds one, and everyone gets used to using it, the rumors about the witch will be self-defeating."