At first, Villa thought it would be enough to organize fifty supporters of Otto. Unexpectedly, there would be as many as five hundred people preparing to go north that night.
Staying in your own house during the long winter, the feeling of boredom becomes increasingly irritating.
Go out to greet the leader when he comes back. You might find something unexpected outside during this trip.
Some brave men are preparing, and some women are also taking action spontaneously, simply because their husbands have not returned home with the leader Otto.
When the news from the priest reached the ears of these women, they firmly believed that their husbands were walking hard in the snowy fields with a large harvest, because there were so many prey that even a strong man could not easily carry them.
The wife's anxiety disappeared and was replaced by joy at the prospect of a good harvest.
Nearly two hundred women, some even with their children, each dressed like a bear, began to prepare sleds for pulling goods overnight. The sleds were loaded with a large amount of dry food, and even animal skin tents for outdoor camping and logging.
and an ax to slay the beast.
In the end, nearly a thousand people were organized, including men, women, and many children.
Even Rurik himself was pulled into this mighty army by his mother Niya.
More people saw that even leader Otto's wife and Rurik, who had high hopes, took action. This search northward could no longer be called a search.
It was the warmest expression that Rossburg made to the victorious people.
When the first ray of sunshine in the morning shines hard on the pale earth, a sense of holiness penetrates people's hearts.
After dinner, everyone started to move in unison, and the vast team spontaneously formed a wide search line to make it easier to find the returning people.
Rurik was also sitting on the sled. He was dressed like a little bear.
Of course, what is completely different from a bear is that he always carries a knife in his waist for self-protection and for cutting meat.
Like other women, Niya is quite thickly dressed and will personally pull her sled towards the north.
Not to mention, even women, even people on skis carrying some heavy supplies, can still move faster on the snow.
For Rurik, today's action was actually the first time he left Fort Ross in the fjord!
Leaving their homes protected by hills, the huge team walked directly on the frozen ocean in order to go north, because the road was very smooth.
Right next to Rurik, his cousin Arik was also dragging his sleigh, and accompanying him was his wife Peravina.
The north wind was like a knife. Looking at his mother's back struggling to move forward, he couldn't help but feel more worried.
"Mom, how about I come down and walk?" he suggested.
"No need! My child, at least now I can easily pull you."
Niya is really not young. She usually eats too much red meat and fish and does a lot of physical work, but her physical fitness is still very good.
Rurik didn't say anything else. He sat obediently throughout the short day, until night fell and people began to set up camp one after another.
They brought a batch of charcoal, so bonfires quickly appeared on the ice.
There is no need to worry that the charcoal fire is roasting the ice under the camp. Because of more than ten days of continuous freezing, the average thickness of the flat layer in the Gulf of Bothnia has exceeded one meter, and the ice is thicker closer to the coast.
The people who went north to look for the leaders were very smart, and the way forward on the ice was indeed the most convenient.
Of course Otto also knew about such a superior way back home, but this idea was finally changed due to the death of a large number of reindeer.
Naturally, there was no grass growing on the ice. Those deer that were forcibly expelled caused a large number of deaths after just two days of walking on the ice.
Otto originally had a hundred deer as trophies, but when he led his men back to land operations again, they only had half the number.
Because the nutrition of grass under the snow is limited, reindeer do not hibernate. They will survive the entire winter, but at the cost of eating grass throughout the winter.
This is why reindeer people must practice winter grazing.
If they could have a large amount of grain, they could feed their deer herds with this extremely nutritious grain, but that is absolutely impossible.
Feeding reindeer with wheat is a bizarre idea.
But without enough energy, a large number of reindeer would die from exhaustion if they had to drag the sled and the leisurely and comfortable Ross man sitting on the sled for more than 200 kilometers.
Reindeer are certainly a traditional species in the Arctic Circle, and they migrate hundreds of kilometers every year.
They naturally have extremely strong endurance, but this is by no means a reason to abuse their animal power.
Smart deer farmers will not go crazy and order their deer to starve and spend several days walking through the migration route that they completed in two months.
Otto and his men are not deer farmers, and their attitude towards deer is also predatory. If the deer can return to Roseburg alive, it can continue to be raised for a period of time to try to obtain more value. It does not matter if it dies midway.
Worry, the owner of the deer can immediately peel off the precious deer skin and antlers, and the remaining venison is the best dry food.
Whether they have made meritorious deeds or not, they have at least two deer.
Now everyone has to face the terrible reality. Many people are left with the last surviving deer.
Some of Otto's men helped him drive the deer away, but he himself had to keep an eye on the last girl who was the deer herder.
A half-dead deer is not a catastrophic problem. Many of his subordinates go to deal with the deer carcass. The skin goes to the leader and the meat to the subordinates.
The opportunity to easily obtain a large amount of delicious red meat was right in front of him. The fifty venison belonging to Otto quickly turned into pieces of meat, and a considerable part had already entered the stomachs of the tribesmen.
Otto, what he cared about most was still the deer herder girl.
Along the way, the child neither cried nor fussed. She just sat quietly on the sled wrapped in a thick leather coat. She ate meat and drank water. She had no intention of running away for several days.
"This kind of person is simply a born servant?"
Otto became more and more curious, but little did he know that the girl saw that her deer was being cannibalized by barbarians, and her heart was bleeding.
But what can a child who has lost his entire family and is controlled by barbarians do?
She cannot understand the language of the barbarians, and now she is completely submissive, but she just doesn't want to die. Because she is cowardly now, she does not have the courage to commit suicide like her mother. She is also very unlucky, not like herself
Brothers and sisters were frozen to death like that.
However, he was the only one alive, with his hands and feet still bound.
She doesn't know where she will be escorted yet, but looking at the current situation, she is afraid that the deer that were taken away from her home will die of exhaustion and starvation in the vast snowfield before she determines where to go. Her personal fate may be similar.
tragedy.
The girl remained silent, longing that she would fall asleep one day and never see the sun again.
It just so happened that while I was still alive, the deer were getting fewer and fewer every day.
Otto and his party turned back to the old road. Based on the marks left earlier, everyone basically determined their geographical location.
Everyone is also very happy, and we can return to Roseburg in two or three days at most.
The only unhappy thing is that the deer pulling their sleds all died. The once two-day journey might have lasted three days or more, because on their sleds were not only their own various snowfield camping equipment, but also those
A large number of animal hides and a large number of frozen and hard pieces of meat bring greater weight.
Returning home with a full load is a good thing, and being able to bring them back without too much effort is what everyone hopes for.
Otto hoped that his men in Roseburg could send people to help everyone bring back the treasure, not to mention that the people in Roseburg have missed everyone for too long.
"Maybe I should send someone to take a shortcut immediately to inform them!"