Haidu Khan made an agreement with Jerubijie to send 20,000 warriors from the tribe of Murb and 10,000 warriors to the tribes attached to Murb, under the command of Urgon Murb and Tachi Murb. After the 30,000 cavalry warriors gathered, they will rush to Youzhou as fast as possible. After getting this news, most of the tribal nobles who knew the inside story were overjoyed, and did not mention the many benefits promised by Yelu Dashi, for the northern tribe of Mobei and the Khitan army, war and fighting the grass valley were inseparable, and they could get the permission of the Khitan State to go deep into the rich land of the south to fight the grass valley, which was worth working on the grassland for many years. But most of the ordinary shepherds below, except for a few who had the courage to get ahead, were worried that they would delay the journey and take care of their livestock, and that they would die in a foreign land.

Even among the tribal nobles, there are those who have doubts. Haidu Khan's eldest son, Boshenghuo Murbo, was one of them. Although he is likely to inherit the throne of the Great Khan because of his son, he is a somewhat mediocre person. There were several slave girls in the tent, who were not yet forty years old, and their eyelids and chin were drooping. Even his son, Tachi Murbo, looked down on this useless father.

"It's not worth it to leave the grassland of your hometown and sacrifice the lives of your clansmen to fight for the people of Liao." Boshenghuo Erbo subconsciously avoided Tachi's gaze and said in a low voice: "When my ancestor was framed by the enemy, my grandfather fled for his life alone, and when he founded the family business, there were only a dozen sheep, but now, we are already the largest tribe in Mobei, with tens of thousands of soldiers, and the number of cattle, alpacas, and horses is too many to count, what do you want to rob so much?" ”

"For the future of the Mlb tribe. The chiefs of the tribes will be slaves, and the brave warriors will be rewarded, and if they are not satisfied, the tribes will rebel and the house of Mirb will perish. Tachi Murb said coldly, not at all as if he were speaking to his father. He gestured with great interest the dagger given by Yelu Bijie, slashed twice in the air, felt very handy, and said happily: "I heard that in Yunzhou, there are many such weapons. ”

"The Xia Kingdom is stronger, the weapons are sharper, and the armor is better." Berthauer bowed his head a little weakly, completely devoid of his father's sense of dignity. He stroked the wool blanket from the Xia Kingdom with both hands, the goods of the Song Kingdom were always not in line with the herdsman's wishes, and the goods of the Liao Kingdom were too rough, and they were not as good as the goods of the Xia Kingdom.

"Xia Guo is our enemy." Tachi Murbo's face sank suddenly, the most intolerable thing about his father was that he often helped the Xia people to speak, and his grandfather probably became more and more alienated from him because of this. "Dividing the steppe of freedom into small pieces is equal to countless cages, cutting the feathers of the eagle and encouraging the traitors of the tribe to commit rebellion."

But the herdsmen say that after settling down, the livestock will not lose weight easily, and the herdsmen will put effort into improving the pastures, and they can grow good pasture grass where there is plenty of water, so that they can feed more livestock. After dividing the grassland, it is not easy for everyone to fight, and on the side of the Xia Kingdom, there are almost no cases of people dying for a piece of water and grassland. When you settle down, you don't have to worry about the water meadows in front of you being taken over by other tribes, and you don't have to worry about sudden storms, ice and snow on the road. Berthauer whispered stubbornly. Even if it is the way of the weak and the strong, the weak should stand with the strongest. ”

Tachi was his son after all, and the future leader of the Murb tribe, and although he was somewhat dissatisfied with his mediocre father, he took pains to tell him what he thought was right. As everyone knows, his good-tempered personality is even more "mediocre" in Tachi's eyes.

Hearing his words, Tachi was slightly stunned, but he didn't expect that this father, who usually only messed with slave girls and lowly lowly shepherds, also had some ideas. He was silent for a moment, and then said coldly: "If there is no fighting, no fear, will the shepherds willingly obey the Mlb family?" They will live like the Xia people, and then obey the will of the Xia Emperor. After saying that, he stood up, bowed and said goodbye and went out. From the bottom of his heart, he was tired of this useless father.

Boshenghuo Erbo sighed lightly, lowered his head, and muttered, "Natural selection, only the fittest survive. Maybe I'm worried. He took a sip of milk tea, took out a few big books from the corner of the tent, flipped through them casually, and on the hairy cover, it was written from Xia Guozi, "Justice of the Mean", "Mechanical Regulations", "Commercial Tax Rules", "Collection of Words", "Zhengmeng", "Acting Heaven", "Species in the World", "Genealogy of Good Horses" and other titles. Boshenghuo Erbo was one of the few people in the Murbo tribe who knew the characters of Xia and Song, but none of this could change his useless reputation. The shepherd went to bed early, but the glimmer of the tent remained bright until the third watch, and outside, several long howls of steppe wolves were heard.

Whenever the clouds cover the moon, the night on the grassland is particularly dark. The lights of the tribe can only illuminate a small area around them, and if you ride out a short distance, you will be in darkness where you can't see your fingers. Tachi Murbo quarreled with his father, rode a mustang horse that had just been tamed, and galloped wildly through the grassland for more than ten miles, surrounded by darkness, and he exhaled the cold night air with his eyes up to the sky, and suppressed all the unhappiness, before he slowly returned, and in the thorn bushes not far away, there seemed to be the green eyes of the steppe wolf, and he did not care. "Come on, just shoot you with an arrow." He thought with hatred that he deliberately put the horse full of speed, and after waiting for a while, the steppe wolf still did not dare to step forward, so he urged the horse to return to the tribe.

On August 15 of this year, Zhao Xingde and his entourage spent time in the countryside in the river. The big guy returned to his heart like an arrow, so he did not march according to the regular rule of sixty miles a day, but drew a line when passing the post station and continued to move forward, hurrying on horsepower, as long as he found a camping place around dark, sometimes marching more than 100 miles a day. This part of the river is full of agriculture and animal husbandry, and it is autumn, and outside the farmer's yard, hay stacks are piled high, and there is no shortage of grain and pasture. In order to reunite with his family as soon as possible, the sergeant of the Chengying Battalion, who paid for the money of grain and straw and had a large pocket, didn't care very much.

Although after more than 100 years of settlement, Hezhong is still much less populated than Guanzhong, and the owner of the farmhouse is a retired sergeant who was drafted for the war two months ago. Although this family was a well-to-do farmer, there were not so many rooms for more than 100 people, so the sergeants camped in a large barn and tied their horses to the side. Wang Tongdeng and others talked with great interest about whether the recruitment of retired sergeants in the river this time was to do something against the Sultan of Rûm.

"It seems that this trip is not the right time to come back," Wang Tongdeng shook his head and sighed, "The river actually implements the law of double summoning of sergeants, and the military government is clearly going to do a big job." He stretched out his hand to unfold the map of the march, held the oil lamp to it, and pointed to the southwest of the Amu Darya River and said, "The Sultan of Rûm and the country of Lumei are recuperating and recuperating, and it is worth giving him a moment at this time." ”

Wang Tongdeng's so-called sergeant double summoning law is a system established since the founding of the country. Each battalion recruited an equivalent number of retired non-commissioned officers and then mixed them with the active non-commissioned officers, thus expanding each battalion into two battalions. Each corps was also expanded to two corps with a unified military name. In one of the regiments, the complete command system of active generals, captains, and centurions remained completely unchanged, and retired sergeants were quickly adapted to the barracks and could immediately go to battle. The General's Mansion sent another General Quan and Sima to train another legion that remained in place, and if the front line failed, this army could be reinforced, or stay behind to defend the homeland. If the war is protracted, the second legion will call up the sergeants again before the battle, and so on and so on, the number of retired sergeants can be expanded to five times the number of standing troops. If the fight continues, it will be necessary to mobilize the regiment to train the army, which also means that the national Zuo of the Xia State has reached the critical point of life and death, and everyone, including the old and weak, women and children, may go to the battlefield.

"Yes, so do the merchants and inns on the road." Du Blowhorn leaned over and said. He secretly rejoiced that he had escaped a great battle, while the young sergeants mostly looked regretful.

"Not necessarily," Zhao Xingde hesitated, "With such a major military situation, the marching commander can't make a fuss before the war starts." "The Chengying Battalion has also carried out many times in Lumei to help the barbarians and the Rus State in distress, remembering the big ship equipped with siege guns he saw in the Zhenxi Fort, his eyes moved from the Zhenxi Fort along the coast to the north, to the mouth of the big river, and along the river up, is the capital of the Rus' Kingdom.

When Zhao Xingde first heard about the sergeant's summoning law, he once thought that such a mobilization was like adding fuel, but when he became familiar with the operation of the army, he no longer felt strange. Because even if it were possible to mobilize an army far greater than the standing army in a very short period of time, the logistics would not be able to support such a large number of troops. It is not only the number of sergeants that is doubling the number of soldiers, but also the burden of salaries, military supplies, and the number of mules and horses for the government treasury are all more than doubled, and at the time of mobilization, the wealth that the state has accumulated in ordinary times is used like flowing water. And that's not even counting the delivery of huge armies and corresponding military supplies to the front of the battlefield, the countless losses and replenishments in the war, and so on. All in all, unless it is a last resort, the Xia State will not waste its national strength at will, but try to ensure the quality of the army as much as possible. And when the war penetrated deep into the borders of the Xia Kingdom, what the five governments considered was not the law of double the recruitment of sergeants, but the general recruitment law of sergeants and the general recruitment law of regimental training. Among them, the law of double recruitment of sergeants requires the consent of the majority of the Protectorate Mansion, the general recruitment law of sergeants must be approved by the majority of the Protector Government and the Pillar State Government to be implemented, and the general recruitment law of regimental training must be agreed by the majority of the Pillar State Government and the protectors of the conscripted states.

The sergeants were talking lively, and the hostess of the farm, Meng Wang, came to entertain her with two children, her son Meng Bin was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and her daughter Meng Jiao was eighteen years old. Although the daughter's family in the river is not as restrained as the Central Plains, she suddenly saw so many young sergeants, with a charm that was not shy. Wang Tongdeng frequently peeked at her. While enthusiastically serving hot broth to these young officers, Meng Wang chattered: "I don't know if I can come back during the Chinese New Year." A hint of worry flashed in his brown eyes. Zhao Xingde took out a silver coin from his arms and gave it to the young man who helped. smiled casually: "Look at this child, the sister-in-law of the Meng family is really blessed." ”

"Bodhisattva bless," Meng Wang took out dozens of round dough cakes from the rattan basket and pushed them in the middle of the table, which were wrapped in sugar hearts, which were moon cakes. A hint of gloom flashed in her eyes, "I can pull these three dolls into adults." "The land here is vast and sparsely populated, and the climate is sometimes harsh, so it is often difficult to delay the diagnosis and treatment of children when they are sick. She gave birth to a total of seven children, four of whom died due to various reasons such as epidemics, and in addition to these two, there was only one seven-year-old seven-year-old child.