Such a large-scale tribal migration could never be completely hidden from prying eyes, unless the tribe had no elders, weaklings, women, or children, and was made up entirely of able-bodied warriors who could ride and bend the bow. The latter could veil their movement by slaughtering and silencing all they plundered along the way and then racing off, but the former—dragging their whole households with them—basically had no such chance.
At the same time, the nearby wild people tribes all sent out their own warriors to begin monitoring, and these warriors were gathering in ever greater numbers. One tribe had two or three thousand, another had four or five thousand. Very soon, along this migration route, nearly over twenty thousand warriors from various wild people tribes were glaring at them like tigers watching prey.
Messages also began to pass swiftly between the tribes, and from the outer ring, new warriors kept entering and joining in.
