Chapter 1269: Halted
Across the vast ice field, the dog team ran hard on all four legs.
The hot breath from their mouths formed clouds of white vapor in the air before being scattered by the freezing wind.
Ollie saw Alesha beside him gesture that they would reach the end of this journey in another forty minutes.
Yet at that moment, Zhang Heng, who had been remarkably quiet behind Ollie until then, suddenly reached out and patted him on the back, shouting in English, "Stop!"
But Ollie did not stop immediately. He turned around to see what Zhang Heng wanted, only to find that Zhang Heng had vanished by the time he looked behind him.
Ollie was startled. He had not expected Zhang Heng to be left behind halfway through—or... more accurately, to have voluntarily jumped off the sled himself.
The sled was not moving slowly, traveling at around twenty-five kilometers per hour. Jumping off at that speed could easily have sent him flying somewhere. Just as Ollie pulled the reins to stop the dog team, a gunshot suddenly rang out beside him.
Ollie instinctively ducked his head. After confirming that he was unharmed, he hurriedly looked toward Alesha's sled and saw that she was also reining in her dogs. She and Song Jia wore the same uncertain, alarmed expressions. Ollie breathed a sigh of relief, then looked toward the other sled, only to see one of the tribesmen Alesha's tribe had sent to meet them slump over onto it.
Then he heard Song Jia shouting, "Get down, get down! Zhang Heng messaged me—there's a sniper!"
Fear immediately rose in Ollie's heart. Before he could even bring the dog team fully to a stop, he copied Zhang Heng and jumped straight off the sled, pressing himself tightly against the ice