Rise of Rurik

The huge tree trunk was dragged to the frozen pier by the combined efforts of the crowd and deer, where further processing awaits the tree.

The trestle of the pier was covered with snow, the vast river was covered with ice, and on the shore, a group of ships was attached to a large amount of snow. Seems like this is a deadly scene? It is not so at all.

The wharf has become not only a storage yard for wood, but also a log processing place.

The tree was merely towed to the pier, and Rurik turned his head and fulfilled his promise.

The promised reward of three pounds of wheat for the laborer was immediately realized. This favor is not only aimed at the Rus people and mercenaries, especially those fighting tribesmen.

The scope of the favor has expanded, and the current residents of Elrond Castle have consumed as much as five hundred pounds of oats in one meal alone. For the first time in their lives, the children of the tribe are actually filled with a lot of wheat, so the feeling of fullness is what they think is happiness.

This is just the wheat that people eat, those hard-working reindeer, they simply consumed nearly a thousand pounds!

It was only when Rurik was serious about counting grain consumption that he realized that his previous estimates were naive.

Indeed, seventy thousand pounds of grain arrived here, and it weighed over twenty-five tons.

A thousand years later, only a heavy truck will be needed to transport grains of this order of magnitude.

In the current era, to transport them, the Rus used a lot of cargo sleds. The sleds are generally made recently, and the material used is mostly oak, so the overall structure is quite strong. Sleds can generally carry up to two tons of supplies, and there is no problem with them transporting food.

The current problem is that even if there is so much food, if the people in the entire settlement are ordered to do high-intensity winter material production in the long run, especially the logging, transportation, and deep processing of wood, the food can be completely consumed in two to three months. .

Although a large amount of grain arrived to provide sufficient security for the labor force, they need to do a bigger job, that is, the surplus grain for the residents of Elrond, which can be regarded as a useful feedback after taking a large amount of iron from their hands.

Extreme logging should come to an end.

The tree still has to be cut down, that is, to make certain restrictions.

No, those ordinary small trees no longer need to be cut down, and digesting the trunks all over the ground is a difficult job for Elrond.

The focus of the felling was entirely on those tall spruce trees that "stand out from the crowd." In order to get them, Rurik had to send a large number of strong men,

There are also the strongest group of reindeer, providing a large amount of wheat as their strong backing, and this is only on the eve of the Rus' Hanukkah, they cut down and transported five large cedar trees.

Their heights vary a bit, but the shortest one has more than 20 stikas.

Overall, their heights are still too extreme.

While the brave are cutting down the tallest trees, others are doing a very delicate job.

That still has to start with the arrival of the team transporting supplies.

The deer breeders have taken part of the deer herd for winter grazing, and they won't consume a single bit of Elrond's supplies. The people who remained in the settlements, their active logging was essentially hired by Rurik, and it became natural to provide wheat as a reward.

Life adds challenges, and boredom seems to be diluted a lot.

On a quiet night, there was only a group of mercenaries on duty, and bonfires were lit outside the gates of the wooden walls of Fort Elrond. They were ordered to be night watchmen, and a bonfire to dissipate the chill.

Rurik didn't want to go to bed early that night.

A bundle of tree trunks with the thickness of an adult man's thighs, which turned gray under the light of the oil lamp, was resisted by the mercenaries to the meeting room of Rurik's mansion.

The leader of the tribe, Mechasta, was naturally sitting here. Today, he was asked by Rurik to sit down because he was ordered to witness these trees.

Rurik didn't know if this person knew the "ash tree" as well as Yevlo did.

"Do you recognize this tree?"

"Is this... it was cut from the forest?" Mechasta's expression fully showed that he did not know.

"Huh? You really don't know?"

"Yes. It looks like the trunks are very special, like the pebbles of the stream. Most of them are gray."

"My mercenary captain told me that this is an ash tree, which is the best material for making bows." Rurik asked again: "I thought you knew it. Unexpectedly..."

"Is it a good material for bows? To be honest, I have never seen it. Master, can I touch it."

Rurik shrugged: "Of course, you can do it yourself."

Ash tree is ash tree, its bark is gray in brown overall, people who are more sensitive to color can easily find it in the woods. In addition, a major feature of the wild ash tree is that the trunk is very straight.

It was indeed the first time in his life that Mechasta had seen an ash tree, and since it was a good material for a bow, it had to at least show good elasticity. He untied the hemp rope, found a wooden pole that was much thicker than his forearm, and tried to bend it with his feet.

The results of it? The trunk had a very obvious bend, and when Mechasta released his force, the trunk instantly returned to its original shape.

This magical trunk named "Grey Tree" completely refreshed Mechasta's cognition, and the whole person's face changed from prudence to ecstasy.

"It's a really good material for bows, much better than the oak we're used to."

"Of course." Rurik shrugged, "I think it is expedient for you to choose oak. Oak is very hard, and it should be used for shipbuilding. You Kovins are very good at archery, and now I order you to make a batch of this wood. Longbow. I will ask no other tribute from you for this, you have made a bow, and it is your weapon, and my only requirement is that if my army is going to fight the enemy, you must send some archers for me war."

Mechasta immediately understood that the wood for these bows was not as simple as a reward. Their own tribes handed in thousands of hand axes and spearheads as tribute, and the tribes bear a heavy burden for this. As a result, Rurik received a batch of wheat and these bow-making materials in return while receiving the tribute. There was a real sense of business dealings with each other, even if Rurik didn't say it.

The more Mechasta thought about it, the happier he became, and he couldn't help asking, "My master, where did you get these precious woods?"

"From a magical island."

"Oh..." Mechasta's cheerful old face was a little stiff. He felt that this was a secret kept by the Rus, so he didn't ask any further questions.

The truth is that Rurik told the truth.

Although this part of Europe is not suitable for the use of compound bows with tendons and horns, in the 15th century, a batch of compound crossbows made of wood and beef tendon have been put into the battlefield. Of course, with the mass production of the steel-arm crossbow and its relatively low maintenance cost, the steel-arm crossbow has become the mainstream of long-range weapons in an era.

The longbow made of red sandalwood has almost become the exclusive property of the British residents. They paid a lot of money for the yew produced in the warm Mediterranean.

In other parts of Europe, a considerable number of single bows are made of various oaks. After all, this is also an expedient measure. Shooting arrows 500 times is inevitable.

It's not that they don't understand the subtlety of ash tree bows, but the distribution of ash trees in this area of ​​Europe is also very strange. They mainly grow in southern regions. Even if the species can endure the extreme cold of minus 20 degrees, it does not mean that it can Grows widely in areas such as Finland.

For example, in the Oulu River Basin where the Kovins once settled, the ash tree does not exist, so in the Kemi River Basin further north, it does not exist. Even the saplings were artificially moved to Elrond for planting, but they were still frozen to death in winter.

Rurik believes that the "hard stone island", that is, Gogran Island. It is because of geographical reasons that the Finns and Estonians have no ability to touch it. The island is by no means a mere five-family ash tree. If you continue to explore, there must be There is an ash forest.

A longbow made of ash is of course not as good as yew, which is also much better than an oak bow.

Rurik asked the key question: "Now that the wood is handed over to you, how many can you make? Remember, I don't want a short wooden bow, I want you to make a batch of long bows that are about your height."

This made Mechasta a little more difficult.

"Well, maybe... Twenty is fine."

Rurik tapped the wooden floor hard, and asked loudly, "How many men do you have who can draw bows? Thirty?"

"Yes! If you count some boys who are about to grow up, there must be thirty of them."

"That's thirty bows, which must be as long as your height."

"Ah this! Isn't it too extreme."

"Not extreme. Listen, only a longbow can shoot a long arrow to make the arrow have to go further. Just do what I ask, and when you're done, we'll have to hunt a few bears to see the effect."

In this way, Mechasta began to organize the manpower to make bows of extreme length using the newly obtained high-quality wood.

They used the traditional method of cutting the wood first, and since the availability of hard and sharp scrapers, chops, axes and saws made of ferrochromium, wood has been processed more efficiently than ever.

The wood is cut into almost cylindrical wooden sticks with the thickness of a child's forearm. At this point, the bow's excellent elasticity and good hardness are exhibited. It's just that it's a cylinder, and Rurik gave a big order, that is, the Kovins who made the bow, use a scraper to flatten it, that is, it becomes exactly like a pole.

They've never machined bows this way, they just don't know the benefits of doing it.

In this era, the bow arm of the European single bow is all a cylindrical wooden stick, and its poor structure makes its power storage capacity seriously wasted. Only flat bow arms are correct.

The flat bow arms are roasted on the fire. This is a heat treatment operation using wood to be bent by heat, and then a rough bowstring made of hemp rope is fastened to it, and the stones are dropped for bow training.

There are as many as thirty bows to be processed, which is already a mass production operation. Mechasta's subordinates are forest hunters, and their bows are made by themselves. Due to the quality of the oak short bows in their hands, they often have to make new bows, so everyone has rich experience in bow making .

It took them more than ten days to complete the thirty bows, and that's all they were rushing to work.

The length is fixed at 1.6stika, which is actually 157cm. Thirty longbows are all of this length, and they are all guided by Mechasta's own height and length.

Yes, the man Mechasta is a dwarf himself, and his clansmen are all dwarfs. They are far less tall and strong than the Rus, and they are well aware of their inherent disadvantages, so they are very careful in archery training.

The ash-rod longbow was all finished, and on November 11 of the Julian calendar, when the length of the day was so short that it was almost a "god's alms", Rurik gave the bored residents of Elrond in public. , showing the style of this new batch of longbows.

No, a thirty-man archer team suddenly appeared. Among them were mercenaries from Kewen, Rus, Melalen, and even the Finn, Yevro.

Arrow shafts are made by women, and the material is pine. The feathers of the arrows come from the birds caught by the traps. The flying feathers are glued to the shaft by turpentine. It is also three tail feathers as usual. In order to pursue a gyroscopic effect stability, the glue of the feathers is slightly inclined to the shaft of the arrow.

As for the arrow cluster, it is also very high-end. It is made by Kewen blacksmith with chrome iron, and finally pine resin and hemp rope are tied to the arrow shaft.

The iron cluster arrows, which were extremely precious to them in the past, are now standard.

Thirty people held the longbow, and every one who drew the bow felt the unprecedented power of the bow.

Because once their short wooden bows only weighed twenty pounds at most, what about this long bow? The pounds were all forty pounds.

Even the Kewen people are short in stature. In the past, they did a lot of heavy manual labor, and their food arrangements were much better than before. They were all strong enough to draw the bow with double the strength.

Of course, even if it is a 40-pound single bow, don't expect it to shoot armor-piercing arrows to really pierce armor, but its arrows do have the ability to pierce polar bear fur. There is a saying that the strength does not need to be too large, just the right amount.

A shooting range appeared in Elronborg. Thirty people were ordered by Rurik to form a dense formation and shoot at the roughly erected wooden wall fifty meters away.

With Yevro's lead roaring, they fired their arrows.

These spinning arrows left shocking and beautiful rules in the air. They formed a rain of arrows. Each arrow spun wildly and flew towards the target in a parabolic cluster on the horizon. Soon after the target came out, there was a crackling sound of arrows.

All of them have a good ability to handle short wooden bows. Now that they use long bows, they generally feel that their skills have improved. This was not how they felt either, because when examining which arrows had hit, Rurik saw a cluster of arrows that had sunk into the trunk of a pine tree, and to pull it out would require a strong man to hold the arrow in his own hands and yank it hard. Many arrow shafts were broken like this at a time.

Still have any doubts about the longbow? Rurik was even very impressed with their excellent eyesight, and even their excellent archery ability suppressed by the inferior short wooden bow.

Afterwards, these thirty people stood outdoors again and made a 45° projectile at the ice surface in the distance. It was later found out that most of the arrows flew over an astonishing 200 stikas, or 200 meters. The killing distance of this projectile is more than double the ability of the oak short bow! Isn't it a big shock to the Rus people?

Because 200 meters is already a very amazing distance, it can give the Ross people a huge tactical advantage. If this is used together with a crossbow, it is an Eastern way of wit and tactics.

The perception of arrows in people's hearts has been refreshed.

After another five days, a hunting team led by Yevro with a longbow and a steel-armed crossbow killed two wandering polar bears with just a longbow in an unexplored forest farther north from the mine. . Only the long arrows fired by the longbow achieved results, and the powerful steel-armed crossbow did not need to be used at all.

Yevluo is mainly hunting to improve his life, and his secondary purpose is to find big cedar trees. Even if you don't cut down the tree immediately and pull it away, you can still get it after you mark it.

The equipment of the white wax rod longbow once again enhanced the strength of the Iron Squirrel Tribe.

It is precisely because of this work that Rurik has thoroughly figured out the fighting power that the tribe can still have at the moment.

It can be said that the fighting power of those Kewen women needs to be ignored, because they will gradually become big-bellied, and the fathers of the children are generally Rus. Every child will find their own identity, is it a Cowen or a Rus? For the sake of honor, economic status and even their future, they still have a very simple bloodline. They cannot deny that their parents are from Rus, and their homeland is one of many settlements in Rus.

After the military defeat, the Iron Squirrel Tribe has only 30 people who control the strings, and these people are destined to make a small fraction of the servant army.

This Kewen tribe has an absolute population disadvantage, and it does not take too long to be assimilated by the Rus.

Making great longbows made the days leading up to Hanukkah a little more fun, and people all over the settlement were eager to see people with longbows playing target shooting.

The Rus' Hanukkah has finally arrived. In fact, on the day of "complete darkness", the Russ of Elron celebrated the most important annual festival of the tribe by lighting a large number of bonfires.

The Kewen people are also offering sacrifices, especially the priestess Parla dressed as an owl. She is beating a small leather drum and playing the harmonica. The strange and solemn voice makes the sacrifice ceremony complicated and diverse. change.

It is true that Rurik was delighted to see the two groups do sacrifices on the same day. As usual, he killed a sacrificial stag with his sword, showed the deer's blood to the Northern Lights, cut open the deer's liver, and declared in public: "Guard Russ. Odin of Odin blesses Aron Orava Castle with peace and prosperity."

Everyone was cheering, and Rurik knew that he had stabilized the hearts of the settled Ross fishermen. He also understood the oracle of Priestess Kewen, that "the Grey Squirrel tribe submits to the Rus to obtain permission from the God of Mountains and Rivers". In fact, the words of the priestess had political considerations. After all, the honorable Rurik knew their language, and the words were also spoken to Rurik, which was a clear statement of submission.

Rurik naturally comprehended, and winked to tell her his relief.

"Now that Hanukkah is over, I even made a cameo role as a priest. Otto, it's time for your winter hunters to come back. When you come back, I'll control the sleigh, pull all the wood I've made, and take me with you. The people have returned to their hometown." Rurik has already made plans for the next thing, the first Ross's largest ship, the "galleon", which imitates the Caravel ship, must have the most critical mast installed as soon as possible. , must be launched after the sea is thawed for sea trials.

No, that was no longer a trial voyage, but put into service, becoming the best transport ship and the most combat-ready warship.