Rise of Rurik

A light snow arrived unexpectedly, and its power seemed to only make the temperature slightly colder.

The essence of spring has arrived, and the Mediterranean Sea in the south is full of flowers, that is, the Gulf of Bothnia in the extreme north and the pure Arctic Circle are still covered with ice and snow.

Fort Elrond is already within the Arctic Circle, and Narvik Port is simply deeper.

The gloomy world kept dropping dense ice crystals, which added a little worry to the team about to travel.

Rurik took a late sleep, and around noon, he ate the local grilled salmon again.

The fish was presented by Mechasta, who himself entered Rurik's palace.

"My lord, did you sleep well yesterday?" He asked complimentingly.

"It's so comfortable. My woman, Noren, isn't up yet."

"Then this meal..."

"It's okay." Rurik waved his hand, "There is basically no chance to sleep peacefully in the next few days. Mechasta, how are you doing what you told me?"

"I organized people to carry the dead grass for you overnight. The bundles of grass have been placed on the new sled, but the grass may not be enough for the deer. The worse thing is that it is snowing outside."

"I know it's snowing, and that's all right. By the way, my Tavastian women, how are they?"

"They are very good. I have ordered them. My people dare not provoke them at all. There is another thing I want to report to you."

"Is it a good thing?" Rurik asked.

"It's a good thing."

"But it doesn't matter."

"It's about the free deer breeders. Some of them are temporarily staying at our Elronburg. You may have known about it. They came to do business, and since they are all your servants..."

Rurik's mind was already filled with the matter of my going to Balmerk, and he suddenly remembered this: "Then go and have a look."

After a while, a group of dwarfs in ragged clothes stood in front of him.

That was Rumia's very distant uncle,

The person gave an order, and all the "dwarves" knelt down on the ground one after another.

Are they all so-called free-spirited deer breeders? indeed so. Hearing that they speak the dialect of Old Finnish, it is indeed the same accent as Rumia.

They kept saying that they had an audience with their master.

But, how could they be so obedient? It must be plotting for wealth.

"You all get up." Rurik flattened him with the same words, and he stood on a high place with open arms, showing his broad mind.

"I am indeed your master! Your life is protected by Ross, but to do business in my territory, you must hand over tribute."

They continued to tell themselves that "there were a few reindeer as a tribute, and that was the only thing they had to offer.

They are deer keepers, that is, Lapps or Sami.

The "wooden documents" owned by the Rus people are clearly remembered. Rus has had a deep connection with them since ancient times, and ruling them is indeed a destiny.

Perhaps his attitude towards them was a little rough at the beginning, but seeing him so submissive today, Rurik can be described as very happy.

He casually ordered Yefro: "Bring the money bag."

After a while, Rurik threw some silver coins at them.

There are not many shiny silver coins, how eye-catching are they on the snow? !

Rumia's uncle was very active, and immediately shouted: "Guys, why are you still standing there? Thank Duke Ross for his kindness!"

They immediately got down on the ground to pick up the silver coins, and happily praised the Duke as a good man.

This may be an insult, but also a means of showing power.

"This group of guys... Canglan knows etiquette. You are really poor, but you are very smart and know how to commit yourself to a strong man." Rurik thought so.

Up to now, Ross' policy against deer breeders living freely from the depths of the Gulf of Bothnia to the Kola Peninsula in the west is basically detainment.

As long as they pay in-kind tribute, they can trade in Elronburg and be protected, and they can buy useful things safely, which was impossible in the past.

Is there a more high-pressure governance for them? The population of free deer breeders is still too small, and the Kra Peninsula alone is an extremely huge place. Although they are powerless to resist, they still have the ability to escape if they are oppressed too hard.

Conquering the area where the deer breeders are located has been considered a success, but the deer breeders themselves are dispensable to Ross. Or put them to good use! For example, they come here every year uninvited and traded reindeer, which can also prevent Ross's own reindeer population from falling into the abyss of inbreeding.

Even, in some extreme situations in the future, free deer breeders may produce males to serve as sleigh drivers for the Russian army.

Rurik didn't want to pay attention to them anymore, he checked the ten new sleds and forty new deer, like giant snails standing on the snow!

These reindeer sleds provided by Mechasta are positioned as heavy trucks for mines! The deer are not randomly selected, they are all stags that have been eunuched deliberately, so as to maintain their physique and avoid their mania in April and May. In this regard, the Kewen people and other Finnish ethnic groups are well aware of it. On the contrary, Rurik, his sleigh team, almost all pull the carts are non-pregnant and thin female deer. The reason for this choice is that it is easy to manage.

The bobsled team just got bigger! Mechasta also dispatched his men.

Rurik is very familiar with these men, and they all kindly call Rurik the most honorable adult. Rurik would call them simply, "Old Soldiers".

During the war, these men were the longbowmen, and now they are serving as the royal servants. However, they carried the "Ash Tree Longbow" on their bodies, so they could shoot and kill wild beasts wandering in the snowy field from a long distance.

Once you have advanced long-range weapons, no one will refuse to shoot polar bears. They want to get precious bear skins, and even make terrible helmets from bear heads with their brains dug out.

It was the right choice to come to Fort Elrond. Not only did Rurik get more supplies, but he also inspected the snow city while his mind was clear.

The ice-covered Arron River has put all the hydraulic workshops on the ground, and they are unable to perform free forging, nor can they pound the oats into digestible crumbs.

Noren took a bath and then a sauna last night. He enjoyed the ultimate enjoyment, and his body became flaccid and weak as a result. After a break, it was already the afternoon of the next day when he woke up.

She ate some cold fish, and took Rurik's arm to visit the giant by the river.

Houses adjoining the aqueduct, huge drains of water trapped in ice.

During the nearly two years of living in Ross, she has learned a lot of Ross people's knowledge about machinery, and she was instilled with some so-called Newtonian mechanics, gears and mathematics knowledge by her man Rurik in her daily study.

Of course she couldn't learn much, but she learned a lot after all. But I am a woman, learning arithmetic and reciting formulas is very intentional, learning gears and mechanics and so on, is this to be a craftsman?

She at least understood the connection between the water row and the free-forging big hammer. After some associations, she immediately thought of those golden millstones in Roseburg's house.

She pointed to the huge bearing that was introduced into the cold house by the water drain, and said, "Rurik, since it can drive the hammer to forge, it can also drive the millstone to rotate with the new gear."

"You..." Rurik froze on the spot.

"Rurik, what's wrong with you?"

"You actually understand this?"

"Of course I understand, it's not all taught by you." After finishing speaking, she laughed again.

Mechasta himself is here, and since even Noren knows that the huge impeller of the water row can drive the millstone, it is really inappropriate not to arrange for his subordinates to do something.

After a while, he went to the workshop specialized in pounding oatmeal, and ordered Mechasta to immediately carve a cylindrical roller and even a flat stone slab out of stone. If you ask what the purpose of this thing is, Rurik gave a very simple answer: "The power of water is used to turn the stone roller and crush the wheat."

It took some effort, and Mechasta had never seen a stone mill before, so he had to follow Rurik's description and rough sketch to take over the job.

The women of the Corvin gray squirrel tribe who received the Ross species generally embraced their mixed-race children. Not only did they not reject the mixed-race children, they also hoped that their offspring would be as strong as the Ross people. Elonburg has a small population, but the number of children being raised is also amazing. Fortunately, this area has only been focused on development in recent years, and the extremely sufficient fishery resources can fully cope with the rapid expansion of the local population.

Another example is that Rurik added a batch of salted salmon jerky, and the special muscle texture of salmon is still obvious. After eating high-salt food, people's blood becomes thicker, which improves people's ability to resist severe cold.

On the appointed new day, Rurik's supplies, inspections, and research in Elronburg ended successfully.

The people warmly welcomed His Excellency Duke's journey, and many people were also glad that the hated Tavastians had finally left.

This is what everyone saw, the Duke's huge sled team went west along the coastline. Is that the right direction?

Rurik's move was indeed a detour, and he had good reasons for his detour.

In fact, go up the frozen Ailon River to Fort Fiske by the lake, and then go westward in the forest to find the Torna River.

There were seventy sledges, seven hundred people in the team, and three hundred reindeer. This large troop was advancing in the gray-white world with constant light snow, and Rurik chose the conservative route.

This conservative choice is unmistakable.

They set out early in the morning and reached the frozen estuary of the Torna River before nightfall.

The light snow is still there, and people are camping in the woods by the river.

Compared to many people's worries about the future, Rurik is as confident as ever in Noren's view.

Even though it was snowing, people still lit bonfires to make the cold night no longer scary.

People spontaneously hid in their sleds to sleep, and the reindeer gathered to report to the group for warmth. Only the guards carried weapons and kept throwing frozen branches into the bonfire.

"When will the snow stop?" Noren, who was snuggled up beside Rurik, murmured.

"how could I know."

"I'm afraid that the wind and snow will become bitter."

"It's okay, I know this place very well."

"Very familiar? Here?"

Rurik sighed softly: "When I was seven years old, I left Roseburg for the first time to participate in our winter hunting. I camped on this riverside. I told you about my past. For the past six years, we Rose have been traveling abroad. Expansion, all this is my effort!"

Incredible as it sounds, Noren knew that what Rurik said was true.

"Then next, we will go back to my hometown at the pace of my people. I... never thought that I could travel so far."

"What is this?" Rurik laughed boldly: "One day we will go to see the capital of the Romans, to see if the giant wall of Constantinople is real. Noren "Don't think about it, go to sleep."

Noren twisted his body, like a cat kept drilling into Rurik's body, hoping to get more wonderful warmth...

The world at night is pure darkness, and the vigilant sentinel discovered the green fluorescent light flickering in the snowy night forest.

Those are the eyes of arctic wolves!

It was a pack of wolves. The pack of wolves, looking for food, took risks and approached the deer herd of the Ross people. However, the wolves who did not escape in time were shot and killed by crossbows.

It is this kind of bold beast that everyone carries weapons to guard against, and the beast also contributes meat, giving the men the opportunity to fight their teeth.

For three consecutive days, the work of the sled team was to rush on endlessly. Everyone didn't worry about getting lost at all. All the Balmerk mercenaries had exactly the same caliber. It is said that although the trip took a long way, this glacier went straight to the destination.

They advanced on the snow-covered and icy road, and the sled team still advanced at a constant speed, maintaining a speed of about 60 kilometers per day.

It is not difficult to calculate how far the journey has traveled. Reindeer are very strange animals. They go to the toilet at almost constant time, and the deer breeder Yufu guesses how far they have advanced each day.

Until three days later, the snowfall process is over, and people can move forward in sunshine again.

Yes, the sun is so bright that it almost blinds people's eyes.

The huge eyelashes of the reindeer acted as natural blinds, and Rurik's men wore wooden-rimmed sunglasses.

Rurik wearing sunglasses is very heroic, and Noren also shows a bit of aloofness wearing her.

Everyone's eyes are protected, and their journey has also entered the stage of high-speed running.

Originally, Rurik was worried that when the team reached the majestic central mountains of Scandinavia, there would be a very bad process of going up the mountain. At that time, will the team have to break away from the glacier and get off the sled as a whole, and climb the mountain slowly?

It turned out that Rurik was wrong, very wrong.

It's as if he doesn't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but because he is in this mountain, his team has already entered the central mountain range, and only by careful observation can he find the clue. Because the team has been traveling on a gentle uphill these days, which is difficult for everyone to notice.

Twelve days have passed since leaving the mouth of the Torna River, and the reindeer sleigh team has demonstrated the ability to continuously run, which is extremely rare in this era. As a price, Rurik also consumed a lot of food and grass reserves.

There are mountains in front of you, and they don't look very tall. The mountain is not high at all, and the altitude of the sled team has reached 500 meters.

The Torna River has become much narrower, but the glacier is still strong. Rurik actually noticed that there were pebbles under the ice, and knew that this place was already a mountainous area, but the smoothness of the ice road and the soothing environment around him made him dare not jump to conclusions.

Until this night, people lit a large number of bonfires, and all the Balmerk mercenaries were laughing and talking about their coming home.

"It's coming soon?" Rurik heard the report from Yefro, sweeping away the boredom of these days.

The boring way of playing seems to be to listen to Noren singing the community. She has her own temper, and she is not happy to play the flute and sing ditties to a group of vulgar people of the same clan, but tonight is very special.

Because many men were yelling, and there was only one thing they yelled about—tomorrow they must arrive at the frozen lake.

A lake on a frozen hill? Are we actually on top of a hill now?

To tell you the truth, Rurik didn't check his geographical location carefully in the past few days. When the morning light illuminated the whole world the next day, he looked to the east and ignored the dense pine forests on both sides of the river. open.

It is said that today we will go to the frozen lake, and the team that is going out again is full of fighting spirit, and even the reindeer herd is dragging the sled under the drive of the whip and begins to run wild.

Rurik didn't have to wait long, the procession had already arrived at the Great Lake before noon.

Seeing this, people were already cheering, and the sound seemed to be able to shatter the ice. Even Noren was screaming, because reaching the westernmost edge of this lake, the sea will soon be visible!

And the col at the bottom of the mountain leads directly to the Narvik Fjord, and in the depths of the bay is Balmerk.

The long journey was basically within Rurik's expectations. He spent seventeen days standing on this ice lake (Lake Torna).

For the whole team, there is only one time when the Tigers go down the mountain.

Rurik gave an order: "Brothers, let's go blood red! Give the Balmerks a surprise!"