Rise of Rurik

The Ross army didn't stay for too long, and they continued to line up on the grassy plains by the lake to continue their journey south.

They quickly saw the deliberately moored fleet, and also saw the village suddenly rising from the ground ahead.

Rurik was in a good mood, and asked his brother Arik, "In the village in front, where are the people who left the forest?"

"Yes. Just a few... There must be more to be discovered."

"I see. It's up to Medvedt's future work."

Unknown to Rurik, Medvedt and his army, who were ordered to do this, were also on their way along the lake.

The Rus army was the first to arrive at the first village, and the first impression of the people who were admiring the crowd was their poverty.

Even the young children in the team have an absolute advantage over the villagers in terms of height.

The villagers are like a group of dwarves. The males are short and thin. Can such people be trained as qualified soldiers? Rurik had had some illusions about them, and now his illusions were half shattered.

The soldiers of the Slavic flag team who stayed in the village saluted their prince, and immediately brought a man, pointing out that this man was the leader of the village.

leader?

Rurik held his chin high and looked down at the short man who nodded and bowed: "Are you the village chief? Are you really from the forest?"

The village chief was speechless for a while because he was nervous. He just kept staring at the Russ army dressed in complete uniform, feeling that it was the army of God.

"What about you!"

After a loud shout, the village chief fumbled to explain his identity and the situation of the entire village.

They also spoke the Ilmenslav dialect, which Rurik understood perfectly.

"Your name is Zait (rabbit)? Your village is called Pigtooth? It's weird."

The village chief just smiled and said nothing for a while.

If this group of people is to be obedient to the people, they are indeed showing a somewhat obedient attitude. Rurik looked at the faces of men, women and children, and he could not see any anger,

Everyone was looking at each other with a smile on their faces and full of curiosity.

In this way, Rurik directly ordered: "Make your people stand! I want to check it carefully."

The village chief did not know why, so he had to do as he was under absolute military might.

They were gathered into a ball, and the curiosity just now turned into anxiety now. Rurik scrutinized them in circles with his hands behind his back, looking for a girl with a beautiful face, just to meet the needs of his young warrior.

A group of "firewood girls" made him a little disappointed, but fortunately they were still young, and when the food was improved in the future, there would still be some beautiful appearances.

Rurik suddenly stood still in front of them, with his legs crossed and his waist pinned, he preached in Slavic: "I! Rurik! Prince Russ! I am your greatest leader, and now you all Surrender to me! Your surrender is the most correct decision in your life! I promise you that you will not be slaves, as long as you give me my annual tribute, I will guarantee your safety, and any enemy who harms you will Destroyed by me. But if you betray me, you will be slaughtered mercilessly!"

Is he Prince Ross? A young man, as the soldiers said. But is he really a Varangian? Why does a Varangian speak our language?

There are still many questions in the hearts of the people, but at least everyone understood the words, and the simple reason listened to the promise of safety.

After all, Rurik called the village chief named Zaits to his side.

The village chief immediately asked: "Your Majesty, as long as... we remain absolutely loyal, can we always get your safe haven?"

"Of course. You will be more prosperous than ever, surrender to me and I will give you a better life in the future."

"Oh! Then you must be the holy messenger sent by the gods to save us."

This compliment Rurik shrugged: "I am the son of God, and the spokesperson of God in the world. Now you have to make some expressions to prove your loyalty!"

The village chief hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Listen to your honor."

"Okay. Let all the unmarried girls in your village come forward, and I will choose."

"what?!"

"Are you hesitant?" Rurik's eyes sharpened.

"This matter... A few days ago, those soldiers had already taken away several women. Could it be that Your Majesty still wants to..."

"Of course." Rurik was fully aware of those circumstances, and he fully supported it, so he deliberately asked back: "As I said, the women we took away cannot be slaves. Don't you think the Ross warriors are not worthy of having them?" your woman?"

The powerful army was in sight, and although the village chief was reluctant, he could only hook his head and let the villagers hand over the girls first.

There were barely 200 people in this village, and the number of girls who got together was actually very few, only about 20. By contrast, they have more boys.

Rurik believed in good faith that the girls in the village had been raided by young warriors from White Tree Manor. In fact, he could estimate that under very poor living conditions, any family would give priority to raising their sons. As for the future marriage of the son, it is too far away, far less important than the asset gain brought by a male labor force. These people live in the forest, and it is very likely that some girls and babies who are not healthy enough will disappear selectively, and if the living conditions are improved, this situation will disappear instantly.

What has happened to the Rus will certainly be repeated to these people.

Rurik must first satisfy his own life-long affairs. Considering that in Fisk's sixth flag team, even if there are 100 boys and girls freely combined, there are still 100 people who can't temporarily get wives.

According to the Slavic tradition, a twelve-year-old girl would be married to her parents, so the so-called girls that Rurik could examine were all too young.

Asked and asked, only five of the girls were basically of age, but their short stature was a little unconvincing.

Rurik pointed with a big hand: "It's these five girls who are now marrying my soldiers." Then he shook his head and asked the young boy in the army: "Come out five people and claim your wife."

At first, the boys of the sixth flag team were busy laughing, and at the end they pushed and shoved, and five of them were probably pushed out by prank.

On the other hand, those girls who are like commodities, they have no right to choose their own marriage according to tradition, and they can only stand dumb when they learn the situation.

Even if those boys came out because of the mischief of their companions, they could solve their own life-long affairs today, and they accepted the current situation instantly and readily. Those girls don't have to be pretty, or even look a little dirty and shorter, that's not a problem at all.

The prince is fulfilling his promise, and he gave such a great gift. If he didn’t follow up, wouldn’t he be disloyal to the prince?

The five boys hurriedly grabbed the arms of their Xinyi girl, pulled them to their side and then to the army formation.

Rurik nodded in satisfaction, motioning for the boy who got his new wife to take out his dry food immediately.

There are two prefabricated staple foods commonly used by the Ross Army today: croutons and flatbreads. In terms of carrying capacity and portability, everyone prefers to stuff pancakes in backpacks.

For a woman who is weak and belongs to her, a man's love and compassion is completely awakened. They took out a pancake from the bag and handed it to their woman, and they saw that the five girls were timid at first, and when they realized that it was food, they bitten like wolves desperately.

"What's the situation..." The village chief and the villagers were stunned.

Rurik then smiled and said, "As I said, they are soldiers who married me, and they are not slaves, so they should have a good meal." After that, he pointed to the village chief: "I'll give you some more treasures."

After a while, a small cloth bag was stuffed into the village chief's hand, and the whole village was shocked when the hemp rope was opened.

"White particles? Could this be the legendary salt?"

"It's salt. Those of you who submit to me, you probably won't get this treasure in the forest."

The village chief, Zaitz, was already in tears while holding the cloth bag. He actually knelt on the ground with his knees, and said a lot of incomprehensible words, which seemed to be praises.

Although there are many ways for people to obtain sodium ions, even if they cannot get salt in their daily lives, they can also be obtained from natural foods. It's just that the efficiency of obtaining salt from food is too slow compared to directly supplementing the mineral salts of Baihuahua. These villagers are passively isolated from the world. In the past, the area around Lake Ilmen was monopolized by large farms. The lakeside farms took the lead in buying salt at high prices with Varyag merchants and Krivic merchants in Smolensk. For their own consumption, there is no surplus salt to sell to the forest people.

The source of the salt they can obtain comes entirely from the shores of the Black Sea. Crimea is still firmly controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire, and the military stronghold of Odessa is in its hands. The local businessman boiled the seawater in a pottery pot. After a simple separation operation, most of the bittern was removed, and the remaining salt was mainly sodium chloride and a small amount of potassium chloride.

The salt, being transported layer by layer, to Lake Ilmen has become so expensive that large farms have to exchange large quantities of hides, and the transaction is by no means unstable.

The population of large farms is slightly better. On the other hand, the population of forest farms, which are more numerous and scattered, generally suffer from hyponatremia and hypokalemia. After a while, he even died of pulmonary asphyxia caused by hypokalemia. They don't know the reason, they can only resort to faith, the so-called dead were punished by the forest god.

Rurik was still arrogant, and it was his arrogance that made poor people only respectable.

"This is the reward for the loyal, and the salt will be given to you! Besides that..."

Then ten mass-produced cast iron axes were placed on the ground: "These axes are also given to you."

What can the villagers say? If they ask for the bride price of the girl, these axes and salt are already huge wealth in everyone's view of wealth. They all knelt down and cheered, praising the prince as a good man.

Eating salt can live well, and the new axe will improve production and life. Rurik was buying people's hearts with things that he didn't think were expensive, and it seemed to be working.

The name "Pig Tooth Village" always made Rurik feel a little indecent. He quickly understood the origin of the name of the village. The large tusks of the pigs were used as spearheads, and the small teeth were polished into clusters of arrows. Obviously, in the Valdai plains of Eastern Europe, where there is a lack of stones, it is natural for animal teeth to replace stones as weapons.

Rurik gave them a very simple and even boring name "New Village", short for Novotin in Slavic.

Raja Rus has fully demonstrated his authority in this village and seems to have gained a new group of fans.

The group did not stay any longer in Xinyi Village, and the five lucky girls who were selected also followed the group after eating the flatbread, to be precise, the man who followed her closely.

The flag signal came from the lake, and the fleet, which had rested for a while, immediately pulled anchor, and the sailors basking in the sun re-steered the boat and continued south.

It didn't take long for the team to reach the second village, and Rurik repeated his old tricks, preaching again, asking for girls, and giving salt and iron. Everything went well, and the village name felt cheap and willing to believe in a bright future.

The second village was given the name "New Second Village", pronounced Novotva in Slavic. Then there are "new three villages", "new four villages"...

Rurik was patrolling his new subjects, ready to give salt and iron, and his young boys were getting women, which led to an ever-expanding contingent.

Those girls were still frail. They were allowed to sit on the carriages and deer carts. The girls saw this mighty team from a new perspective.

They saw a lot of girls with bows and quivers, with beautiful faces and blonde hair, like fairies in the forest. Those female warriors are also Varyags! With the naked eye, these Slavic girls who left the forest felt that the Varyag conquerors were not at all terrible as their parents said. They even heard the saying: marry us, you are us.

After Rurik had completed his tour, the entire team could stop to rest.

Just when I met the seventh village, a wonderful encounter happened!

The two armies marching toward each other were carrying the Ross flag, and the armies of Rurik and Medved collided.

It is such a wonderful encounter to see the prince and the prince leading the army to inspect outdoors. !

For this reason, both armies paused and shared information with each other.

When he learned that the prince was doing a cruise around the lake before the autumn harvest, Medved asked for a good report. He proudly claimed that he had pulled out eleven villages from the forest at once, and that the work will be expanded until next spring.

The army rested in place, and the team with a total of 1,000 people entrenched in the seventh village. The villagers here were both curious and fearful.

"One thousand", this number is a very large number in the concept of villagers, the army in front of you is clearly invincible!

Medwait also understood the prince's policy towards the new subjects by the way. The incident surprised him a little. They were obviously a group of poor people. Why should the prince reward them with salt and axe? The prince has his own purpose, but his stupid head still doesn't understand it!

"Are you going back to prepare for the autumn harvest?" Rurik asked knowingly at the last moment.

Medvedt nodded: "Exactly. I still have a lot of information to report to you, but..."

"You don't need to say more. There is nothing more important than preparing for the autumn harvest. Your people go back quickly. After the autumn harvest, I have to collect the grain tax around the lake according to the list, and I will need your assistance at that time."

"As ordered."

The two teams met face to face and rested for a while before parting ways. Through brief reports from each other, Rurik gained a better understanding of all the new subjects.

The team advancing by water and land rushed to the eleventh village, which was only two days and nights away from the forest.

The house had just begun to be built, and the raft had just been made.

The strong village chief sighed with emotion on the fertility of this land, and thanked the prince of Ross, who he had never met, for his permission to live by the lake.

They never imagined that in just two days, the army of the Principality of Ross was killed!

At first the people subconsciously fled into the village, until the village chief saw the flying flags and believed that it did not mean danger.

The fleeing villagers came back one after another, and Rurik happened to enter this huge construction and wasteland construction site.

"Why are you running away? Afraid that we will bring killings?" Rurik's words were very straightforward, and the village chief was strong and aware of current affairs, and honestly explained his concerns.

"It is true that our army has killed many enemies. But for those who submit to me, this army is the most reliable support..."

That's all, Rurik is another move that he has repeated ten times.

So far, there are no new villages ahead, and the parade is over? This is but the end of the parade to the newly surrendered populace.