Rise of Rurik

Those experienced Russ and Danes warriors saw a new way of fighting. The Pecheneg cavalry and the Frankish cavalry they had encountered were completely two tactics. The Frankish cavalry were brave, because they dared to dash forward with their cavalry spears, while the Pechenegs shot arrows and ran away!

Smart people like Arik and Ragnar can realize the disgust and cowardice of this tactic. The Pecheneg cavalry archers ran away after shooting the arrows, and the soldiers could only use their shields to resist the arrows, and just wanted to counterattack the enemy.

Of course, Arik also thought of the soldiers in the formation to restrain themselves with crossbows. It's just that both sides are good at archery. Does the Rus army still have the absolute advantage of bow and arrow? At least one thing is certain, if the Rus army is all infantry, at best they can be defeated, and it is too difficult to complete the annihilation.

Only a few people realized the advantages of the Pecheneg cavalry, and the vast majority were just watching the fun

The big play finally came to an end, and when all the performances were over, the gathered crowds retreated one after another.

That night, the ten cavalry warriors who gave full performances were treated with high courtesy. They are just slave warriors in the tribe, and now they have become the guests of the prince of Ross!

Naturally, their former master Kagan was present again.

A small banquet was the beginning and end of today's work, and Rurik officially accepted these ten people as his subordinates.

Let's see these ten cavalrymen get together on one knee and accept the order of "Ros Khan".

"You are all my servants now, and serve me in the future. You must do your duty well, and if there is any act of betrayal, you will be hanged in public. As long as you do your duty, you will receive stable food, clothing, and housing. And a stipend. When you're older, I'll reward you with women, and eventually become my horse herders and breed more horses for me, and your sons will serve me."

This feeling is good, and brothers who serve Prince Ross can get more.

They said yes.

"Very well. Sit down! After drinking my drink, you are my warriors..."

Those who can be selected by Kagan must be the elite among the Pecheneg people, and these ten people must have the qualifications to become officers.

They each reported their own names. The names of various Turkic languages ​​really confused Rurik, and learned the true meaning of their representatives. There is nothing special about the names.

Some are called "Langya", some are called "Big Arm", some are called "Arrow Feather", and some are called "Big Eyes"...

As his name suggests, the warrior named "Big Eyes", among the many sons of the small-eyed grassland, this man's eyes are indeed big.

Their names are varied, and since they are all slaves, the right to name them theoretically belongs to the master family, so naturally it is impossible to take any elegant names. In other words, the names of the Pecheneg people are generally taken randomly, the rules are no rules, and they are quite random.

Kagan's own name is quite particular, meaning "Khan's Sabre". This is like the Viking lord naming his son "Bjorn", the so-called "Lord's Attendant".

None of the Pechenegs had surnames, or surnames meant nothing to them, especially to a group of slaves.

Even the concept of surname has no practical significance for most of the people under the jurisdiction of the Rus Principality. Only Rurik took coercive measures to make the Slavs in the Novgorod region have a variety of meaningful surnames.

At least the ten men must have a surname to facilitate management after serving as a cavalry officer.

Half-drunk from each other, Rurik had an idea and pointed at the people clockwise according to their current seats, rewarding them with their so-called surnames.

"You are called one, you are called two, you are called three...you are called ten. This is your attribution name (the concept of surname). In the future, when you call yourself your first name, you should add this at the end."

Rurik spoke in a Slavic language that they could understand, and a group of slaves could choose what to do. The new master gave the surname, and the brothers thanked him.

During the previous warm period, Novgorod was under construction, and the construction of houses is still in essence. Building a house for the prince can be rewarded, and at the very least, it can be mixed with a day's ration. Rurik spent a lot of money on this, thanks to this year's high grain harvest, and the fleet plundered a batch of grain in Frank and Britain, which was well enough to cover the financial expenses.

It is undeniable that at present there are a batch of woodcuts with good quality that are idle in the city. They were built to deal with future population expansion, and they are here to stay.

Each of the ten people will be cavalry officers, and each will be assigned a woodcarving room to temporarily live in, so that they can live a better life than the regular mercenaries in Rurik, and they are in fact similar to those of the same clan who still live in the barn. demarcated the boundaries.

The ten people's temporary life is still resting, they have the right to move freely in the city, and they don't need to pay for three meals a day. Their personal weapons and armor are still being seized, including their own mounts.

In fact, all the Pecheneg people are in a state of leisure and leisure. The people who live in the barn will spend their own money from now on, and their master Kagan is responsible for living expenses, so how to spend money Look at Kagan's own wishes.

In his opinion, his Rurik brothers have done their best. The subordinates live in the brother's warehouse without spending any money. What he asks for payment is the food for the remaining 40 subordinates and the food for the 40 war horses. Rurik was stabilizing the supply, and the price of oats was steady at ten pounds a silver coin.

Compared with people, the horses of the brothers are the most important. In the homeland of the grasslands, horses can still graze on the turf in winter, even after such a winter, the horses of the entire tribal alliance are in a state of extreme weakness. It's not that everyone intentionally abuses their horses, it's all about the lack of seasonality in pasture. In addition, when the pastures are luxuriant, the horse herds enter the breeding season. Therefore, in the eyes of many grassland people, it is necessary to raise troops for a truce in winter and spring. When the war horses are the most sturdy in autumn, it is the best time to start a war. .

It is precisely this factor that Cagan and his team set off in late summer and arrived in Ross in early winter. If the season changes, the war horse can be exhausted alive...

Even so, the horses that arrived in Rus were very weak, and thanks to the large quantities of oats provided by the Rus, the weak horses recovered quickly.

Everyone loves horses. Kagan used to be incompetent, but now that he has money, he immediately buys oatmeal to feed the horses.

In this way, Rurik directly negotiated with Kagan a preferential price for the breeding of the agent. It is said that each horse stays in the stable every day and does not go out without any task. The standard food for each horse is five pounds of oats a day, supplemented by a small amount of yellow. Root carrots and cabbage. Even if the supply of vegetables is a preferential category, labor costs and venue costs are exempted, and the hard expenses of 200 pounds of wheat a day for forty horses must be paid.

Two hundred pounds of oats a day? Isn't that two pounds of silver in ten days?

I heard that the winter in this lake area will end at the beginning of March, and the brothers have to wear it for five months here. The feeding fee for 40 horses is a large amount.

Rurik is very reasonable, and the cost of raising a horse this winter has accumulated thirty pounds of silver.

In comparison, the cost of food is much less.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to rest, Kagan did not hesitate to wander around Novgorod City. He bought a new leather jacket for himself, and even bought sunglasses for his subordinates, which cost a lot of money.

He was fascinated by the glassware sold by the Rus, and the flower-scented soap he used to bathe in.

After buying and buying, it is another wealth to pay out.

Even so, he felt that he was making a lot of money!

Nowadays, due to the mass production of die-cast glassware, they have become much cheaper at the original price, so that five silver coins can buy a glass plate, and ten silver coins can buy a glass cup. Kagan hurriedly bought some more, immediately stuffed a lot of withered grass in the wooden box, and sealed the stacked glass tableware.

As for the simple colored glass bead pendants and necklaces, he also bought a few sets, so-called bring them back to his mother, sisters, beloved wife, and as a tool to win over the leaders of the alliance.

It was only three days of effort, and the hundred pounds of silver coins sold for the horses had already costed seventy pounds!

Among them, he also ordered ten Ross steel swords, and even used ten gold coins donated by Rurik to make local young craftsmen melt gold coins and plate them on the swords.

The so-called silver coin is indeed a common accounting tool in Rus, and the proceeds from the sale of horses by Kagan were earned back by Rurik in a short period of time.

Rurik, on the other hand, had given the order to form cavalry, and he needed some time to wait for the chosen people to assemble in Novgorod.

Of the 100 horses purchased, ten of the best mares will be used for breeding. Of the remaining ninety, eighty will be pure war horses, and the last ten will be noble mounts.

People such as Arik, Yevro, Medved, etc., everyone must learn to ride a horse and learn to handle weapons on horseback.

Let's talk about the eighty riders with the eighty war horses, they cannot have a single source, and even select riders, which Rurik uses as a tool of command.

The Sixth Banner Team, whose members are all young, selected 30 members, 25 members from the most loyal White Tree Manor, no one from Ostara, and five members each from Calf and Fisherman Manor (including a son of the chief).

In another ten traditional lakeside estates that had resolutely surrendered to Rus' rule after the counter-insurgency war, their boyar chiefs had to surrender a son to join the cavalry.

Among the 80 cavalry soldiers who have gathered enough, there are also restrictions on the age of the personnel. The so-called minimum age is fifteen years old, and the upper limit is twenty years old.

Thirty of them were boys from Roth's home, and the remaining fifty were pure Slavs.

The cavalry should be the elite. Of course Rurik wanted to build a team composed entirely of Russians. The current situation dictated that the cavalry would not only be a mixed army, but the common language used was Slavic.

The order has already been issued, and the selected people are required to arrive in advance, especially the manor owners who handed over their sons to be cavalry. If they miss the date, they will be disrespectful and will be punished.

The people of White Tree Manor were really happy about this. The horseman looked majestic. If there was a choice, the boy would naturally be more willing to be a cavalry.

The Principality of Rus pursues a simple citizen soldier system. All men have the obligation to fight in the army. In this regard, the Slavs and the Vikings including the Rus have reached a complete consensus, but everyone is destined to be only infantry. Now being a cavalry has become a new choice.

Medvedt was responsible for his share of twenty-five people, and quickly selected qualified personnel according to the request of the prince. First of all, they are young soldiers in the Slavic flag team. The average age is only 21 years old. Even so, many of them participated in the decisive battle on Gotland many years ago as a child, and there have been many battles since then. There is participation. They were still young, and there was nothing to say about their loyalty.

Although Fisker, the captain of the Sixth Banner, could not step down as captain to become a cavalry, he was honest about the issue of being ordered to choose. In their youth city settlement, a competition within the flag team was held immediately. Although I don't know what it means to form a cavalry team, at least the selected personnel must be strong. They competed in wrestling and archery in the snow, competing in a more modest manner against thirty boys.

Carlotta, the Duchess of Ostara, took the position of five riders. She wrote a letter, and the longboat sailed on Lake Ilmen, where the ice floes already existed. The letter arrived at the new Ostara fortress. Certainly. Even if there was a severe lack of men in this once-desperate tribe, it would have been possible to gather five fifteen-year-old boys. Of course, Rurik also considered their practical factors, and only asked for five people.

Calf Manor and Fisherman Manor stood firmly in the camp of Prince Ross in the counter-rebellion war. They enjoyed a lot of post-war dividends. Now, the two leaders have no worries about the issue of becoming cavalry. They not only handed over one son, but also handed over their own nephew. The ten boys handed over by the two were all related to themselves, just because they didn't want to let go of this shortcut that could make future generations prosper.

But how many of the other ten manor owners have this kind of consciousness?

Because of the geographical isolation, they only knew that a group of horse riders from the south went to the north, and they basically did not know the identity of the horse riders. What does it mean for the prince to build a cavalry unit? Probably for better control.

The prince forced his son to be a cavalryman, and the manor owner took it for granted that this was an act similar to that of a proton.

What else can be done? If you don't hand over a son of the right age, the prince's thunderous wrath will be bad.

The departure of the younger son means the complete loss of the inheritance rights to the manor, which is naturally the eldest son of the manor owner is most happy. However, the child's mother thought about it, and always felt that her son would not come once he left, and became a slave-like existence who only obeyed the orders of the prince.

This kind of thing was staged in many manors, and for a while, the boy who was eager to become a cavalryman was also panicked, as if he was going to Novgorod by boat to break through a sea of ​​fire.

People have been assembled one after another, and they have different expectations for their future.

Especially the sons of the manor owners, they came tremblingly, and what they saw and heard was not what they expected.

They saw a herd of fat and well-built horses, all fitted to saddles, bits and reins.

A group of prairie people on horseback stood majestically behind the horses.

look! The blond man.

Who else could it be if it wasn't Maharaja Rurik? !

Indeed, Rurik was fearless of the north wind and allowed his blond hair to be praised by the wind. Although the weather is good today, the wind is slightly stronger, showing the desolation of the northern country. Let's look at this group of Turkic wild horses. In addition to eating oats and carrots every day these days, their manes are also growing like crazy. They should have gradually exhausted their physical energy, but they were stronger, and they were completely different from their counterparts who were physically sluggish during the winter on the grassland.

While Kagan was shopping in the city, Rurik was busy improving his horsemanship.

The running-in period has probably passed, the mount he has chosen is obviously very intelligent, and the orders given are all well implemented. This horse thus got a nickname, the so-called "Munk Bjorn", the so-called "Black Guard", which is a domineering name in Viking culture.

It was Rurik who issued the assembly order. Seeing that the selected boy was ignorantly gathered in the open space outside the city, the cold wind was blowing.

Prince Ross inspected his subordinates from an absolute top-down perspective and gave a brief speech.

He didn't hesitate any longer, and ordered: "The gentle and powerful horses are here, you go and choose your own horses! Remember, the person who chooses the horse must swear to treat his horse well, it is your comrade-in-arms and your future. family……"

A witty horse selection meeting began. Under the watchful eyes of Kagan and other Pecheneg cavalry, a large group of young novice knights chose their mounts. Curiosity and joy were written on their faces, and they subconsciously stroked the horse's mane and hugged the horse's head again. The son of the manor owner who was worried, this chin cannot immediately learn to ride a horse, in order to have a majestic appearance exactly like the prince.

In Kagan's view, these young people must not have the horse-riding talent of Prince Rurik.

Next, Prince Pecheneg himself will be the head coach to train these yellow-haired guys into cavalry! By the way, I can also earn a tuition fee and buy a further batch of materials to bring back to my hometown next year.