Rise of Rurik

Not all the cavalry teams released for patrol returned. In the vast forest and swampland, Fisk decided to return with the loot, so naturally he could not inform everyone.

The brothers have fully developed their ability to act freely in the Frankish hinterland. They have received prairie-style cavalry training, and their acting style has converged with that of the Pechenegs.

Those grassland people rode horses and drove cattle and sheep, and could camp and settle anywhere on the grassland.

It is very similar to the style of the Vikings. They rowed boats and anchored in distant places, built houses and docks, and fished on the spot.

The Rus, who were good at rowing, turned into people who were good at riding horses. Even if there were only a few people, they dared to explore alone in small groups.

Because they do have a "God's perspective."

The members of the First Cavalry are all elites. They have received more advanced education and know the basic structure of the coastline of Northern Europe and Northeastern Europe, so there is a guarantee plan for the expedition.

If you get lost, you can either go north to find a sea-like lake, and then go west. Or keep heading west, and when you find the sea, go north along the coastline.

Eventually, the lost party would reach Fort New Rose.

When a team of ten people went all the way south to reach the West Dvina River, they did not find a suitable ford crossing. Thinking that there might be an accident if they tried hard on horseback, they simply continued their exploration along the riverside area.

If they choose to push upstream along the riverside area, they will soon encounter shallows that can be easily forded.

They chose to go downstream.

There is a saying that has been circulating among everyone for a long time. It is said that if you push along this river to the mouth of the sea, you can connect with the settlement called Riga. King Rurik claimed this, and even went to Riga to borrow its ships to easily reach the island of Saaremaa.

Rus had no contact with the settlers in Riga, and everything was confirmed by the king's account, and he even drew a map.

The map was drawn in a simple way, and the soldiers remembered it in their minds. Maybe they could take advantage of this year's opportunity to try to implement the king's statement.

The brothers enlisted their Pecheneg captain, a former herdsman named Ureko (meaning big arms).

Prairie people are quite casual about naming, especially for a slave who herds horses. It is already a great honor to be given a name by the master. On the contrary, this name is not bad. It indicates that a person's arms are strong and powerful, which is a compliment.

Over the years, Ureko has had a new life in Ross.

His identity is still a slave, but he is only a slave in name.

He married a wife in Rus and had children, who were already of mixed Turkic-Slavic descent. He also has his own assets, and the destiny of his heirs is to continue to be a cavalryman.

Loyalty to the Rus' king was more promising than loyalty to the Pecheneg Khan. When it comes to warriors, the young King Rus is extremely fair and just. Anyone can grab ordinary spoils according to their ability. The valuable gold, silver and jewelry must be handed over to the king, and then divided according to proportion.

he! It was those who participated in the encounter with the East Frankish King's Forest, and also participated in the sneak attacks and plunder in the Cologne and Bonn areas. The deed of squeezing five thousand pounds of silver coins from Cologne was brilliant, for which this man who was born as a horseman slave also received a large sum of money. The spoils of war in 840 alone were enough for him and his family to live comfortably for a lifetime.

But human desires are endless, especially since this kind of existence itself is a fighting warrior.

"We'll go down the river and grab the weak villages we find. If the other side is strong, we'll talk to them." Almost everyone has this attitude.

The captain of Ureco's team, his attitude is very important.

His reaction was more decisive than the others. "Why bother to talk? Let's grab it when we get the chance! Even if it means grabbing a few sheep and slaughtering them for roasting, after all, there is not much dry food in such a place. It is better to catch a fat sheep than to shoot a hare without oil and water. "

He said it very truthfully. The brothers had been shooting wild animals and eating a lot of meat these days, but they were short of oil and water.

Although these descendants of the old Rus don't understand the concept of "rabbit hunger syndrome" at all, based on the habits and traditions of Nordic life, everyone has a keen attitude towards fat. This is why when Ross was still a tribe, he was particularly keen on catching seals, hunting whales, and purposefully fishing for cod and eating cod liver, all for the sake of the fat.

The roasted fat lamb was extremely delicious, and Ureko made the brothers salivate just by talking about it.

"Let's go!" Ureko ordered.

The group of ten people lined up in a column. They conserved their horsepower and tried their best to avoid sinking their hooves because there was a lot of mud in the riverside area. They held the reins and walked on the horses, while the bow bags were hung on their bodies, and the quivers were hung on the saddles, so that they could turn into foot archers and act immediately when in danger.

The team had long separated from flag captain Fisk. There were five teams that left Lukiholm. They all arrived at the West Dvina River one after another. It was up to them to explore further according to their own wishes.

In fact, when they decided to go down the river, they had been wandering around the forest area. If they encountered a bear, they quickly avoided it. They also hoped to encounter a village in the forest that they wanted to capture.

They missed old Harold and his party from Riga, and they didn't know that the latter had been annihilated by Fisk in the upper reaches of the marsh.

They completely lost contact with Fisk and had no intention of returning to the team at any time.

This is a group of guys with strong survival ability in the wild, and their current activities are no different from wild beasts.

They are a group of ferocious beasts that will prey on anyone they encounter.

Ureko and his gang decided to go down the river south of today's Vitebsk.

They kept moving forward and trying to find a suitable ferry, but they saw that the river was becoming wider and wider.

Suddenly, a white presence appeared on the riverside grassland ahead, as well as a shaking figure.

Isn’t that white one a sheep?

Everyone looked at each other and immediately mounted their horses tacitly.

Ureko asked everyone: "How? Kill the shepherd or take him prisoner for questioning?"

Someone bared his teeth and growled like a hungry wolf: "At best, we can kill after asking questions. No one expects the captives to understand our language."

Everyone laughed arrogantly for a while, and then launched an attack with their bows.

But he said that the shepherd had seen the horseman, but it was too weird to see ten black figures suddenly rushing from the upper reaches of the river. Curiosity overcame fear, and the wrinkled shepherd was soon surrounded by cavalry.

How could this person be so bold? Or simply frightened.

"Hey! Old guy, where did you come from?!" The question was first asked in Norse, but the shepherd was indifferent.

Then he switched to Slavic with a strong Yin Ermen dialect, and he finally reacted.

Most of the words are very similar, especially the word village (ancient Slavic word).

The shepherd chatted a lot, and the biggest question was "Who are you and what do you want to do?"

It stands to reason that a kind person would have a good chat with them, but because these warriors have experienced hundreds of battles, they can also become extremely vicious in an instant.

The shepherd didn't wait for an answer, or in other words, the answer he got was to seal his throat with a sword.

One soldier ended everything with a precise shot across the throat, leaving the scene speechless.

"What are you doing?! We haven't finished asking yet." Ureko turned his head angrily.

The soldier said plausibly: "There's no need to ask any more questions, just follow the direction this person pointed. Look, we're waiting to eat roasted lamb. Isn't that right?"

To be honest, Ureko couldn't control his so-called men at all. They were a group of out-and-out old Russians, and their style of doing things was exactly the same as that of their fathers, even though they had integrated into Slavic ancestry. But Ureko was neither a Rus nor a Slav. He was born a slave and was naturally looked down upon by these young, energetic and tall brats.

Ureko is very self-aware, and he will be able to "retire" in a few years, and at most he can continue to serve as a cavalry coach.

What the Russians need is cavalry combat skills, not Pecheneg mercenaries. All the grassland coaches will soon complete their missions, and the rest is just for these brats to do whatever they want. At least they are acting too assertive now.

Ureko couldn't say anything, so he just went with these boys.

The herdsmen who ignored their money and died took all the six sheep they caught to the forest not far away, and lit a bonfire in the forest to slaughter the sheep and roast them for food.

They try their best to make barbecue and use the meat in the form of hand-made meat as dry food to continue their heartbeat. The peeled sheep skin is retained, and then some people eat the whitish mutton oil directly raw, and some roast it for consumption. After everyone had a good meal, there was no need to discuss what to do tomorrow.

In the early morning, morning fog filled the whole world.

The Rus kicked down the slow-burning bonfire and led their horses away from the camp. There were only traces of sheep blood, broken bones, and horse dung on the ground.

They mounted their horses, each carrying a large amount of meat roasted as dry as possible in their backpacks. Now that the temperature is high, even cooked mutton will not stay fresh for very long. The brothers still need more supplies and hope to get more benefits through looting, such as gold and silver coins.

Even arresting a few women...

Because the shepherd points out a direction, that is his village.

The body of the dead shepherd lay quietly in the grass, and no one alerted the village at the bend of the river to the danger.

People in small settlements continue their daily lives of farming, raising cattle and sheep, and fishing near the coast.

Today is a peaceful day in Japan, and the villagers continue their simple and hard work. Suddenly a group of people on horseback suddenly appeared. Once they appeared, they immediately attacked everyone they saw like wild beasts.

But for this Russian cavalry team, they clamped their legs on the belly of the horse and used their bows to shoot directly at the people hoeing in the fields, including those resting in the fields. The farmer might have subconsciously stood up to take a look at the sudden charging horseman, but was directly hit by a flying arrow.

They shot farmers as if they were shooting wild beasts, their methods were clean and neat, and they did not bother to replenish their arrows to ensure death. Because there is a village ahead. Although the village is small and the buildings are in very bad shape, even if there is no gold and silver there, there are a lot of urgently needed supplies for the brothers.

"Fight to the end!" Ureko shouted again: "Just follow your ideas! No mercy!"

Yes, they will be replicating the vicious looting of villages near Cologne in this unknown place.

They shot arrows outside the village, and the villagers, aware of the huge crisis, immediately began to flee. The cavalry further rushed into the small village, put their recurve bows back into their bow bags, and immediately drew their swords and stabbed and slashed at the scurrying people.

No one explained why. The Ross warriors recalled the crazy war last year. They were driven mad by bloodthirsty, and now they just wanted to kill indiscriminately. Especially when the men in this village began to try to resist, armed with scythes for cutting grass, long-handled flails for threshing grain, and even genuine axes and swords, they could only fight back because of further killings by the Ross cavalry.

The violent villagers faced the professional cavalry, and the unilateral killing could not be changed.

Even without contact at all, the men who fought back were killed or wounded by arrows, followed by the trampling of horses' hooves and the stooping sword stabs of cavalry.

Seeing that they were completely outnumbered, the surviving villagers rushed to the village's dock. There were also some canoes here, and they jumped on board, loaded up as many people as they could, and paddled to the other side.

However, the cavalry had already used all their strength to suppress the dock, forcing some people to even take off their clothes and start swimming to escape.

The woman and her child were paddling hard in the canoe. Without a wooden oar, they stretched their arms in the water and used their hands instead of oars. Each canoe has reached its capacity limit, and its drifting is shaky.

"They want to escape! Brothers, shoot arrows." someone encouraged.

After hearing this, everyone fired accurately at the fugitives.

At this moment, Ureko, who had regained his composure, unexpectedly chose stability. He was not suddenly merciful, he just felt that there was no point in firing the arrow like this. "Why waste an arrow and lose it? If you fall into the river, you can't get it back."

But the young warriors were too lazy to pay attention. They laughed and watched the man hit by the arrow fall into the water, and encouraged each other to shoot accurately. Until the successful escaper floated to the other side of the river and was quickly obscured by the reeds.

Those who drowned immediately drifted downstream with arrows stuck in their bodies.

The Ross Cavalry completed a sneak attack on the village. They created a mess and finally began to clean up the battlefield.

So, they found a small group of people hiding, and a young woman pulled them away by their hair, ignoring their crying and making a fuss. The rest were killed together, and their bodies were thrown directly into the quietly flowing West Dvina River.

The village has a population of less than a hundred people and only a few houses and barns. There were actually quite a few people who escaped to the other side. Ureko and his group only left four young women behind. They counted about sixteen corpses thrown into the river by themselves. Of course, the population loss in the villages was actually greater.

In this village, more cattle and sheep were seized, and even two smaller horses.

There was a discussion, and all the sheep were killed, and as many of the skins as possible were skinned off. They found linen on the spot, wrapped the bloody sheepskins, used the captured ponies as pack mules, and carried two large packages of sheepskins away.

Now that the steel sword is dripping with blood, we might as well make things even better.

Someone shouted: "Just like we did in Cologne! Set fire! Burn everything!"

The village burst into flames one after another, red flames shot up into the sky, and the thick smoke billowed like a crack in the earth and magma was erupting.

That night, the Russians happily left the burning village with the captured grain, cheese blocks, a little honey, and other loot. They rested in the woodland further down the river, and the four women immediately turned into everyone's toys. They were toyed with at will by the Ross warriors who had teeth like wild beasts. Each one of them was tortured to the point of almost mental breakdown, and then curled up into a ball, wondering why they had encountered such bad luck.

Some people even fought back and tried to fight the attackers. Indeed, a woman took advantage of the chaos and found the attacker's dagger and held it in her hand to confront them.

However, she was hit on the head with precision by a wooden stick that suddenly hit her. After a moment of dizziness, she was held down again.

The storm ended immediately, and all four women were tied up.

"Like a female warrior." Some people said.

"Karl, what do you mean? Do you want to monopolize it?" Someone else teased with a smile.

"It's not impossible, it's just that our methods are too barbaric. Even if this is my slave, I'm afraid she will cut my neck with a knife while I'm sleeping."

"It's a joke, are you still afraid of this?"

Hearing this, Ureko couldn't help but whisper: "We did go too far during the day. In fact, we can have a good chat with them, maybe the situation will be better. You guys! What a bunch of lunatics."

No one thought this was a criticism, so someone raised their head and said: "That's right. They are not our allies anyway. There is nothing wrong with burning villages and killing people. We are warriors, and fighting is our duty."

Someone even pointed out a very convincing statement: "This way Odin can see our bravery."

They were fighting and sacrificing blood to Odin, and the warriors immediately felt that their actions were great.

After all, the four captured women also spoke Slavic dialects. After everything quieted down, the clever warrior tempted them with barbecued meat and promised in language that they would not die if they cooperated well.

Finally, some prisoners chose to cooperate and explained some situations.

It turned out that the small village that was easily defeated by the adventurous Russian cavalry was called Duka Village (near today's Beshenkovich) according to the locals, which means curved arc.

Indeed, the course of the West Dvina River, on which this settlement is located, forms a huge arc. This is a river bend, and the river has soaked a large area of ​​land, which is more suitable for cultivating wheat.

So what force does Duka Village belong to? The prisoner explained that the word "Polot" and the suffix of the place name were Polotsk.

Isn’t it a force belonging to Riga? As the prisoner in the negotiation understood what the interrogator meant, his eyes immediately became confused, and then he said bluntly: "We are not Riga people. Riga people are enemies."

So there was a misunderstanding. After all, the Russians also have pure gold hair and big blue eyes. Even when they are young, they often have beards.

The woman cursed in grief and anger: "You Varangians from Riga! You have committed a serious crime! Our leader will raise his troops to beat you."

This is so inexplicable. The soldiers couldn't understand what the woman was shouting and completely ignored her threats. They thought it was a curse turned into incompetence and rage.

To everyone's surprise, the first contact between Ross and Polotsk came from Ross's armed invasion. The Russians in the form of horse bandits completely destroyed a small settlement in the easternmost part of the Polotsk people. Because the captured woman said a lot of things, the soldiers at least understood that they could indeed reach the legendary Riga by continuing downstream.

"The Point Guard Is Here"

We are not afraid of anything. A mere ten people dare to invade the world, especially now that they have four captured women.

They also found that the women who had been struggling for a time actually all became quiet and were forced to lie down on the saddle very obediently. They should have been fully appointed, right?

In fact, this is not the case, just because they feel that they have a chance to escape.

Because the raider cavalry was still moving downstream along the river, as long as they continued walking, they would reach the core area of ​​the Polotsk people. At that time, my own people will take revenge under the command of the leader!

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :