Rise of Rurik

The king who stayed in the capital could not indulge in eating, drinking and having fun. Rurik had a lot of things to do. Only at night, with the soft light of the oil lamp, could he enjoy family happiness.

Several wives and concubines of different identities gathered together to chat casually, and even the high priest Rumia joined in to kill boredom.

Rurik himself couldn't be idle. He brought his eldest daughter Velika here and presented the compiled manuscript of "Russaga" in front of her.

The floor was covered with warm and thick deerskin stalls. The little girl changed into warm clothes, lay on the blanket and slouched her feet casually, then flipped through the documents under the guidance of her father under the oil lamp.

Rurik was sitting cross-legged next to him. He liked his daughter's small neck and bulging cheeks very much. Her long braid was hanging on her shoulders. Her feet were shaking involuntarily, and she looked through the documents as if she understood them completely. .

She is growing rapidly, and now she has begun to take on the appearance of a woman. After all, she is still growing fast despite being half German.

She is obviously only nine years old, and according to tradition, she is considered ten years old after Hanukkah. Although she is young, her height has surpassed that of her biological mother Rumia, or maybe Rumia is simply too short.

The high priest Rumia is very short. He wears a huge antlered helmet passed down by the Rus people. The overall height is about the same as a small stag. He is also holding an ancestral gem-encrusted wooden staff. He stands in front of the big temple with a mysterious look. .

"Do you understand everything? This version is all in Latin."

"A lot of them can be understood. Dad..." The girl turned her head and subconsciously twisted her body to act coquettishly, laughing.

Seeing her happy look, Rurik couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"Do you really understand? I don't believe it."

"Well, there are some words I really don't understand."

"If you don't understand, learn it. Listen, this is the classic of our faith. You have to memorize it all."

"Ah?" The face of the girl who was acting coquettishly changed suddenly, and she couldn't help covering her mouth.

"So much content. Too much?!"

"How much?" Rurik asked maliciously,

"Silly girl, this is only a small part. There are still many things you need to be familiar with. Now I will take advantage of the opportunity to teach you some more. I won't stay here for long, and I will leave soon."

"Still leaving?" The girl wriggled her body again until she reached her father's legs.

"I won't let you go."

"Oh, I still have to leave. I am the king."

"No." The look of her pouting in protest was really cute. Rurik gently grabbed his daughter's pigtails and said,

"disobedient?"

"Hey, you. I'm obedient."

"That's right. I'm going to the north for a patrol, and I'll come back in the winter. Haha, I'm just staying in the capital this winter and not going anywhere." It sounds like she can always be by her father's side, and Velika hopes to be more With more company, she continued to hug her father's legs and act coquettishly: "I will also go to the north to have a look. I heard that there is another big temple of ours in the north. I am a deputy priest now, so of course I have to go and see it."

"Huh? That's okay."

"Alas!" The girl felt that there was something interesting, so she slowly got up and said with a smile, "I can still take care of brother Osborne." There seemed to be no necessary reason to keep her in the capital, but this girl did give some good reasons.

Rurik thought that considering the future of the kingdom, the future high priest and prince would need more experience living together as blood relatives. As long as there is a chance, it would be good for the outside world to have siblings come together to live together.

"Okay, I'll take you away. Now, take a look at these documents and ask immediately if you don't understand any words."

"Okay." In the past era, the Ross tribe would suddenly prosper every winter. At that time, due to the fact that the Gulf of Bothnia was frozen every year, ice and snow blocked traffic. Although it was possible to forcibly cross the ice and snow to communicate with distant settlements, it was ultimately a feat of brave people and could not be turned into a common commercial practice.

Businessmen seek profits and avoid risks and are very risk-averse unless the gains from the transaction are huge. Ordinary traders do honest work. They transport goods to Roseburg in the autumn, or take goods away from Roseburg, and come and go to create prosperity in autumn and winter.

Now Rossburg has long expanded into the huge Ross Kingdom. The territory of the kingdom is large and fragmented. The settlements are arranged along the Baltic Sea coastline, and the inland areas are large tracts of uninhabited forests in Northern Europe.

In winter, countless rivers enter the dry season, and the amount of fresh water flowing into the Baltic Sea decreases, giving the high-salt water of the Atlantic Warm Current an opportunity to take advantage.

Warm ocean currents can ensure that the central Baltic Sea is not frozen. It is bounded to the north by the Åland Islands, where Tombstone Island is located, and to the east by Gogland Island in the Gulf of Finland, where quarrying is possible. The area within the boundary is rippled by cold water, and the outside is covered by ice. .

If the cold snap this year becomes more severe, the ice will expand and the central Baltic Sea will also be covered with floating ice.

The climate in 841 was generally average, and the agricultural harvest was neither bad nor rare. For any farmer family that relied on growing food to make a living, this year's situation was quite satisfactory, which can be said to be a gift from God.

As one of the Viking tribes, Rus has now integrated most of the Viking tribes into one, and merged all the mythological parts.

The Kingdom of Rus worships seven gods, among which is Frey, the god of agriculture. In other words, the real god of agriculture and harvest is actually the mount of God Frey, the big golden boar Gulinbosti, the original meaning of which in ancient Norse is

"Pig with a warm glow". The autumn harvest in New Roseburg is about to begin, and High Priest Rumia is actively preparing for this year's harvest sacrifice.

For the first glass-covered temple of Rus, there is a reason to perform a sacrifice every month.

The Great Temple is on one side of Harvest Square, facing an extremely flat square paved with cement.

Some of the heavy stone piers from the old stone ship altar of the Rus tribe were transported to the capital by ship, and were reprocessed at the gate of the First Temple. They were then assisted by a batch of newly mined and regularly chipped stone bricks to build a permanent building. altar.

In this way, priestly activities in the capital can be carried out stably in public places, and there will be at least one sacrificial activity every month.

The priests therefore seemed very busy, and people who came and went were free to observe and participate, which made the lonely life more fun.

Especially for some major festivals, the new tradition of building fire towers in Russia has become an old tradition. If you don’t build a tower to make a torch during major festivals, you will lose the fun of unknown carnival and dancing. People spontaneously cut down the wood and carry it to the square, and personally participate in the construction of the wooden tower. It is to add strength to the sacrifices. They want to believe that if they are so pious and godly, the whole family will get good luck.

Ships transporting fur goods from the north are arriving one after another, accompanied by large quantities of iron ingots, copper ore or simply iron ore.

Glauber's salt, cinnabar, chalk mud, pine gum, pine tar, simple charcoal, salt, walrus tusks, feathers, antlers, boiled fat... These northern goods are generally rough and are just raw materials. They have no market in the north. Only those shipped to warmer and more densely populated capitals can be sold at a good price.

Squirrel skins, mink skins, forest cat skins, and a variety of valuable or large quantities of small animal skins arrived at the port of New Roseburg on the last ships before winter. These long ships were in order to avoid the relatively fragile hulls from being frozen in the ice. During the period, when the ship was frozen and cracked, they rushed directly to the sandbar. After unloading, they dug wooden piles and fixed them with cables. Then they removed the sails, leaving only the mast pointing straight into the sky.

On the eve of the harvest festival, the kingdom's autumn leather trading event begins. Since this year is the first trade fair during the gift tax holiday, the trading scene has become extremely popular.

Since a big sacrifice is about to be held in Harvest Square, and the square will be used as a public threshing ground immediately after the sacrifice, the market in the inner city is cancelled, and all the vendors who should be doing business in the city have moved to the outside to set up stalls.

The two markets in Waiguo are more lively, and if there is intense excitement, there will be more disputes. As usual, Governor Konuson led security patrols to maintain law and order.

The Kingdom of Rus already has a written law written on paper. It can certainly be made more detailed, but the general public is still more accustomed to the common customary laws of the Viking tribes.

The thieves had their hands chopped off, the tribesmen were beaten violently and then expelled, the murderers were beheaded or hanged, and the extreme murderers were made blood eagles.

The vast majority of crimes that can be detected by patrols are thefts. This is a commercial city after all, and the ones that can be caught the most are pickpockets.

It is difficult to catch pickpockets in the mixed market, and there is indeed a small group of people who make a living in New Roseburg.

Young Cornuson didn't have much patience with such people. If he caught a thief, he would naturally have to torture him to find out his accomplices. Instead of chopping off his fingers, he would have to give them a beating with a whip. After that, he would transport them to a quarry on the shores of Lake Onega for a quarry. Years of quarrying slaves.

Little Konuson came to work, especially when the king was present. As a pure-blooded old Russian, he had some common blood and honor with Rurik himself. He would not tell the king that the capital city was peaceful, and the king would definitely do the same. Do not believe.

Now we are arresting a group of thieves and robbers to report to the king. Anyway, it is almost impossible for the criminals caught to be old Russians. He has no psychological pressure.

The lively market was comforting. Rurik, standing by the window, had a bird's eye view of the city, and his ears were filled with the noise blown by the wind.

The lively scene in Waiguo was clearly that of a rural market. Rurik knew exactly what was being sold in the market. He suddenly felt a little regretful and couldn't help but clenched his fists.

"Oh, I'm just pretending to be fat. I just slapped my thigh and rewarded a nationwide tax exemption. How much business tax will I have to lose! Forget it, let's just treat it as a fattening sheep." Rurik could only comfort himself with the tax-free stimulus. With various small businessmen accumulating wealth, relying on opportunities to quickly accumulate initial capital will help these people invest again. With an eye on the future, Ross will have huge financial income as soon as the tax holiday in the spring of 844 is over.

Before that, the operation of the kingdom relied heavily on the royal family's industrial support. However, Rurik decided to continue to use troops against Frank.

Captain Brody of the 2nd Cavalry took a rest after arriving in the capital, and the entire flag corps began daily drills in the open space outside the city.

They don't train on horses every day. The horses need to be cared for, fed with fodder and wheat, driven to wander in the wasteland to chew grass, remove the horseshoes to repair the horseshoes, use a large wooden comb to tidy up their long manes, and even cut off an overly long mane. Neck mane for other purposes.

The blood of Rus’ war horses is almost that of Turkic horses. This is an ancestral breed of Mongolian horses, essentially similar to Mongolian horses. They are shorter but stockier, have strong endurance and are extremely cold-resistant.

They have extremely exaggerated ponytails and neck manes. These long and tough hairs can be used as brushes, but they are clearly more suitable as the torsion unit of a torsion slingshot.

Deer sinew, horsehair, and hemp rope, the three-in-one torque unit provides powerful torque for the slingshot. Rurik is already preparing for a rainy day. There is no need to make new torque slingshots and bull trebuchets. The old equipment can be used by his blacksmith slaves. Make large-scale improvements.

The battleship's heavy equipment was dismantled, and the torque unit was inspected and refurbished. The blacksmith slaves also accepted the job of mass-producing carbon steel arrow clusters. Compared with cast iron arrow clusters, sleeve-type low carbon steel arrow clusters are more time-consuming.

This is certainly worth it. Considering that he will intervene in the Frankish Civil War in the future, Rurik is sure that King Ludwig, who has lost most of his main army, will be beaten up by his eldest brother, and that tough-talking guy will definitely ask for help. , then the Russian army can legitimately send troops to intervene.

The enemy will be the regular army of Central Frank. Based on a series of lessons learned from previous large-scale battles, Ross must use the best weapons to deal with them.

There will be a group of armored heavy cavalry and heavy infantry, and there will also be a group of ruthless men equipped with riveted mail. Ross will also have to use carbon steel arrow clusters on a large scale to break the armor.

In this way, Rurik paid for all kinds of feathers from the north, including some special ones.

It was a long black feather with a delicate feel. It was definitely not a crow feather. As the complete feathered bird skin appeared in the market, matched with the bird's head, Rurik quickly realized what it was.

It is not a penguin, but it has the real name of a penguin - auk. Asking about its capture point, it was the reef near Murmansk, a stronghold in the far north.

Rurik was not completely familiar with this kind of bird. At that time, he personally completed the first expedition to Murmansk. After spending a polar night in a pit in the Arctic Ocean, he captured elephant seals and plundered their big tusks. At the same time, he also saw this Plant a flightless bird.

The auk is not extinct now, and Ross's hunters are just starting to capture it. The leather was very delicate, but Ross still liked the fine hides of small animals like ferrets.

The feathers of the auk are a good material for making arrow feathers. Considering that the poultry raising action encouraged by Ross has been very effective, the kingdom has no shortage of arrow feather materials, and eggs are no longer rare. The black feathers of these auks seem to be more suitable for decoration. things.

The most leather the Kingdom of Rus can provide is reindeer! Nearly six years have passed since the crusade against the Karelian tribal alliance. The existing reindeer herds, coupled with the tens of thousands of captured reindeer, have multiplied into a herd of up to 100,000 reindeer.

The base is huge and all are owned by the royal family. All Lapps are essentially related by blood to the high priest Rumia. They still live a herding life, because the whole family is legally the herding slaves of the royal family, so they have huge and powerful backers.

A large number of reindeer were captured in past wars, and the king shared the trophies with the soldiers. Many Russian families raised their own herds of small deer. The number was small and they were mostly used for transportation, so-called pulling carts in the summer and pulling sleds in the winter.

Some poor management families hastily slaughtered the trophy reindeer and now have nothing. Rurik controls the largest herd of deer, and relying on the absolute advantage of scale and the loyalty of all the Lapps, this advantage is still expanding.

Due to the destruction of the Karelian tribal alliance, the remaining Karelian people rushed eastward and fled to a place called Perm to live with their relatives, having escaped from the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Rus.

After they disappeared, the north of Lake Ladoga, the area around the White Sea, and even the Kola Peninsula, these barren places in the far north suitable for reindeer herding, completely became the activity space of the Lapp people.

There is no need for Russian explorers to find the path. These nomadic Lapps must wander around the Murmansk stronghold in the far north and the area around Lake Ladoga. Their production and lifestyle are such that relying on a pair of feet has already become the basis for the Russians. Discover a different land transportation route to the North Pole.

The king has a large amount of reindeer financial resources to support his implementation

The grand ceremony of the "Ninety-Nine Deer" sacrifice. The people in the capital have polished their sickles, and the oat fields outside the city are in harvest season.

It is an open secret that the king collects human and animal excrement to make fertilizer and even cultivate fire salt. The fire salt to support combustion no longer needs to be collected from naturally decaying wood. You can get some from the dung pile, but it feels disgusting.

In the past, people just threw their excrement into the river or sold it. Russians hated the presence of such filth around their living areas.

The king collected the excrement of people and animals in Novgorod to make fertilizer to fertilize the fields. The output of the royal family's farmland has always been gratifying. Not only did the news spread, people with land in the capital learned about it and began to collect it.

They can only be used in a small area of ​​land. Generally speaking, due to the full use of drill sowing, supplemented by pulling weeds and transporting Neva River water by water trucks for irrigation, the production capacity of oats on the Neva River, which is only barely able to cultivate land, is indeed Improved.

Maybe this is because of the worship of gods! Rurik ordered ten reindeer to be brought out. At the height of the public altar, the high priest Rumia looked up to the sky with a jeweled wooden staff and shouted words of prayer.

Nolen, Ella, Bayasil and Queen Svetlana happened to be in the capital, so the four women took the opportunity to dress up as priests to participate in the ceremony.

With a golden laurel crown on his head, Rurik received the attention of the people. He first held up a steel sword inlaid with gems, and then took the hand of his eldest daughter, Velika, who was also the deputy priest. The guards controlled the deer and killed all ten.

According to tradition, the deer blood must be integrated into the altar and into the earth. The following ceremony is too thrilling.

The livers of the deer were cut out, and then the high priest confirmed the good fortune. The livers were placed on a bronze tray and enshrined in front of the gilded statue of God Frei that was moved from the great temple. At this moment, the high priest solemnly addressed the crowds of people watching the ceremony. Announcement: God Frey promises us a good harvest.

Then, there were boiling cheers.