The five Tavastian captives were escorted to Rurik's tent. Rather than being captured and their unknown fate, the captives were now shocked by the huge camp and large number of ships of the Lilos people, and then this fear surpassed death itself.
Rurik had no intention of hiding his identity. Considering the similarities in language between the Tavastians and the Kovins, he revealed his identity in front of the captives.
"You Tavastians invaded my territory and killed my servants. Now, we, Rus, have come to take revenge. I! I am Rus'... the leader."
Originally, Rurik wanted to say that he was a duke, but his opponent didn't understand the term, so he gave up.
Mechasta, the Covenite, had nothing but insurmountable anger towards these enemies, and he shouted casually, "Stop talking nonsense with them, we should kill them."
"No need." Rurik stretched out his hand to signal Mechasta to shut up, and then told everyone bluntly, "I have no intention of killing these five people."
"Not killing?" Arik became alert and smiled, "Is it mercy?"
"It's a tool. We don't have to listen to their words, let them be messengers, and let them all go."
Everyone looked at each other and felt that this decision was okay.
The five prisoners quickly listened attentively to Rurik's declaration of war.
"We Russians are here to wipe you all out! I will attack your fortress! Tell your leaders that we want a decisive battle. If you are brave, find an open area and fight us. If you are afraid of our army, hold on Your fortress. If you are cowards, leave my territory forever! All those who stay and decide to fight us, men and women, will eventually be killed. Go away and tell your leaders about the attitude of us Rus."
It is equivalent to saying that the young Rus leader only gave the Tavastians two choices: war or flight.
They were beaten until their noses were bruised and their faces were swollen, and many of them were beaten with panda eyes.
Some people were lying on the ground hesitating and hesitating, and their words were full of disdain, "We... will never escape. Our leader will fight you decisively."
"Decisive battle? I'm afraid your leader will be scared and run away when he sees my army." Rurik continued to provoke.
"No... we will not escape. This side of the sea is our territory. You... you are the enemy!"
Hard-spoken? Rurik liked that they retained their tough-talking and disdainful attitude.
Rurik looked around and smiled, and then challenged the prisoners with a sullen face, "I understand your language! Listen carefully! I will chop off your leader's head and use his skull to make a water cup for my humblest slave. !Tell your leader the truth.”
Of course they were not released easily. All five prisoners had their ears maliciously cut off on Rurik's order.
This is not the end.
Rurik's provocation and explanation of the conspiracy are to ensure that the enemy will also pursue a decisive battle. As long as the enemy is angered, the enemy will become reckless and will be carried away by anger.
This was the end of Rurik's actions. However, Rurik also gave an extremely terrifying gift to these exiled prisoners.
It was hideous hide, now packed up and thrown to the captives.
These skins all come from the Tavastia race who died previously. Unexpectedly...
The prisoners were so frightened that they even forgot the pain of having their ears cut off.
They each carried a piece of leather on their backs and staggered away with heavy hearts filled with grief and anger.
At this point, most Russians are convinced that after such humiliation, the enemy must be eager for a decisive battle.
Even if there is a lack of open space in this area, the Russians can exert a huge tactical advantage as long as they form a decisive battle.
Seeing that the camp was almost arranged, the Russian army, led by Rurik, began the final preparations and they were about to set out to fight.
Just as Rurik hoped, the five freed prisoners escaped along the river and met their kin at the location of the old Salmon Lord hillfort.
Although they were horribly humiliated, they still explained in horror the fact that the Russian army was coming to kill them. When they removed the stripped leather, the onlookers were all shocked, and many simply vomited!
The Tavastians gave the Russians the nickname of "skinners". Looking at the hung bloody corpses of their fellow tribesmen, the commander Vateyala who was sitting in the rear ordered that once a Russian was caught, he would be treated like a hunter. Like squirrels and ferrets, they are hung alive and skinned to retaliate in kind!
The five men with their ears cut off were quickly escorted by their tribesmen to the already heavily fortified Old Gray Squirrel Hill Fort.
When these five people saw their boss, they burst into tears involuntarily.
"Don't cry! Don't be a coward! Tell me what happened to you! Tell me if the Rus are really going to attack us!"
One person wiped away his tears, looked up at the furious Vateyala, and pointed his right hand toward the west: "We saw their camp, and there were at least a thousand people there! I saw the leader of the Rus, a cannibal. Hungry wolves that spit out bones. They said they would fight us and kill all our people."
"Huh? Are they really so determined?" Upon hearing this, Vatyala suddenly stood up, and the veins on his face almost exploded.
The capable people sitting in this wooden house were completely shocked when they heard that the Russians had such an intention.
Someone stood up and roared: "Then let's fight them decisively! Our spearheads are also iron! Our arrow clusters are also iron! We have more people, kill them and take no prisoners!"
"Yes! The last failure was just an accident! If we fought honestly, we could kill them all in one swarm."
"Don't let us live! Even if we capture a hundred enemies, we will hang them up and skin them. We don't want a single slave!"
"So we call all our brothers now and go out and fight them!"
…
Although some people think that a hasty decisive battle is a bit rash, look at the current atmosphere, those who act cautiously may be beaten as traitors by their brothers.
How could these Tavastian elites be so furious over just a few words of information? All because of the bad behavior of Arik's scouts.
The horrifying corpse that was hung was the most ferocious humiliation. Arik had accomplished his goal, and he had already aroused the rage of his opponent.
Infected by such an atmosphere, Vatyala, who now has more than 1,300 Tavastian warriors under his command, completely ignored the previous failure of being ambushed. He was blinded by anger and longed for a decisive battle that would determine his fate. .
The tribesmen who had lost their ears continued to describe what they saw in the Ross camp, and they continued to be shocked that their opponents were also building mountain fortresses.
It was a mountain fort leaning on the coast, with tall wooden walls, and a large number of huge ships floating on the sea, which were a hundred times the size of canoes!
The Russians dressed almost identically, as if they had an inexhaustible supply of linen.
The Russians are all very tall, and they seem to be able to fight bears with their bare hands, and then bite off the bear's neck with their teeth to eat the bear's meat raw...
The words became more and more outrageous, and Vateyala felt more and more that these five poor people were frightened out of their wits, and they began to praise the enemy's arrogance.
Someone interrupted them: "That's nonsense! We are fighting the enemy, not the monsters in the forest. As long as we gather together to launch an attack, they will be defeated!"
Some people who were not very determined in the first place became frightened when they heard the description of the "earless man". This was completely different from the righteous indignation they had just felt.
The anger of the commander Vateala could not be quelled, and he could not think of any strategy. He even had no idea about the true strength of the Russians, and what he knew was extremely limited.
However, someone came up with a "clever plan" that everyone found interesting, which is to treat others in their own way.
The "cool plan" is this. Tavastia's army left more than a hundred people to guard outside the mountain fortress, and the remaining 1,200 people set off! Everyone rushed to the bend downstream of the river and set up an ambush at the burned woods and mountain fort.
It is difficult to fight decisively in the changing forest, and even the Tavastians cannot stand this terrain. The only flat place that could be used for a decisive battle was the abandoned village next to the river. There was a flat river beach there that could be used to fight in formation.
The Tavastian army did not want to seize the battlefield first and arrange their troops. Instead, they laid an ambush first, and then suddenly rushed out when the Ross army appeared. They caught the opponent by surprise and drove them into the river, so that the opponent would not be killed by weapons. To die is to drown.
How can everyone not think this is a clever plan when there is no better plan? !
Watyala slapped his thigh: "Okay! Let's do it! Opportunities cannot be taken, let's act now!"
The haste was real haste, and Vatyala was not stupid enough to ignore the speed of his troops.
The Tavastians, who had learned of the landing of a large number of enemies two days ago, were all saying that a decisive battle was inevitable. fear? confused? None of this makes sense.
Almost everyone knew about the horrific hanging corpse, and their minds were filled with anger.
The brave warriors of Tavastia were hung and skinned like hunted squirrels? ! Who are the Russians humiliating? !
Middle-aged, young, and even some teenagers from the tribal alliance, these Tavastian men from the southern lakes and swamps area, they wear a variety of leather clothes, carry their own short wooden bows and quivers, and carry Iron spears, javelins, iron swords, iron axes and wooden shields gathered into a mighty army and followed their leader Vatyala out of the mountain fort.
Ordinary people who had just immigrated here cheered for the heroes, wishing them a great victory and establishing the Alliance's absolute rule over this newly conquered territory.
Women and children were cheering, and the more than a hundred soldiers who stayed behind were beating their wooden shields and yelling, and some were beating their small leather drums to cheer.
Infected by this enthusiastic atmosphere, and then realizing that my own army is so huge, why don't the small characters in the army think that they are bound to win?
Who are the Russians? This will be an ambush battle where the brothers rush to the battlefield and beat them violently. With the superiority of troops, victory is not easy to come by?
Optimism permeated the entire Tavastian army, and this size of troops was extremely rare in all military operations of the tribal alliance!
The last time such a large-scale army was dispatched to fight against the Karelians who invaded the territory was ten years ago. The subsequent battles were all maintained at a scale of two to three hundred people.
The glory of the new victory will be in his own hands, and with the blessing of a "wonderful plan", Vatyala no longer has any doubts, and the concept of "failure" has been deleted from his mind.
Perhaps this was not arrogance, but simply a miscalculation of the strength of the Russians because he listened to false information.
They didn't start moving until almost noon, and even though the team was a little disorganized, they still reached the location of the old Salmon Lord's hillfort after nightfall.
No! They did not enter the burned hillfort.
Every warrior of Tavastia's army walked along the riverside woods. When they approached the flat land washed out by the big bend of the river, they saw an incredible number of bonfires appearing in front of them.
"Not good! Are these all Russians? Why... there are so many people!"
The horrified Vateyala was shocked and urgently ordered several people in the team holding simple torches to put out the fire immediately.
People stood there and talked about it. No one thought that the Russians would move so quickly. They had already arrived!
Vateyala hurriedly summoned his cronies and brave men. He knew that no matter how brave he was, he would not dare to break into the Russian camp. As long as he saw the starry bonfire, he, as the commander, would tremble involuntarily.
Although Vatyala didn't want to, he really felt fear.
Fortunately, the darkness hid the brothers' figures. The extremely limited torches (just some lighted branches) were not for lighting at all, but only used weak light sources to ensure that the team did not get separated.
He pointed to the dense bonfire: "We are still one step late, but we must attack the ambush."
"How to fight?" someone asked.
At this moment, the person who proposed the "ingenious plan" immediately thought of a new countermeasure: "In my opinion, brothers should enter the woods. Spring has arrived, and the past day has been quite warm, so there must be fog tomorrow morning. We use the cover of morning fog to make a sudden attack , will definitely catch them off guard."
"Wonderful!" Vateala laughed out loud and patted his legs: "Just do it, let's go there quietly, just like when we hunt together, we must not let the prey notice it."
Vateyala made a brief arrangement, and the team that was originally advancing along the river dispersed to a certain extent. They entered the forest and divided into several groups, hiding one after another about 500 meters away from the Ross camp.
They decided to wait until the morning mist rose and the brothers took action.
But is this a foolproof plan?
Even if Rurik thinks that the Tavastians are local chickens and dogs, he is not so arrogant that he despises his opponents like a group of ants that can be trampled to death at will. He was worried that the Tavastians, one of the ancestors of the Finns, would not follow the rules and engage in things like hijacking camps, so it was reasonable to set up false bonfires when they were resting at night.
Besides, although this place has been reduced to ruins, the Russians actually arrived here again in a purely military way.
There are also some thatched houses that can be lived in. Rurik feels helpless when he thinks that three years ago this was a village of the Salmon Lord tribe and now it has become like this.
Kejas and Mechasta, as well as the more than fifty Kovin archers who were included in the shooting flag team, all returned to their hometowns. Seeing their homes destroyed by the war, they felt no nostalgia except sadness.
The Kovin soldiers obeyed Rurik's orders numbly. Even when they were setting up camp to rest, all the crossbowmen were on alert.
Although they were chatting and laughing around the campfire, eating grilled fish, and waiting for the wheat to be cooked in the big iron pots and earthenware urns, everyone who had finished eating stayed in their own positions.
The capable old warrior of Ross certainly felt that his Lord Rurik was too cautious.
That's fine, it's always right to be more cautious when you're on the battlefield.
The Ross Army set up camp with its back to the river, which of course mainly considered the convenience of water. The torsion slingshots and trebuchets were still mounted on the two-wheeled carts. They were arranged in an array and fired in the same direction outside the camp. The shooters were scattered around the bonfire on the outside, and there were also close combat warriors nearby to defend them. All the warriors complimented the baggage and Rurik himself placed in the core. This is the classic Russian marching and camping formation.
This formation does lack some creativity, and it is also the safest in Northern Europe at this time and space.
Rurik's move didn't stop there. This formation just built a turtle shell, which was just a passive defensive move.
His real brilliance was in placing sentries in the woods. No, the Tavastians felt that they were perfectly hidden, but the sentries retreated quietly and hurriedly told Rurik this incredible but very realistic news.
More than one sentry came back, almost all the sentries withdrew!
Rurik, who wanted to get one last good night's sleep before the battle, couldn't sleep peacefully this time.
The sentries came one after another. He was shocked that the enemy army had most likely completed the encirclement without the Ross army knowing it. He was so shocked that his scalp was numb.
"These Tavastians are not fools! I underestimated them!"
what to do? Rurik quickly calmed down his emotions in shock, and immediately ordered all the centurions and flag captains to come to his thatched hut command post.
He decided to take advantage of the situation and come to the decisive battle as early as possible. Wouldn't it be nice for the Russians to get this flat ground and beat their opponents to a defensive counterattack? !
