The Russian army did not stay long. They continued to line up on the grassy plains by the lake and continued southward.
They quickly saw clearly the fleet of ships that had been moored on purpose, and also saw the village that suddenly sprung up in front of them.
Rurik was in a good mood and asked his brother Arik: "In the village ahead, where are the people who left the forest?"
"Yes. It's just a part of it... there must be more people yet to be discovered."
"I get it. It depends on Medved's future job."
What Rurik didn't know was that Medvet and his army, who had been ordered to do this, were also rushing along the lakeside. The two armies were heading towards each other, and their encounter with each other was already certain.
The Rus' army was the first to arrive at the first village. The first impression they gave Rurik of the admiring onlookers was their poverty.
Even the young children in the team have an absolute advantage in height compared to the villagers.
The villagers resemble a group of dwarves, and the men among them are short and thin. Can such people be trained into qualified soldiers? Rurik had some illusions about them, but now his illusions are half shattered.
The Slavic banner soldiers stationed in the village paid a warrior salute to their prince, and then brought a man and pointed out that this man was the leader of the village.
leader?
Rurik raised his chin 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 moment because of his nervousness. He just kept staring at the Ross army who were completely uniformly dressed, feeling that this was the army of God.
"I'm asking you something!"
After a loud shout, the village chief hesitated to explain his identity and the situation of the entire village.
They also spoke in the Ilmen Slavic dialect, and Rurik naturally understood them completely.
"Your name is Zaits (Rabbit)? Your village is called Pig Tusk? That's weird."
The village chief just smiled and remained silent for the time being.
If this group of people want to be obedient to the people, their current behavior is indeed somewhat obedient. Rurik looked at the faces of men, women, and children. He could not see any anger. Everyone looked at them with smiles and curiosity.
So Rurik directly ordered: "Let your people stand still! I want to check it carefully."
The village chief didn't know why, but he had no choice but to comply under the absolute military power.
They were gathered into a group, and the curiosity they had just turned into uneasiness now. Rurik looked at them in circles with his hands behind his back. He was looking for girls with beautiful faces among them, just to satisfy the needs of his young warriors.
He was a little disappointed with the group of "chaihuo girls", but fortunately they were still young. After the food was improved in the future, they would still have the beauties they should have.
In front of them, Rurik suddenly stood up, spread his legs and pinched his waist, and announced in Slavic: "I! Rurik! Prince of Rus! 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 tribute every year, I will guarantee your life safety. Any enemy who harms you will be punished. Annihilated by me. However, if you betray me, you will be mercilessly killed!"
Is he the Prince of Rus? He was a young man just as the soldiers said. But is he really a Varyag? Why can a Varangian speak our language?
There are still many questions in the hearts of the people, but at least they understand the words and simply accept the safety promise.
After that, Rurik casually called the village chief named Zaiz to his side.
The village chief immediately asked: "Your Majesty, as long as... we remain absolutely loyal, can we always have your safe protection?"
"Of course. You will become more prosperous than ever before. Surrender to me and I will give you a beautiful life in the future."
"Oh! Then you must be the holy messenger sent by God to save us."
Rurik shrugged this compliment: "I am the son of God and the spokesperson of God in the world. Now you have to make some gestures to prove your loyalty!"
The village chief hesitated for a moment and then said, "It's up to you."
"Okay. Let all the unmarried girls in your village come forward and I will make a selection."
"ah?!"
"You hesitated?" Rurik's eyes sharpened.
"This matter...the soldiers have taken away several women a few days ago. Do you think the prince still wants to..."
"Of course." Rurik was fully aware of the situation, and he fully supported it, so he deliberately asked: "I have said that the woman we took away cannot be a slave. Don't you think that the Russian warriors are not worthy of having them?" Your woman?"
The powerful army was right in front of him. Although the village chief was reluctant, he could only lower his head and ask the villagers to hand over the girls first.
This village barely has a population of 200, and the number of girls gathered together is actually very rare, only about 20. In contrast, they have more boys.
Rurik kindly believed that the girls in the village had been plundered by young warriors from the White Tree Manor. In fact, he could also estimate that under the living conditions of very poor supplies, any family would give priority to raising their own sons. As for the son's future marriage, it is too far away and is far less important than the asset gain brought by a male labor force. These people live in the forest and are very likely to selectively disappear some girls and babies who are not healthy enough. If living conditions can be improved, this situation will disappear in an instant.
What happened to the Russians will definitely happen to these people again.
Rurik must first satisfy his own life-long matter. Considering that among Fisk's Sixth Flag Team, even if boys and girls combine freely, there are still 100 people who will not be able to get their wives for the time being.
According to Slavic tradition, a twelve-year-old girl will be betrothed to her parents for marriage, so the so-called girls Rurik could examine were all too young.
After asking around, only five of the girls were basically of age, but their short stature was a bit unconvincing.
Rurik pointed with his big hand: "These are the five girls who are now marrying my soldiers." Then he shook his head and asked the young boys in the army: "Come out five people and claim your real wives."
At first, the boys of the Sixth Flag Team were busy laughing, but finally there was a push, and five of them were probably pushed out as a prank.
On the other hand, those girls who are like commodities have no right to choose their own marriage according to tradition, and they can only stand numbly after learning the situation.
Even if those boys came out because of the pranks of their companions, after all, today they could solve their life-long event, and they readily accepted the current situation in an instant. Those girls may not be beautiful, they may even look a little dirty and short, it doesn't matter at all.
The prince is fulfilling his promise. He has given such a great gift. If he doesn't follow up, wouldn't it be disloyal to the prince?
The five boys hurriedly grabbed the arm of the girl they liked, pulled her to their side, and then pulled her into the military formation.
Rurik nodded with satisfaction and signaled the boy who got his new wife to immediately bring out his own dry food.
There are two types of pre-prepared staple foods commonly used by the Russian army today: hard bread cubes and flatbread. In terms of carrying capacity and portability, everyone prefers to stuff pancakes into backpacks.
For a woman who is weak and belongs to him, a man's loving heart is completely awakened. They took out a piece of cake from their bag and handed it to their woman. The five girls were timid at first, but when they realized it was food, they started biting it like little wolves.
"What is going on..." The village chief and the villagers were stunned.
Rurik then smiled and said: "As I said, they are warriors who married me. They are not slaves. They deserve to have a good meal." After that, he pointed at the village chief: "I'll give you some more treasures."
After a moment, a small cloth bag was thrust into the village chief's hand, and as the hemp rope at the top was opened, the whole village was shocked.
"White particles? Could this be the legendary salt?"
"It's salt. Those of you who surrender to me, you must not be able to get this kind of treasure in the forest."
The village chief, Zaits, was already in tears while holding the cloth bag. He actually knelt on the dirt floor and muttered a lot of difficult words, which seemed to be all praise.
Although there are many ways for people to obtain sodium ions, even if salt is not available in life, they can still be obtained from natural foods. It’s just that compared to directly supplementing Baihuahua’s mineral salts, the efficiency of obtaining salt from food is too slow. 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 the visiting Varyag merchants and Smolensk merchants. They only bought salt. 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. Today, Crimea is still firmly controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire, and the military stronghold of Odessa is also in its hands. Local merchants boil seawater in pottery urns. After a simple separation operation, most of the bitter brine is removed, and the remaining salt is mainly sodium chloride and a small amount of potassium chloride.
The salt was transported through layers of layers, and it had become expensive to transport it to Lake Ilmen. Large farms had to exchange large quantities of leather for it, and this transaction was not stable at all.
The situation of people in large farms is slightly better. On the other hand, people in forest farms with a larger number and extremely dispersed distribution generally suffer from hyponatremia and hypokalemia. If they do some strenuous physical labor, they will definitely fall into coma. For a while, he even died directly from pulmonary asphyxia caused by hypokalemia. They didn't know the reason and could only appeal to their belief that the deceased was punished by the god of the forest.
Rurik still looked arrogant, and it was his arrogance that made poor people only feel respectable.
"This is the reward for the loyal, salt will be given to you! Besides..."
Then ten more mass-produced cast iron axes were placed on the ground: "These axes are also given to you."
What else could the villagers say? If they ask for a betrothal gift for a girl to marry, 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 will help you survive, and the new ax will improve your production and life. Rurik was using what he considered to be inexpensive things to win over people's hearts, and it seemed to be working.
The name "Pig Tooth Village" always made Rurik feel a little inelegant. He quickly understood the origin of the village's name. The large tusks of pigs were used as spearheads, and the small tusks were polished into arrow clusters. Obviously, in the Valdai Plain of Eastern Europe, which lacked stones, it was natural for animal teeth to replace stones as weapons.
Rurik gave them a very simple and even boring name "New Village", which was shortened to Novotin in Slavic.
The Prince of Rus has fully demonstrated his authority in this village and seems to have gained a new group of fans.
The group of people did not stay any longer in Xinyi Village. The five selected lucky girls also followed the team after eating the pie, or to be precise, they followed her man.
The flag signal came from the lake. The fleet, which had rested for a while, immediately pulled anchor, and the sailors basking in the sun resumed maneuvering the ship and continued southward.
It didn't take long for the team to reach the second village. Rurik repeated his old tricks, preaching again, asking for girls, and giving salt and iron tools. Everything went well, and the villagers felt that they were getting a bargain and were willing to believe in a bright future.
The second village was named "New Second Village", pronounced Novotva in Slavic. Then there are "New Third Village" and "New Fourth Village"...
Rurik was inspecting his new subjects, and the salt and iron tools he had prepared were being given away. His young boys were also constantly getting women, causing the number of the entire team to continue to expand.
Those girls were still weak after all, and they were allowed to sit on carriages and deer carts. The girls saw this mighty team from a completely new angle.
They saw many girls carrying bows and arrow pots on their backs. Their beautiful faces and blond hair looked like fairies in the forest. Those female warriors are also Varyags! With what they saw with the naked eye, these Slavic girls who left the forest felt that the Varyag conquerors were not at all as terrifying as their parents said. They even heard the saying: If you marry us, you become us.
After Rurik completed his inspection, the entire team could stop and rest.
Just when we met the seventh village, a wonderful encounter happened!
Two armies marching towards each other, both under the banner of Rus, collided with the armies of Rurik and Medvet.
What a wonderful chance encounter it is to see the prince personally leading an inspection tour outdoors? !
For this reason, both armies paused and shared information with each other.
When he learned that the prince was taking a tour around the lake before the autumn harvest, Medved asked for a report. He proudly claimed that he had pulled out eleven villages from the forest at once, and that this work would be expanded until next spring.
The army rested in place, and a team of a thousand people was entrenched in the seventh village. The villagers here were both curious and afraid.
"One thousand", this number is a very big number in the villagers' concept, and the army in front of them is clearly invincible!
Medved also understood the prince's policy towards the new subjects. He was a little surprised. They were obviously a group of poor people. Why did the prince reward them with salt and axes? 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.
Medved nodded: "Exactly. I still have a lot of information to report to you, but..."
"You don't need to say more. Nothing is more important now than preparing for the autumn harvest. Your people should go back quickly. After the autumn harvest, I will collect food taxes around the lake according to the list, and I will need your assistance then."
"As commanded."
The two teams met each other, rested for a while, and then parted ways. Through each other's brief reports, Rurik gained a better understanding of all the new subjects.
The team, advancing both by land and water, rushed to the eleventh village, which was the village that was only two days and nights away from the forest.
The building has just begun and the raft has just been completed.
The strong village chief lamented the fertility of this land and thanked the Prince of Rus, whom he had never met, for the permission to live by the lake.
They never imagined that in just two days, the army of the Principality of Ross would arrive!
At first, 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 also happened to enter this huge building and large construction site.
"Why are you running away? Are you afraid that we will bring about killings?" Rurik's words were very straightforward. The village chief was strong and aware of current affairs, and he honestly stated his concerns.
"Indeed, our army has killed many enemies. But for those who surrender to me, this army is the most trustworthy backer..."
Forget it, Rurik repeated the move ten times.
So far, there are no new villages ahead. Is this the end of the tour? This was but the end of the parade to the newly surrendered populace.
