Those Russian and Danish warriors who had experienced hundreds of battles saw a brand new way of fighting. The Pecheneg cavalry and the Frank cavalry they had encountered were completely different tactics. The Frankish cavalry were brave because they dared to charge into the formation with cavalry spears and assassinate them openly. On the other hand, the Pechenegs shot arrows and ran away!
Smart people like Arik and Ragnar realize the disgust and cowardice of this tactic. The Pecheneg horse archers ran away as soon as they shot the arrows. In order to avoid the arrows, the warriors could only resist with shields. They just wanted to counterattack and the enemy fled.
Of course, Arik also thought of the soldiers in formation using crossbows to restrain him. It's just that both sides are good at archery. Does the Russian army still have an absolute advantage in bows and arrows? At least one thing is certain. If the Ross army were all infantry, they would be able to defeat them at best. It would be too difficult to complete the annihilation.
Only a few people realized the advantages of the Pecheneg cavalry, and the vast majority of people just watched the fun.
The show eventually came to an end, and when all the performances were over, the gathered crowd dispersed.
On this night, the ten cavalry soldiers who performed well were treated with great courtesy. They were just slave warriors in the tribe, but now they have become the guests of Prince Rus!
Naturally, their former master Kagan was in attendance 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 kneel down together and accept the instructions of “Ross Khan”.
"You are all my servants now and will serve me in the future. You must do your duty well. If there is any betrayal, you will be hanged in public. As long as you fulfill your duties, you will receive stable food, clothing, and housing. And a stipend. When you get older, I will reward you with women, and eventually you will become my horse herders, raising more horses for me, and your sons will also serve me."
This relationship is good, and brothers can get more by serving Prince Rus.
They all said yes.
"Very good. Just sit down! If you drink my wine at the end, you will be my warriors..."
Those who can be selected by Kagan must be the elite among the Pecheneg people, and these ten people must be qualified to become officers.
They each reported their names. The various Turkic names really confused Rurik. He learned the true meaning of their names. There was nothing special about the names.
Some are called "wolf teeth", some are called "big arms", some are called "arrow feathers", and some are called "big eyes"...
As the name suggests, the warrior named "Big Eyes", among the many sons of the grassland with small eyes, this man's eyes are indeed big.
They have a variety of names. Since they were all slaves, the right to name them theoretically belongs to the master's family. Naturally, it is impossible to choose elegant names. In other words, the names of the Pecheneg people are generally chosen randomly, there are no rules, and they are quite random.
Kagan's own name is quite particular, meaning "Khan's Saber". This is like a Viking lord naming his son "Bjorn", the so-called "lord's attendant".
None of the Pechenegs have surnames, or their surnames have little meaning to them, especially for a group of slaves.
Even the concept of surnames lacks practical meaning for most people under the jurisdiction of the Rus' Principality. It was only Rurik's coercive measures that enabled the registered Slavs in the Novgorod region to have a variety of meaningful surnames.
At least these ten men must have a surname to facilitate management once they serve as cavalry officers.
When they were half drunk, Rurik had an idea and pointed at the people clockwise according to their current seats and rewarded them with their so-called surnames.
"Your name is one, your name is two, your name is three... your name is ten. This is your attributed name (the concept of surname). In the future, when you call yourself a name, you must add this at the end."
Rurik spoke in Slavic that they could understand. What choice could a group of slaves have? The new master could give him a surname and the brothers could thank him.
During the previous warm period, the city of Novgorod was under construction, and the real movement of building houses is still continuing today. You can get rewards for building a house for the prince, and you can even get enough food for a day at the most. Rurik spent a lot on this, thanks to this year's abundant grain harvest and the fact that the fleet plundered a batch of grain in Frankia and Britain, which helped to cover financial expenses.
It is undeniable that there are currently a number of good-quality woodcuts in the city that are idle. They were built to cope with future population expansion, and now they are just in use.
Each of the ten people will be a cavalry officer, and each of them will be assigned a wooden hut to stay temporarily. From this, they can live a better life than the regular mercenaries in Rurik, and they will also be virtually the same as those of the same race who still live in the barn. The ground has drawn a clear line.
The temporary life of these ten people is still resting. They have the right to move freely in the city, and they do not need to spend money on three meals a day. Their personal weapons and armor are still impounded, and their mounts are still being impounded and raised.
In fact, all the Pechenegs are in a state of leisure. The people living in the barn will spend their own money from now on, and their master Kagan will be responsible for the living expenses. In this way, how to spend money will be very difficult. It's up to Kagan.
In his opinion, his Rurik brothers have done their utmost to be benevolent and righteous. The subordinates live in the brothers' warehouse for free. All he has to pay is the food for the remaining forty subordinates and the food for the forty horses. Rurik had a steady supply, and the price of oats was stable at ten pounds a silver coin.
Compared to people, the brothers' war horses are the most important. In the hometown of the grassland, horses can still eat turf in winter. Even after such a winter, the horses in the entire tribal alliance are in an extremely weak state. It’s not that people intentionally mistreat their horses, it’s simply that the seasonal factors of pasture are insufficient. In addition, when the pasture is luxuriant, the horses have entered the breeding period. Therefore, in the eyes of many grassland people, troops must be raised and truces are held in winter and spring. The best time to start a war is in the autumn, when the horses are most powerful. .
It was precisely for this reason that Kagan and his horse team set out in late summer and arrived in Ross in early winter. If it were another season, the war horse would have died of exhaustion...
Even so, the horses arriving in Rus were very weak. Thanks to the large quantities of oats provided by the Rus, the weak horses recovered quickly.
Everyone loves horses. In the past, Kagan had no ability, but now that he has money, he immediately buys oats to feed the horses.
In this way, Rurik directly negotiated with Kagan a preferential agency breeding price. Each horse stayed in the stable every day and did not go out unless there was no task. The standard food for each horse was five pounds of oats a day, supplemented by a small amount of oatmeal. Root carrots and cabbage. Even if the supply of vegetables is included in the preferential category, labor costs and venue fees are exempted, and the hard expenses of 200 pounds of wheat for forty horses a day must be paid.
Two hundred pounds of oats a day? Isn’t that just two pounds of silver coins for ten days?
I heard that the winter in this lake area ends in early March, and the brothers have to wear horses here for five months. The feeding fee for forty horses is a huge sum.
Rurik was very reasonable and offered a fixed price of thirty pounds of silver coins for horse breeding this winter.
In comparison, the cost of food for people is much less.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to rest, Kagan wandered around Novgorod without hesitation. He bought a new leather coat for himself, and even bought sunglasses for his subordinates, which was a lot of money.
He was fascinated by the glassware sold by the Russians, and he couldn't stop using the flower-scented soap for bathing.
After a lot of buying and selling, another fortune is paid out.
Even so, he still felt like he was making a lot of money!
Nowadays, due to the mass production of die-cast glassware, their original extreme prices have become much cheaper, so that you can buy a glass plate for five silver coins and a glass for ten silver coins. Kagan hurriedly bought more, and immediately stuffed a large amount of dry grass into the wooden box to seal the stacked glass tableware.
As for simple colored glass bead pendants and necklaces, he also bought several sets, so to speak, taking them back as gifts to his mother, sisters, and beloved wife, and as a tool to win over alliance leaders.
In just three days, the one hundred pounds of silver coins from selling the horse had already been spent, which is seventy pounds!
Among them, he also ordered ten Russian steel swords, and even used ten gold coins given by Rurik to have a young local craftsman melt the gold coins and plate them on the sword's tang.
The so-called silver coins are indeed a common accounting tool in Russia, and Kagan's income from selling horses was earned back by Rurik in a short period of time.
Rurik, on the other hand, had already given the order to raise the cavalry, and he needed some time to wait for the chosen men to assemble in Novgorod.
Of the one hundred horses purchased, the ten best mares will be fully used for breeding. Of the remaining ninety horses, eighty will be pure war horses, and the last ten will be noble mounts.
People such as Arik, Jevlo, Medved, etc. all must learn to ride horses and learn to handle weapons on horseback.
Let’s talk about the eighty riders matched with the eighty horses. They cannot have a single source, and even the riders are selected, and Rurik uses them as tools of control.
The Sixth Flag Team, whose members are all young, selected 30 people, 25 people from the most loyal White Tree Manor, no one from Ostara, and five people each from Calf and Fisherman Manor (including a son of the chief).
There are also ten traditional lakefront estates that have firmly submitted to the rule of Rus after the counter-insurgency war. Their boyar leader must hand over a son to join the cavalry.
Among the eighty cavalrymen gathered in this way, there are also age restrictions for the personnel. The so-called lower age limit is fifteen years old and the upper limit is twenty years old.
Thirty of them were boys from Rus' proper, and the remaining fifty were pure Slavs.
The cavalry unit should be considered an elite force. Of course Rurik wants to build a team composed entirely of Rus' natives. Due to the current situation, the cavalry unit will not only be a mixed force, but the internal language will also be Slavic.
The order had already been issued, and the selected people were required to arrive early, especially those manor owners who had handed over their sons to serve as cavalry. If they missed the date, it would be disrespectful and they would be punished.
The people of White Tree Manor were really happy about this, and the horseman looked majestic. If he had a choice, the boy would naturally prefer to be a cavalryman.
The Principality of Rus pursues a simple citizen soldier system, and all men have the obligation to serve as soldiers. In this regard, the Slavs and the Vikings, including the Rus, have reached a complete consensus, but they are destined to only be infantry. Now becoming a cavalryman has become a new choice.
Medved was responsible for his share of twenty-five people and quickly selected qualified personnel according to the prince's requirements. First of all, they are young warriors in the Slavic flag regiment, with an average age of only twenty-one. Even so, many of them participated in the decisive battle on Gotland many years ago as a child, and they have also fought in many subsequent battles. There is participation. They are still young and loyal.
Although Fisk, the captain of the Sixth Flag Troop, could not step down as captain to become a cavalryman, he still followed the instructions to select personnel. In their settlement in Youth City, a competition within the flag team was immediately held. 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, and in a milder way thirty boys competed.
Carlotta, the Duchess of Ostara, acted as five riders. She wrote a letter, and the longship sailed on Lake Ilmen, where there were ice floes. The letter arrived at the New Ostara Fortress, and the five candidates were quickly selected. Certainly. Even if this once extremely depressed tribe is seriously short of men, it is 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 firmly stood in the camp of Prince Ross during the counter-rebellion war. They enjoyed considerable post-war dividends. Now, the two leaders have no worries about recruiting people to serve as cavalry. They didn't just hand over a son, they also handed over their nephew. The two men handed over a total of ten boys, each of whom was related to them, just because they did not want to let go of this shortcut that would make future generations prosperous.
But among the other ten manor owners, how many of them have such an awareness?
Because of the geographical isolation, they only knew that a group of equestrians from the south went to the north, but they basically didn't know the identity of the equestrians. What does it mean for a prince to build a cavalry force? Probably for better control.
The prince forcibly handed over his son to serve as 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, it will be bad when the prince's thunderous wrath comes.
The departure of the younger son means the complete loss of inheritance rights to the manor. Naturally, the eldest son of the manor owner is most happy about this. However, after much thought, the child's mother felt that her son would never come back once he left, and that he had become a slave-like existence who only took orders from the prince. She cried loudly when she said goodbye.
This kind of thing happened in many manors, and for a while the boy who was eager to become a cavalry panicked, as if he was going through fire by boat to Novgorod.
The personnel have been assembled one after another, and they also have different expectations for their future.
Especially the sons of the manor owners, they came here tremblingly, and what they saw and heard was not what they expected at all.
They saw a group of fat and strong horses, all equipped with saddles, bits and reins.
There is a group of prairie people on horseback standing majestically behind the horses.
look! The blond man.
Who else could it be if he wasn't Prince Rurik? !
Indeed, Rurik was not afraid of the north wind and allowed his golden hair to be praised by the wind. Although the weather is good today, the wind is slightly strong, making the northern country desolate. Look at this group of Turkic horses. In addition to eating oats and carrots every day these days, their manes are also growing like crazy. They are supposed to gradually consume their physical energy, but instead they become stronger, completely different from their counterparts who spend the winter on the grassland and become physiologically sluggish.
While Kagan was shopping in the city, Rurik was busy improving his horsemanship.
The running-in period has probably passed. The mount I selected is obviously very intelligent, and the orders given are implemented very well. This horse got an elegant name, the so-called "Monkbjorn", the so-called "Black Guard", which is actually a domineering name in Viking culture.
It was Rurik who gave the order to assemble. He saw the selected boys gathered in the open space outside the city ignorantly, blowing the cold wind. He lightly rubbed his feet against the horse's belly, and the horse walked slowly away.
Prince Rus reviewed his subordinates from an absolutely overlooking perspective and gave a brief speech.
He didn't hesitate anymore and ordered: "All the gentle and powerful horses are here. Go and choose your own horse! Remember, the person who chooses the horse must swear to treat his horse well. It will be your comrade-in-arms and your future." family……"
An interesting 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 all over their faces. They subconsciously stroked the horse's mane and hugged the horse's head. Those who had worried about the son of the manor owner must not immediately learn to ride a horse in order to have a majestic appearance like the prince.
In Kagan's opinion, these young people must not have the talent for riding horses like Prince Rurik.
Next, Prince Pecheneg himself will serve as the chief instructor and train these yellow-haired guys into cavalry! By the way, I can also earn a tuition fee and buy a batch of supplies to take back to my hometown next year.
