Rise of Rurik - Chapter 1120

[Chapter 1120 Harvest Sacrifice in 841 Years]

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

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

Rurik himself couldn’t be idle, so he brought his eldest daughter Velikala here, and presented the finished manuscript of “Rossaga” 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 with her feet drooping casually, and then read the documents under the guidance of her father by the oil lamp.

Rurik was sitting cross-legged beside him. He liked his daughter’s small neck and bulging cheeks very much. Her long braids were hanging on her shoulders, her feet were shaking involuntarily, and she looked through the documents as if she understood everything. .

She was growing fast, and now she was beginning to look like a woman, half Germanic blood still growing fast after all.

She is obviously only nine years old, and according to tradition, she is ten years old after Hanukkah.

Although she is young, her height has surpassed that of her biological mother, Rumia, or it is just that Rumia is simply too short.

The high priest Rumia is very short. Wearing the huge antler helmet inherited from the Ross people, the overall height is about the same as a stag, and leaning on the same ancestral gem-studded wooden staff. Standing in front of the great temple, the whole person is quite mysterious. .

“You understand everything? This edition is all in Latin.”

“I can understand many of them. Dad…” The girl turned her head and subconsciously twisted her body coquettishly, laughing.

Seeing her happy appearance, Rurik couldn’t help laughing out loud.

“You really understand? I don’t quite believe it.”

“Well, there are some words I really don’t understand.”

“Learn if you don’t understand. Listen, this is the classic of our faith, and you have to memorize it all.”

“Ah?” The face of the girl who was acting like a baby just now changed suddenly, and she couldn’t help covering her mouth, “So much content. Isn’t it too much?!”

“A lot?” Rurik said maliciously, “Silly girl, this is only a small part. You still have a lot to get acquainted with, and now I will teach you some more while I have the opportunity. I won’t be here again Stay for a long time, and leave soon.”

“Are you going?” The girl twisted her body again and wriggled to her father’s legs, “I won’t let you go.”

[In other words, currently the best app for reading and listening to books, change the source app, www.huanyuanapp.com to install the latest version.

】

“Oh, I still have to leave. I’m the king.”

“no.”

She pouted and protested cutely, Rurik gently grabbed her daughter’s braid, “Disobedient?”

“Hey, I’m obedient.”

“That’s right. I’m going to visit the north, and I’ll be back in winter. Haha, I’ll just stay in the capital this winter and not go anywhere.”

It sounds like she can always be around her father, and Verika hopes for more company. She continued to hug her father’s leg and act like a baby: “I will also go to the north to see. I heard that there is another big temple of ours in the north. I They are all deputy priests now, so of course they should go and see.”

“Huh? It’s okay.”

“Hey!” The girl thought it was a joke, slowly got up, and said with a smile, “I can still take care of Brother Osborne.”

It seems that there is no necessary reason to hold her in the capital, and this girl did give some good reasons.

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

“Okay, I’ll take you away. Now, take a look at these documents first, and ask questions immediately if you don’t understand any words.”

“it is good.”

In times past, the tribe of Ross would suddenly prosper every winter.

At that time, due to the annual freezing of the Gulf of Bothnia, traffic was blocked by ice and snow. Although it was possible to forcefully cross the ice and snow to communicate with distant settlements, it was ultimately a feat of bravery and could not be turned into a common commercial practice.

Businessmen seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and are very risk-averse unless the benefits of the transaction are huge.

Ordinary traders do honest work. They transport goods to Roseburg in autumn, or take away the goods from Roseburg, and come in and out to create prosperity in autumn and winter.

Now Rose Fort has already expanded into a huge Ross Kingdom.

The territory of the kingdom is large and trivial, with settlements along the coastline of the Baltic Sea, and the inland area is a large area 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 warm Atlantic Ocean an opportunity to take advantage of the high-saline seawater.

Warm currents keep the central Baltic Sea from freezing. It is bounded to the north by the Åland Islands where Tombstone Island is located, and to the east by Gogran Island in the Gulf of Finland where stone can be quarried.

If the cold current is more intense this year, the expansion of the ice sheet will cause the Central Baltic Sea to be covered with ice floes.

The overall climate in 841 was mediocre, and there was neither a shortage of crops nor a rare bumper harvest. For any peasant family who lived on growing grain, the situation this year was quite satisfactory, which could already be called a gift from God.

Ross, as one of the Viking tribes, now integrates most of the Viking tribes into one, and merges all the mythological parts.

The Kingdom of Ross worshiped seven gods, among them was the god of agriculture—Frey.

In other words, the real God of Agriculture and Harvest is actually God Frey’s mount, the big golden wild boar Gulin Bosti, which in ancient Norse means “pig that radiates warm light”.

The autumn harvest in New Rose Fort is about to begin, and the high priest Rumia is actively preparing for this year’s harvest sacrifice.

To the great glass-covered temple of Rus there is a reason for performing a sacrifice every month.

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

Some thick stone piers of the old stone boat altar of the Ross tribe were transported to the capital by boat, and they were reprocessed at the gate of the first temple, and then a batch of newly mined stone bricks that were chiseled and chiseled were assisted to build a permanent altar.

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

The priests are therefore very busy, and the people who come and go can observe and participate freely, which makes Qidan’s life more fun.

Especially for some major festivals, Ross’s new tradition of building fire towers has become an old tradition. If you don’t build towers as torches on major festivals, you will lose the fun of unknown carnival and dancing. It is to add strength to the sacrifice. They want to believe that if they are so devout and godly, the whole family will get good luck.

Ships transporting northern fur goods arrived at the port one after another, accompanied by a large amount of iron ingots, copper ore, or simply iron ore.

Glauber’s salt, cinnabar, chalk, pine gum, pine tar, simple charcoal, salt, walrus ivory, feathers, antlers, boiled fat…

These northern goods are generally rough and full of raw materials. They have no market in the north, and they can only be sold at a good price when they are transported to warmer and densely populated capitals.

Squirrel fur, mink fur, forest cat skin, a variety of precious or large-scale small animal leather arrived at the port of New Roseburg on the last ship before winter. When the bulging cracked, he directly chose to rush to the sandbar. After unloading, he laid wooden stakes and fixed them with cables, and then unloaded the sails, only the mast pointed directly at the sky.

On the eve of the Harvest Sacrifice, the kingdom’s autumn leather trading event began. Since this year is the first trade fair during the grace tax holiday, the trading scene has become extremely popular.

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

The two bazaars in Waiguo are more lively, and if there is intense excitement, there will be more disputes. Governor Konusson led the security patrol team to maintain law and order as usual.

The kingdom of Rus already had a written law on paper, it could of course be more detailed, but the general public was more accustomed to the common customary law of the Viking tribes.

Stealers chopped off their hands, violently beat their clansmen before expulsion, murderers beheaded or hanged, and extreme murderers became blood eagles.

Most of the crimes that can be found by the patrol team are theft. This is a commercial city after all, and the most caught are pickpockets.

A motley crew of market pickpockets is hard to catch, and New Roseburg does have a small group of thieves by trade.

Little Konusson didn’t have much patience for such people. If he caught a thief, he would have to torture and question his accomplices. If he didn’t cut off his fingers, he would have to be whipped. Quarry slaves of the year.

Little Konuson came to work, especially when the king was present. As a pure-blooded old Ross, he had some common blood with Rurik himself. With honor in his body, he would not tell the king that the capital city is peaceful. Presumably the king will definitely Do not believe.

Now that a group of thieves and robbers are being caught to hand over to the king, it is almost impossible for the criminals caught to be old Ross, and he has no psychological pressure.

The bustling market is gratifying. Standing by the window, Rurik has a bird’s-eye view of the city, and his ears are full of noise blown by the wind.

The bustling scene in Wai Guo is clearly the big market in the countryside, and Rurik knows exactly what the market sells. He suddenly felt a little regretful, and couldn’t help clenching his fists.

“Hey, I also slapped my face to make myself fat. I just rewarded a national tax exemption with a slap on my thigh. How much commercial tax do I have to lose! Forget it, let’s just treat it as a fat sheep.”

Rurik can only comfort himself. A tax exemption stimulates all kinds of small businessmen to accumulate wealth, and relying on opportunities to quickly accumulate an initial capital is conducive to these people’s reinvestment. Focusing on the future, Ross will have a lot of money once the tax holiday expires in the spring of 844. Huge financial revenue.

Before that, the operation of the kingdom largely required the support of the royal family’s property.

However, Rurik decided to continue to use troops against Frank.

The captain of the second cavalry team, Brody, rested for a while after arriving in the capital, and the whole flag team began to practice every day in the open space outside the city.

They don’t train horses every day. The horses need to be cared for. They need to be fed with hay and wheat. The mane is used for other purposes.

The blood of Ross’ war horse is almost Turkic horse.

This is an ancestral breed of Mongolian horses, which are essentially equivalent to Mongolian horses. They are shorter but stockier, with strong endurance and extremely cold resistance.

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

Deer tendon, horsehair, and hemp rope, the three-in-one torsion unit provides powerful torsion for the slingshot. Rurik has already prepared for a rainy day. There is no need to make new torsion slingshots and bull trebuchets, and the old equipment can be used to make your own. Iron slaves perform large-scale cultivation.

The heavy equipment of the battleship was dismantled, and the torsion unit in it was inspected and refurbished.

Iron slaves also accepted the work 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 of course worth it. Considering that the future is to intervene in the Frankish civil war, Rurik is sure that King Ludwig, who lost most of his main force, will be beaten up by his elder brother. Ask for help, and then the Ross army can justifiably send troops to intervene.

The enemy will be the regular army of Central Franks, and based on a series of lessons from previous large-scale battles, Ross must deal with them with the best weapons.

It would be a group of armored heavy cavalry and heavy infantry. I am afraid that there will be a group of ruthless men equipped with riveted mail armor. Ross will also have to use carbon steel arrow clusters on a large scale to break through the armor.

In this way, all kinds of feathers from the north were bought by Rurik, including some special ones.

It was a long and delicate black feather, it was definitely not a crow’s feather, as the complete feathered bird skin appeared in the market, matching the bird’s head, Rurik quickly realized what it was.

It is not a penguin but has the penguin’s real name – the great auk.

Ask about its capture point, which is the reef near Murmansk, the stronghold in the extreme north.

Rurik didn’t have a complete model for this bird. At that time, he personally completed the first Murmansk expedition. After spending a polar night in a pit in the Arctic Ocean, he caught elephant seals and plundered Big Tusk. At the same time, he also saw this bird. A flightless bird.

The great auk is not extinct now, and Ross hunters are only just beginning to catch it.

Its leather was fine, but Ross liked the finer hides of ferrets.

The feathers of great auks are good materials for making arrow feathers. Considering that the poultry breeding campaign encouraged by Ross is very effective, the kingdom has no shortage of arrow feather materials, and eggs are no longer rare. The black feathers of these great auks seem to be more suitable for fur decoration things.

The most leather that the Kingdom of Ross can provide is reindeer!

Nearly six years have passed since the crusade against the Karelian Tribal Alliance. The existing reindeer herd combined with the tens of thousands of reindeer captured has produced a herd of up to 100,000 reindeer.

The base is huge, and they are all owned by the royal family.

All the Lapps are essentially related to the high priest Rumia, and they still live a life of herding, because the whole family is legally the herding slaves of the royal family, so they have a huge and powerful backer.

A large number of reindeer were seized in the past wars, and the king shared the spoils with the soldiers. Many Ross families kept their own herds of fawns, and the small number were used as a means of transportation. The so-called pulling carts in summer and pulling sleds in winter.

Some poorly run families hastily slaughtered the reindeer as a trophy, and now they have nothing.

Rurik controls the largest deer herd, and relying on the absolute size advantage and the allegiance of all Lapps, this advantage is still expanding.

Due to the collapse of the Karelian Tribal Alliance, the remaining Karelians rushed eastward and fled to a place called Perm to live with their relatives. They had escaped the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Ross.

After they disappeared, the north of Lake Ladoga, the area around the White Sea, and even the Kola Peninsula, these extreme northern barren lands suitable for reindeer herding, completely became the activity space of the Lapps.

It is not even necessary for Russian explorers to find the path. These nomadic Lapps must wander around the Murmansk stronghold in the extreme north and the area around Lake Ladoga. Explore a different kind of land transportation route to the North Pole.

The king has a lot of reindeer financial resources, which supports him to perform the “ninety-nine deer” sacrifice.

The people in the capital had already polished their sickles, and the oat fields outside the city were all harvesting.

It is an open secret that the king collects human and animal excrement as fertilizer and even cultivates fire nitrate. The fire nitrate for combustion does not need to be collected from natural rotten wood, but can be obtained from dung piles, which is disgusting.

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

The king collected human and livestock excrement in Novgorod to make fertilizer and fertilize the fields. The output of the royal family’s farmland has been gratifying. The news not only spread, but the people with land in the capital city also began to collect after learning about it.

They can only be used in a small area of fields. On the whole, due to the comprehensive adoption of the drill mode for sowing, supplemented by pulling weeds and water trucks to transport Neva River water for irrigation, the Neva River, which is barely able to cultivate land, has a real production capacity of oats. improved.

Perhaps, this is the reason for revering the gods!

Rurik ordered ten reindeer to be brought out, and on the height of the public altar, the high priest Rumia raised a jeweled staff and looked up at the sky, shouting words of prayer.

Noren, Ella, Bejahir, and Queen Svetlana happened to be in the capital, and the four daughters took advantage of the situation to dress up as priests to participate in the ceremony.

Rurik had a golden laurel wreath on his head, and he received the attention of the people. He first held up the steel sword inlaid with gemstones, and then held the hand of his eldest daughter, Vilica, who was also the deputy priest. The guards controlled the deer and beheaded all ten heads.

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

The deer livers were all cut out, and the high priest confirmed the auspiciousness. The deer livers were placed on a bronze tray and enshrined in front of the gilded statue of Frey brought out from the Great Temple. Declare: God Frey promises us a bountiful harvest.

Then, there was a roar of cheers.

[End of this Chapter]