Chapter 1,316 Cleaning

Rurik leads the charge!

Seeing how brave the king was, the four cavalry flag troops seemed to have drank magic mushroom soup, and each one of them became a berserk warrior.

Seeing how brave the standing cavalry of Delos was, the Ostara cavalry, the Pecheneg cavalry and the horsemen from Kiev followed closely behind and went into battle.

They skillfully took out their recurve bows, estimated the distance, took out the arrows from their quivers, and roughly threw them in the direction of the enemy.

Arrows rained down for a while, and countless arrows missed and flew over Rurik's head. The rapidity of arrow misses and the momentum of the war horses made the first round of arrow rain extremely lethal.

But there is almost only one rain of arrows.

With just one volley, the unprepared Smolensk surrenderers were beaten blank. Leather clothing could not withstand Ross's armor-piercing arrows. Countless people were stabbed like hedgehogs. The reindeer and horses pulling the sled were hit by arrows and went crazy. In the extreme chaos, a large number of people were thrown off.

There is no need for Rurik to arrange the next tactics. He gave the veteran Fisk a wink and another gesture.

So, Rurik moved to the left, Fisk moved to the right, and the Russian cavalry divided into two groups. The soldiers bent their bows and shot arrows sideways, like a peregrine falcon swooping down, shooting the arrow directly through the enemy's head!

After Ross's cavalry, Allied cavalry attacked again.

A powerful cavalry assault, the target sled team has completely collapsed.

Although Rurik had a suspicion, he found that this group of people did not look like armed men, at least not entirely. They were definitely not attacking the Smolensk army stationed at the Great Altar.

The thing has been done, let’s do it!

Rurik had already reached the end of the sled team, and three thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry were already attacking the target from front to back.

Warriors holding bows and crossbows jumped off the sleds one after another, and fired again in the general direction of the target.

Even the torsion sling loaded on the sled fired the javelin with fury.

"Let's charge again! Leave no one alive, let's go!" Rurik once again raised his sword high and led the cavalry to launch the final blow.

The mighty cavalry galloped on the frozen Dnieper River. Swords replaced bows. They rushed directly into the sleigh team, trampling the wounded with iron hooves, and the collision of horses was supplemented by the thrust of swords.

The cone-shaped Ross steel sword poked a bloody hole, and the person hit by it had almost no way to survive.

The Russian army resolved the battle like a storm, and the scarlet blood flowed on the ice along with the mist, because it was cold and quickly frozen and merged with the ice.

The calmed down soldiers inspected the corpses and discovered that there were actually many women here. They were clearly not fighters, and the other men who were shot looked like ordinary farmers.

There were indeed many corpses of armed men. They died from the dense rain of arrows before they had time to resist.

Rurik dismounted his horse and after a short inspection, he realized that he might have killed the wrong person.

But it doesn’t matter, that’s what war is like…

He asked the surrendered Hagen to come and inspect the body, and the scene now undoubtedly shocked the old guy deeply.

Wheat fields seem to grow on the ice? No, those were the densely packed arrows stuck in the corpse. The arrow shafts were like straws and the arrow feathers were like wheat ears.

Suppressing his nervousness, Hagen unexpectedly found a familiar face among the countless corpses.

He squatted down and subconsciously covered the dead man's ferocious eyes.

This move was noticed by Rurik, who walked among the corpses holding a sword: "Is this man your friend?"

"Not really. He is a nobleman named Alexander Varyaslavich."

Rurik was slightly surprised: "What's his name? Alexander?"

"It's just a Greek name. Your Majesty is well-informed and should understand."

"Of course I understand. It's just... that's fine. Is this man a Smolensk noble?"

"Yes." Hagen continued: "His nickname is Dad. He is indeed the oldest among those nobles. Don't be surprised, Your Majesty. Those guys all claim to be descendants of Romans, and their names are naturally more Greek."

"It doesn't matter." Rurik shrugged, "Anyway, they will all become corpses today. Hey, I didn't expect to meet them here."

"Maybe they are surrenderers. There are still some people who have not been killed. Your Majesty will just interrogate them."

"Of course I will do it."

The trembling prisoners of war were trembling, and there was nothing surprising about the information they immediately revealed. The number of people in this sleigh team is nearly five hundred. They are three nobles with their families and servants who want to surrender to King Rus.

Until a man pointed out a box in the sleigh, which contained the heads of Vadim's wife and children?

Rurik suddenly realized what had happened, and took a group of subordinates to take a good look at the noble body.

The wooden box was opened, and inside there was only a gray-white head that was frozen solid.

"Are these Vadim's family members?" Arik came over excitedly but was disappointed.

"I'm afraid only Vadim himself knows."

"That's fine. This way we can eliminate the root cause, although we are not the ones who eliminated the Vadim family."

"But they will all be destroyed." Rurik took a good look at his cousin's face and took the opportunity to reveal some of his inner thoughts: "We will occupy Smolensk, but the people here are not cowards. I need someone. A strong man controls this place. Brother, this person..." Rurik laughed and stopped talking.

"Me? No problem." Arik opened his mouth without thinking.

"Oh? So simple?"

"Otherwise? Perhaps only I, the brave one, can help you frighten these unruly people."

"It's a deal." Rurik punched his cousin lightly on the chest, and Arik punched him in return.

Arik really didn't think much about it, he just felt that controlling a defeated large community could further demonstrate his military power.

He longs to become a great warrior, enjoys the feeling of being praised by warriors, and is also satisfied that the defeated are in awe of this kind of martial prowess.

The heads of the Vadim family have been collected, and the Russian army will no longer stay here.

The battle ended suddenly like a gust of wind and rain. The victors recovered their arrows and fled away, leaving only the corpses of humans and animals lying on the ground, left to freeze hard and torn to pieces by the Dnieper River after the snow melted in spring... …

The prisoner of war who was eventually executed mentioned that the Smolensk nobles were not united. They had various attitudes but did not choose to fight to the death.

It was as if their spines had been broken by Vadim's scrawled defeat.

Rurik quickly completed the combat arrangements.

In Rus, each flag unit is an independent combat unit. Five hundred trained armored warriors can handle most combat operations in Europe today. Now that Rurik has so many troops, each flag team must be more than enough to deal with a noble fortress-like manor.

A standard regiment dealt with an estate, while the cavalry patrolled the outer areas.

The number of enemy fortresses and estates was far greater than the number of Ross's army's flag troops. It was destined that Ross could only prioritize a few estates to carry out cruel and barbaric "nail pulling".

In this way, other manors will not sit still and wait to die when they see the tragedy. They will flee, and once they escape, it will be the moment of killing for the cavalry.

All operations were conducted only against walled aristocratic estates. Those farms without any defensive measures were by default regarded as free collective farms where ordinary people settled. They are strictly prohibited from looting.

The target was further refined, the entire army had a tactical division of labor, and what was left was a series of strong attacks.

As for the main city of Smolensk, the people here have not yet recovered from the sneak attack. Panic spread throughout the settlement, and news began to reach remote farmsteads.

However, except for the smoke column, no one saw any trace of the Ross people. People living in the forest have always lived in isolation. Since they have never seen the enemy, they are just some rumors, and the gangsters are targeting the rich nobles, what does it have to do with me?

Remote farms have expressed indifference and continue to live their winter lives, ignoring the warnings.

The nobles were still in extreme ideological confusion. Some wanted to escape, but they would not leave if others did not leave.

As for the mobilization of armed forces, some people did start to organize militias, but there were very few people who responded. Ordinary people heard a series of embellished stories from the escapees from the high altar, and even said that the horse-riding bandits were cannibals.

The creature is an evil spirit that emerged from the swamp, an apostle of the Chaos God...

The nobles themselves were also divided. "Dad" and some people foolishly surrendered to the enemy. Everyone cursed him for his own destruction.

They could make some decisions but never join forces, and they were running out of time.

Some peasants left the shelter of noble manors, returned to their humble homes, and fled decisively with their soft goods. There are also sharecroppers and serfs who cannot escape because of their livelihood. They are deeply entangled. After all, compared with being attacked by bandits, if they escape now, they will freeze to death in the extreme cold.

Just when those who stayed behind were hesitating collectively, the Ross Army came!

At first, the cavalry suddenly appeared, and then came the overwhelming sled army, as mighty as a flood or a drifting stream.

With blue and white flags flying, and accompanied by the sound of horns and drums, various units of the Russian army launched a full-scale attack.

The tactics have been laid out, and Rurik can only pray that they can be basically implemented.

The sleds of each infantry standard team rushed towards their respective targets. Rurik was anxious and did not ask Haakon and his gang to draw a map of the estate. It was no longer necessary. Each standard team began to control the target on a first-come, first-served basis. Launch a strong attack.

Because Rurik had promised that a flag force would attack the target manor, and all the looted treasure would be his own, the morale of the Russian army was greatly improved.

Arik led the veterans of the First Flag Team, who were extremely sharp in their work.

The torsion slingshot fired javelins and cast-iron projectiles at the battlements. They hit the wooden piles and sawdust flying everywhere, and the defenders died one after another.

The manor was surrounded by four centurions of a flag force. Rurik had no plans to invite these old guys, but now it is the old soldiers who have shown the strongest combat qualities.

More than 30 people, led by Arik himself, worked together to pull the hemp ropes binding the pine trees. This simple battering ram quickly knocked down the wooden door and nearby wooden walls.

The gate collapsed. Arik took the lead and rushed into the manor with two steel swords. The soldiers on standby filed in.

They immediately clashed with the noble's armed guards. Under the absolute suppression of force, the few noble guards were killed one after another.

"Kill them all and loot the gold and silver. It will all be yours!"

Moving forward in the cry, Arik can no longer care about his youngest son Gil.

As Rurik's second nephew, Gil was born with the destiny of a warrior. The little guy followed his uncles with a dagger and rushed into it. All he saw was messy killing, so he joined the fight with the large army, although he was only watching the class the whole time.

Those had four banner corps composed of young people, and Rurikben worried that they might be merciless in battle because of their lack of experience.

But he was wrong.

On the contrary, the four young flag troops inherited the military spirit of the veterans. They were proud of their bravery and ruthlessness and showed no mercy in the face of the enemy, proving their strength to the king.

The four flag detachments pulled out the nails respectively. Since they had to divide their troops to stay at the Great Altar Barracks, their strength was reduced, but their attack power was still strong.

The soldiers constantly deployed their crossbows to suppress the enemy, and the flag captain also arranged personnel to guard against the enemy escaping through the small door.

They kept banging on the door and even threw ropes to pull down the wooden wall. After all, not all nobles built walls that were large enough for people to stand on and had battlements.

To put it bluntly, these walls guard against local farmers, they guard against thieves, not the army!

The simple wooden wall was pulled down, and the young warriors rushed in. They stabbed anyone they saw without mercy. People shouted Odin, and with the posture of being covered in the blood of the enemy, they looked up to the sky and declared to the gods that they had completed their personal blood sacrifice.

Similarly, as the governor of Novgorod, Medvet's Slavic banners had already been Vikingized. The soldiers mostly used spears. As the wooden wall was pulled down, the spear-wielding soldiers filed in, quickly overwhelming the enemy armed men who were holding on, and eventually killed the noble's family.

"Damn it! Are they the apostles of the evil god?" A noble stared helplessly at the approaching tragedy.

The head guard nervously advised: "Sir, let's run away quickly. If we don't leave, everything will be over."

"Stupid! You think I don't understand? Damn it..."

The head guard knew that the boss was reluctant to part with his family wealth, so when he saw that the boss was unmoved, considering that he still had to live, he simply said, "Sir, take care, we will run for our own lives."

As the nobles scolded and stamped their feet, the guards collectively opened the closed wooden door. They even took away all the horses in the stable, put on sleds and began to flee collectively.

Seeing this, the nobles didn't care too much and joined the fleeing team.

This can give the various cavalry units waiting for a chance to fight.

Rurik has been with the 1st Cavalry. All cavalry units are currently exercising restraint. They do not participate in sieges or plunder villages everywhere, even if there are vigilant probes in those villages.

[In view of the general environment,

Rurik's eyes were keen: "Brothers, someone finally escaped. Follow me and kill them all!"

Like a pack of tigers pouncing on prey, multiple cavalry teams came running towards them upon hearing the news.

The noble guards who fled privately collapsed in the dense rain of arrows, and the cavalry trampled them with iron hooves. The nobles and family members who followed also died one after another.

Some fleeing nobles are being besieged, isn't this giving other nobles the last chance to escape?

More noble families began to evacuate, but they misjudged the speed of the cavalry. The cavalry ran wildly on the snow-covered road. The snowy roads made by the local people in winter were suitable for their escape and for the Ross cavalry to pursue.

Rurik did not enter the already empty noble manor, but instead turned to attack new targets.

He also noticed that Beyasher's Pecheneg cavalry actually rushed into the manor, obviously they were going to plunder.

"That's fine. You looted the nobles and made a fortune, so I won't worry about you attacking the farms of ordinary people. Ordinary farmers are the ones I want to win over."

Rurik continued to fight. Those nobles who were hiding in the manor could use wooden walls to protect themselves for a while. Now they all appeared in the open area, giving full play to the tactical advantage of the cavalry.

The nail-pulling operation went more smoothly than expected. Rurik could not imagine how this group of weaklings could support Vadim and organize an army of four thousand.

The battle started at noon, and the battle against the nobles was completed before the sun showed any sign of setting.

Maybe some nobles really survived because they escaped early, but the noble group in Smolensk, those who claimed to be descendants of Rome, fell apart instantly with their deaths.

He glanced at the sun, then glanced at the aristocratic manor that was smoking everywhere, and in his ears he heard the cry of killing that could not be covered up by the wind.

"Now that the nobles of Smolensk have been wiped out, it's time for me to establish a new order!"

Rurik realized that he should order the entire army to put down their butcher knives temporarily to avoid harming ordinary people.