Chapter 728: Rurik at Novostara-Sur-Lovady

The time was in the evening, and the soldiers who had walked for an afternoon had the fortune that the calves of the male and female soldiers were bandaged to avoid muscle soreness to a great extent. Everyone was still tired, so they began to unload from the carriages and deer carts filled with supplies. A large iron pot, lined with pottery piers, is buried in the stove to cook thick porridge mixed with wheat and vegetables. They also began to harvest trees and branches, and set up field tents on the spot.

This move undoubtedly surprised the villagers who had just built a few wooden sheds.

The Rus conqueror of the Varangians was by his side, the king of the conquerors was a young boy, and the king's warriors were both male and female and very young.

The conquerors not only had no ill will towards everyone, but even rewarded them with salt and iron.

The prince is really a good man, the children of the whole village got some strange food, it seems that it is made of wheat and it is really delicious...

The act of kindness won the hearts and minds of the people, and the attitude of the village chief changed drastically.

The villagers are simple and simple and full of desires. It is completely because they lived too hard in the past. A Varyag king who can speak Slavic has sworn that he will lead his subjects to live a good life with practical actions. vote.

The village was named "Eleventh Village", and the village chief who hurriedly sent his daughter was also recorded by Rurik.

The Ross army mixed with the villagers for a night, and the sailors also went ashore to rest, and by the way, they brought a batch of trawled perch for everyone to roast.

The "Peace Parade" throughout the day was suspended, but it had just begun.

The bonfires on the ground by the lake here are as dense as stars, and they can probably be seen from far away places, right?

Many people were already sleeping in the tents, and Rurik was willing to stand by the lake for a while longer.

Arik patted his brother's shoulder: "What are you thinking? You...this year is completely your performance."

"I'm looking at the South, those Ostarans."

"I miss your Carlotta."

"Yes. I also want to see how the construction of New Ostara over there is going. Tomorrow I plan to get on board all and take a water cruise to the village behind. We will spend the night in New Ostara, and I hope Carlo She can provide us with some yogurt and cheese."

"Can she get enough cows?" Arik yawned and shrugged.

"Let's rest early."

"Alright."

Rurik created a new image among the newly subservient Slavic populace. The Varyags are a collective term for a group of people. Although the Rus are one of them, they are more reasonable than the other Varyags, and they are also building a stable order. These people are willing to submit to a monarch who helps and shelters them. They don't care whether the prince of Rurik is really a "son of God". As long as the prince fulfills his promise, then he is a "son of God".

This is true of new subjects, and the same is true of old subjects who have surrendered.

However, Rurik will no longer give physical rewards to those old subjects. Of course, they can still get a batch of advanced production supplies, provided that the food is exchanged.

Lake Ilmen is a large lake in the inland region of Eastern Europe. The eleven villages of the new subjects are relatively close to the Rus settlement of Mstisk, and the next voyage completely became Rurik’s inspection of the old subjects. .

The fleet suddenly appeared, and all the people of the manor along the way were watching.

The boat was released, and Rurik went ashore with a group of soldiers. Accompanied by the farmhouse Boyar respectfully, the prince visited the rapidly heading wheat fields. According to the statistics of the fields, he reiterated the taxes that the estate should pay this year and the specific time of tax collection. The prince further pointed out the relationship between the monarch and his subjects, and focused on the fact that Mstisk on the north side of the lake was in fact the largest Rus settlement in the region, and welcomed the village name to bring his surplus production to trade useful materials. .

In the face of the absolute might of the Rus army, thousands of people would bow down to any farm.

Each of the surrendered old farms has its own unique livelihood. The fleet has entered the southern lakeside of the Great Lake. The farms distributed here pay more attention to raising sheep and planting flax, and raising more black-haired cattle.

Rurik's fleet has drifted to the so-called very southern flax manor, where people grow flax in addition to wheat. This year's flax stalks had been harvested, and when Rurik arrived, a strange smell was pervading the village.

have a look! 2,000 men, women and children in the whole farm are serving the boiling hemp poles. Those strange smells are emitted by the hemp poles churning in the boiling water in the pottery urn. The decolorization of the hemp rods was also done by the way.

You can also do business on the cruise. Salt is a hard currency that is more beautiful than silver in this lake area. He took out a pound of salt and easily exchanged for a large amount of rough processed twine.

Making slender twine into ropes is a good thing for the Rus, or all Viking tribes are good at doing this, but everyone lacks the opportunity to get flax on weekdays.

The flax manor originally produced rough flax for their own use and sold the surplus to other tribes. The pine needle manor that was the biggest buyer in the past, but now the consumers of that manor have all turned into dead bones. It seems that they have lost a big buyer, but now they have got a more crazy buyer, the Prince Ross.

"You should continue to open up wasteland and plant flax for me. The flax you produce can replace oats as tax, and I also order you to sell all the surplus goods to me every year. Oh! I changed my mind! You will use flax for tax credit this year. , at ten times the tax weight of oats."

The farm Boyar and the general public fully welcomed the prince's request for tribute, and all of this was indeed in line with the contract previously made. The princes did not accept the truth that only wheat was a tax, and any equivalent could be a tax.

They can keep a lot of rations, and according to the contract, they really pay a lot of rough flax for tax, and they don't lose much.

Not only that, since the prince revealed that the duchy has a huge demand for flax, Boyar and the villagers immediately reached a consensus that the linen used for cloth this year should be kept for himself, and the rest should not be processed or not. By the lake, they were all sold out. The people also got salt and a new batch of iron tools, especially a curved plough, which will have a huge positive effect on the land reclamation next year.

Now that the Flax Manor is over, it should be New Ostara further south.

The Lovady River, the West Dvina River and the Dnieper River, the three rivers originate from the same swamp.

As long as you follow the Lovady River to the south and enter the source, the second wide river that the explorers find and find must be the West Dvina River, and its mouth is the Riga Bay, which is the traditional territory of Latvians and Lithuanians.

If explorers find a third broad river further south, there is no doubt that it is the Dnieper, and just sail a short distance along the river, and a huge settlement is in sight. That is the Smolensk built by the Krivicians.

After all, Carlotta and her people are essentially Vikings, and when they reach a new territory, exploration becomes an urgent task.

She is pregnant with the prince's child, and no one dares to oppose her power.

She is also a very ambitious duchess, and she was not like that at first, but the current situation forced this young woman to become a generation hero.

The Ostarans are also the Varangians, they are part of the Duchy of Rus, the female leader is also one of the wives of the prince, and the child in the womb is also the cub of the prince. Nearby farmsteads revere the Ostarans, even if their population is no more than seven hundred.

As far as the level of technological development is concerned, the Ostara people are still better than the nearby farms, but they are far behind in terms of farming skills.

But the Ostarans hardly cultivated land in Scandinavia, even if they controlled the lake of Gran Lake at that time, it was possible to grow wheat.

The people of Ostara focused almost all the technology trees on raising large livestock and making dairy products, and emigrated to the New World. Carlotta's first thought was to buy cattle and sheep from nearby farms. She decidedly took tough measures and took a small group of armed fighters to forcibly buy cattle, especially the heifer calf was the most favored.

How dare those farms resist, they have to hand over a batch of cattle and sheep. However, the money Carlotta gave them greatly eased the anger of the people who lost their cattle and sheep.

This is the era where the colored cows do not exist, and the European aurochs have not yet become extinct.

Even domestic cattle still have some wildness. No matter how much the male or female is pure black, the sharp horns of the bull are straight forward. If it is frightened or aroused by anger, the bull is a brute force charge, and if it is used on the battlefield, it is also Powerful combat tool.

However, the Ostara people are the best at herding. Even if the old Ostara tribe experienced war, there were only 100 women left. The production and life experience of the tribe was basically mastered by women. . They deliberately kept a small number of bulls, and since they did not understand cattle farming techniques, most of the bulls would have been eaten at the calf stage. All cows will be retained, and they will be replaced in the constant gestation, colostrum cycle.

Life is getting better, settlements have sprung up, and a walled town with a wharf by the river and the lake stands at the mouth of the Lovati River.

It was the breeding season for cattle, and Carlotta now had sixty cows, but only ten bulls. Forty of the cows were ready to breed right away, and they had to survive the winter until the calf was born in the early summer of next year, and it was only then that the Ostarans were able to make yogurt on a grand scale.

The Ostarans have to wait, their cattle and sheep are like a kind of walking, long-lived farmland, the harvest is next year, and now they must rely on fishing and buying wheat from neighboring farms for the winter.

Of course, Carlotta firmly believed that his man would definitely cross the Great Lake and bring enough food for his tribe to survive the winter.

Her body has undergone very obvious changes, and her enlarged belly can be covered with clothes for the time being. She didn't want to hide it, her belly getting bigger and bigger every day was an oath of power.

It wasn't long before she became pregnant, and the women were planning a big day for their duchess. Probably until next year's spring sacrifice, a male Duke of Ostara would fall to the ground, and her status would be completely unshakable. Everyone is looking forward to the birth of this child. The birth of a boy means the rebirth of Ostara.

The women weave cloth with the bought linen, make wooden furniture with knives and axes, and also chop wood and pile them up to build a "wooden wall" outdoors to store heating fuel in winter. A large number of reeds were plucked, and they were piled up into haystacks. According to past experience, women holding scythes are now stocking up food for cattle and sheep for winter.

There are also a large number of wooden stakes in the city of New Ostara. On the pulled up hemp ropes, there are densely packed perch that have been descaled. They are naturally dried and used as one of the staple foods of the people in winter.

Men do a lot in building cities, they are busy logging and they don't have much time to clear the land. Only a small amount of wasteland has been doubled, and wheat will not be sown until next spring. However, these lands have already produced some crops - yellow root carrots.

There is a fishing boat belonging to Ostara cruising on the lake. They are traditional long boats. The boss of the boat greets ten fishermen to work together to control the big net to trawling. They fished on the orders of the Duchess, and all the catch was to be shared by the whole clan, and there were five fishing boats cruising like this.

A fleet was approaching in the distance, and the fishermen squinted and paused to look at it. They all guessed who was coming, until they saw the flags flying on the masts and smiled.

"Brothers hang up the bull's head flag, the Russ are here!" The captain of the ship ordered.

Rurik had noticed the long ship long ago, and they hung a familiar flag to prove their identity. He stood at the bow and looked out again. The dark green forest in front of the lake reflected a city with wooden walls. Appear!

The fishing boat met the fleet, and soon the maharaja's parade army arrived at the most important resting point of their journey.

Considering that the small wharf in New Ostara City was not enough to dock the fleet, all the large ships were anchored near the shore, and after the small ships were released, everyone landed like this.

Carlotta is a strong woman, she can still jump and run around, hearing that Rurik is here in person, how can the sudden good thing make her want to continue the lunch break to raise her baby?

All the people in the city went to greet the guests under her leadership, especially when she ran wildly all the way, and finally gave a strong bear hug, holding Rurik in her arms.

But Rurik was taller and stronger.

"I said it." He looked at his woman affectionately. "I've finished immigration, and then I'll come to see your new Ostara."

Because he was too excited, Carlotta was already in tears: "It's great. Everyone came to this warm new world, I..."

"You're crying. You don't have to cry, even if you're very happy. I'll stay here for at least a whole day, and I'll take care of you. I'll give you a good taste of being a woman..."

Rurik's meaning was already very obvious, Carlotta slightly shyly hooked his head, grabbed Rurik's right arm with one hand, and slowly brought it under his robe.

Rurik just touched it lightly, and then froze with excitement.

"Sure enough...you finally succeeded."

"The women are saying the baby will be born next spring. This is your son."

"I know." Rurik was too lazy to say more, he suddenly tried hard, and directly hugged his woman and the child in his belly as a princess in his arms.

Carlotta is very young after all, even with her square cheeks, her overall youthful appearance is enough to attract Rurik, not to mention that she is still a girl adopted by Otto, the first Duke of Ross. called sister.

Otto's actions were both well-intentioned and politically motivated. Now the resurgent Ostara people are indeed strong supporters of the Principality of Ross. They essentially guard the southernmost part of the existing control area of ​​the Principality. Holding the Duchess of Ostara, Rurik hears all "Long live Raja Ross".

Obviously, the people who immigrated here not only welcomed the prince, but also clarified the fact that they were first of all subjects of the prince of Ross, and secondly of the Duchess.