Even though the price of squirrel skins was kept very low, the old Russians living in Mstisk still made a lot of money.
Even if the mistress of each household and the concubines of the male protagonist are from other ethnic groups, their lives have been Russianized in ten years. Are they considered real Russians? No one is bothered by this question, because their children are real Russians.
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Based on the Rus tradition, every winter every household must do their best to stock up on winter supplies. Winter hunting has been a career for the brave since ancient times, and a large number of Rus people are unwilling to take risks to hunt rare animals. Although high risks have
It may bring high returns, but women still want their families to be safe.
Today's life is hundreds of times better than in the past. As people become richer, they are able to hoard more abundant supplies. They are no longer satisfied with using limited food to survive the winter, but now want to eat and drink well.
Although Novoostara has been selling cheese, they have to satisfy their winter needs first, so in the autumn Novgorod market, cheese often disappears unless the steppe people bring new goods.
Since I can tolerate the fishy smell of pickled shark, the smell of cheese is nothing.
They pay more attention to the rich taste of cheese and the strong power it gives diners.
Any food that is high in calories is extremely popular, and this is true for all types of fat.
Every household must reserve the fat of reindeer and seals, and even the fat of hunted bears. Pickle it with coarse salt and turn it into lumps of salty oil that has been frozen soft and glutinous, and is eaten with bread.
Or cut it into a piece and throw it into a pottery jar to stew it with various reserved foods. This is a new kind of food that is different from Ross's hometown.
The Russians completed the interception of the cavalry, and Carlotta and others were also invited by Arik to his city for a gathering.
This place is still not Novgorod, until entering the wooden wall, Quetzal saw the inside story.
Take a look! The neatly arranged houses have similar looks and some obvious features. The houses have a main house, a courtyard in front of the door, and a side room. Finally, a fence surrounds the building.
Real Russian men are astonishingly tall and their hair is like gold.
There are a large number of children running here. They look grown up but actually have childish faces. The children don't seem to be afraid of the cold. They dress up like adults in thick clothes and fight with each other with wooden shields and wooden swords. It seems that they are trying to figure out who is the best.
He is a good fighter.
Prairie people are particular about riding in groups, shooting arrows, and hunting prairie wolves. The Ross children are the same, but the difference is that they always go into groups, build a wall with a round shield that can cover most of their bodies, and step on the snow.
They hedged in an orderly pace. The barbaric games often turned into big fights. Although they were wooden "weapons", they seemed to be really deadly, and there were often some adults watching who cheered at the top of their lungs and occasionally cursed.
Taking advantage of the opportunity of being a guest in Mstisk, Quetzal, a Pecheneg nobleman, was able to see the winter life of the real Russians.
A large number of young children grew up fighting each other. According to the city lord Arik, the children still have endless fun exploring in the East. Young people want to fight real powerful enemies and become real men, so they use their companions as imaginary enemies to hone their slashing skills.
It is not impossible to fight with real swords and axes, but some boys must have killed themselves in a hurry. Real weapons can kill their companions, so they fight with wooden sticks, which will result in bruises at most.
This was what Arik ordered. He was eager for new battles and determined that there would be a new journey soon.
In the war of 840, the old Russians suffered heavy losses.
Some of his old associates died in battles to open up territory for Russia, and their children inherited their fathers' swords and their father's legacy who died in battle.
The first and second banner corps are mainly composed of old Russians, and the composition of the soldiers of the standing army is also similar.
Times have quietly changed. Boys in Mstisk are turning twelve years old in large numbers. They have a large population and all have experienced physical education and cultural education, and have participated in productive labor since the age of ten. The high-intensity labor cooperation is far better than that of their parents.
With the food and Nordic ancestry, even though he is twelve years old, his height has reached 1.7 stikas, which is equivalent to 168cm.
With such a height, he is already slightly taller than the main soldiers of the Frankish army.
Because he had fought against powerful enemies in the west, Arik knew the enemy's situation very well.
When the children heard the call from the city lord, they spontaneously started a "winter martial arts performance". On the one hand, they formed groups to fight each other and frequently changed their groups. On the one hand, they carried axes and sawed the nearby forest in pairs. The logging soldiers dragged the tree trunks back.
It is a means of exercising physical fitness and strength.
It was purely due to physiological factors. The boys had grown tall enough, but their muscles were not strong enough. It seemed that each boy was too thin to fight the enemy on the front line.
This requires a lot of heart-to-heart connections and a lot of oil and bread.
Objectively speaking, this is also the reason why Mstisk bought all the oil, honey, and cheese transported by the steppe people and the Kiev people.
There are many spacious open spaces in the city. When Quetzal inquired, he learned that they were pre-designed threshing floors, and they were covered with a layer of strange lime cement, as if covered with flat stones. Currently, such a site is the best
In martial arts venues, fighting has become boys' favorite entertainment.
Quetzal associated a lot with the organized training of tribal children.
Pecheneg nobles also train their children, and women are no exception. This is similar to the Russian principle, but the difference is that young people in Russia are practicing martial arts, and the mobilization intensity is much stronger than that of Pecheneg.
"No! You are clearly sharpening your knives! Which fat sheep are you targeting?!"
Quetzal was too cautious to ask, and he thought he didn't need to ask. We are all allies, and if it showed, he and his entourage would join the Ross cavalry and fight side by side, and easily reap the benefits of the war.
The martial arts performance of the Mstisk boys was an omen. The children trained as if they were facing a formidable enemy. Fisk and Carlotta couldn't help but feel their hearts beating.
"When I go back, I will also train soldiers."
Fisk's identity is still the captain of the 1st Cavalry of the Standing Army. The unit has been expanded and the main force is stationed in the Novgorod camp. How are the training of those boys? Are they capable of fighting in battle? Why don't they also show off their martial arts?
Take a look.
As for Carlotta, her principality is the vanguard force of Ross going south. Not to mention that all men are warriors by default, and all young girls have to go to the battlefield when necessary. The principality of Ostara also needs to implement winter military exercises, with special emphasis on the training of cavalry.
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At the beginning of the period, the number of Slavic women marrying old Rus's was limited, but since then the number has increased year by year. Fourteen years have passed since the initial marriage, and the women who married Rus's gave birth to children the following year as expected.
.Women are giving birth continuously, often giving birth to a second child as soon as the first child is weaned. Coupled with the Russian war captives, thousands of Finnish tribal women became concubines and continued to have children.
After life improved, the Russians abandoned the barbaric tradition of abandoning babies and had enough food to raise all kinds of boys and girls. The population explosion began in 829.
Now, it will be Hanukkah in 842.
If according to the old tradition, the age of twelve is used as the standard for adulthood (including false years), there will be nearly a thousand boys and girls coming of age after Hanukkah.
Thousands of other children have grown up and some are married.
An old Russian man has more than one wife. In the past ten years, every household has at least five children. Some families attach great importance to childbirth. The eldest son has grown up and the youngest is still in his infancy. There are actually ten cubs in a family.
It would be an exaggeration to describe the exponential growth of the population of the Old Rus tribe. It grew from the initial 4,000 people to 40,000 people, and it was simply inevitable that it would reach 850 AD.
Rus can really support such a large population. After all, there are still hundreds of thousands of Slavic people in the capital and Novgorod area. After everyone's life improves, they are also trying their best to have children.
This was the case in the agricultural era. As a true farming settler, the best wealth for a family is its population, and childbirth is the expansion of wealth.
The Slavic farms are pioneers in logging and expanding their land. The three-year tax exemption reward and the tax holiday for land reclamation are superimposed. They have the motivation to open up land crazily.
The vast Yin'ermen Lake has a large area of swampland and coastal flat land, but it is a waste of resources as a pasture for cattle and sheep. In the past, due to the poor tools, pioneering was a laborious and low-yield thing, but now it is not the case, even if it is towed by manpower.
The plows and plowshares are unstoppable. They are very smart. What they "beg" from the forest are new fields with poor fertility. Of course, they can be improved with human and animal excrement, but it is better to transform the ownerless lakeside, which is like lake mud.
It is an excellent fertilizer.
They are the Slavs of Yin Ermen, and anyone who dares to take away their fields will be counterattacked to the death.
Under the leadership of the Boyar nobles, village regiments were organized in each village in 840 to guard against the attack of the Smolensk people. Of course, if the king intended to send troops to attack the south, the nobles were also willing to organize regiments to gain war dividends.
In the final analysis, they are farmers who are used to farming. Unlike the Russians, farming is necessary but not the only thing. They are hunters and fishermen. Their past habits cannot be changed in ten years. Fishing is the foundation of the old Russian people's life, and farming is
It will take a long time to change from making a living to becoming the main means of livelihood.
That's why Mstisk is training.
When spring plowing is completed in 842, young people can go on expeditions with genuine weapons.
In their understanding, the rise of Ross depends largely on war and plunder, and no one knows it better than Arik, the double sword. This is because he led 450 tribal warriors in the first battle of Ross's large-scale expansion.
A sneak attack on Gotland and a happy return with wealth.
As a king, Rurik had a variety of ways to rise. For Arik, war and plunder were once the norm.
Carlotta, the Duchess of Ostara, suffered from leg problems due to the war. It happened that this female noble spent a year frantically expanding southward.
Bald Fisk's dead father was originally a poor man, but now he has invaded the legendary Gulf of Riga, forcing the locals to surrender peacefully.
How can Arik not feel itchy?
The real channel of the Volga River has not yet been found. At least the Russian forces have almost reached Smolensk. Once the official contact is made, it will no longer be a cavalry fight, but a real battle to destroy the country. This is what the young new Russian soldiers are waiting for.
The opportunity, no, the opportunity has come.
He assured Carlotta: "It's okay for you to kill the Polotsk nobleman Lambard. It's good for you to control it personally next year. If you are worried about their resistance, I can send some boys to obey your command. Even my eldest son
Askard can also participate. The Vitebsk fortress you risked to build is very risky. If it is attacked by the Smolensk people, I will also send boys to help you. I will explain this to Rurik,
He will definitely agree."
Carlotta was promised military assistance, and she affectionately called Aric her eldest brother, which was indeed the case.
The daylight hours are now very short, and the daytime in the Yin'ermen Lake area has rapidly shrunk to only a quarter of the day. The limited daytime is used intensively, and at night, most families light oil lamps and do some handicrafts.
Arik chatted a lot with the nobles, especially recording their families and relatives. Since we are allies, it is necessary to talk about each other's relatives and try to build a relationship with each other to facilitate future cooperation.
Arik, nicknamed "Two Swords", was so brave that he did not need a buckler and rushed into the enemy's formation with his bare back, killing indiscriminately like a berserker.
Such a strong general couldn't help but shed tears even when talking about family matters.
Both parents have passed away, and the only immediate elders alive are his uncle and aunt. His uncle is none other than the Supreme King Otto, who has retired to seclusion. Unfortunately, his uncle is also very old.
A true warrior should die in the last battle, sacrificing himself in a sword fight.
Can the uncle still lift the sword? Maybe just barely.
To be fair, the rise of Rus was the result of the great achievements of his younger brother Rurik, and the leader of the expansion was the old king Otto. He was a hero and a great figure who contributed to Rus's change of attitude towards the Slavs and large-scale marriages.
Now that the half-blood New Rus's born as a result of his determination have begun to grow up, it is time for the old king to see his handiwork.
The mighty cavalry still had a large amount of goods to transport to Novgorod, and Arik also summoned a group of young people in the city to join the cavalry army as infantry.
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Marching is also a part of military exercises, especially marching in neat queues with a full set of infantry weapons, which can better verify whether the army has basic discipline.
Arik summoned nearly five hundred people and asked them to carry their father's shield, the sword of their father who died in the battle or their own sword, and then grab a spear, strappy backpack, and basic basics.
Rations and stomach bags and water bottles have become a fairly regular "infantry flag force", and even the number of personnel is similar.
He gave the young boys an idea: let’s go to see the old king, salute him, and then walk around Novgorod to tell everyone that you are the new Russian warriors. Although you are young, you are no less good.
to your father.
Indeed, their fathers are all old Russians, and there are even brothers and twins with similar age differences in the team. What they have in common is that they are all twelve years old or about to be twelve years younger and they are all high-spirited.
They lined up neatly, with the leader still carrying the Ross flag. Everyone wore newly sewn decorative small-style Ross jerseys, and they all wore ferret hats. Like other Ross flag teams, white is the main color.
, blue is a necessary embellishment. They are thickly dressed, and at first glance they look like the brave first flag team, but in fact they are all newcomers eager to make achievements.
This kind of good thing is naturally indispensable for Arik's eldest son Askard. This boy who turned thirteen after Hanukkah participated in the war of 840. Even if he did not explicitly kill an enemy, he had the experience of witnessing a cruel war.
, has grown significantly.
Askard fantasizes about being the flag captain of this group of peers, and also fantasizes about making great achievements in future wars.
He longed for the recognition of his uncle the king, and now he even wanted the praise of his great grandfather Otto.
He dressed up like an elite warrior at the request of his father Arik and needed the encouragement of a real hero.