The boundless hills are covered by dense pine forests, and now the forests are covered with thick snow and ice blankets, and the people living in the forests have already lived a peaceful winter life.

This is Smolensk, large and small villages rise along the main channel of the Dnieper River, and there are also a large number of villages near many tributaries.

Hundreds of thousands of people settled in the huge area centered on the main city of Smolensk. They were a powerful force on this side, and their huge population was enough to supply the ruler to make some pioneering work.

Just like Novgorod in the north, not to mention the main settlements, there are still a large number of people hiding in the dense forests.

The same goes for the Smolensk region.

A group of small villages are hidden in the dense forest. They are often a settlement of only a hundred people, living a quiet and poor life in the form of collective farms.

Such farms have not yet come under the rule of the Smolensk forces, who have no intention of going to the forest to pick them out.

A feudal kingdom named Ross rose in the north. The kingdom had an urgent need for population growth. Those who hid must be found out, regrouped and settled to pay taxes for the kingdom.

Smolensk is still in the state of the tribal alliance. Even if they give Vadim the position of chieftain for various reasons and allow him to send troops for an expedition, Vadim is still not the real king of the alliance.

The forces of all parties were forced to obey a series of orders from the thousands of elites Vadim had trained. Now Vadim and his army have left, and the huge Smolensk community has fallen into a temporary leaderless group.

Will Vadim win?

Maybe.

But would it be a terrible loss for Smolensk if his expedition failed, and his men froze or were killed?

The local aristocrats, especially those with a little Roman and Greek blood, settled their own accounts.

In the army that went to war, those so-called elites were all bitter and bitter people. The villages of these people were destroyed by the Ross forces and their relatives were killed. They had motives and reasons for revenge.

"But what does all this have to do with me? Noble, I still live comfortably? Those who gave Vadim were a group of debt slaves who owed me money and went to help Vadim fight. In this way, I am done. I don't have much to lose from the mission that guy gave me, and if I win, I can share some war dividends from it

The nobles in the city of Smolensk have such an attitude. They have controlled the eastern front of the Amber Road since ancient times. However, in recent years, trade has become more and more difficult. Originally, there would be Varyag people visiting Smolensk every year to transport goods from the north, especially amber. These trades have basically been interrupted in recent years.

The way things are. When the Ross forces frequently went south, the final influence directly included the Gulf of Riga and the Courland region, which was the source of the Amber Road. The Varyag merchants, mainly of Danish origin, have been considering their own countermeasures for a long time. They first became conservative, which caused the entire Amber Road trade line to become depressed. Smolensk has hardly received new amber and beeswax.

Now these Varyags have become part of the kingdom of Rus. The Amber Road is still there, but it has been controlled by Ross, and it is even less likely that gemstones will be imported before Smolensk surrenders.

[In view of the general environment,

The residents of Smolensk do not need those gems to live. The mere stones are indeed beautiful but cannot be eaten.

While the Varyags were transporting gems, they would also transport some leather, large pieces of sea salt, and sun-dried salted fish. After all, the residents of Smolensk were inland, and they were too far from the sea. In this era when the large salt mine of Pripyat had not been discovered, the salt needed by inland residents was almost provided by these merchants.

Imported salt has become scarce, and people can still get a minimum amount of sodium from food. The current situation of salt shortage is weakening people's ability. Of course, life can continue, but it is easy to faint when swinging an ax to cut trees. Because of the lack of salt, The main labor force of the family finds that their bodies are suddenly not as good as before.

But life can still be maintained, they are still cultivating wasteland and farming, and they are still domesticating a large number of cattle in the wasteland.

Even after breaking the deal with the Varyags, Smolensk is still developing.

The local nobles don't like Vadim's overbearing, but hope that this person can help them open up a new situation.

The nobles are afraid of Ross in the north, but they look down on those people in their hearts. The nobles have basically figured out the situation, who is attacking us? Not only the Rus people, but also the Kiev community, a relative tribe in the south.

In the eyes of the Smolensk people, the Kiev community has become a servant of Ross. The trade between the two sides was interrupted in the past, and now they are fighting each other.

Although they were all members of Krivich's men, the Kievs had their Kiev altar, and Smolensk had its own Gnezdovo altar. The sacrificial activities condense the hearts of the residents near the altar. When they no longer share the same sacrificial center, division becomes inevitable.

These Smolensk nobles can deeply feel their isolation. It would be great if there are fierce men who can lead the army to fight out.

They are not grateful to Vadim, they are more than happy to sit back and enjoy.

They were waiting for the good news of Vadim's victory. Before getting the good news, the local nobles naturally stayed at home and continued to drink and eat meat. And the vast number of civilians are also holding in their simple houses, guarding the food brought in in autumn and not going out unless necessary.

Regardless of nobles or commoners, at most they will only do some winter work within the settlement. Since the trade has been cut off, there are not many valuable handicraft industries in each household, and there is no external demand, so women will not use the passive leisure in winter to do some manual work.

The greatest entertainment that the people can do is probably to give birth to more labor force amidst the groans of joy.

There are more and more children being born, and the death rate remains high. Every farm is doing fertility hedging. Even so, a large number of residents die every winter.

Young children may not make it through winter, especially since babies born in winter rarely make it to spring. The elderly are most likely to die suddenly, and the young and middle-aged may also freeze to death.

After all, the houses of ordinary villagers are leaking everywhere, and the level of house building of ordinary people in Smolensk is far inferior to that of the Delevlian people in the west.

The Drevlians led several nearby tribes to establish the Doleb League. They are not residents of the Krivich lineage. Although they are both Slavs, their language is indeed different from that of Smolensk and Kiev. the difference.

The residents of the various farms helped each other, and when someone died in the family, they regularly gathered up the frozen corpse and transported it to the public cemetery for burial.

Death is not terrible. Every winter is a trial for ordinary people. If you don't survive the severe winter, it must be your fate.

People can only keep warm by lighting bonfires indoors. When the prepared firewood is exhausted, they can only send people to the nearby forest to cut down trees to replenish it. If the replenishment is not timely, the family members are at risk of freezing to death. It all stems from the poor quality of ordinary residential buildings and serious air leakage. The only good thing is that they have never had the concept of carbon monoxide poisoning. It is indeed impossible for a house with air leakage everywhere to encounter this danger.

Even for the local nobles, the mansion is only slightly more advanced than those ordinary people.

They boasted that they were descendants of noble Greece and Rome, even if they had a little bit of blood, they obviously did not inherit the superb architectural skills of those strong men.

The nobles lived in large longhouses that resembled the Varyags. Due to the absolute lack of stones and the lack of knowledge of how to burn bricks, they built their houses entirely on pine trees. No matter how magnificent the construction, in the final analysis, it is nothing more than a herringbone-shaped long house with a rough floor.

The entire Smolensk settlement is relatively densely populated, and the multiple villages have gradually expanded like a whole due to natural development.

Such settlements do not have wooden walls for defense, and the allied settlements near the main city of Smolensk also do not have any city defenses.

In other words, consciously building the city wall is too new for the Smolensk people. The wealthy local aristocrats had at best built low walls around their mansions, and it was unthinkable for them to pay for a large wall around the entire settlement.

Even the most important and holy Gnezdovo

altar.

There are a large number of small villages around the altar. They do belong to Smolensk, and the villagers are more willing to listen to the priests than the nobles in the big settlement not far away.

The priests also did not build a wall around the altar. They accepted offerings from the people, used all their wealth in their own lives, and built the rammed earth altar to be bigger and more magnificent.

Compared with the rapidly expanding Northern Rus, Smolensk has lost out in regional competition over the years, but the local nobles lack a clear understanding of their rapid relative decline.

"Vadim organized an army of 4,000, so the Ross people will definitely suffer a lot of losses."

Some people care, some people don't care.

Facing Vadim's army disappearing into the snow, those who cared about the war gradually devoted their energies to winter life.

Because, every village has a large number of corpses transported away.

At the Gnezdovo Great Altar, the priests receive food from the family members of the deceased as compensation, and they preside over the funeral for the deceased.

Black grave! That is an area near the great altar.

The forests were cut down, and the low-lying areas in the hills were transformed into collective cemeteries.

The sledge transported the dead of different ages, and the corpses were covered with a piece of coarse cloth or nothing, and were dragged to the altar by family members.

Find an open area at random near the cemetery. The family cut down some pine trees and placed the corpse on it. They burned the corpse into black bones with a strong fire. If they were more patient, they waited until the bones were burnt to pieces.

All this requires the priest to participate in the whole process of supervision, so that the soul of the dead can fly to the sky.

They worship the **** of fire and believe that the souls of the dead can enjoy peace only after the fire is burned.

The remaining black skeletons were buried with charcoal ashes, and they were buried in a pit, and piled with soil to become a tomb.

This is how the Black Tombs of Smolensk came about.

Even if they are local nobles, most of the dead nobles will not be burned to ashes by their families, and the noble bodies are buried in the cemetery along with a large number of funerary objects.

However, even nobles rarely have such noble funeral objects. The most noble thing is human sacrifice, and such extreme funeral objects are rare.

No one dared to destroy the tomb, and all the priests have been guarding the sacred altar and the sacred black tomb.

They are a group of priests who have long been used to life and death. This year, as in previous years, the more severe the winter, the more funerals they have to preside over.

Compared with the quiet dormancy of Smolensk, the Gnezdovo altar in Katyn Forest has come to a lively period again.

Aside from the large-scale funerals, the priests must also start preparing for this year's winter solstice sacrifice.

At such a juncture, the Ross Expeditionary Army was approaching the city.

kindness?

No!

Wherever Ross's army came, what they wanted was ferocity. The Ross army just wants to open up the situation with a heavy punch. It is best to knock the opponent out of the way with the first punch, so that Wenwen can control the strategic initiative.

The first right hook had already been thrown, and the target was Gnezdovo in the forest. Because the altar is actually not far from the Dnieper River, and its location is on the right bank of the river (the current north bank), Ross's kill was indeed a "right uppercut".

Finding Gnezdovo was easy! Not even the many raiding allies of the Pechenegs ever went so far.

On the contrary, there are old Danish guys from the Riga Bay in the army. They once fled to Smolensk as Varyag merchants to sell goods, so as to buy good-looking boys and girls from the locals and send them to the Roman Empire in the south. Kherson city (now Sevastopol) transportation.

Beautiful girls will be raised, and then turned into concubines and concubines by Roman merchants all the way to Constantinople for a better price.

And the beautiful boys were either served as servants, or were castrated to become special servants.

Visitors from the Gulf of Riga don't care about the final outcome of those children, anyway, they are easily bought from their parents. For those guys, salt is obviously more important than the children's future. Or when a family has a lot of children, and the young children face any

In winter, they may not be able to resist and die, so parents don't cherish it too much.

In this way, although there are no prisoners of war as guides, the "Old Paoer" in the Bay of Riga can clearly help the Ross army find the correct location of the altar based on memory.

"They may not be very rich, but the priest's residence does have some gold and silver. There is a large population in the area. If the king wants to kill them, the brothers will really dare to do it. If the king wants to capture them, you will also get a lot of slaves." Turkander reported this to Rurik.

Rurik had to think about whether he would rush to kill him with thunder, or try to surrender him with gentle means.

"Bah! Dare to organize a large army to fight me, which basically led to the destruction of the Polotsk people who surrendered to our country. Smolensk must pay the same price. Fight! They are neither benevolent nor righteous. Anyway, many people have already said that I am a murderer. An inexhaustible tyrant, it's already like this, why should I care about it? Rurik thought for a while, and without getting too entangled, he decided to be a tyrant again.

For Gnezdovo, disaster came without warning.

Rurik spread the order to the whole army, to all the bannermen, to all the allied troops, to all the commanders and to all the fighters, and everyone received exactly the same order - to destroy the Gnezdovo altar of the Smolensks, at will You plunder, you capture as you please, you set fire as you please, and you destroy as you please.

He endorsed the legitimacy of the war destruction of the 6,000-strong army, and the soldiers of the Ross Allied Forces who were eager for war were all rejoicing.

It doesn't matter if they are poorer, and it is also a good thing that they can capture a large number of prisoners of war.

Russians, Inlmen Slavs, Riga Bay Danes, Latvians, Finns, Pechenegs, Kievs, and all kinds of people who constitute the Russian coalition participated in this grand event. Everyone has equal opportunities. King Ross allows everyone to plunder freely, and prohibits competition among friendly troops.

King Ross is extremely fair and noble, and he announced that he would not participate in the plunder, which means that the tradition of "handing over half of the spoils to the king" does not exist in the current operation.

King Rurik of Ross will also participate in the looting operations like ordinary soldiers.

They have already started to act.

As a result, the earth shook, and the villagers who were trying to fish on the ice were the first to be attacked.

Fishermen just saw a large number of black shadows moving on the wide ice of the Dnieper River, and they didn't know what happened until they were shot by sharp arrows.

The Ross army raised the flag high, and the soldiers put dyed blue feathers on their heads one after another. They changed into armor one after another.

The clothes of the visitors from the Gulf of Riga and the prairie people are also very distinctive.

Everyone is not worried about accidentally hurting each other during the operation, because the clothes have excellent discrimination.

As for the enemies, they are probably villagers in messy clothes.

Facts proved Rurik's judgment. When the army followed the relatively wide forest road that was artificially developed, it was easy to rush to the location of the great altar.

A large number of villages existed around the altar, and the 6,000 Ross coalition army, cavalry and sleds simply rushed into the huge open space of the altar at high speed.

No one can figure out what happened, after all, ordinary villagers have never seen a real Ross army.

But those armed men jumped out of the sled and launched a fatal attack on everyone.

Those cavalrymen aroused the fear of the villagers, and then turned into a screaming run of the villagers.

All funeral ceremonies have been suspended, there is killing everywhere, looting everywhere.

The coalition soldiers killed all the men they saw, but they planned to spare the lives of the women, provided they did not resist.

There is only one type of person who is given priorityyoung women.

Especially the four Citizens' Banner Squadrons that came from the expansion of the army. The young soldiers were full of blood. When they learned that they were allowed by the king to personally capture a slave in the war, they started to act like hungry tigers.

The army is completely out of control!

Rurik did not participate in the looting, but rode a horse and a group of cronies in the chaotic battlefield to witness the intensified killing.

he doesn't care about these people

The life and death of the coalition forces does not matter.

He noticed the pyramid-like earth mound not far away.

"There!" Rurik pointed with his big hand, "Brothers, this is the altar. Let's go! Let's ride up on the horse. This king wants to witness the blood sacrifice from a high place. Odin!"

With a shout, he rode his horse and rushed over, followed by the cavalry behind him.

And Vadim has been pulled out of the cage. The man was fastened to the sled, and Vadim was able to see the horror that was taking place.

Vadim closed his eyes lightly, the shouts of killing could be heard endlessly in his ears, and he could clearly see the killings that could be seen everywhere. The good altar has become like this, and it has become the place where the Varyag blood sacrificed to Odin?

He suddenly saw that Rurik, King of Ross, had rushed to the top of the altar on horseback!

Isn't this... just another kind of humiliation? !

Vadim almost gritted his teeth. A while ago, he was here to lash out at Fang Qiu, gathering four thousand troops to make a grand sacrifice, and even cut his left hand to personally complete the priest of Vulcan with blood. At that time, Vadim hoped that this way would bring victory blessed by the Slavic gods, but...

"God, your altar is being destroyed and usurped by the Varyags! God, if you are worthy of worship, let the fire burn them to death."

But Peron did not respond to Vadim's prayer ~www.mtlnovel.com~ The killing continued, and his faith also collapsed.

There was no organized resistance in the entire altar and the surrounding area, and the residences of the priests were swept away by the coalition forces. They didn't care who the high priest was. The local priests whitewashed their faces with chalk mud and painted patterns on them. Everyone looked the same, so the coalition forces rashly killed these pagan priests.

The high priest of Smolensk with a wrinkled face was stabbed to death by random swords while screaming. His gold and silver ornaments were looted, and even his teeth were broken. The soldiers took the gold teeth out of his mouth Walk

Rurik witnessed all this from the high altar.

There is no fear, no anger, no regrets, and no pity.

Rurik was silently in a daze like a spectator, everything was very real and very unreal. Indeed, the operation was too smooth! It went so smoothly that it was outrageous. The imaginary "decisive battle under the city" with Smolensk may no longer be possible, and they turned out to be fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

He stared at the chaos around him with a calm face, quietly waiting for the natural end of the operation.