Chapter 1312: Sneak Attack, Burning and Surrender

Remember [new] in one second! "They just left like that? Are they going to kill those guys?"

"They let us go and asked us to join the gang? Boss, what should we do?"

The residents of Smolenskvarang, who were left on the banks of the frozen river, found everything incomprehensible, and everyone kept hearing about the boss Hagen.

Everyone needs Hagen to take drastic measures, and even hesitation is fatal.

Looking at the Russian flag in his hand, he clenched it tightly, gritted his teeth and shouted: "Listen to me! Everyone, take away everything you can! Let's go to Gniezdovo, let's go to Riga Brothers from the Bay. Let’s go to Ross!”

That's all, he whispered again: "I hope King Ross is sincere."

When everyone is undecided, someone proposes a plan and it becomes the only plan.

"What about our ship?" someone asked casually.

"No! Let's survive first. All of you!" Hagen said again: "We will prepare some gems as tribute to King Ross, and we will please him in exchange for our safety."

Let's take a look at each other again. It's probably safest to spend money to buy peace.

They are all businessmen, and they are not willing to exist as warriors unless necessary.

We have no past interactions with the Ross people, and it would be too naive to believe the bald man's promise unconditionally, but we have no better choice.

Then take a gamble! Just bet that the King of Rus who unified the Baltic Sea is the real king.

The entire Smolenskvarang people took action. Although they had less than thirty families, because they were wealthier than the locals, every family had a small group of relatives.

Even slaves who were children.

They bought children from local farmers who could not feed them, paid the farmers a sum of money, and promised that these children would live a good life with their new owners in Rome. The promise is that if the child resists, he will not hesitate to serve him with a stick.

They hurriedly gathered their belongings, took out the reindeer and cattle from the pens, and connected them to the sled with ropes. One family crowded onto the sleigh, and all the slaves followed them.

So there were 300 people from less than 30 households. Objects of little value were abandoned, and worst of all they abandoned their own ship.

Hagen suddenly thought of some measures. For example, the King of Rus must have no understanding of Smolensk, and if he wanted to conquer it, he would need information from insiders.

Correct business intelligence can determine the success of a transaction. Correct military intelligence is here. King Ross, who has never met him after submitting it, will not despise it, right? Maybe even a reward will be given if you are happy.

Just as the Varangians were anxious to sort out their belongings and plan to retreat, Fisk's First Cavalry showed off its power outside the residence of a local noble.

The cavalry flew into the open space between the manor and the manor with the Ross flag flying high. The horse's hooves stepped on the farmland abandoned in winter. It was extremely flat and not only allowed the horses to gallop, it was also an excellent place for a decisive battle.

"It's stupid. There are obviously a lot of people here, so they would rather live in scattered places than build walls?" Fisk was full of contempt for the small wooden castles he saw, and even more disdain for the simple wooden houses.

Old man Sven interjected casually: "Almost all the manors you see belong to Romans."

"Romans? Ridiculous! If they were really Roman, they would have black hair and purple robes."

"It's just what they call themselves." The old man added casually: "It costs money to build a wall. They only want to build a wall for their own manor, and they don't want to build a big wall for the villagers."

"Hey, they built a big wall to give our Russian army a headache. Although any wooden wall can be easily broken by us."

"So, we just show off our power?"

"That's it! I just want to show them the power of Ross's strongest cavalry."

Fisk was really heroic, but in the eyes of the old man Swain, he was still a bit naive.

"But the cavalry is already here, so you really don't want to do any damage."

"No need. Uncle, stop talking and just listen to me." Fisk flicked the reins again, and the entire cavalry team ran further.

However, the attitudes of the defenders, especially the powerful nobles, were changing dramatically as they witnessed the cavalry plundering the manorial fortresses.

"Are these Ross horse-riding gangsters? They are well dressed, but they are helpless against my fortress. Brothers! Taunt them at the top of your lungs!" A nobleman was so arrogant, and as his men really yelled at them, the nobles also I became more confident.

The term "Suka" has been used to curse people since ancient times.

In this era, almost all the Krivi tribes called others despicable and called them "Sovaka". The original meaning is a male dog, and the meaning it derives is self-evident.

One manor yelled "Savaka Ruski", and other manors heard it and followed suit. A group of people hid in a manor. They were angry at the intruders and judged that their situation was absolutely safe, so they cursed without restraint.

But Fisk and his party were not fools who did not understand Slavic, especially the young masters of a group of boyar nobles in the First Cavalry.

These young masters have become extremely ferocious and arrogant during the war. They cannot listen to the abuse of others, and they are all filled with anger.

At that time, the local people's scolding war convinced the old man Sven that those guys were qualified to scold, but...

"They are calling you mean. Boy, this is so shameful and humiliating! I can't help it." He deliberately provoked.

"Then fight!"

Fisk did not show Li's anger. He yanked the reins and turned the horse's head, rushing towards a small manor where curses were heard.

The cavalry quickly passed through the empty simple residences of the villagers, and then crossed an open space to face the manor wooden castle protected by a low wall.

After all, the local nobles who claimed to have Roman ancestry were not willing to live together with miserable tenant farmers and serfs.

It was the empty space where they were separated from each other that allowed the Ross Cavalry's tactics to unfold.

"Take out the bow!" When that happened, Fisk personally raised his recurve bow: "Parthian tactics! Now!"

Therefore, the Ross cavalry immediately adopted the mode of a centurion. They were divided into combat parts and made a large circle outside the target wooden fort.

Each hundred-man team moved in a circle. When the cavalry moved to a suitable position, they turned sideways and fired arrows towards the fortress.

There is no need to kill the enemy accurately, after all, the enemy is not stupid. When they saw the arrows coming, they hid behind the battlements. However, the arrows fell from three directions, but they massacred the peasants who had gathered in the fortress to take refuge.

The nobles rushed toward the sturdy wooden house under the cover of the guards and servants. The guards held their bucklers high and successfully escaped back despite the rain of arrows.

The nobles would never allow their serfs to "take shelter from the rain" in their own houses. It was a great kindness to keep them inside the wooden walls.

The guards kicked or hit people to prevent them from charging into the house. Many people were killed or injured. They even rushed into the house despite missing arrows on their backs and vomiting blood.

Even when the guards were forced to draw their swords and kill people, they still couldn't stop the panic. In the end, these tenant farmers and serfs rushed to the noble master's house...

"It's a mess inside. Maybe you can capture it." The old man was still blowing.

"Forget it." Fisk shook his head: "Did you hear the screams inside? It's enough to shock them. The rest..." He looked at the simple houses not far behind him and noticed smoke. The smoke that floated out was the smoke from the fire, but unfortunately the villagers had no time to enjoy it.

Fisk had an idea, and as he was supervising the battle, he ordered the trumpets to be blown, and the three cavalry centurions stopped fighting one after another.

The cavalry suspended the raid, and no one regretted the loss of some mass-produced arrows. Still feeling dissatisfied, they used the cooking bonfires set by the villagers to deliberately set fire to the entire messy residential area.

Thick yellow-white smoke began to emerge from the thatched roof, which could not be suppressed by the snow on the roof.

Smoke began to billow from a building. It was seen by all the nearby noble castles, and those who were still shouting and cursing immediately shut up.

Because the Ross gangsters were really destroying, and they could only be passive, the farmers watched helplessly as their houses gradually burned down and were destined to be turned into ruins.

The cavalry moved very quickly. At first Fisk was worried about the enemy ambushing the enemy, but in the end they just watched from a distance like a turtle with its head down.

He held the reins, and the horse stood in the snow. He stared at all the surrounding manors, even the local people's small docks and the boats placed on the shore.

Continuing to destroy is a waste of time. The cavalry is only performing the task of expelling prisoners. There is no reason to continue fighting unless necessary.

"Let's go! That's it." He waved his right hand to attract everyone's attention, and then ordered to blow the call for his subordinates to assemble.

Like the wind and the remaining clouds, the Ross cavalry destroyed the residential villages in front of them. Even though they were obviously simple houses, they were also the homes where civilians relied for a living. Many families have not had the chance to carry away the remaining food from their homes, and now even their houses are beginning to be engulfed in smoke and fire...

The snow on the roof melted rapidly due to the fire, turning into violent water vapor and flying into the sky in the form of white mist, just like the prelude to a volcanic eruption.

Even in Gniezdovo, even if the straight-line distance between the two places is as far as ten kilometers, on an extremely clear winter afternoon, the smoke column begins to turn yellow by the setting sun, making it an existence that no one can ignore. .

At this moment, Rurik had ordered the entire army to rest and recuperate freely. The soldiers were still searching for loot everywhere. As someone boldly discovered buried gold and silver coins from local tombs, the grave-digging operation started spontaneously.

In the past, the remains of the deceased who were incinerated were put into pottery urns or wooden boxes, and were buried with some valuables of the deceased. It is not uncommon to even die as a human being, but there are not many nobles who are really capable of doing so.

The local manor nobles living in Smolensk would definitely place their graves on the hills near the high altar. (In fact, because the hilly area is not suitable for farming, Smolensk built the city in the flat area upstream of the Grand Altar, where multiple tributaries meet the main river.)

The more noble the tombs are, the higher the mounds of earth are built. Just keep an eye on the strange mounds and do something.

Heroes from all walks of life are doing this, and everyone sees this as further revenge on the enemy.

So some people even played with the excavated skulls and showed off their power to their companions with their swords. The remains of the deceased were discarded everywhere, the gemstone rings from the finger bones were stripped off, and the gold teeth inlaid with individual remains were also chiseled out.

All this was tacitly approved by Rurik.

The act of destroying other people's cemeteries is indeed disgusting, but he has already ordered his subordinates to carry out large-scale killings. Since the behavior is bad enough, it doesn't matter if it is even worse.

There is no need to worry about the fear of the wrath of the Slavic gods. The main forces of the Ross coalition believe in Odin and Thor, and all their actions at the high altar can be interpreted as venting their anger.

They did have their reasons, and the first of them was to carry out large-scale eradication of the ancestral graves of the hostile forces under the banner of "revenge of the dead Polotsk villagers and Gulf of Riga merchants", thereby concealing their intention to collect loot.

As more and more people saw the yellow-white smoke column rising from the east, those who were in a daze also got up to observe the strange phenomenon, and subconsciously took out their weapons in case of any eventuality.

Rurik stood directly on the towering rammed earth altar, and he was busy supervising his subordinates to erect wooden poles here, the so-called resting place of the enemy chief Vadim.

Of course, the blood eagle will be done, and then it will be burned in a fire. In the end, the death row prisoner will turn into smoke and dust, as if he never appeared.

"Your Majesty! Strange sight!" A soldier raised his right arm in surprise and pointed directly at the forest treetops.

Rurik looked sideways, and at first a yellow and white lump was nothing more than a cloud. It's so weird, it's actually a plume of smoke?

A strong sense of déjà vu arose spontaneously. He slapped his thigh and it was hard to say anything. He secretly yelled: "Fisk, I asked you to do a small thing, and you really attacked them?! You really belong to me."

Fisk led his First Cavalry to excessively execute orders and expand limited military operations. This kind of thing was done too much. The army and others are in a big melee, so that the general can use his strong subjective initiative to open up a situation that is beneficial to his own side, but now... Rurik does not intend to complete the matter, but his subordinates really have huge desires.

"Let's go, brothers, let's go take a look at the river." He ordered again.

Rurik organized some cavalry, and hundreds of them stood on the frozen river to watch the show.

They watched more and more carefully, and the king's initiative also attracted thousands of warriors to come out of the forest and stand on the frozen river to watch and discuss.

Many banner captains and centurions under the banner, these middle and senior officers were informed of King Rurik's actions.

Is it too idealistic for the king to think that after killing a lot of people, he can force the enemy's nobles to come to sue for peace?

Of course, the so-called "invitation for peace" is a trap, and what awaits the nobles is the Hongmen Banquet.

Ross is not really pursuing peace, or in other words, Ross is asking for peace under Ross, which has nothing to do with the local nobles. They should be destroyed physically. Instead of annihilating them through conspiracy, it is better to regroup the army and go directly to the main settlement of Smolensk to kill them.

The majority of officers and soldiers do not want to stay in Smolensk in the future, and they do not believe that the people here can become their own people. They hope to abduct some beautiful girls from the local area and return them to their hometowns in Novgorod and the Gulf of Riga. They will then control the girls tightly and use them as wives to give birth to a large number of children. Their wishes are so simple.

Fisk and his crew realize enough is enough, the sun is turning orange and the days are running out.

The burning village was really a warning to vent anger. There were no casualties in the village, but the manor that suffered from the Parthian rounds suffered a large number of deaths in a huge panic.

There was panic until the Ross cavalry really walked away, and then some hiding people squirmed out of the corners where the arrows were hidden to treat the injured, drag the bodies, and pull out the arrows to find out.

The shocked nobleman knew what he was selling. When his subordinates presented the arrows they picked up, they took a look at the straight arrow shaft and the wonderful arrow clusters. The arrow cluster is completely different from their understanding. It is a collar structure, and the pointed cone-shaped arrow cluster is inserted into the arrow shaft. The two fit harmoniously and are as straight as a stick.

Such an arrow is definitely not a hunting arrow. Using it to kill a target can only make a hole and seemingly cause no more damage.

However, all the arrows found were of this style. When they were laid out flat together, the nobles and guards were shocked to see that the arrow clusters, arrow shafts and arrow feathers were all almost the same. This was too abnormal. They are indeed iron cluster arrows of good quality. Although a number of peasants were killed and injured, the nobles still locked the door. The deceased was temporarily pulled to the wooden wall and pushed directly down to the outside. The captured arrow clusters were used for their own use. Continue Cling to the wall and hold on.

The 1st Cavalry has begun its return journey, which still has to pass through a micro-community of Varyags who are trying to persuade them to surrender.

Recruiting these people is a temporary measure. Fisk will never take action against these people before they openly show hostility to Ross.

The cavalry were galloping on the frozen river right under their noses, and everyone saw that those guys were showing off with unusual actions.

The old man Sven hurriedly warned Fisk: "Maybe our persuasion is effective. We should go and see if they are willing to follow us..."

"Is it necessary? If they are willing to surrender, they can set off on their own. There is no reason for us to go with them."

"Forget it, whatever you want." The old man shrugged and stopped talking.

Fisk really didn't want to stop and take care of the Varangians who were obviously starting to move around on the ice, even though they were almost all of Danish origin.

He didn't want to, but the Varyags showed no fear when the cavalry reappeared.

It can be said that the rising white smoke gave everyone enough shock. Anyone who hesitated was worried that this place would most likely turn into a large-scale battlefield, so they unconditionally listened to the speaker Hagen and joined the surrender team.

Those who had started early had already started lining up on sleds with Xinrou. Of course, Hagen did not want to leave alone with his family. He deliberately waited for the price. Anyone who has an affair with the Varangians can leave with the team, even if the Varangian man in his family dies or becomes ill, and the woman, even if she is a Slav, is promoted to the head of the family based on northern tradition, and follows with her children. Walking in large groups will not encounter rejection.

The gifted Ross flag has been hoisted by Hagen, and he is willing to believe that this flag can bring stability to everyone.

No, the Ross cavalry did some damage and apparently left in a column at high speed.

Are they leaving? !

Hagen quickly jumped off the sled and called to some brothers. They kept waving their hands and running on the ice, just to attract the attention of the cavalry and better stop the bald warrior.

"You see, they just have something to say." The old man Sven reminded again with a smile: "Thank me! They are all friends from the Gulf of Riga. They must have listened to my advice."

It was an unexpected surprise. Fisk felt that they were really willing to submit, and their speed of action was really decisive.

The cavalry team immediately adjusted its direction, and finally the sleigh team stood in the queue. The unruly warriors stood here. They had just done some damage and fought a small-scale war. The indescribable murderous aura exuding from their bodies was clearly felt by Hagen and others.

But Hagen and his men are not willing to be like cud dogs, let alone bow to Fisk on horseback.

They are all from the north, and all forces respect unruly warriors, while flatterers will be despised.

Hagen raised his chest, his gray beard and braid swaying in the wind, and his deep eyes were full of determination. He pointed at the smoke column not far away: "Did you do it? The battle has broken out? Do you really want to attack Smoleng?" Are the Sk people taking action?!”

Fisk looked calm, "You? Why are you stopping us? The mission has been completed. We have to return to Gniezdovo to report to King Rus. As for whether to go to war, it all depends on the intentions of King Rus. You...really plan to submit? ?”

"Yes. We will surrender to King Rus and hand over some tributes. Look." Hagen pointed to his sleigh again, "I have hung up your flag. I hope you keep your promise."

"That's natural." Suppressing the joy in his heart, Fisk remained serious on the surface, but he had changed his mind: "Then take action. I can wait for you for a while, and you can prepare as soon as possible, and I can All of you are recommended to King Rus."