Rise of Rurik

The time of day was very short, and Rurik felt that three or four hours had passed from the beginning of the sun to the end of the sun.

Days are shortening dramatically every day, and finally polar night will envelope the world.

Really want to run to the Arctic Ocean in the polar night? Is it too crazy?

Having already croaked in Haikou, and made promises to his subordinates and new allies, he found that he had no choice but to go all the way.

Now the question arises, what path to choose? Is there a clear path in the vast snow field?

A group of people built a camp in the pine forest by the frozen lake (Kimi Lake).

Everyone peeled off the deerskin, and the steaming leather quickly became hard.

The bloody venison was poked by pine branches, then grilled over the fire, sprinkled with a pinch of salt and it was a meal.

The deer blood has not been handled properly, and the venison is really bad. Rurik held a lump of oily roast meat and could only bite the bullet. He comforted himself that at least compared to the hunters of the more ancient times, or the nomadic deer herders who ate raw meat, he was not a bloody man.

He thought about the way forward, and everyone had the same thought.

The sons of the two chieftains of Balmerk, since they had decided to see the "Northern Sea", they did not dare to back down. Retreat means cowards and will definitely be despised by the Rus.

In a sense, just because both sides of the alliance are monitoring each other and flaunting their bravery, there is no room left.

Hungry Biyonni gnawed on a deer's calf, and he felt he couldn't eat any more. He wiped his greasy hands with snow at will, and shouted, "We will go all the way north, along this glacier, and we will reach the sea."

"It's impossible," Rurik said casually, hooking his head slightly.

"Why? We're right by the lake, and it's obvious that the river flows into this lake from the north."

"Because water can only come from above. We will continue on the glaciers, we will reach the source of the water, but not directly to the sea. We also need to find a real waterway to the north."

Rurik's words should have been easy to understand, but Biyonni did not understand for a while, "It doesn't matter. When we reach the source of the river and cannot find a new ice road, we will go north in the wilderness, and we will surely see that A sea. If it exists... no! It has to exist!"

"Of course the sea exists,

It's just that we have to look for glaciers. Rurik raised his head, the beating flames of the bonfire reflected in his pupils: "I can use my reputation to guarantee that there is a harbor in our north that never freezes, and there is purity there. I'm going to find it and occupy it! "

"Okay. Hopefully there are bears there...Listen, my brother." Biyonillo smiled slightly. "We're still interested in bear hunting."

"You can rest assured. We will definitely hunt a lot of white bears that catch seals. If we can't catch a lot of seals, we will surely catch a lot of seals. I only have one concern."

"Go ahead."

"We're going into pure night, it's a very long night, and we're going to have to rely on starlight, moonlight, and Aurora to keep going. We'll be forced to endure extreme cold and possibly severe blizzards. Maybe winter's Adventure is not a good time."

"Long night?" Biyonni looked at his brother Floki, and they both laughed. "What is that, we in Balmerk are used to the complete darkness of winter. Odin divides the year into twelve parts and designs one of them to be pure night to test us. We dare to march at night, I hope you Ruthians OK too."

"This is the best." Rurik nodded and felt a sense of security in his heart.

The next morning, the extravagant sunlight shone on the vast snow field, but the expedition's expedition had already advanced on the ice.

The reindeer were fed some wheat, and they nibbled some grass roots freely. After gaining strong physical strength, they continued to move forward under the driving of humans. The eight domesticated deer simply ignored the slaughtered wild kin, even though there were also a batch of frozen meat skewers prefabricated to wear on branches and frozen like a stone, and a batch of frozen meat skewers stretched out on the sleigh. Hard like the buckskin of a wooden board, they don't feel at all.

The Rus and Balmers, huddled together again, continued northward in the increasingly cold climate.

The people on the sleigh bored away the boredom of the journey by joking and bragging, while they were observing the woods around the glaciers. If bears, wolves or other animals appear at this time, they will not hesitate to jump off the sleigh and start hunting.

In the current situation, hunting is no longer purely for leather. People all think that their lives are facing a huge threat from extreme cold. Starvation means the body is cold, and it means freezing to death.

There must be a tribe of grazing deer herders in this area. Once they are discovered, the expedition will not hesitate to launch an attack. Now Rurik is in an extreme environment. He knows one thing. For the safety of himself and his brothers, let the exposed tribe of deer breeders die. He really didn't want to be a big villain, so he could only hope those guys wouldn't be exposed.

The day was fading at a speed visible to the naked eye, and it was evening again, and the team encountered a problem.

"What now?" Biyonny asked suspiciously.

The velvet cap covered Rurik's frowning brows: "A fork in the road. Damn!"

"Should we go this way? Left or right? You have an idea."

"Then to the right."

"Why? Oh, no more questions..."

Rurik muttered casually with a calm face: "I remember that the harbor is northeast of Elrond Castle. Now we have to go east and take the river on the right."

The team chose a path determined by Rurik. Most people didn’t care, and it didn’t matter to Yonny at the beginning. Just thinking about what Rurik had just said, the more he thought about it, the more strange it became. It was as if Rurik himself had been to the "unfrozen harbour" as he said, and if Odin really gave him the forewarning, then the team was now on the right path.

No one knows what the name of this new glacier is, or that any river has no natural name, and anyone can give a river a strange name.

If he had a pen and paper at this time, Rurik would write a journal to record it.

He is currently unable to do so, so he can only bite the bullet and go on.

In fact, the glacier in the process of the team is the Tennie River, which originated in the Murmansk region.

The team marched forward under the glow of the Northern Lights. Everyone sighed at the magnificence of the aurora, and thanked the Valkyrie in the sky for lighting the way for them. The sky is clear, and the world under the night is very bright, but the air is so cold...

The bonfires dissipated the freezing cold, as well as potential prey. Of course, there are polar bears in this area, but these ferocious beasts are instinctively afraid of fire, and the sudden light of the earth also makes them instinctively avoid.

They hit another fork in what is now called the Savukowski Swamp, and apparently the wider river made everyone think it was the right way to go.

The team went north after a big turn, and traveled on a river that ran almost purely north-south for two days. Rurik faced an even worse situation.

There were perhaps only two hours of daylight left, and Rurik knew he was about to break into the more extreme polar night zone.

It was such a juncture, three frozen rivers appeared in front!

It was Biyonni again who asked, "Choose a new road! The river in the middle is too narrow, it must be wrong, the left and right are wide, which one should we choose? Or the right?"

Rurik was a little undecided, and he didn't want to show his hesitation. Since Biyonni said so, his concerns should also be put aside.

"You're right! Just go to the right."

On the right is the river to the east, but things are getting worse for Rurik.

The team camped under the darkness of night again. They skillfully used bow drills to drill wood to make fire. After the bonfire dispelled people's fear of the extremely cold night, they began to cook wheat and grill pre-made meat skewers. It was just because of the reality that Rurik issued an order to leave more wheat to the reindeer pulling the cart. After all, once the reindeer could not eat these high-energy foods, they would never be able to pull the entire team of people and goods.

People wake up in the night, and the procession begins again. The woods in this area have become sparse unexpectedly, and Rurik estimates that everyone has entered the tundra area.

That's a bad and positive sign, as only a few of the toughest trees can live near the Arctic Ocean, and the vast area is one that can withstand extreme moss growth.

The sky was slowly getting brighter, and people who continued northward along the river clearly felt that the river was rapidly narrowing. They didn't have time to be afraid at all, they saw the sun lazily breaking through the horizon, and everyone saw the snow-capped mountains in the north!

Biyonny on the sleigh stood up directly: "I didn't even know there were mountains here! Rurik, shouldn't we keep going the wrong way? Climb over this mountain, or maybe we'll go home."

"Brother, you're stupid," Floki complained; "the direction of the stars can't be wrong, look at the sun again. Does the sun rise from somewhere else?"

Biyonni felt embarrassed, he hurriedly sat down and asked Rurik again: "The river is about to disappear, how will we go without the glaciers? It's not the sea, but the mountains ahead."

Things got very tricky, and Rurik panicked for a moment.

With the attitude of coming here, he simply slammed his heart: "Let's continue to rush! When we reach the hills, we will turn over the mountains. We will be able to see the vast sea in the north when we stand on a high place."

It is a pity that Rurik, who speaks loudly, underestimated the complexity of the geographical structure. The essence of what appeared in front of the team was the remnants of the Kola Peninsula Mountains. The two sides of the mountain range were large areas of Arctic wetlands in summer, and part of the fresh water poured into the Gulf of Bothnia. Its source is here. The place where Rurik was located was the largest source of water for the Elrond (Kemi), only now it was determined how significant this could be.

The so-called adventure is to risk life to explore the unknown world.

Rurik reckoned that a tribe of deer-raisers would graze past here in the winter. He didn't find any definite traces. The sea is just around the corner.

But even standing on the top of the mountain, he never wanted to see the sea.

The Arctic Ocean is indeed in the north, and the nearest coastline is nearly 200 kilometers away from this hill. No matter how strong the viewer's eyesight is, no matter how clear the air is, no one can ignore the curvature of the earth and see the ocean blocked by the horizon.

People are exploring cautiously. As the saying goes, there must be a road in front of the mountain. When everyone is ready to jump off the sleigh and climb the mountain, there is a very obvious glacier in front!

It is not an ordinary glacier, but a glacier with a very wide channel!

The river channel is nearly 100 meters wide, with clusters of cedar forests on both sides, and more areas are tundra.

The team has not found any traces of the activities of the deer breeders. Perhaps this place has been a no-man's land since ancient times. Rurik came up with an idea of ​​chiseling ice and putting small pieces of wood in it. Everyone watched the experiment and made sure that the river was heading east. But what exactly does this mean?

"The river is definitely heading to the sea! I swear!" Rurik seemed calm as he spoke, but people were excited to fry the pot.

"So, when we walk along this new glacier, we will surely see the harbor you mentioned, the sea?" Biyonny swayed Rurik in excitement and kept asking.

"It can only be like this, I hope we can see the sea when it is completely dark. Biyonni!" Rurik said very seriously: "It seems that we all have to prepare ourselves mentally, we have to wait for pure The night is over..."

"It doesn't matter! The priest said that there is the sea at the end of the world in the north, but no one has ever seen it. I can stand on the shore of the end sea, maybe meet the Valkyrie, and talk to the heroic spirits of my ancestors..."

Biyonny had said a lot of good fantasies, which Rurik knew were too unrealistic.

Time actually begins to enter the December month of the Julian calendar, and the Gregorian calendar is five or six days corrected than the current old Julian calendar.

The time of day has become dispensable. In essence, after just seven days, the pure polar night will come. At that time, there will be thirty-eight days of pure night waiting for everyone.

The Ross-Balmerk expedition spent most of the day advancing in the dark, the people on the sleds felt very uncomfortable, and the reindeer that the team pulled the sleds didn't seem to care at all.

A day since the discovery of a new glacier, a new lake has appeared!

This lake is extremely tortuous, and it is the Turomsk Lake, which is 80 kilometers long from north to south.

In the beginning, the expedition team was purely for bear hunting, but now it seems that all the human beings in the world have disappeared, and only a handful of them are still struggling. They seem to be walking in the small world created for them by Odindan, completely relying on the strong belief of "seeing the sea at the end of the world in the north", and the infamy of being cowards as warriors who dare not retreat and bear the burden of being cowards. Drive the reindeer and continue north along the lakefront.

The huge benefit of the huge lake is that they are no longer subject to the twists and turns of the river, they can take a straight line, so it doesn't matter if it is dark at night, they rushed to the northernmost point of the lake in just one day.

There seems to be divine help in the dark, and just at the northernmost point of the lake, a river running towards the north reappears.

The team resolutely continued north along the river, and the river magically continued to widen.

They had only traveled for a day, and the great difficulty forced them all to the snow-covered banks.

Everyone didn't know whether to be excited or afraid, because it was supposed to be a river with a thick layer of ice, and the ice layer was so thin that people were worried about falling in, and the river surface became very wide. If you continue to move forward in the old way, everyone will fall sooner or later. Frozen and drowned in the river.

People had to make their way across the snow-covered river bank, and they moved through the terrifying snow that was up to their knees. For the time being, no one dared to go deep into the pine forests on both sides, because the thickness of the snow there was too extreme.

The snow on the river was not extreme, and they kept going all day, when the glacier had completely disappeared.

The sun vanished with just one head on the horizon, and with the help of the extravagant sunlight, people trekking in the snow finally saw a magical scene.

Because there is no road ahead, there is nothing in the north, no pine trees, no tundra, just a lot of salty water!

"This! It must be the sea at the end of the world." Standing in the short sunshine, Biyonni was not very excited. He leaned on a wooden stick and calmly looked at the vast ocean in the north, listening to Haitao beat the frozen land. Everything is so peaceful.

"We are finally here. This is what I said about the unfrozen bay and the unfrozen sea. The sea at the end of the world is here. It's just that this is not the end of the world." Rurik forced a smile as he spoke.

Listening carefully, Biyonni was a little lost: "I thought there was a cliff. The cliff is the realm outside the world tree, the world after the death of ordinary people. Is the priest wrong?"

"Look at it with your eyes!" Rurik said. "This is the Arctic Ocean, favored by a warm water that will never freeze. If we Rus build a port here and place some ships, we will You can go west along the coast by boat, and you can float to your hometown in as little as seven days."

"This..." Originally, Biyonni didn't pay much attention to this matter. He really stood in front of this legendary sea. He realized that behind Rurik's words, he was actually saying that this sea and the sea of ​​his hometown are different. Communicating.

Floki listened carefully to Rurik's words, and his worldview was rewritten. Unlike his brother's slight suspicion, he completely believed Rurik's words, and then interjected: "So, what is at the end of this sea?"

"A new world!"

"New world?"

"First a huge ice sheet, then land. If we continue to move forward, we will..." Rurik looked at Floki's expectant eyes and didn't elaborate, he put on a pretense: "It's all gods Revelation, it was Odin who told me about the existence of this place, and also revealed that crossing this sea is a happy unknown new world. Floki, if the preview you are carrying is true, you should find a way to cross this sea to find that New world."

"I will! I will succeed!"

Floki was already jumping excitedly, and then faced the Arctic Ocean and shouted: "Odin! I will succeed! In my life, I must bring my clan to live in the new world!"

Rurik shrugged, not knowing yet that he had inspired a Norwegian madman with unprecedented power. Floki the Raven, the man who colonized Iceland, if that's fate too.

Biyongni is very realistic at this moment. He knows that the sun will disappear for a long time, and everyone can only stay here until the sun returns. The situation should not be bad, the rivers and seas here are not frozen, and fishing is at least no problem.

He suddenly asked Rurik: "We are building a camp. You are the hero who brought us here. Name the camp and name the river."

"Okay. The river is the Murman River, and our camp is Murman Fort."

Moorman, what do you mean? Biyonni and everyone don't understand it at all, but the name is simple, it was given by Rurik himself, and everyone immediately accepted it without any objection.

The team finally stopped on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. A camp called Fort Murman that will resist the long polar night is about to rise. In the future, this will definitely become the true northernmost stronghold of the Rus, even if it is far Lumberg is already very far away, but what does this mean to the Rus, who are a Viking tribe? Besides, this place is really close to Narvik Fjord by sea!

As a result, under Rurik's personal exploration and supervision, Murman Fort (Murmansk) began construction in the last month of AD 831.

But Rurik, he was basically unable to return to his hometown of Roseburg to participate in this year's winter sacrifice. Even for the entire Ross clan, one would suddenly find Lord Rurik disappearing into the ice!

Are the tribes worried? Rurik couldn't care less.

The people who rushed to the coast to investigate for the first time saw the orange phantom in the sunset, and people began to be restless and laughed wildly.

Because that is the polar bear that hunts the seals resting on the shore, and there are quite a lot of them!