In Ross, for city dwellers, the wilderness has always been synonymous with danger. Without a large number of guards, going to the wilderness and committing suicide are almost the same.
As for rural residents, most of them will never leave the village where they live. Even if they go to the market, most of the men and women from the village will go out.
However, the villagers will still teach their children and families to be careful in the wilderness. The gangs in the wilderness are never easy to deal with. Even if a strong man runs into the wilderness rashly, he can easily be captured and used as a slave. The children will be
Not to mention.
The roads of the princes are much safer. From time to time, you can see villages and castles here where you can rest. Their presence provides people with safety.
But when walking on the road, you must remember that the road is also the activity area of various gangs. There may be hundreds of robbers ambush somewhere.
Road safety is safe, but if something happens, it could be a big deal.
Although there are troops of princes patrolling the roads, you cannot guarantee that they will be there when you are attacked, so in the end you can only rely on your own abilities.
Merchants and travelers will form huge teams to advance on this land, because only a large team can deter the gangs who regard them as prey.
The gangsters have become more difficult to deal with recently, because some of them have been equipped with crossbows from Moscow. Although one or two people in Dingtian have these things, their armor is not very effective against them.
However, for a group of people, they can move around in the countryside very freely. These people are the lords of cities and towns in various places.
On the one hand, these people have guards and wear iron armor, but on the other hand, they are valued by Moscow.
In response to the robbery of businessmen, Moscow's response was to strengthen road protection and would not specifically carry out raids on gangs and robbers.
But if the leader of the city is robbed and killed, then Moscow will dig deep. It doesn't matter if the leader can't catch the murderer. Anyway, the only thing that makes the caught gangster pay the price is that enough heads must be handed over.
Under such circumstances, it was natural that few people would take action against the fortress of Northeastern Rus. If they did, they would have to face the elites from Moscow who came out to claim their lives. After suffering several losses, they all understood.
Of course, Moscow also spent a lot of resources to achieve this effect, but when the satisfactory results were returned to Rostislav, everyone was very satisfied.
However, the walled city owners rarely leave their land, partly because they want to strengthen their control over the land, and partly because they are prepared to respond to possible conscription at any moment.
Moscow is very strict on recruitment. If someone fails to respond to the recruitment and does not pay a huge amount of exemption money, his land will be confiscated, his identity will be revoked, and he will become a civilian.
Everyone understands how seriously Moscow takes these matters, especially after cleaning up a few people. From then on, those situations, such as using privileges to escort caravans and leaving the territory for a long time, disappeared.
Compared with the money for escorting businessmen, it is more important to keep the real estate in their hands. They paid a lot to obtain these real estates.
But today, the city lords of Suzdal are gathering in an orderly manner. This is because of the order from Moscow.
Recently, there have been several incidents of caravans being robbed. Rostislav asked the castle owners in various places to gather their strength to carry out a cleanup to make the gangs restrain themselves.
Naturally, Varin Kashinsky had to attend this meeting. He was the most powerful castle lord in the Suzdal region. The castle lord was also dressed in a very flamboyant manner. He wore the gold-plated armor given to him by the prince.
People appear to be golden.
Behind him were a dozen followers wearing iron armor. Like their master, these guys looked flamboyant.
In the past three years, Valin's strength has become more and more powerful. In the past, he was just a lord who could only pull out hundreds of men, but now he can pull out 300 men at a time, and he also has several iron-clad men in the city.
Samurai, this is the kind of veteran who has been on the battlefield and equipped his servants at home with several crossbows.
In fact, Valin didn't have to attend this meeting at all. After all, this kind of meeting basically had to be held every once in a while. Assembling troops to defeat gangs and so on had already been done by everyone, because the work assigned each time was different from before.
Not big.
And the purpose of his coming this time was to meet an old friend, Mieszko.
Three years ago, when Mieszko returned, he found that his territory had been destroyed in the rebellion, the city wall had been breached, and the citizens did not know where they had gone.
After all, Meshko will always be more powerful than powerful, and it would be too easy for those heretics to incite riots in his territory.
And then, as Valin expected, Meshko was soon given a new territory, and Edward's territory was temporarily handed over to him for management. Although Meshko could not take Edward's territory into his own pocket,
All income from this territory belongs to him.
Relying on the stable funds from the Polish king and the slaves sent by him, Mieszko quickly built a new city, which was more majestic and wider than the original one.
After knowing this, Valin couldn't help but sigh that people are really different. He had struggled for more than ten years to achieve everything, while Meshko had it with just a few clicks of his fingers.
And the city leader's desire to take his family to a higher level has become stronger. It would be great if his descendants could be like this.
The last time he met Meshko was three months ago when they were betting on horse racing at the Moscow Racecourse. It had been a while since they had seen each other, so Varin wanted to see this old friend, so he came to attend this boring meeting.
Soon, Valin's team arrived at the venue. There was once a tower built here, but the tower is now dilapidated, and only some stones are left on the ground as signs of its past.
As for who it once belonged to, no one knows, and the name of the founder of this tower has been lost in the long river of history.
Because it is at the highest point in the area and is surrounded by open spaces, everyone chose it as the center of the gathering.
Rostislav once settled here when he was inspecting Northeast Rus. Varin still remembers the grand momentum at that time, with the tower as the center and the surrounding area covered with tents. These were the nobles who followed Rostislav.
There were already many people here before Valin arrived. Although each city leader brought at most five or six followers, the total number of people must have been hundreds.
There are also some businessmen here, among them the kvass dealers are indispensable. Now these followers all have a cup in hand. This national drink of Russia is sold everywhere.
There are also some farmers who have set up their own stalls to sell their agricultural products to their followers, and some farmers have even set up canteens on the spot to make a big stew and sell it to these followers.
In fact, this is a local rural market. After all, the terrain here is open and located at a high altitude. At a fixed time every month, nearby villagers will come here with their output to exchange with each other, so the businessmen and farmers here have never
less than.
This market emerged after the arrival of the princes of Moscow. Rostislav not only brought feudal oppression, but also made the economy more prosperous, and many people also benefited from the increase in productivity brought about by the advancement of technology and tools. Compared with mobility,
What was once a stagnant water has become much more active.
But after all, Rostislav did this just to collect taxes. For example, in this market, there is a tax collector of the Prince of Moscow resident here. He is responsible for managing the market and collecting some reasonable bribes from transactions. This is also the reason why Rostislav
The tradition is that officials obtain supplies from the location.
Valin's team quickly integrated into it, and Valin also quickly found his old friend, Mieszko. When he found Mieszko, the illegitimate son of the former Polish king was having a drink with someone.
Wine from Bulgar.
Since the Bulgar War, Northeastern Rus' has established a stable wine trade with Bulgar, and with this trade, wine has begun to spread.
The price offered by the Prince of Moscow to the Bulgar winery was very favorable, which made the owners of the winery even willing to sacrifice their share of the local market to satisfy the foreign market.
This, of course, caused the manor owners to receive a lot of complaints, but they didn't care about those complaints, as nothing was as important as making money.
This is exactly the effect Moscow wants, so as to strengthen this group's tendency towards Russia and create a strong pro-Russian faction in Bulgaria.
This group is now using the funds earned from Moscow to actively open up wasteland and build new wine estates. There is no need to worry about quality issues. There is a huge gap in the bottom-tier wines in Moscow.
In Northeastern Rus', people didn't see that much. They just felt that the prince let them drink wine, so they cheered for Rostislav constantly and supported and loved the prince of Moscow even more.
Nowadays, even roadside vendors usually have a small barrel of wine, but this thing is not cheap, and even the poorest quality one is considered a luxury item for the people.
After all, this is real wine, not a substitute like kvass. Everyone is still willing to pay for a small drink, and Moscow makes a lot of money from this imported wine.
But for a being of Mieszko's level, this wine was obviously too bad. When he was a child, he drank the best wine from the King of Poland's wine cellar. After arriving in Northeastern Rus, he also drank the best Bulgar wine.
Even kvass is the kind of fine product that was added to a large amount of honey and debugged in the Moscow court.
But who let him drink up the wine bag? Now he can only drink this low-quality wine, but because the quality of this thing is really bad, he drinks the wine like water.
Naturally, the man he was drinking with couldn't deal with such an old drunkard. He soon began to shake amidst the boos, and then stepped back wisely, so as not to pass out and be embarrassed. However, Mishko remained as normal as a normal person, with a smile on his face.
There is also a sense of invincible loneliness.
"Meshko, long time no see."
Seeing this, Varin immediately went to Mieszko and took over the drunk man's place, while the Polish knight's attendants immediately filled the castle lord with wine.
"Oh, it's you Valin. It's a pity that there is only this low-quality wine here now, but this is the only one I can drink now. I can't even get drunk from this thing, it's just like drinking water."
Meshko was a little less interested even when he saw his old friend. After all, drinking this wine was too boring and affected his mood too much.
The Polish knight now looks very much like a playboy. I believe many people think so too. Looking at him like this, no one can think that he is the warrior in the Bulgar War, who is also praised in the ballads.
That one.
"It doesn't matter what I drink, you know, I've had worse things."
Warin climbed up from the bottom and drank a lot of kvass mixed with water. It was really nothing, so he drank the wine in one gulp.
"It would be great if there was a glass of kvass from Rostislav Palace here, it would be really wonderful."
Mieszko sighed at the fine wines in the prince's court, which were really good things. Thinking about it, he couldn't help but feel nostalgic for his old days in Krakow, when he enjoyed the treatment of the Piast royal family.
But it was just a thought. He had long known that that kind of life was destined to never come back, and his business was doing pretty well now, with no shortcomings and nothing worth complaining about.
"yes……"
Valin also subconsciously sighed that he had tasted that thing before, and after tasting it, Valin subconsciously thought that it was definitely not kvass.
Just when he was reminiscing about the wonderful taste, he suddenly heard the bell ringing continuously.
"Tsk, what a pity, it started before I even had a chance to say a few words."
Meshko subconsciously complained that this was the bell for the meeting, indicating that the time was up, but the action did not stop, and he stood up directly.
"Let's go to the meeting and see what those people have to say today."
The venue of the meeting was very simple. It was the place where things were usually announced in the market. The princes pulled up chairs and sat side by side, listening to the princes' orders described by the Moscow officials above.
There are a lot of city lords, and the number of grassroots nobles who represent the authority of Moscow has expanded a lot in the past three years. After all, the powerful people in Moscow are watching, and there are a steady stream of warriors joining the prince's command. There are always some people who can't get married.
troops, then the natural next step is to distribute the land.
Rostislav's criteria for allocating land are very loose. As long as you have iron armor and prove that you have force, you will be assigned a piece of land and a few slaves, but it is up to you to tame the countryside.
A lot of people will be eliminated at this stage, and some people will always have their heads blown off by old farmers, but more than half of them still persevere, successfully tame the villages, and then build a walled city with materials provided by Moscow.
Thirteen years have passed since Rostislav came to Northeastern Rus, and many things have changed.
After so much chaos, everyone's resistance to the royal regime is no longer so strong, and it is easier to do these things than before - but only a little.
When Moscow officials talked about it, as always, the city leaders were drowsy listening to those things. After all, the things they preached did not change much every time, and the same was naturally true for Varin. Anyway, it was just a matter of dealing with it.
.
However, Meshko's words next to him made Varin alert.
"Look at these guys, they haven't seized this opportunity. This is a great opportunity to practice themselves. When the war starts, they will have no choice but to practice on the battlefield, and failure will mean death."
Regardless of the fact that he was also attacked, Valin's focus was on the war. Does this mean that a war was about to begin?
Meshko has a source of information in Moscow. Unlike the city lords like them, Meshko's bloodline determines that he is born in the top circle of Ross's powerful people. The information he can access is not something that the city lords can only
Comparatively.
This is also the key reason why Varin has always maintained a good relationship with Meshko. Meshko's combat effectiveness is on the one hand, and his sources of information are on the other hand.
Some of the information that the king's illegitimate son casually revealed could not be easily followed by a local person like him.
Valin has always been eager to move to the next level. Now he can only have half a foot in that circle. If he wants to truly become a regular visitor to the Moscow court, he still needs to continue to work hard.
He hopes that he will complete the journey as much as possible. He does not believe in future generations, so he must complete certain things.
And he also has this condition. Warin is still young and can still rush.
"How to say?"
The leader of the city lowered his voice and asked, "This kind of thing is not suitable to be discussed in public."
"Vseseslav in Polotsk will cause trouble sooner or later. The news coming from there is that it is getting more and more restless, and Kiev is increasingly testing that side. And Mr. Rostislav has been secretly doing it for a long time.
Prepare for war. By then it will probably be a war that will sweep through the entire Rus. Now we must seize the opportunity to practice well, lest we die directly in the face of that kind of war. Moreover, the Prince of Purgation this time also wants to see the state below."
Meshko said something that had a huge impact very casually, but it was only in front of Varin that he was so casual. If Meshko was not regarded as someone in his network, Meshko would not have mentioned a word.
and.
Valin's heart was shaken by this. Although he didn't understand the details here, he still heard the "Russian War" very clearly. Does this mean that there is going to be a war on the scale of the entire Rus?
"Anyway, Valin, you should train your people well during this time. You can only rely on yourself to save your life on the battlefield, and no one else can be relied on."
Meshko continued, advising his old friend to strengthen training.
But what he didn't know was that even without any persuasion, those few words he said still made his old friend decide that the crackdown on bandits should be serious this time, and that all his men should see blood.