Chapter 381 Bringing the Wood Home

Those spruce trunks, which were deliberately sawn to about ten meters long, had long been stripped of their bark, and had been placed in the dry, arctic snow for more than two months, and Rurik also stayed in the extreme north for a long time. time.

A large number of tree trunks have been dried in the shade for a certain period of time. Although the trunk is frozen hard, a large amount of water has been sublimated inside, and the entire trunk appears to be even harder.

After all, the materials that will be used as masts are all cedar trees that have grown for thousands of years. The slow growth of them is not easy to describe in words, just felling and sawing them requires the joint work of several strong lumberjacks, and it takes some time.

Now that the trunks were shortened, Rurik took measurements of the trunks, which were relatively similar in length and diameter, on the eve of moving them.

For a small vessel like the Caravel, it was nothing more than a major overhaul of the Viking freighter, and its length and displacement did not increase much. Its mast should not be too long or too thick.

All the selected materials are the front part of the trunk, the maximum diameter of the trunk is about 50cm, and the minimum diameter of the other end is constricted to only 25cm.

Therefore, these materials are similar to extremely long truncated cones. Rurik held a branch and made simple mathematical calculations directly on the snow.

The large number of mathematical symbols really dazzled the onlookers. Only the girl, Seporava, saw some of the clues carefully and told her curious father.

What the hell is Rurik doing? Mechasta did not understand. Oh, it seems the daughter has figured it out.

After all, Seporava was in Roseburg, and like other children, Rurik focused on imparting some mathematical knowledge. There is always nothing to do for a long time. Girls are naturally physically weaker than men, more like a Kewen girl like Seporava, who doesn't like fighting and killing.

The brains of those children have developed to a certain level, and children over the age of seven only need education to quickly and logically understand abstract knowledge such as mathematics. Their minds are no different from those of modern humans a thousand years later, the only difference being the lack of teachers with extensive knowledge.

Rurik was happy to impart knowledge to his future wives and concubines. In this way, when your children and grandchildren are all over the place, you don't have to spend a lot of time on your children's education.

The trunk volume was calculated, and Rurik estimated that if a stika and a meter were basically similar (he always found the two units of measurement to be surprisingly similar), then the volume of six trunks would be just over four cubic meters.

Compared with the previous tree, the size of the tree has been directly reduced by more than double.

In essence, the weight of the trunk has been reduced to less than two tons.

Is it solid wood?

It really takes at least ten people to push it flat on the snow.

A group of strong men squeezed the flax ropes, which were almost arm thick, under the tree trunks.

Rurik didn't expect to be able to carry it well with just one piece of equipment. For stability when loading the sled, he needed two pieces of equipment to be activated at the same time.

After some preparations, the boom hooks of the two cranes were hooked on the ropes.

On the other side, three sleds are ready.

The brawny men who had been busy for a while were sweating all over, and many people simply took off their leather jackets and wore only linen on their upper bodies, as if they didn't care about the minus five degrees.

Yevlo was entrusted with the task, and he stood in the rat cage waiting for his master's orders.

More than 500 people widened their eyes, and they are going to see the wonders they have never seen in their life today.

"My lord! Let's start!" Yevro urged loudly.

Rurik looked left and right and swallowed.

"Okay! Start!"

The giant cage finally began to turn, with a strong creaking and twitching sound, and the metal rattling of the chrome-iron ratchet tenons.

The people of Elrond made a lot of sacrifices to make a range rover with amazing resilience. Rurik bought nets from fishermen with wheat, and the nets were dismantled and the slender hemp ropes were twisted thicker and thicker. And that's not all, to make it more resilient, all the ropes are soaked in seal oil and fish oil. The rope reeked of some damn stench, but no one questioned its tenacity.

Everything was going on in an orderly manner, and while people were stunned, the extremely heavy solid wood was slowly leaving the ground.

Rurik came to the scene in person and stared at the fir tree trunks that were over a meter tall.

"Let's stop here!" He gave an order, the rat cage stopped turning, the sturdy claws stuck the rat cage to death, and the tree trunk was suspended in the air.

"Mechasta! It's your turn."

Mechasta was not a spectator. He was in danger and ordered the people on standby to push the two vacant sleds directly under the tree trunk.

Rurik took another look: "Start the line!"

After many previous experiments, the person in the cage turned around, and the person in charge of manipulating the pawl also began to operate in reverse.

The tree trunk is being unloaded slowly and rhythmically, and finally pressed smoothly on the sled.

In fact, the big tree can of course be dragged directly by the cable, and the reindeer herds have been dragging it and sliding to Roseburg. Rurik was too worried that such an operation would destroy precious wood, and that it was not necessarily a labor-saving operation.

There is nothing better than a sled in the northern snow world, not to mention a batch of sleds built by the residents of Elrond, which can squeeze 20 adults and have an economical and practical carrying capacity of at least one ton.

Rurik was all about squeezing the potential of the sleds, which were loaded with two tree trunks.

"Hey, it really feels like a semi-trailer."

The trunk is held tightly to the sled by the cable, and the weight of the trunk itself makes it extremely stable.

Rurik began to jokingly call it a semi-trailer, pulling its front, of course, four reindeer.

Since the contact area between the snowboard and the ice and snow is very small, just four reindeer can pull it away under the urging of the leather whip, and still maintain a very good inertial motion.

The loading work was completed in the jaws of more than 500 onlookers, and it was just the beginning.

In this day alone, not only did the six most critical spruce trunks be loaded, but a batch of pine logs also began to be hoisted very quickly.

By the time night fell, ten sleds had already been loaded. In particular, the four full-time pine-loaded, cut into standard two stika trunks were hoisted one after another, five at the bottom and one at the top, stacked in a pyramid-like manner, and finally bundled with a Range Rover.

Everyone had to face an exciting reality. The core personnel who completed the timber hoisting were the four guys standing in the rat cage. After completing the task, no one could see how tired he was, but Rurik still gave the four the most sumptuous dinner.

Now that the squirrel-cage crane can come in handy, it should move more lumber!

At night, the crane thing became the hottest topic of conversation among boring people.

No, in Rurik's mansion, Mechasta's laughter was hardly heard. Because he knew that the crane was standing in Elrond, and it would not be moved again.

He didn't have the concept of "heavy equipment needs regular maintenance", thinking that if it stood here, it would serve Elronb forever.

The mansion was brightly lit, and Mechasta continued the laziness after the meal, and couldn't help asking Rurik's next arrangement.

"Now that the crane is a success, when are you leaving?"

"What? Expecting me to leave?" Liliurik deliberately showed displeasure.

Mechasta hurriedly denied: "How could it be? I... hope you continue to live here, you know, all my clansmen have benefited from you."

"Favor? If this counts as a favor..."

The so-called favor here actually means that Rurik provided a large amount of wheat with great generosity. In fact, this is nothing. Rurik must have understood the basic knowledge of modern nutrition. These are all knowledge in middle school biology courses. Their heavy manual labor was unprecedented, and the cranes could not build without giving them a lot of wheat.

Rurik has always had a vision that he hoped to achieve in the short term, which is to ensure that every adult man and woman can eat a pound of wheat every day.

If the Rus were 10,000 people, the annual wheat requirement would be 3.65 million pounds for the year. As far as the reality is concerned, if the Rus people did not open up a lot of farmland themselves, relying on various means, it would be difficult to buy such an amazing scale of wheat from the Melalon people.

It can be said that the residents of Elronborg have been living the kind of life that Rurik hoped for during this period of time. But this kind of good life is about to come to an abrupt end, and they have to live the old road of only eating fish.

Rurik thought about it for a while and cheered up, "Frankly speaking, I've stayed until now to get a lot of wood for shipbuilding, and I'm also making cranes for this purpose."

"Now the crane is done."

"Yes, so I'm going to evacuate. I can fully load the remaining timber in the next three days, and drive the reindeer herd and evacuate with my people on the fourth day. The crane is here, still There are a lot of strong men eager to sell their strength for silver and wheat, and a lot of sleds are vacant. Even if the weather is cold, we must continue."

"Oh! That's great!" Mechasta longed for the wheat in his heart. The 70,000 pounds of wheat were destined to be eaten, and he wanted to be eaten by his own people.

Rurik continued: "I have to wait. I have to wait for the big chief to come back."

"They...they went to the east." Mechasta worried, "maybe they went to my hometown again, and they may encounter unsubmissive tribes."

"You... don't worry about them failing."

"No!" Mechasta denied: "We don't know anything about the world in the East. They may have the most terrifying bears and the most dangerous land."

"It's really boring, so you are weak." Rurik muttered, sitting upright again: "If they really go all the way east, they will see a sea frozen by ice and snow. It is not the end of the world in the east, just a sea It's just the sea."

Mechasta believed it to be true: "Master, you do know the composition of the earth."

"Of course! To be fair we're not a good place to be here, why would I be building a city here if it weren't for a lot of leather, ore, salmon, and even a lot of shipbuilding wood? Listen, sooner or later. We're going to run south and explain that I'll let you settle in a warmer world."

Rurik sometimes laughs at himself for vowing to be the king of the rotten land, and that's true. The reason for this is very simple - the population is too small.

Since we can't get a large population from the outside for the time being, we can only rely on our own people to give birth. This brought another serious food problem, which caused the Rus to step up expansion. Then the ships, which are important tools for expansion, need to be stepped up to manufacture.

Rurik wanted to wait a little longer, and took the opportunity to organize manpower to continue logging, and notified the police to make more sleds.

The coldest January in the Gulf of Bothnia is over, and the days are now dramatically increasing.

The time has come to the fifteenth day of February in the Julian calendar, and more than half of the month has passed. The difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar seems to be that the calendar time is set a week later, so the spring equinox in 831 is on March 28.

The temperature is not so aggressive anymore, even with a snowfall in the middle, the temperature is still rising quietly, and it will take a little time before it returns to above freezing point.

Finally, on the verge of arriving in March, a team full of dust and fruit returned to Elrond in victory.

who are they? It was the hunting army led by Otto.

Originally, Elrond Castle was used as a shelter for the northern hunting team, but as a result, the hunting team rushed towards the east like a galloping arrow.

They are actually hunting wild deer, forest cats, ferrets and snow rabbits near the lakes in the upper reaches of the Kemi River. They set up a large number of traps to capture a large number of small animals, and they also use a particularly useful crossbow to hunt wild wild animals. Reindeer and other large beasts.

Apart from that, they did not encounter any other hunters.

The fact is that they actually operate in what is now the Norrbotten district of Finland. Even after a thousand years, this place is almost a no-man's land. In the past, some hunters from the Kewen tribe would visit this area, but now the Kewen people are weak, and the strong and powerful hunters of Ross have looted the animal resources here for the first time.

They made only a humble batch of sleds, hauling a huge variety of furs. The oatmeal had been eaten long ago, but fortunately the captured animals were rich in muscle and fat. Otto's aging body was sitting on the sled, being led by his own people, and he didn't feel tired. He now cares most about the price of the fur on hand.

Otto is back, and now Elrond is both familiar and unfamiliar.

What are the two huge indescribable things standing at the west gate of the city?

It wasn't until he saw that this thing could easily hoist extremely heavy wood, and after sitting in the snow in shock, did he realize its dream.

The winter hunting was a great success. In the eastern forest and snowy plains, the team obtained more than 300 deer skins, as well as up to 2,000 mink skins, forest cat and snow rabbit skins. There are ten bear skins, and frankly speaking, if some bears hadn't escaped smartly, the Russ would have pulled back more bear skins.

Ten hideous bear heads and forty terrifying bears that were cut off are the best proof of strength.

The hunters who were eager for money sold the leather to the merchants stationed in Elrond for the first time. Since the Gould family gave the best price, it can be said that the Gould family has become a big one in this transaction. winner.

Why? For more than three months, they stayed in Fort Elrond to enjoy the aurora every day, watching cranes grow from nothing while leisurely wandering. Their waiting has brought great benefits. They are all second-hand dealers. They will rough process the leather they buy, and then sell them to tailors who make clothes.

At one time this job required leather merchants to transport goods to Melalen for trade. For the Gould family, because with Fodgen, who owns the tailor's workshop relocated to Roseburg, Gould can immediately exchange income. All his family has to do seems to be buying, packing and supplying.

Otto came back, and he listened to his son's story about the crane and the giant tree at the banquet in the mansion. He also recounted his various adventures in the Eastern Snow Plains.

"We're leaving, with a lot of cargo. What are you going to do when you go back?" Otto asked his son.

Rurik's answer was very succinct: "Shipbuilding. I have stockpiled a huge amount of wood for shipbuilding."

"Wood? Wouldn't something near Roseburg satisfy you?"

"Of course! Those small trees are only suitable for fuel, and only the big trees in this area are the best materials. We will transport a lot of wood here every winter in the future."

"Alright. I plan to stay for two days and leave, how about you?"

Dad was so anxious, Rurik thought about it and nodded.

The two leaders of Ross have to evacuate with their clansmen, and Elrond will return to the old state after that. At first, Mechasta was a little against their permanent presence, but now that he was used to it, he wished that the leader, especially Rurik, would come to visit often. As far as emotional relationships are concerned, because his daughter Cypolava is destined to be Rurik's woman, as the daughter's father, he naturally regards Rurik as his child.

Mechasta, of course, knew that Rurik was extremely noble, and he felt obliged to do whatever he could to help.

In the end, there were twenty snow-laden vehicles, of which three "semi-trailers" stood out. The carefully selected reindeer became the core driving force for pulling the sled, a task that turned out to be completed at once with only eighty stags.

They walked along the ice on the coast, some 70,000 pounds of grain still unfinished.

In addition to the remaining part of the reward to the residents of Elrond, the rest of Rurik was brought with him. Humans only eat a small part of the grain, and most of the unprocessed wheat grains are the food of the reindeer along the way. Those were twenty sleds with a huge load, and without a fine feed, the reindeer would quickly die of exhaustion.

Rurik's little body didn't matter. He was covered in thick leather and sat on the top of the wood of a sleigh. He rode on the highest pine wood, and paved the pavement under his crotch so that he would not freeze.

He saw that the dark transport team gathered in a compact group and continued to trek, but this speed was quite slow.

Finally, after walking on the ice for five days, they returned to Roseburg after a four-month absence, and the time quietly entered March.