40.
40.
One who praises peace.
It was the meaning of the name Mirosław.
A very meaningful and fine name, was it not? One who praises peace. The trouble was, the Mirosław whom the people of Polotsk had appointed as Knyaz did not love peace at all.
"Konungr Helgi! Your Grace oversees a great city across the sea and may not be well acquainted, but...! Here, nothing can be done properly without a steady supply of slaves!"
After calming the warriors of Polotsk who had abruptly been baring their backsides, Mirosław and I had led our respective retinues and guards out to a neutral zone set up between the two factions, where we carried on a heated discussion.
Of course, with much pent-up grievance, it was mostly Mirosław denouncing Rurik's incompetence to me...
"And just look at that Rurik of Novgorod! It is the law of this land that if you do not step forward and take aim first, other wolfish bastards will take aim at you! Yet he does nothing...!"
Had I heard those words with no prior knowledge, I might have thought, 'Oh? Is that so?', but having already been told plenty about the local situation by Rurik and Oleg in Novgorod, I was able to let Mirosław's words go in one ear and out the other.
'Not quite, Mirosław. You are not outraged by the encroachment around you. When I moved to brake the slave market, you needed another source of supply. You could not afford to fall behind in the competition with the Khazar Khaganate.'
A competition over who could capture more slaves. In short, it was a matter of money in the end.
Truthfully, if one were to judge solely by bare sustenance, the lands of the Rus, centered on Novgorod and Polotsk, were of fair productivity. No, it would be correct to say they were bountiful. Compared to the land's productivity, there were not many people.
But that was the farmers' situation. For Mirosław, already a locally renowned slave broker of sorts, his profits were in a situation of gradual decline.
I had dabbled in stocks in my past life too, and usually, when you enter a bear market, your vision goes. Everything before your eyes becomes loathsome, and you just wonder when we're getting to Mars. That desperate feeling where you just want to kick any pebble you see by the roadside.
In such a situation, what if an outsider neighbor throws a wrench into your business at every turn? Then, all that's left is to see each other's blood.
'From an investor's standpoint, I can understand...'
My personal understanding and state affairs were, in truth, unrelated matters.
How much that fellow lost, or how much he earned, was of no importance to me. What was important to me now was: would that fellow come back under Novgorod's influence and open the water route heading south? Or not?
"And so, O noble Konungr, think once more, and let us burn those worthless plains of the insolent horse-riders...!"
"Knyaz Mirosław of Polotsk."
Around then, I halted Mirosław, who kept chattering nonsense while pretending to be greatly stirred up.
Between his reddened face, I could see an utterly calculating gaze. Well, a man who had dominated the region's slave trade would not be a fool.
He was clearly caught off guard by my entrance, yet his efforts to find some way to survive stood out.
So, I would give him a chance.
"I well understand your position. But for your single silver coin, there is no reason at all for the people of Novgorod to move."
"Konungr Helgi...!"
"Hear more, Knyaz Mirosław. Like the people of Novgorod, I too will not move for your silver."
"Konungr...! I am most certainly not acting thus for my own person!"
"Instead—"
The two eyes of the merchant, who had sensed the game was up the moment I, an existence beyond expectation, intervened, had grown pitifully teary, yet they did not lose that initial calculating glint.
If he was not sincere about slaves, but was sincere about money, then it would suffice to open another way for him to earn that money.
"—let us re-establish the trade route to Miklagard together."
At the words I had abruptly thrown out, not only Mirosław but also Refil, Rurik, and even Oleg began to roll their eyes about. Of course, my loyal yet somewhat slow-witted Stórolf merely guarded my side as always.
"...Helgi Konungr, I speak carefully with all due respect, but we Rus already trade with Tsargrad."
"Once, perhaps. It would be blocked now. The Khazars, the Magyars, the Bulgars are interfering, and Kyiv is also skimming off the top in the middle."
"That... is true."
"Let us put aside the slave trade, which requires catching people, providing them with training before selling, and layering on exorbitant fees, Mirosław. It is not something for men to do for long.
Rather, would it not bring far greater profit for you to join me in creating a great trade route, running without rest for six summers and six winters, from across that sea all the way to Miklagard?"
Mirosław's eyes, which had likely wanted to bargain appropriately with me to secure trade goods, silver, or a guarantee of his territory's safety, now lost their initial calculating light and began to flicker with distrust and doubt.
"The Konungr's words are sweeter than honey. But how can we believe this?"
His rhetoric was truly incredible. In a situation for which he himself must take responsibility, his instinct to diffuse accountability with the wording 'we' was veteran-like.
But the proposal I was now dangling and shaking before that money-demon's face had not come about overnight. It had been continually surfacing in my head from the very moment the Jarl of Gotland proposed the eastern expedition.
I needed the developed goods of Constantinople, and Árós could provide them with cheap—very, very cheap—and high-quality grain, wool, furs, and the like.
That the size of the crumbs falling to Polotsk and Novgorod, which could be called the two entrances of that trade route, would be by no means small—anyone capable of simple arithmetic could see this.
That was why the eyes of Mirosław, Rurik, and Oleg were now trembling as such.
"Faith, is it? It seems not yet having crushed the one who bared his backside at me is not enough, I take it?"
Recollecting the shocking scene from earlier, Mirosław immediately bowed his back a full ninety degrees at my teasing question and offered a grand apology.
"I and the people of Polotsk are ignorant folk who have dug only the earth our whole lives and grown up there; we have no eye to recognize a high personage, and are ones who have lived our whole lives looking at each other's backsides in such a manner.
What could we properly know? However, if only I could resolve the great Konungr's wrath, I would strip that insolent fellow's clothes this instant, clap him in manacles and a collar, and present him to Konungr as a gift."
"..."
My, behold this malignant heart, skipping right over the fact that he himself had cursed me and trying to sell out a subordinate peasant who had simply diligently provoked the enemy on his orders.
I learned yet another thing today. Push off responsibility... offer up the weak... as a sacrifice... noted...
"No need for that. It was such an impressive backside, I merely attempted a joke. So, I think I have given sufficient time to settle your thoughts... Have you reached a decision?"
"Of course. Konungr."
Unbelievably calm and composed for a man who, just an hour before, had spewed all manner of curses like a brawler, Mirosław was now even wearing a salesman's smile and was paying me homage.
"The loyalty of the humble city of Polotsk and of its representative, I, Mirosław, is solemnly sworn before the name of Perun, to belong from this hour to Helgi Ragnarsson, the great warrior and Konungr of all Norsemen and Rus.
Perun! Strike down lightning upon the heads of all who transgress this!"
"...Thank you, Mirosław."
"Speak informally, my Konungr!"
Thus, on the small plain between Polotsk and Novgorod, I had brought two of the major cities of the Rus into my grasp.
It was not what I intended, but so long as the result is good, is that not enough?
...
I did not know whether I had merely added useless baggage.
*****
There is a saying, riding on a tiger's back.
A situation of having mounted a tiger.
I had not wished for matters to unfold this way, but once mounted, one cannot simply dismount.
I had to see how far this would go.
In a case like mine, I could honestly turn back anytime I felt things were going awry.
Thought of in the simplest terms, because right here, right now, there was no one who fought better than I did.
"Ah, forget it—! Too troublesome, I'm done!" Even if I threw a tantrum like that, who would stop me?
Yet, once you become king of two peoples (Danes, Svear), no, was it three now (Rus)? If you counted the Angles, it made four. Once you became king of four peoples, things did not flow according to my whims, and even if I wished to, I could no longer stop the snowball that was already rolling.
Because every constituent member composing this world moved according to their own desires, and if I showed the slightest gap in that process, there were plenty of fellows who would stab in at once.
Therefore, I could do nothing but shoulder it all and go forward.
That was why it was said of a king, 'one who leads'—as my father had put it...
I was beginning to understand, little by little, the saying that one must necessarily take up the sword.
Unbelievably quick in their change of attitude for people who, at first meeting, had abruptly spewed vile curses and farted with their backside turned up, the people of Polotsk seemed accustomed to this sort of thing.
That is, having their Knyaz change overnight.
"So, friends from the west—what kind of food does our new Knyaz—no, Konungr—like?"
"How many winters has our Knyaz, who is larger than a bear, seen this year? What? Eighteen? Wuhaha! Why, we thought these fellows were just a stiff bunch, but now I see they have quite the amusing side!"
"So—Hel? That Hel? What sort of work does that god do? She rules over death, you say? Oh dear, I must make a good showing then! So, where and what must I offer? We don't offer anything? Then how do we show respect?"
So full of curiosity, they ceaselessly hovered around my warriors who had come from Árós, asking this and that. At some point, they naturally carved wood to carry the symbol of Hel at their bosom, while also engraving lightning beside it and practicing a fusion faith. Some even hovered around my tent, claiming to serve as my personal guards, which twisted Stórolf's mood into discomfort.
"Konungr! Those fellows have no discipline! They are beast-like creatures who do not even wash, giving off an unclean stench! Each time they shook their heads, lice cascaded—in swarms!"
'It is normal to have no discipline originally. Stórolf... we are the strange ones.'
It was something Stórolf, who had started his military life under me, could not be expected to know. But he would not know how much Hrólfr had suffered, back when Árós was merely some fishing village, as he led the army's reform through my incessant gaslighting.
"Let's be satisfied for now if they go when told to go and stop when told to stop, Stórolf.
As for the matter of washing, rather than that... keep informing those who resist about the handsomeness of washing and combing. So that they wash and comb their hair of their own volition.
Tell them women like it, and it will go over well."
"To have to live with such fellows! I pity the women of this place! I should wish to save them! Understood, Konungr!"
Even among the people of Árós, who were excessively charged with national pride, Stórolf, as a 'flag bearer' of the Garmr Brotherhood who were particularly strong in self-esteem, breathed out hot air while revealing a peculiar cultural supremacism.
As I remembered it, that friend had previously gotten into a certain kind of relationship with a woman of East Anglia...
'He may be physically clean, but spiritually, he is depravity itself. And when, in what era, will his spiritual cleanliness ever be secured?'
I did not even hope for monogamy, yet seeing such an uninhibited history of affairs made one part of my brain feel as though it was breaking down.
What was it again, was it not said that old times were stricter? Why were relations between men and women so fired up in this region?
"Over there, that place visible in the distance is precisely Polotsk, Konungr!"
If Ecgberht of Jorvik was an unapologetic, forthright sycophant, Mirosław was a slightly more treacherous sycophant.
Of course, I could see his inner thoughts clearly, but in any case, so long as our objectives aligned, I would keep him alive and use him.
A slave trader who dominated a region does not become that for no reason. It meant he had ability.
"Indeed. Then, let us enter. Knyaz Rurik."
"Hoho—yes, understood. Konungr."
Leading Rurik, who wore a hollow laugh at the sight of his old comrade-in-arms Mirosław displaying an attitude 180 degrees different from how he treated him, I entered Polotsk, situated beside a river flowing westward.
And it was around this time that a man sent from Miklagard arrived in Novgorod.