Chapter 40 Do you know Rome?

Rurik held the wooden board in his hands and handed it to Vilia with a kind face.

What did the child carve on the wooden board? After all, they are some weird marks.

Villa was full of curiosity and her mentality was very peaceful, until she saw the amazing markings on the wooden board with the help of the glow of the oil lamp.

Those were some markings that shocked her!

The lower right corner of every rune letter I saw was engraved with a new letter. right! That was another alphabet. How could Rurik know this? !

Vilia’s eyes widened, and the aging wrinkles on her face trembled.

"You...you...what on earth did you carve?!" She mumbled tremblingly, then her hands loosened, and the board fell directly onto the animal skins spread on the ground.

Vilia no longer had a kind expression on her face, and her appearance even frightened Rurik.

"Grandma Priest, did I do something wrong?"

"No! You didn't." Vilia swallowed hard and then picked up the fallen board. , and continued to stare at the incredible traces.

She fell into deep thought, and for a while Rurik could only stare, waiting for the old man to speak again.

The lower-level priests who were doing their daily work realized that something was wrong with the atmosphere and consciously stopped what they were doing. The entire longhouse of priests suddenly fell into silence. Everyone was waiting for Villa to speak. The only sounds in the room were the faint crackling of charcoal fire and the squeaking of seal fat being fried in a hot cast iron pot.

Vilia was having a fierce ideological struggle in her mind.

Finally, she made a decision.

"Rurik!" Villa asked the child in front of him with a sullen face and an extremely serious attitude, "Do you know Rome?"

"You...you said What?!"

"Rome! A powerful city in the far south." Rurik still couldn't understand it. He seemed to understand it. What is pointed out is "Eastern Rome", but what about the city.

After some thinking, he finally understood the situation. The "Rome" here indeed refers to "Eastern Rome".

Because all the Viking forces are still in the tribal stage, and their largest organization is still the tribal alliance, they do not have a clear concept of country, and naturally they do not have a clear vocabulary to describe "country".

At this time, Rurik didn’t know how to answer. He had no idea that Priest Vilia knew about distant Rome?

The Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea are simply two unrelated worlds!

No! Wait!

Suddenly, Rurik thought of his own home. As the leader, his father had a locked wooden box, which was mainly filled with metal.

Those are coins, most of themAll are tributes from the residents of Novgorod. These minted coins can be exchanged for some goods with other tribes, and their purchasing power is a mystery.

The locals in Novgorod did not have the ability to mint coins at all, and the currency they used came from Eastern Rome.

The currencies are printed with the portraits of the characters and the annotations of the vocabulary.

Rurik had an idea and reluctantly explained: "I saw some special letters on the coins my father showed me. My father said they were the writing of distant Rome. So I used them. ”

This explanation is not convincing at all!

The wily Vilia knew the child was lying just by looking at his face.

"My child, what you say is not true. Your father Otto did not understand the use of Roman writing, and those Romans hardly used the writing you marked. This is a more Ancient writing, my understanding of it is very limited. But you! You actually used it. And...you..."

Eastern Rome in the ninth century was even more Hellenistic, and Latin and its writing had already become worse. In decline, Greek and the Greek alphabet became the mainstream of society. Therefore, the new coins minted by the government are brighter in quality than the old coins that have been in circulation for hundreds of years, and the inscriptions on them naturally become Greek.

So, Rurik should not know Roman letters, but Greek letters.

Villa's eyes widened. She felt like she was carrying a huge burden, and her whole body was suffocated by the intensely oppressive atmosphere. Her spirit was shaken violently, for Rurik, whose knowledge of the Roman alphabet was itself a miracle.

"Rurik, you know the ancient letters of the Romans, and you use them very correctly. The letters you carved are still used by the Franks. What you carved is the same as what they used." It's the same.

Only two people in our tribe know this unique set of letters! "Huh?" Rurik himself was even more frightened. Who would have thought that things could turn out like this.

"Who is it? Which two people?"

"You are! And me." Vilia stretched out her head and looked at Rurik's smiling face seriously, "Now Look straight out of the corner of your eyes and tell me honestly, who taught you this?"

"This..." Rurik couldn't explain it at the moment.

Velia used her imagination and asked tentatively: "Are they the women from Novgorod? Only their tribe has a better chance of contacting the Romans."

But he can’t guarantee it now. What trouble will happen if he says this? And cause heart disease.

Hearing what Villa said, Rurik seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw, even ifJin nodded: "Yes! Yes! Is it from those people that I learned this from my sister Peravina?"

"You... lied!" Vilia objected on the spot, and then He raised his withered mouth, which had almost lost all his teeth, and said regretfully: "Those women from Novgorod are a group of stupid people. They don't understand any writing at all. Including the people of our tribe, we are the only ones." Only a few people know how to write their own names in Roseburg! This is the saddest thing for me, only you are from our tribe! Hope."

Rurik was a little happy to be praised by Vilia suddenly.

Immediately afterwards, a new question came: "You can't learn anything from stupid people, especially these Roman letters. Tell me who taught you."

"This..."

"Tell me the truth, otherwise!" Vilia looked around, thinking that since the child's father had already led the warriors into the extreme cold It was the last large-scale hunting before. Who could take good care of this little kid Rurik at this time?

Villa was fierce and said in a threatening tone: "If you can't give me a satisfactory answer, you can't leave here."

Threat? A real threat.

Rurik looked troubled, and it seemed that he could only tell the truth, but did Vilia believe it?

Looking at the current situation, I can only use the excuse of "being born with it".

"Yes! I just understand the language of the Romans." Rurik muttered deliberately in a low voice.

"What did you say?"

After all, Vilia is very old, has some blurred vision, and is also slightly deaf.

Rurik probably shouldn’t make this matter public. He stood up and approached Verya’s ear, who was sitting cross-legged, and muttered deliberately: “Grandma Priest, these are the things I was born with. I know a lot besides it. I have had this knowledge in my mind since I first saw the light."