When you think of Vikings, you picture coastal raids. But what if their most powerful legacy was forged not in the West, but along the great rivers of the East? This episode uncovers the story of the Rus', the merchant-adventurers who built an empire connecting Scandinavia to Constantinople and Baghdad. We reveal the brutal secret at the heart of their immense wealth and the foundation of the first Slavic state, Kievan Rus': a vast, systematic trade in human lives.