“A contract that’s in perpetuity isn’t a contract at all,” I replied. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“No one important, that’s for sure. At least, not in the grand scheme of things. I’m a messenger, here to send you a message.” At those words, the band of thieves pushed forward, weapons ready for an attack, but the man held up his free hand. “Relax, no one’s fighting anyone today. We’re clearly outnumbered, and we’re all gentlemen here, right? There’s no honor in an unfair fight.”
“There’s also no honor in attacking an unarmed caravan driver,” I said. “You drew the blood of one of my people. You interfered with my trade route and destroyed my shipment. I am here to demand that this blockade cease and that reparations are made.”
This caused the short man to laugh at my words. The other two guffawed as well, as if I had told the funniest joke they had heard in years. “Reparations?” the messenger repeated. “Look, pal, we’re the biggest trade guild in Liora. If we decided tomorrow that, let’s say, Igithor was on our bad side, their people would starve within two weeks of our shipments stopping. We control the flow of food and weapons to the Kings who wage their wars. We ensure the peasantry has access to healing potions as long as they can afford them. We own this world.”
“And that gives you cause to be so ruthless and cruel?”
The man shrugged. “Hey, if it were up to me, I would have quit when I got my first million gold pieces. But hey, it’s not my place to judge. Now, I am here to make you an offer.” He dug into his left pocket and produced a small piece of paper. “Take a look.”
An offer? First, they attack my caravan and then they try to make a deal? Still, it was worth taking a look. I unfurled the paper to see a new trade deal for the wheat. I would supply the wheat directly to the Tradesmen at the default market value which was a measly 10 gold per unit. This would be in-perpetuity. There was also an exclusionary clause to this contract, in which I was required to make all trade deals with the Tradesmen first. Only if they refused to trade with me, could I go elsewhere.
I tore up the offer in front of the messenger. “Are you kidding me with this?”
“Hey pal, you’re throwing away unlimited resources. We have everything you could ever want. No more having to visit village to village, no need to scrounge around in the hopes of finding the right resource. We have it all.”
“And if I want to make more than a pittance?” I asked. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’d much rather be in control of my own destiny.”
The messenger grimaced at that. “Do you really? And think about this, pal, do you really want the Tradesmen coming after you?”
“Are you going to declare war? Just wantonly attack an innocent village because you want their business?” I asked.
“Truthfully, I don’t know what they’re gonna do, cause I am just the messenger here. I just want to make it clear that this is going to be hard on you and your village if you refuse.”
I nodded at those words. “So no reparations then?”
This elicited more laughter. The messenger shook his head at me. “No, no reparations.”
I turned around to walk off, but then stopped and turned to face the man once more. “You said the guild has healing potions, right?”
“Will cure any injury or disease,” he said. “And we sell’em for dirt cheap to champions. Can’t have our cash cows dying.”
“Good,” I said. I looked back at my men. “Break their legs and take all of their stuff. That fancy armor should sell for enough to get a healer for Hatha and replace the stolen wheat.”
Chapter 14
The ride home was a quiet one. Alamander, who was normally chatty, stayed silent as we returned to Tine. The Tradesmen thugs had quite a bit of coin on them, giving us 200 extra gold—after Finch’s men took their cut, of course. The armor could be sold at an auction house in the city, and Finch believed they were worth a few hundred pieces total. This was a fruitful endeavor, for the time being.
Now I had sent a strong message to the Tradesmen by having their thugs appropriately punished. Attacking an innocent member of my village was not acceptable, no matter the reason. I would fight them to the ends of the earth, if it meant keeping my autonomy. There had to be some kind of centralized power that could keep the Tradesmen in check, some kind of king or perhaps an Earl. I was unsure, but would need to look into solutions to this new problem.
If I had let the thugs go without punishment, the Tradesmen would have thought that I was feeble and thus would continue their campaign of harassment. But attacking them would send a signal that I would be trouble. They would probably escalate things from here. So why attack them? I could not afford to look weak in front of my own people, or my subordinates. Finch’s men had a newfound respect for me, as did Alamander. Word would get out of my deed, and hopefully the people would realize that I was here to keep them safe. On top of that benefit, I had been hoping that we could get some gold off of them. We would need it to build defenses.
As I returned home, I retired to my office to ponder what my next option was. Alamander was no doubt sharing the news of what happened, and Hatha had recovered enough to go back out on the road. I wanted to stop her, but we needed the gold from the next shipment. There was still much to be done, and I admired her spirit of persistence.
As I opened the book, I was greeted by yet another new overlay, this one was the Faction Relationship page. It listed two factions: The Tradesmen, and The Amber Road Bandits. Predictably, my relationship with the Tradesmen had dropped down to negative 50. The Amber Road Bandits, however, had reached 15 points of positive relationship with me, which unlocked a passive benefit for my village called Eyes Out. Whenever a threat moved through the Amber Road (which was the name of the major road that led from Igithor through Reed and down to Manithor), I would be alerted through the Great Picture. I’d be given a full report on the threat’s size, strength and objective.
It would seem that, as I met various factions, the Great Picture would keep track of their opinion of me. Benefits could be unlocked by getting on their good side, and there was a negotiation option that allowed for me to send messengers to make deals with them—provided I had actual messengers to send. Predictably, I could also see a small threat warning next to the Tradesmen, alerting me that they now considered me to be an enemy.
I wondered what their next move would be. Looking at the defensive building options that I had, I was quick to realize that the amount of time and money it would take to put together any kind of serious defense was far, far outside of what I could afford for now. With only 400 gold at my disposal, the best I could do was erect one guard tower, and that would only convert one member of the population into a guard. Even 50 men would be able to take us down. My only hope was that they would not mobilize too quickly, giving us a few more weeks to prepare.
In the meantime, there was only one thing for me to do and that was to start construction on the Brewery. The additional income from selling the beer was extremely necessary at this point, so was the prospect of keeping Alamander around. A man of his talents and skills might be the only thing that protects us from the Tradesmen’s retaliation. It was clear that he was only really interested in working for beer, and I didn’t want to lose his services for failure to pay.
And so, I put in the work order. I shelled out the 200 gold to build the Brewery, putting an urgent flag on the job, so that whenever someone took a break, another worker would be assigned to work, ensuring the building went up faster. After the order was placed, I turned my attention to figuring out how the Auction House worked.
Igithor had an auction house, which I had briefly visited during my journey in the city. Without anything to buy or sell, I wasn’t particularly interested in it at the time, but now that I had some very nice armor that had some enchantments upon them, that all changed. I didn’t need to send a messenger or a caravan to sell my items on the auction house, rather I just needed to ac
cess another page that had been unlocked upon me entering.
Apparently, the auction house used a special type of magic to simply relocate items to their new owners, without requiring any kind of shipping. All I needed to do was assign these artifacts to the auction section, set a minimum price and the length of the bidding. Without a formal appraisal, I decided to just go with Finch’s recommendation, putting both pieces of armor up for 150 gold combined. The duration of the bidding would be four days. Hopefully that would be enough time to generate some income for us. What I would spend it on was an entirely different question.
With the work and auction orders placed, I closed the book and departed from my study, looking for Alamander. He was the one man who would be able to help us in this coming time of crisis. I just needed to be sure that he was still onboard with Tine. There had been something in his silence that led me to worry about his leaving, and so, I needed to secure his position here, at least for a while.
I found the illusionist outside the Tavern, sitting on the grass and reading his spellbook. As I approached, he glanced up at me.
“I see the Brewery is being built,” he said, chuckling a little. “I can’t wait to be the one who cuts the ribbon.”
“So you’re sticking around then?” I asked, sitting on the ground across from him. My eyes fell down to the spellbook in his hands. Actual magic. I knew it existed in this world; I had witnessed many magical occurrences. But I began to wonder what was in that book. And I wondered if it was possible for just anyone to learn how to cast spells.
“Oh yes,” Alamander said, drawing my attention back to the conversation at hand. “You’re gonna need me for when the mercenaries show up.”
“Why stick around if you know there’s going to be trouble?” I asked.
Alamander tapped on his book. “I’ve got a few spells that might fix this problem. And besides, this village is perfect for a guy like me. There’s no police force to hassle me for taking midnight strolls after a few pints. And everyone’s afraid of me since, in their eyes, I’m an all-powerful wizard. It’s nice to be respected and not considered a laughing stock.”
“I’m glad you’re staying,” I said, looking down at the spellbook again. I couldn’t resist asking. “Can anyone learn magic?”
This elicited a scoff from the wizard. “Do you see everyone using magic?” he asked. “No. Only those who have the Gifting are able to do so.”
“So you have to be born with it?”
“Sometimes,” Alamander said, waving his hand to conjure a small image of a glowing gemstone. “Other times, you gotta get your hands on one of these. Giftstones, we call them, are created by Master Wizards, you know, the guys who are the biggest and best of them all? When it comes time to pass on the tricks of the trade, a Master Wizard will make a handful and find the right people to give them to. The Giftstones imbue them with the power to use magic.”
“That’s interesting.”
“It’s very rare to meet people with natural magical abilities,” he continued. “Incredibly rare. So for the most part, a wizard gained their gift from a Master Wizard. It helps restrict the number of wizards in the world. Too many wizards can make for a very dangerous world, if you ask me.”
“It also would make their services much cheaper,” I replied.
This elicited a laugh from Alamander. “True. Not all of them are willing to work for beer. And to answer your follow-up question that is sure to come, no I cannot make a Giftstone for you. It takes a tremendous amount of magic to do so, but on top of that, you need to be a level 7 wizard. Which is a far road for me, my friend.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So what happens when I open up a Wizard Tower and instruct you to teach?”
“Ah!” Alamander said. “That’s different. I can imbue students with a spark of my magic, allowing them to cast spells that are weaker than my own level. They can also use my scrolls and spellbooks and whatnot. My level dictates how many apprentices I can have. Right now, I can manage about one.”
My attention shifted for a moment towards the Brewery, to see the workers enthusiastically putting up the walls. “So how can we defend this place?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve seen my fair share of sieges before,” Alamander said. “Normally, walls would do the trick.”
“I meant with magic,” I replied, crossing my arms.
Alamander smirked at that. “I have two major illusions that should work. The first is that I can create a false army, one twice as large as the enemy that arrives. This will cause them to change tactics dramatically and set up camp outside. They’ll send a few raiders in to burn your wheat fields, and then just wait for you to starve out.”
“They wouldn’t want to just fight the other army?”
“Absolutely not! I don’t know how it works in your home world, but most mercenaries here are looking for easy money. They get paid quite a bit to fight, and when you end up dying at the end of some bigger army’s spear, you don’t get paid at all.”
I nodded at those words. Mercenaries really only had one motive: profit. By making an attack against us as costly and dangerous as possible, it would discourage them.
“So they starve us out, ensure no shipments come in and no one can leave. It might take a few weeks or even a month, but these jackasses are usually paid by the day. And the Tradesmen have such deep pockets, they won’t even notice the artificially larger bill,” Alamander said. “I learned that when uh, marching with a few mercenary crews of my own.”
“You were a mercenary wizard?”
“No, I was a Tradie. And when you’re a member of the Tradesmen, you’re whatever they want you to be,” Alamander replied. “So I’m preparing the illusion to scare them into laying siege. We will lose our capacity to make food immediately, but if we’re well stocked, we could last a while.”
“You said you had another spell?”
Alamander grimaced at that and shrugged. “Mass invisibility. Strong enough to make most of us invisible. For emergency evacuations.”
“Well, let’s hope that we won’t have to use such a spell,” I replied, standing to my feet. Alamander’s plan wasn’t meant to protect us; it was simply meant to buy us time. I would need to come up with some other way to discourage these mercenaries from taking us down.
Chapter 15
The newly opened Tavern was full of mirth and laughter. Within two days, the Brewery had opened and immediately beer production began. I was enjoying the fact that, in this world, resources didn’t take very long to be created, regardless of how long the actual process was in my own realm. The barley enabled us to create 5 barrels of high quality beer per day, and the Tavern only required one barrel each day—leaving us with a 4 barrel surplus.
But as I sat at the table, along with Liza Reed and Tomas Peters, the economics of beer was the last thing on my mind. Rather, I had called a meeting between our three villages to discuss this common problem that we were all facing.
“Tine is looking well,” Liza said in between sips of her beer. She had brought with her many different binders full of paperwork, no doubt expecting more trade deals to discuss. I had promoted two villagers to Messenger and then sent them out to bring the leaders of Reed and Cornet to meet with me. I was pleased that they both arrived within the day.
“Thank you,” I said, looking at the both of them. Liza was relaxed, but Peters was fully alert and sitting upright, no beer in his hand. Did he know that I was in trouble? Or was he just always this skittish? “No doubt you are wondering why I’ve called you here,” I explained. “I consider both Reed and Cornet to be allies of mine, and I hope the sentiment is mutual.”
The two nodded at me. Liza raised her glass to me before emptying it and ordering another from a nearby barmaid. I continued. “A few days ago, the Tradesmen attacked my own caravan and put a blockade outside of your own territory, Liza.”
“Yeah, I am well aware of that fact,” Liza said, nodding her head.
“No one here is friends with the Tradies,” I continued. “In fact, we all have a vested interest in our villages remaining safe from their influence. Liza depends on us for wheat, we depend on her for gold, and Peters, you depend upon me for my ability to invest in your land.”
Peters nodded at that. “So what are you proposing? A defensive pact? I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have an army.”
“Reed has 10 guards,” Liza said with a sigh. “We can’t fend off mercenary hordes.”
“I understand this full well,” I replied. “But we have collective resources between all three of us. What if we were to pool all of our wealth together and raise our own mercenary army to protect our territory? I’ve been looking at options, and I’ve discovered one that is costly but would aid all of us in the long-term.”
“A mercenary lodge?” Liza asked, and I nodded eagerly.
“I’m unfamiliar,” Peters said, raising his hand slightly. “What does that mean?”
“A mercenary lodge is a permanent structure that we can put up in a territory outside of our own borders. While it’s open, we can recruit mercenaries for an incredibly steep discount, provided that we pay a certain amount of gold per week as part of the lodge’s maintenance structure,” I explained.
“And, since the lodge is where mercenaries like to stay, it increases the chances of nearby villages getting visitors,” Liza added. “It also means we can instantly recruit mercs to fight for us, as there’s no travel time.”
“Best of all, the founders of the lodge create a special contract where the resident mercenaries pledge to never turn against the founders,” I said. “It’s exactly what we need.”
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