I’d already known that we were not the only “civilization”, but I did not like to hear confirmed how much more advanced they were than us. At the same time, I knew from history how hard it was to march armies through mostly empty land, and we had nothing that made it worth the effort to conquer a forest filled with deadly archers.
During the entirety of this glorious feast, while the fires burned bright, the slaves sat glumly a good distance away from the celebrations. They were tied to each other and to a tree that grew next to the bunkhouses we’d given the traders. One of the barbarian mercenaries who the traders had hired as guards stood over them, with a menacing spear.
There was no fire to warm the slaves, and slowly the spring evening turned cool, with a sharp breezes springing up from off the ocean, and I could see the slaves shiver, as they had been given no furs or hide coats by the traders.
The guard was switched with one of the other barbarian mercenaries every hour, so that he could have his turn to enjoy the food, the laughter, and to awkwardly try to flirt with the inevitably married elven women, who also did not speak their language, but who were quite willing to learn.
However shortly after the first of the big food feasts was served, Cassandra, with several other children, snuck over to the slaves, and after enduring a few shouted complaints from the barbarian guard, she gave them an ample helping from the deer meat, and some hide blankets.
The men smiled at the small elvish girl, with her pointed ears and bright eyes, and she frowned disapprovingly at the guard, and at all of the traders.
But when she tried to undo the knots on the ropes tying the slaves together, the guard shouted at her, and then picked her up, though he thought better of kicking the child after seeing all of our archers while coming into the town, and there was a brief argument that ended with several elves being posted with three barbarians at all times to guard the slaves, and make sure that none of our people tried to steal them again, not even our children, who of course did not know any better.
However the new elvish guards did ensure that the beaten down slaves were given food during the course of the evening.
The next morning the negotiations began, both the private negotiations, and the big public negotiations.
I first gave Commercialus the list of what I wanted most.
Incense was the biggest goal, because while burned in a place of power, it gave a 10% boost to spiritual energy generation. That would be huge benefit, and I wanted enough incense to supply us until the next time a group like this came through.
I also wanted to get a lot of the ivory, so figurines could be made for everyone. Enough of a supply for a small figurine for every household might be a big cost, but I thought it might be worth it.
If it would not cost too much to get them, I wanted to get some of the bronze breastplates the soldiers wore.
And finally, and most importantly, I wanted to buy information.
Foedus, my foreign advisor, had found out from the trader while they talked, both tipsy, late last night, that while the general news of the world would be given for free, that if he was paid for his time, he and his other traders would describe at length everything they knew of the lands to the south which they came from.
I wanted that knowledge.
Simply the knowledge we had gotten casually last night from conversation gave me a small boost to research speed on a dozen different technologies. After all, simply knowing that something is possible gives you the idea to try to figure out how to do it, even if you don’t know the details.
Knowing everything about the cities to the south would help us get closer to them economically. This is the effect that in games like Europa Universalis is modelled the neighbor bonus to tech research. The closer the rest of the world came to being a “neighbor” to us for the purpose of getting research bonuses, the better.
Commercialus met that morning with the leader of the traders, who was named Karult. They sat high up on the hillside, overlooking the port, and Karult brought out and gave Commercialus some more of the wine.
I had a sinking sensation as I watched Commercialus take the wine and smile back at Karult.
So the thing is, inexperience trading a particular good means you don’t know what it is worth. We were inexperienced with all goods, which meant that we lost about half their value, or alternatively had to pay about double for buying other goods.
This negative modifier would decrease the more times we traded with a particular good, or the more information we gained about it. The eager, happy, and friendly language enthusiasts who’d surrounded the traders, happily asking about everything, gave us enough information that we only ended up with an average of a 30% loss from ignorance.
But the big issue was that Karult was simply much, much better at this than Commercialus. Despite being an elf with expertise in bartering, he was still an elf.
He liked the game of bartering, but a part of his soul that was bred deep in him simply could not take seriously the idea that getting a good trade was really important.
And Karult was a master trader, he wasn’t as good at trading as Virtunis was at meditating, but he was really good.
In the end we had to pay almost three times as much for everything than it was actually worth. And this made me not want to trade very much.
I really wanted the incense and the knowledge. But nothing else was very important. We only got two of the long elephant tusks that they brought for trade, but I did get a promise to learn everything he knew about foreign lands and a supply of incense.
This cost me all of the pearls, half the gold coins, and half of the little gems we’d collected. They were going to literally stuff their bags with hundreds of rich beaver furs, and they were taking dozens of the best flint spear and axe heads that we’d made.
As for Marcus’s hope about breastplates? Forget it. He was going to be quite disgruntled with the loss of too many axe heads and arrowheads.
All so that I could burn day and night some sweet smelling stuff in my temple and around the gem’s place in my home settlement for the next three years.
Of course the elves who were not expert traders like Commercialus got ripped off even worse, but they were mostly happy with the novelty of trading, and protected by the fact that they couldn’t trade away everything they owned for what they wanted.
We got lots of little things that served to boost morale, or personal productivity on the part of my elves. Finely shaped stone axe heads were traded back to some of the carpenters. People bought most of the wine they had come with, all of the spices, and a few pieces of cotton cloth, also another elephant tusk was privately purchased.
In the end the trading caravan, after staying with us for a week, was about to leave with its bags much fuller than when they’d arrived.
This entire time the children constantly swarmed around the traders, who good naturedly kept them away from their packs, but otherwise smiled at them, and occasionally gave a child an exotic treat.
After the first night and the first morning, the elvish adults found better things to do with their time than stare at the traders. Except of course the linguists, whose assigned job was to learn as much about the language of these people as they possibly could.
However the children were not so easily discouraged from watching.
They didn’t have the memory of the grand sky temples, and whatever other sights they had known in that distant past before the fall. All any of them had ever seen was the forest.
Marcus was the only non-elf any of them had ever seen, since no barbarians had reached it anywhere near the main settlement since the children would have been old enough to remember them doing so.
So the traders were interesting, and they stayed interesting.
Cassandra particularly was fascinated by them, but she returned, every day, to the slaves, bringing them food from our communal cooking fires, and water, and blankets for the night.
And then on the day before the traders we
re to leave, Cassandra found Marcus who had always been fond of her, and Arnhelm who had never forgotten that she was an orphan, and that he owed a life debt to her father who died saving his life.
She also dragged Virtunis and Commercialus by their sleeves, and she pointed at the slaves with her other hand.
Always when Cassandra spoke I understood what she said without the need for her words to be translated by the system. Somehow her meaning was clear. She pointed to the slaves and said, “Our guide! Our guide! He doesn’t like this. He knows it is wrong.”
Karult had been close and rifling through one of his packs to find a bead bracelet which an elf he had been speaking to had suggested an interest in. He looked up at this conversation between them, his head cocked with interest.
Marcus patted Cassandra’s hair fondly. “There is nothing that we can do. We have no slavery amongst ourselves. And that is why we must always remain strong so that none can enslave us.”
“No! No! No! I know we must have these people.”
“Cassie, we do not have slaves with us.”
“Our guide wishes for us to set them free, so that they might choose if they would stay in the village.”
Marcus frowned and looked at the tied and seated human slaves. “Yes,” he whispered, more to himself than to Cassandra, “that would be much like our guide.”
Commercialus said, “We do not have sufficient resources to barter for slaves — and if we just let them walk away, after we purchased them — that doesn’t make any sense.”
“If Cassandra tells us we ought to purchase them,” Virtunis said confidently, “then we ought to.”
“Our guide,” Commercialus said, “is not without the potential to make mistakes. We simply cannot purchase all of them.”
“Them, them. You must choose those five.” Cassandra pointed out five of the slaves. And then she pointed at the remaining two. “He is a bad man. Very bad. Bad. And he,” she pointed to the last of them, “he shall escape on his own, and return to his family one day.”
This slave looked at Cassandra with eerily clear eyes, as though he could understand her voice.
Karult exclaimed, having come there to stand near our council members, “A touched child! She has been touched by a guide, and she can speak with him! I’ll give you all — no just four. I’ll give you four of those slaves in exchange for her. But you can have the fifth if you throw in another stack of those furs.”
Commercialus looked intrigued.
Marcus stepped in front of Cassandra and snarled, gripping the handle of the axe he wore at his belt, as he did not wear his bow and his spear while walking around the center of the village.
Karult eyed Marcus carefully, and put his hands up and smiled with a friendly look. He stepped close to Commercialus and said quietly to the elf, “Talk to him a bit, eh? We are both men of business. And I confess, I perhaps am not giving you the best deal — all five slaves for the girl. I admit it, she won’t need to eat much.”
“Why,” Virtunis asked in a mild voice though I knew him well enough to tell that he was quite ready to throw himself at Karult to attack him with his bare fists and teeth if he thought the trader would try to kidnap Cassandra, “do you wish to have her?”
The trader smiled. “In the cities of the south, those who are touched are quite rare. Quite rare. The guides of those cities in the far south, they all want such people, especially when they are children. But I tell you, these are good slaves. Good men. The five of them for one little girl.”
“I fear that is entirely impossible, as we do not,” Virtunis replied, “sell our people into slavery.”
“Come on — you want those five men? I’ll throw in the other two for free — and I’ll give you a few more of the ivory tusks.”
I had a sudden strong feeling, and one that worried me, that if we had a halfway decent skill at bargaining, we would be able to easily convince him to leave everything in his packs behind if he could take Cassandra as a slave with him.
Sell one of your people?
Though you do not have slavery enabled, this is a special circumstance. You can authorize Commercialus to trade for these slaves, who you then will immediately release, to see whether they leave or not, and you can authorize him to sell Cassandra for all that she is worth.
There is a lot of stuff in those packs… lots of stuff that could benefit your tribe. You know you want those breastplates… and that ivory… and, eh… you aren’t going to offer her up for sale. Not even funny to suggest it.
Order Commercialus to negotiate for the five slaves Cassandra pointed at, with the requirement they be freed immediately upon purchase?
Order Commercialus to negotiate the sale of Cassandra?
Order Commercialus to do both?
Ignore this whole opportunity, and say goodbye to the traders tomorrow.
I had Commercialus negotiate for the slaves.
This proved to be a difficult and painful negotiation, as Karult was clearly angry with us, when it had been made completely clear that we would not, not for any price, even one beyond his current means to offer, sell Cassandra to him.
Were those who had that special connection to a guide really that valuable?
It suggested that I might need to wait a long time before another girl like Cassandra became available.
The problem was at this point that Karult already had everything in our settlement that was light enough for him to carry out that I was happily willing to trade away. So we had to offer him things I didn’t want to trade.
What it ended up being was all of the fruit from the temple orchards that I currently had stored, all of the masterwork flint blades that had by good fortune been created by my flint knappers, except for the one on Marcus’s spear. But five of my warriors had to give up their prized spears to finish up the price demanded by Karult.
I really hoped as I watched the goods be handed over that this would prove worth it.
The trade was made, and they removed the ropes from the people, and, unlike what I hoped, the five of them did not immediately become my citizens. Instead they were unattached, but not hostile.
And one of them immediately declared his intention to travel back south with the caravan, so that he could rejoin his family.
What a fucking dick. After I spent all that money on him, his only thought is his family?
And I looked at Cassandra’s smile.
She’d learned enough of the slave’s language, and she encouraged the man who looked to be about thirty-five to go, and she told him that she was sure he would see his daughter, and his sons, and his wife once more, and that he would live to a happy age with them.
Was she truly a prophet?
I then felt guilty at being annoyed that the man would just leave, especially since he had been the most heavily muscled of the slaves, with some experience as a stoneworker.
I had been salivating at the idea of having him build stone walls and barricades in useful locations, or maybe putting together a stone building for my place of power in the village, which would have given me five extra worshipper specialist slots.
And he’d been the most expensive.
At the same time, he looked so happy and grateful at Cassandra brokenly speaking his language, and promising him a happy future.
I kind of hated myself for wishing he would just stay here.
And she then spoke to the other four, asking them if they would stay, and they all agreed to stay for a while, to decide if they wished to settle here permanently. But there was still no guarantee that any of them would stay, but we gave the four of them the whole bunkhouse to live in, and everyone was ordered to make them as welcome as possible.
The next day the traders left, with a promise that they would return in two years, with more spices, more ivory, more slaves, and generally more of everything for us to buy.
Karult, though, sneered as he left the encampment as he looked up at our watchtowers.
I could see when I tried to loo
k at his status sheet the things we’d discovered about him through observation and conversation. And I knew that as he was not one of our people, when I looked at what the bio sheet said was his opinion of us, that the biosheet might not be correct.
But I was pretty sure he really was contemptuous of us.
Chapter Twenty-One
Three months after the visit of the traders it happened. It was a calm midsummer day. The air was warm and still, and many people throughout the settlement were taking afternoon naps. Not much work was going on, not on such a beautiful day.
The alarm sounded in my mind.
Attack. Attack. Attack.
I looked at the minimap. Pulsing red dots that were right in the middle of my territory, only two miles from the settlement.
My panic spiked.
What the hell?
I slowed events to nearly a pause so my racing mind could catch up to the situation.
It was possible for a group to sneak past the outer line of defenses and patrols that had caught all of the groups of barbarians recently, because I did not have enough soldiers to densely patrol everything. But this was so close.
Two miles out from the main settlement, and the entire area was a dense, thick green forest. I had only a thousand elves. The approaches a mile around the town were always watched by guards in manned platforms that could see each other, but two miles away from the town was close enough that my people would wander frequently and freely — though never without their weapons — but far enough from the town that it was impossible to have a tight defensive perimeter.
If a group of barbarians disguised their scent from the patrolling dogs and wolves, a small group could easily make it deep into my territory.
But only a small force. I did not think a hundred men could sneak this close without being sniffed out by the patrols, or leaving signs of their passage.
There were ten of them. Ten dots on the minimap.
I zoomed in on them. Marcus and everyone else who was armed in the area had received the immediate order to rush to the location where the enemies had been seen. Everyone in town was being ordered to drop everything they were doing and rush for their bows and spears so they would be ready to fight.
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