The Women of a Fallen Noble House, Part 1
I drove the truck into the encampment we had pitched on the grasslands outside Drail.
The camp had doubled in size while I was gone. Cook-smoke climbed from more than a dozen fires, and the tents ringing the place were packed to the seams with newly purchased slaves.
Marco, Maximus, and the Third Prince—Argon, his face hidden under a hood—came out to meet me the moment the truck appeared. Marco gave me the report on everything that had happened in my absence.
"We bought additional slaves that were going for next to nothing. Every one of them was sound of limb—merchandise that had been groaning with infection and fever. We purchased two hundred and three in all. Eleven died while we were dosing them and nursing them back, so the remaining stock is one hundred and ninety-two."
Eleven lost. It stung, but not one of them had cost even fifty silver. Hardly a serious loss.
"Good work. How's the market these days?"
"The price of young male slaves has shot up. The fighting took heavy losses, so supply dried up all at once. The other side of that is that female slaves have fallen sharply."
"Have they?"
"Yes. So if we have capital to spare, I suggest we buy the women as well as the wounded. We can hold them until the price recovers and sell then, or take them to another region. Either way, I expect a handsome margin."
Oh-ho. I liked the way this one talked. Buy where it was cheap, sell where it was dear. A merchant born, not made.
In the end, the price of able-bodied male slaves had risen, while the sick, the wounded, and the women had fallen by comparison. I was not about to let an opening like that pass. And I had arrived with goods ready to sell, right on time.
I took Marco around to the back of the truck and showed him what I had hauled in. His eyes went wide at the sight of the trainees sitting in the cargo bed, faces stiff with fear.
"How—where did you get so many?"
"Pulled them out of my private warehouse. That's all you need to know."
"Ah. Yes, sir."
The identity of a core supplier is among the most valuable secrets in the trade. It is common enough for that knowledge to be shared with no one but the guildmaster and a handful of others.
"We'll move these first. Then we'll take the coin and go look at the women."
"Yes, Guildmaster."
In the gorge that ran between Albredo and Drail, on ground where only the faintest traces of battle remained, figures in black hoods combed the earth for a trail.
"Magic was used, by the look of it. The tracks have been erased."
"The marks running up the walls are still there, so knights of considerable skill must have fought here. But the tracks on the ground have been wiped clean. That has to be a mage's doing."
The hooded figure who seemed to be their leader spoke.
"Then we start by identifying the mages who took part in the battle."
"We'll return to Drail and find out."
"This is not the client's problem alone. The assassination of the Third Prince is a matter of the guild's honor. Find him. Find him, and put him to death."
"Yes."
"Yes."
They had appeared like shadows, and like shadows they melted back into the dark of the gorge and were gone.
The Drail slave market. The trainees, weeping and begging, needed breaking before they were ever put up for sale. When it comes to teaching obedience, a club is the medicine and a public example is the cure. I had the worst of the trainers—the ones with the blackest names—dragged out and flogged in front of the rest.
Maximus, so massive that his size alone was a threat, took a short whip in hand and laid into a trainer until the man's hide split and hung in strips. Screams thinned into groans, groans into silence, and still the lash kept falling. It did not stop until a pool of blood had spread across the ground where the man was bound.
When that half-dead body was finally lowered to the dirt, the venom and the pleading vanished clean from the trainees' eyes. What rose in their place was fear, and submission.
We loaded the broken slaves back onto the truck and took them out to the market. Better nourished than the people of this world, the trainees sold the moment we put them up—all forty-four gone in less than a day. Marco worked the price with just the right push and pull, and we cleared every one of them at an average of nine gold a head.
Total take: 396 gold. In metal that was 19.8 kilograms, and at 110,000 won a gram, 2.178 billion won.
Back at camp, I took stock of what remained. The gold coins earned so far came to 951. Buying the 203 sick slaves, along with tents, provisions, Submission Collars for their necks, and the wagons and horses to haul them, had cost about 200 gold. If I counted the rest of the investment as covered by the money I had borrowed in Korea, what I had left was 751 gold, 192 slaves still recovering, IS-1 and IS-2, twelve trainers, Blondie, and the catfolk.
I kept the trainers off the block. I had another use for them. Squeezing information out of them would profit me far more than selling them outright.
There was no point hauling unnecessary cash, so I set Marco to buying more slaves. I already had wounded stock enough; this time I wanted goods with a higher margin apiece. One lot in particular caught my eye—the public auction overseen by the royal house.
"These goods come from the house of Viscount Malic, whose defeat brought on the loss at Albredo. A slave of noble blood is a treasure among treasures, and hard to come by. We will open the bidding at thirty gold."
On the platform stood Viscount Malic's wife and daughters—Viscountess Anne and her girls—and with them, in a great lot, the slaves the viscount's house had owned. The moment I saw the viscountess and her daughters, the word came out of me on its own. Beautiful. Clean white skin and brilliant platinum hair, nothing like an ordinary blonde, narrow waists and full breasts. Every one of them looked as if she had stepped out of a comic.
Marco caught fire the moment he saw the goods.
"We have to buy them. This is a massive opportunity."
"That good?"
"Yes. Noble daughters and noble wives almost never reach the market. They're premium stock."
I nodded. That made sense. And yet a question snagged me. These women were not a whit inferior in looks to the ex-wife I had sold off last time, and her opening bid had been a hundred gold. Set beside that, the auction's starting price made no sense.
"Then why is the opening bid so cheap?"
"Well... goods from a ruined noble house are said to be unlucky. People tend not to buy them."
"Ah. So that's the reason."
Unlucky merchandise, then.
"Only here, though. Package them properly and sell them in a distant city, or another country, and that stain washes clean. The price jumps several times over."
My head cleared at once.
"Then we can't let them go. Bid. Now, Marco."
"Yes, Guildmaster."
After a dozen-odd rounds of bidding, I won the viscountess and her daughters. I bought other good-looking women on top of them. Among those were slaves the viscount had kept for his bed. Two hundred and eighty gold bought me nine in all—six women and three demi-humans.
The demi-humans were dwarves, widely known for the skill of their hands. Then I paid a visit to the Drail branch of the Mage Tower.
What I had commissioned was an enchantment for the truck I had brought with me. Once I confirmed the price and paid in gold, the branch's chief mage came in person with mana stones and gold and laid the magic into the cargo bed.
Mage Tower enchantment, laid into the cargo bed
Volume increased fivefold
Weight-reduction magic: mass cut to one-fifth
Price paid: 150 gold
Aphago, in the necklace, immediately started nagging.
"A fortune, spent on rubbish like that? The dungeon is crammed with items hundreds of times finer."
"Enough. I can't use those until we sign a proper contract. This will do for now."
Either way, the five-ton truck could now haul twenty-five. More than three hundred people would fit in a single load. A hundred and fifty gold was well over eight hundred million won back in the real world, but if I meant to move more than two hundred slaves, it was an investment I could not avoid. I had considered wagons, but then came the labor, a team and feed for every wagon, and an endless list of things to manage. So I spent the money, large as it was.
After the other wagons and the remaining expenses, I had about four hundred gold left. Nearly cut in half. Earning it is the hard part. Spending it takes a moment. But it was an investment. An investment.
With lumber bought at the market, we split the truck's cargo bed into two levels. The dwarves lived up to their reputation and knocked the work out in no time. When it was done, the wounded slaves and the IS trainers—more than two hundred in all—fit aboard with room to spare. The investment had been worth it.
I rebuilt the cargo bed mounted behind the Humvee so people could sit, and loaded the women there. The dwarf slaves and the remaining baggage went into the last wagon we had bought. Marco drove one wagon. Maximus drove the other. I climbed into the Humvee with IS-1 and the Third Prince, Argon. Argon would stay in the vehicle with me until we were clear of Drail. IS-2 took the truck.
Preparations ate a full day.
"Are we ready?"
"Yes, Guildmaster."
"Yes, Master."
"Then we move. Destination: Arhen."
Arhen—a border city of the Zahed Empire, north of the Drail Kingdom. Before I opened a gate back to Korea, I meant to stop in Europa first. One reason only. I was going to the rich kingdoms of Europa to find suckers willing to pay dearly for slaves.