The Power of Distribution, Part 2
Thanks to driving through the whole of the night before, I passed the gate and reached Drail.
The next morning I went straight to the slave market.
"Young slaves, right here! Snap them up while they're cheap! Six gold and ninety silver a head! A giveaway! Practically free!"
"Lowest prices guaranteed! Nowhere cheaper than this!"
"Our company master's gone mad! The finest chance you'll ever have to stock slaves at the bottom price! Don't let it slip past you!"
Slave prices in the Drail market had fallen even lower than before. An ordinary male slave now went for as little as six gold. The surge that had driven prices up for a time had settled as the weeks went by.
Buy those discounted bodies and haul them to a great city like Gerona, and the margin would be fat the moment they arrived. Until just a week ago, mid-sized and large trading companies had been sweeping up every slave that reached the market. Now even that demand had dried up, and the prices had dropped further still.
To me, that was nothing but opportunity.
I went from company to company and bought up every lot released onto the floor. Leaning on the fact that they needed to clear unsold stock, I beat the prices down. Each house hauled out whatever hadn't moved, and I bought them as fast as they came out.
After two days of sweeping the market like a net, I had purchased 817 slaves. The average price came to six gold a head. Cheap as the buy was, it still ran to the enormous sum of 4,900 gold.
The last time I had bought items, that alone had cost nearly 2,500 gold. Add two ship charters and the hire of a mercenary company, and the treasury was now on the verge of running completely dry.
Nor did it end there. I loaded the slaves I had bought into the backs of the trucks. To carry them, I had already gone to the Mage Tower and had spatial-expansion magic tuned into the vehicles. A fivefold expansion paired with an oxygen-generation spell cost 200 gold a truck—600 gold for all three.
I couldn't simply leave them sitting in the cargo beds, so I bought a blanket apiece at the market and handed them out, then purchased food for the journey and iron cauldrons to cook it in. Tens of gold vanished in a blink on that alone.
If this plan failed, I really might go bankrupt.
I shook my head and cast the thought aside. The moment the preparations were finished, we drove back out through the gate beyond the royal capital, emerged on the Syrian side of the border, and followed the road back to Damascus.
At a motel in Damascus I met IS-1 again. As ordered, he had already worked out a way across the Lebanese border. Following his lead, we took the trucks toward the borderlands between Lebanon and Syria.
Dawn at the border checkpoint. Soldiers with rifles stepped out to bar the convoy—a Toyota pickup with three trucks strung in a line behind it. A border guard came up to the Toyota and rapped on the driver's window. Tok, tok, tok.
No. 1 rolled the window down and greeted him like a man he knew.
"You've been working hard, sir."
"The ones behind you—your party?"
"Yes, sir."
In the rearview mirror I watched soldiers heading for the cargo box of the truck directly behind us. While I was weighing whether to drop every one of them, No. 1 passed the soldier outside the window the envelope of cash I had given him before we set out.
"The goods I mentioned last time. Beans and sesame."
The soldier took the envelope and stole a glance inside. Then—
"It's late. Drive carefully. Hey! Let them through!"
At a word from him, the soldiers who had just been opening the lock on the cargo box clicked their tongues and fell back. At the same time the barrier arm across the road rose.
"Boss. We're clear to pass."
"Good."
With the pickup in the lead, the trucks crossed safely into Lebanese territory.
Once inside Lebanon we made for Beirut, the capital and one of the Mediterranean's great port cities. The vehicles waited in a place empty of people until evening came.
Late at night the convoy slipped quietly into the port of Beirut. At a tucked-away pier, a ferry flying the flag of Türkiye lay alongside the quay, waiting in silence. We drove the trucks up to it.
A sailor who had been standing out front saw the vehicles and came over. I stopped the pickup, climbed out of the passenger seat, and went to meet him.
"Would you be the customer from Türkiye?"
"That's right. I made contact through Law Firm Istanbul."
"Then it checks out. The vehicles behind you—that's the cargo?"
"It is."
"Mind if we have a look? We don't take dangerous work."
"Do as you please."
The sailor and the men beside him opened the cargo hold. A long creak, then a heavy thud. Inside the flung-open box, crates were stacked clear to the ceiling.
"Olives. For pressing into oil."
The sailor peered into the gaps between the stacked crates, gave them a cursory look, and shut the door again. He was no quarantine officer. That much was enough.
He came back and spoke.
"Drive aboard. Carefully."
Once leave was given, the trucks rolled onto the ferry one by one. Watching them go, the sailor came over and held out the papers.
"Sign here. The destination is Naples. Correct?"
"Correct."
"You're not riding with them, then?"
"I've got preparations to make ahead of the ship. My people will board in my place. We'll look after the vehicles ourselves during the crossing, so no one goes near them. You were told that, I assume?"
The sailor nodded.
"I've already passed the word to my crew. All we have to do is haul the goods."
I had set terms when I chartered the ferry. For the length of the voyage, the crew would not come down to the first-deck section where the cargo sat. In exchange, I would pay a premium in cash.
"Then here's the advance."
I drew a thick paper envelope from inside my coat and handed it over. The sailor opened it, checked the money, and nodded.
"The balance will be paid in Naples when you arrive."
"As you like. And the Naples entry clearance—your side is handling that, yes? If there's trouble, we don't know a thing about it."
"Don't worry. Just see that they're moved properly."
I parted from the sailors and called together the slaves who had driven the vehicles up onto the ship.
"I'll go ahead to Naples and get things ready. You come on to Naples with the cargo. Look after the goods while you're at sea."
The trucks were packed thick with blankets and rations, so nothing ought to go wrong. By ferry, Beirut to Naples was roughly two thousand kilometers. An ordinary sailing ship of the other world would need ten days for that run, but a ferry on this side could make it in three. I had set all of this in motion believing that gap would earn me a fortune.
Now, to settle the last of it, I headed for the airport alone. The destination was Rome.
I flew into Rome, then drove back out to the vineyard southeast of the city. At the vineyard I passed through the gate and arrived in Gerona.
There I went to find Maximus. He had pitched a camp on the outskirts of Gerona and was managing the slaves.
"You've come, Master."
"You've worked hard. And the slaves?"
"They are all well. At the start, however, some would not listen and resisted, so I laid hands on them as an example, to set the discipline. One died. Two were injured, but not badly. A month or two of rest should see them mended."
Maximus had been the only overseer, and still he had shown exactly why he was chief slave overseer. Without so much as borrowing the power of a Submission Collar, he—whose strength surpassed a warrior orc's—had wrung a defiant slave's neck and killed him in front of every watching eye, while the man still lived.
"Well done. If anything, it shortened the training. If anyone resists next time, handle it as you see fit."
"Thank you, Master."
"Good. Then let me see them."
Maximus called the slaves to assembly.
"Fall in!"
At a single word they rushed out and dressed their ranks in perfect order, not a hair of error in the movement. Thugs who had lived as mafia, after all. Break them in once, and they were easy to work afterward.
"You. Moreno. Step forward. Giovanni, beside him."
The two named men shot out and stood ramrod straight at attention before me.
"I've got questions. Answer them honestly, and in detail."
"Answer him!"
Maximus roared it.
"Master!"
"F-forgive me, Master! Please—speak!"
"Yes, yes. Ease up. A ferry is on its way from Istanbul to Naples right now, with three large box trucks loaded aboard. I want those three cargo trucks to come in without passing port quarantine. Fellows like you can manage that, can't you?"
The two of them answered at the top of their lungs, neither waiting on the other.
"Master! There will be no problem!"
"Send me, and I'll have them through at once! Ah—Master!"
I looked on, well pleased, at how crisply they snapped to.
"Our slave overseer has done his work very well. I'm quite satisfied."
Maximus bowed his head, visibly moved.
"Not at all. All of this is by your grace, Master!"
"Good. Then you two—tell me what each of you knows. Take turns. You first, Moreno."
Clear the port, and I could loose another eight hundred slaves into Gerona. Count the orcs, and the number came to twelve hundred. The thought of the trading companies thrown into a panic drew a smile out of me on its own.