Deals Between Nobles

Deals Between Nobles

"What? The orcs are heading south?"

March Miles was the one who cried out. His political instincts seemed truly terrible; he simply did not understand how nobles clashed with one another.

The others were also somewhat shocked and afraid. Even Kristan's breathing grew slightly hurried.

Viscount Miles sighed.

"Rag, you come too."

Somewhat unexpectedly, Rag gave Ryan a friendly look. Clearly, Ryan's counterattack against Miles had made Rag the greatest beneficiary of this conversation between nobles.

Viscount Miles still had several Pioneer Orders in hand. Perhaps one of them would fall into Rag's hands.

There were only interests between nobles. Though Rag had been rebuking Ryan just moments ago, the two now nodded to each other like longtime friends.

If Viscount Miles's manor conveyed the grandeur of an ancient inheritance, then the viscount's study was a true and complete witness to history.

"This study was moved here in its entirety from the South after I hired a Saint Domain Mage. Not a single detail was disturbed during the process."

Viscount Miles sat behind a desk, while Ryan naturally took a seat on the leather sofa beside it. As for Miles's two sons, they could only stand.

"Baron Ryan, if you have something to say, say it here."

Viscount Miles was already old. He did not want any accidents in his territory now; he only wished to get through this winter peacefully.

At this point, Ryan stopped beating around the bush.

"The orcs have indeed moved south. My soldiers discovered their scouts."

"Scouts?"

Viscount Miles's gaze sharpened. "Orc scouts?"

"That's right."

"Orcs have scouts too?" Kristan spoke up in astonishment from the side, seemingly trying to assert his presence.

Ryan smiled at the viscount's eldest son, the future Viscount Miles.

"Among the orc tribes, the powerful and intelligent orcs all possess military knowledge of their own. Their methods of fighting may not have changed much, but they still have eyes such as scouts."

Kristan's face darkened. He felt that Ryan was calling him unintelligent.

"Baron Ryan, tell us which orc tribe it is."

Rag spoke up. He knew he had already fallen out with the other competitors in the family. For the sake of that Pioneer Order, he naturally did not want to lag behind.

"How much does the prefecture governor think this information is worth?"

Ryan looked at Viscount Miles.

"I'll give you enough food for a thousand people to eat for two months. That should be enough for your Frozen Earth Territory to survive this winter."

Viscount Miles looked at Ryan and added:

"Besides that, you are not allowed to tell a second person about this information."

Ryan shook his head.

"Not enough."

"Twenty-five thousand jin of food. Don't tell me how many people can eat for how long, Viscount. Those slaves can eat once every three days. Are they supposed to be counted too?"

"Besides that, I want warhorses—one hundred warhorses shipped from the South."

"Baron Ryan, you are too greedy."

Viscount Miles looked coldly at Ryan.

"No. My information is unquestionably worth the price."

"Twenty thousand jin of food and fifty warhorses. As for the remaining fifty, when spring comes next year, I can make the decision to have the Imperial Merchant Guild reserve fifty for you."

"Not enough, Viscount. Twenty thousand jin of food and one hundred warhorses. Not one horse less."

Ryan was unwilling to make any further concessions, because the price of buying warhorses from the Imperial Merchant Guild had long since soared into the heavens.

"Baron Ryan, I hope you properly understand the value of one hundred warhorses."

If not for the Pan-Planar War of the deities, warhorses would not have been so expensive. In many territories, warhorses were merely called warhorses during wartime; in ordinary times, they were even used to haul goods and plow fields.

But after the Pan-Planar War of the deities, warhorses became distinct from other horses.

Because after the War of the Deities, large numbers of Extraordinary Legions had emerged, and the quality of warfare had risen dramatically. Even ordinary soldiers needed the physique of an Apprentice Knight.

These Apprentice Knights wore metal armor, while the stronger Formal Knights and Bronze Knights clad both themselves and their horses in full metal armor.

With that kind of weight, any horse that had not been specially trained as a warhorse simply could not carry it.

Take the Empire's Heavy Cavalry Legion, for example. It had only ten thousand men, but the weight of each rider, his armor, and his equipment on the warhorse already exceeded a thousand jin. Ordinary horses would be crushed after only a few steps, let alone run.

For these reasons, the price of warhorses had risen from merely one or two times that of packhorses to dozens of Gold Coins even in the South, and ten times that amount in Northwind Province.

The value of an ordinary farming family's entire lifetime could barely compare to that of a single warhorse.

"A Highland Warhorse sells for as much as five or six hundred Gold Coins in Zero Crossing Prefecture. Once the Imperial Merchant Guild is sold out, the price may continue to rise."

"But I know that the price Viscount Miles pays for warhorses from the Imperial Merchant Guild certainly is not that high."

"In the South, a warhorse costs only seventy or eighty Gold Coins. Once they reach Northwind Province, those guilds can at most raise the price three or four times before Viscount Miles. Any higher, and they would not be able to withstand a noble's wrath."

"Two to three hundred Gold Coins each. For one hundred horses, that's only twenty to thirty thousand Gold Coins. That should not be much to a viscount, should it?"

In the Other Plane, even the Whitman Family, which could only wander among four or five hundred people for more than a century because of the fierce winter brought by the Pan-Planar War, still had several thousand Gold Coins.

And in Northwind Province, did Viscount Miles, who occupied an entire prefecture and controlled an unknown number of Mineral Deposits, truly lack twenty or thirty thousand Gold Coins?

One had to remember that the Empire had a policy of not collecting taxes from the nobles of Northwind Province for the first ten years.

"Seventy horses. I can only give you seventy warhorses. That is my final offer. If you cannot accept it, I will arrange for people to find those orc scouts myself."

In the end, the transaction between the two nobles was completed with twenty thousand jin of food and seventy warhorses.

Ryan believed that this information would allow Viscount Miles to earn several times that amount in Gold Coins from the other nobles and from all of Zero Crossing Prefecture.

Then, upon hearing the name Black Goat Tribe, Miles's expression became indescribably ugly.

Kristan's was the same.

It seemed this viscount had encountered the Black Goat Tribe before.

Ryan thought this, but he sensibly rose and took his leave.

As a standard noble family, even if Viscount Miles died immediately and most of the other Miles Family members died as well, they would never default on the wealth owed to Ryan in this deal.

After leaving the viscount's manor, Ryan led his men to the street where the Empire's merchant guilds were located.

Other than Viscount Miles's manor, this was the widest street in all of Zero Crossing City, because all kinds of ox carts and horse-drawn carriages passed through it.

Of course, that was not a sight one could see in winter.

Now, these merchant guilds sold nothing. They only bought.