When men were young, they also had their own ambitions, and they were never dissatisfied with their boundless life, fantasizing that one day they would have the opportunity to go out and wander and finally return to their hometowns, but when their hometowns have disappeared, what can these be?

On the day when the war came again, Hams had observed the man's eyes, and there was not the slightest fear, but a terrifying calmness, and if you looked closely, you could still see the suffocating excitement.

But now he was crying like a child, like someone had given him a punch and made him fall to the ground.

Many of the Great Prussians wept, they had fantasized about the day when there would be an enemy with a sword, but they never imagined that this day would come in such a form. When the enemies were dying one after another, and their heads were neatly placed in front of them, it was not so much that they felt the thrill of revenge, but that the scene in front of them had taken away the whole of their lives. Even the last straw that connected them in the past and present was pulled out.

These people in front of them should be everyone's enemies of life and death, but they can't be hated at all.

Looking at the wailing on the city wall, although the heart of the young man Wiegand was still a little heavy, the spirit of the whole person became happy. Edward knew that the tactics he had discussed with his sister had worked. The gates of the town were opened at once, several of the town's militiamen put away their heads that had been spilled on the ground, and the merchants walked up to the carts loaded with goods, and the two sides exchanged the prices of the goods in stumbling language. A group of citizens timidly gathered around him, their eyes pretending to be this strange young man, but they kept as much distance as they could, as if he were some kind of beast.

José dragged a limp leg down the wall. He couldn't help but think that maybe for a long time, the safety of the town, at least the Wiggen people in the swamp, would not be a direct threat. With this time, he could have taken a few more time to visit Vedia, who was in foster care on Marcus Manor. The stinky boy had just learned to ride a horse when Marcus tricked him into becoming a knight on the manor.

Knight, does that kid know what a knight is? Jose still had a little blame in his heart, but a smile appeared on his face.

The news of the peace of Valunor and the Hope Marshes spread through the villages and towns of the Northlands with the caravans coming and going, and the news swept through the desk of the King of the North Sea, and became a good topic at the dinner parties of the nearby dukes, and the countless shivering lords who had hidden in their homes walked out of the fortified castle, and the young peasants laid down their scythes and ploughs, and finally glanced at the fields that they had tended to half-reach, and walked into the distance.

In a manor in the Northlands, a rather heroic young man drew a half-man's tall longbow and steadily shot an arrow into an apple hanging from a tree branch.

A farmer dressed in brown clothes ran over, picked up the apple that had fallen to the ground, and delivered it to the boy.

The arrow was firmly planted in the center of the apple, burying the sharp arrow deep into it, through the shell of the apple, and faintly through the edge of the other side.

The boy nodded slightly.

"The pointed arrows are really easy to use. ”

The boy was about to practice again, but just as he hooked the bowstring again, a jingling sound came to his ears, and a convoy approached from a distance. The boy lowered his bow and asked

"Virgil, what are they doing here?"

"Young Master Vidia, this is probably a caravan from the south, I saw it a few times when I was young, they like to tie an iron bell around the neck of the horse, and they want to jingle when they walk, the sound is good, and it looks magnanimous, if the young master likes it, I will go with you to ask for one." Virgil stood aside and smiled. "I've seen more than 10 years ago, but it's a bit rare in the past two years. ”

Vedia shook her head, as if she had suddenly thought of something again, and turned her head and instructed again

"Virgil, if they plan to do business further north, go to the warehouse and get some more charcoal for them. ”

Virgil bowed slightly to Vedia, turned and walked towards the location of the manor's warehouse, worried about the health of Master Marcus. Ever since Marcus had fought on Valuno's side before, there had always been something wrong with his body, either walking on the road and suddenly flashing down, or waking up in the middle of the night with a sore shoulder. If it weren't for this boy named Vidia coming to the manor, it is estimated that things would have been messed up a long time ago.

Master Marcus usually seems to be unscrupulous, but he doesn't have a deep friendship with anyone. At least Virgil had been on an errand at the manor for almost twenty years, and he hadn't made any friends with Master Marcus. I heard that Master Marcus came from a very good background and was a son of a prominent family in the south, but he had never seen any relatives visit, let alone his family, as if there had been no such thing since the day he came.

This lord who came out of the air lived here as if isolated from the world, and when he first arrived, he would gather all the farmers in the manor with great interest and conduct several "armed exercises". Sometimes it is a "remote training", that is, suddenly waking people up in the middle of the night and telling them to carry their luggage and run with him. Sometimes, he simply divided them into two factions, and then told them to poke each other with sticks, and he was the referee himself, until there was only one person left on the field, and he would give this person a good piece of ripe field. Later, probably because three or four floors of the land in the manor were divided by him, these activities stopped. Since then, Marcus has not spoken to anyone, and has locked himself in the house day and day, cutting a few pieces of wood with his hands, and the man has been gesturing day and night, as if he is guilty of hysteria.

From one point alone, Lord Marcus's reliance on Young Master Vedia is somewhat extraordinary. On the day that Vidia came to the manor, Marcus had just ceremoniously introduced this "young master from the north" to every farmer in the manor, his mouth was like a box to open the lock, and he chattered endlessly beside Vidia, and the old man wanted to talk to the young man clearly about all the words he had been holding back all these years, and finally arranged a room closest to his room for the young man to make a living room, so that he could chat with him at any time.

Virgil had always regarded himself as a subordinate of the estate, and he was never put off his feet when he was instructed to do something, except for basic farm work. In a few moments, he loaded a cart full of charcoal for the caravan. Probably because it was almost noon, the caravan happened to stop, and Virgil followed without much difficulty.

Some of the nearby farmers had already come up, holding their own vegetables and shouting loudly near where the caravan had stopped.

Vijael had some pity for these people, if these merchants had just returned from business, then they might still have two dollars in their pockets, and the farmer's goods would have a chance to sell at a higher price, but if they hadn't thrown them out, it would be in vain. The caravan stewards would not come up to talk to the peasants, and the men in the caravan would not have the money to improve their lives.

If it weren't for the fact that he had run for Marcus a few times, Virgil wouldn't have known all about the doorway here. He parked the cart in a forest a little distance from the caravan, and then pulled a child from the street and told him to keep an eye on the cart of charcoal. In order to make him obediently listen to him, Virgil shoved the boy a small piece of dried cheese and waved his fist.

Virgil walked into the camp with a smile on his face, and he was taken aback by what he saw. There were even twice as many people here as the farmers on the estate, and most of them were still young and strong, and if it weren't for the tall carriage on the side, Virgil would have even mistaken him for a village.

Shocked, Virgil gasped, he smelled a business opportunity. There were two hundred men, thirty horses, four or five sheep, and a whole bunch of ducks that had not yet grown. And these things need to be kept warm, and without charcoal, none of them can survive. He immediately approached the leader of the caravan and began to negotiate with him. In order to attract the attention of the caravan leader, he threw out his identity as soon as he came up.

"The adults in our family want to sell charcoal to you, and the price is negotiable. ”

"There are forests everywhere here, why should I do this business with you. ”

"Listening to your fluent lingua franca of the Great Pruus, you seem to be a decent merchant of the Empire, how can you not even know this? Although there are many forests on the road, the forests near the trade route have owners. No merchant could afford to go to the wilderness where no one was going to cut wood. ”

The caravan leader took off his fur hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"How much do you have on your head?"

"A lot, depending on how much you can eat. ”

"It's a pity I don't need much, my caravan is about to reach its destination, hillbilly. ”

The merchant continued with a hint of mockery in his tone

"See the sweat on my hat? It's only the end of summer and my destination is ......"

"Your destination can be reached in autumn, but you forget, this is the North Sea, and there is no autumn further north. Virgil unceremoniously interrupted the merchant.

"I have a truckload of charcoal, which weighs 300 pounds. And I can sell it to you now, but I don't want money, you have to exchange it for the goods you brought. ”

Virgil's words made the merchant's heart slowly relaxed, he was ready to be blackmailed by the people who came out of this manor, there is no way, doing business with the lord is like this, the lord has mastered the mountains and rivers of the empire, grain and minerals, the merchant has few chips in his hand, except for playing clever, there is no advantage in the average price competition.

But if Virgil wanted the goods, it was a different story.

The merchant strode with Virgil to the wagons for the caravan, which were neatly stacked with the most sought-after goods from the North: iron farming implements made by Abbasquia, freshly woven linen from the women of Cyprarus, stoneware jars from Dinny, and other knick-knacks imported from overseas. These things were great goods in the South, but they were worth more than gold and silver in the North.

Virgil looked at the dazzling array of goods for a long time, and after a long pause, he swallowed the saliva in his mouth, lowered the value of these goods in his heart, and then viciously offered his own price to the merchant

"I'm going to change ten iron hoes, five shovels... Ten horses of linen... And three clay pots, all of which are sturdy and durable!"

The merchant was fiercely disdainful in his heart, and completely suppressed the fire in Virgil's heart that had just crushed him, the hillbillies in the Northland were still a bunch of hillbillies, and if he brought the glassware, crystal statues, and gold and silver tableware from the city of Abbasquia to show the countryman, he would not be stupid.

The businessman thought so in his heart, but his face was full of grievances:

"Oh, you're a lion's mouth! Satin is on top, how can you say such a thing. If you're going to talk to me about business like that, then we don't have to talk about it. ”

Virgil didn't know the bottom of his heart, he hadn't seen the grocery market in the south, and you could exchange it for a carload of goods with a few gold coins on your body. There are more shelves than merchants, and everything is marked with a price, and there are officials of the empire who supervise merchants to prevent merchants from offering unreasonable black prices. Not to mention the blacksmith's workshop where smoke billows out, and what was made in the morning had to be pulled by a car. All he knew was that these things were the main expenses of Marcus Manor for almost a year, and the charcoal he sold would only take two young men a week to save a cart, one to work, and the other to chat with the other.

He was shrewd enough, but he also had an eye for things he didn't know the true price of.

"I can ask for a little less linen, and we can count the clay pots for another amount, but as I said before, the number of hoes and shovels cannot be less. ”

The merchant simply calculated the gains and losses, and even if he transported the charcoal back at this price, he would not be able to lose the money, but he still habitually cut the price

"Five hoes and five shovels are my kindness to your family. ”

"Eight hoes, the lord's manor is also going to be profitable. ”

"Six hoes. Even if I really lack charcoal, you can't knock my bamboo pole. ”

Virgil opened his mouth in surprise, stared at the merchant with wide eyes, and learned to speak word by word in the tone of the merchant

"Am I ripping off?"

The merchant's head was sweating again, and he knew he had lost his words. Even the three-year-old children in the city of Abbasquia knew that no one was better at extorting money than an Imperial Merchant, unless that person was another Imperial Merchant, and the business was bigger than the previous one.

"You won. I'll give you seven, and I'll ask two people to pick up the goods for you, and we'll have charcoal in one hand and farm tools in the other. ”