From Londoner To Lord

The bandit glared at them. "Alright, you cretins, work day is over now. Load up all the clay into the wagons, and don't leave a single tool out here, or it's your hide on the line."

The slaves nodded, and began emptying the carts into the wagon where clay was being deposited, before loading up the empty carts themselves into another waiting wagon meant for that purpose. Soon, the wagons had been tied to the waiting pairs of nodors, which started pulling them up on the inclined slope leading outside the mine. It wasn't his turn today to lead the wagons, so once they had reached the level of the ground, a few slaves started leading the wagons to one of the clay-wagon storage barn on one side, while he and most of the other slaves turned around towards the place which they called their home now. It was still a slog to walk through the muddy path to one of the shacks which he shared with nearly a dozen other clay miners.

However, those shacks were well protected, or at least as well as they could be in these dangerous forests, by a makeshift wall made from branches surrounding the whole living compound. After arriving here, he had been surprised to see that he wasn't just coming to live in a shabby bandit hideout. While these walls were far from the carefully crafted palisade walls surrounding Kirnos, and were instead just thick branches stacked together in a trench and tied with a rope - with the help of slave labour of course - this was still a well-protected walled compound, quite unlike what he had expected to find here.

Soon, he had reached the wooden gate of the compound, and a bandit took the tools from every slave's hands before allowing them to enter. As Joric walked inside the walled compound, he looked around himself and saw the two lines of four shacks each, which was where everyone lived. The first three shacks in the first line were for the enslaved men and boys, while the fourth one was for the women who were slaves.

Further ahead of the four shacks of the slaves, there were four more shacks where the bandits lived a lot more comfortably. At the end, there was a huge and much more elaborate cabin - built of sturdy wooden logs - which was where Torhan, the leader of the clay mine lived.

It wasn't like Joric had ever made an accurate count of the people living here, but being a merchant for most of his life, some things just came naturally to him. Within a few days of living here, he had estimated that there were above forty slaves working here in total, as well as around twenty-five bandits who kept an eye on them and kept the compound secure from any enemies or wild beasts.

Initially, when he had arrived here, he had wondered why there was only a single wagon of clay coming to the markets of Kirnos if there were so many slaves living here, but it hadn't taken him long to realise that this wasn't just a bandit's hideout in the middle of nowhere. It was like a whole scaled-down village managed by its chief Torhan, although it was still much smaller than a place like Kirnos. The reason for it was that on the other side of the eight shacks and the leader's cabin, there were a lot more shacks and wooden buildings.

On the closer side, there was a horse stable which doubled as a nodor stable, as well as a small coop for chicken. A barn near the walls stored hay for animals and food grain for people, while a communal kitchen was located ahead of the barn where food was cooked for all the bandits and slaves by some of the slave women. Near the corner of the walled compound, there was even a small flour mill driven by a nodor inside another shack. There was even a well inside the compound next to the flour mill, for goddess' sake! Although Joric had no idea how that had been dug here. He shook his head in wonder. With all the shacks already being protected by the wall encircling the compound, if this bastard also started farming here, it might just become a whole tiny village of slaves which would basically be self-sufficient in everything!

That was probably the reason why Torhan was said to be a man who valued his profits above everything. He had even heard that in some rare occasions when there was a child born here to one of the slave women, Torhan took the newborn and sold it as a new slave in the marketplace of Kirnos, since the child wouldn't be of any used to him for many years, and from what he knew, Torhan was a man for whom profit reigned supreme. In return, Torhan promised to shave off a few years from the remaining time which the woman still had to serve as a slave, no matter how much the woman pleaded to allow her to be with her child.

Joric sighed. He already knew that this world was a harsh place, especially for commoners and even more so for slaves, but he had still been insulated from a lot of these things while living in a good sector of Kirnos. But after coming here, his eyes had been forcefully opened to how the world really operated.

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Looking at the storage barn, he had immediately realised that even after the other tasks being performed by the slaves to keep this bandit compound up and running, Torhan was still mining more clay than he sold in the markets. Joric had realised the reason for that when he remembered that the clay wagons had been coming to Kirnos even in the winter, when the ground should have been too frozen to dig easily. That's where the clay storage barns located just outside the walled compound would have been used.

Even if Torhan couldn't mine any clay in the winter, he must have wanted to keep selling clay even during that time, and for that, he needed to have a good amount of it stored by mining more clay in the summer months so he could sell them in the winter. Of course, Joric realised, this way Torhan could calculate exactly how much clay he should send to Kirnos so that the price would still remain high instead of flooding the market with all his stored clay at once, which would make the prices fall, and would decrease his profits. It was like this bandit chief operated more like a merchant than a bandit!

Soon, he had reached the series of shacks where the slaves lived, but he was surprised to see a bandit standing outside one of them. Wondering what it could be about, he began to enter the shack where he slept, when he heard his name being called from the outside. Frowning at that, he exited the shack and saw that it was the bandit who had called his name once again, while a slave nearby was pointing at him.

His heart had already started beating fast, thinking he had done something wrong and was going to be punished by being whipped which was the usual punishment here. Reaching closer, he looked at the bandit. "You called for me?"

The bandit jerked his head towards the shack of Torhan. "The chief is asking for you. Follow me." With that the bandit turned around and started walking towards that huge shack.

"But... but why? I didn't do anything wrong!" Joric protested.

The bandit gave a shrug without looking back. "Beats me. Guess you'll find out there."

Fearing that he was going to be whipped tonight, while wondering what he might have done which required him to be called to Torhan's cabin, Joric started following behind the bandit with slow steps to delay the inevitable. However, they had reached the cabin of the bandit leader far too soon for his heart to calm down.

"Chief, I brought the guy you wanted," the bandit spoke loudly after knocking on the wooden door.

"Send him in," Joric heard someone replying from the inside.

The bandit opened the door, and gestured to him to walk inside. With his heart beating loudly, Joric took tentative steps inside the cabin, and realized that this cabin really was different from the shacks where the slaves lived. There was a small fire burning on one corner above which a cooking pot was being managed by a woman - likely a slave as well - which meant the leader didn't eat from the food prepared for everyone else. A stack of swords and bows was kept in another corner of the cabin, along with only a few quivers - perhaps because some bandits must have been out hunting at the time. An elaborate collection of luxurious-looking rugs was kept in another corner, which is where the chief must have slept in the night.

Focusing his attention on the last corner, he saw three men sitting on chairs while talking. Noticing him, a lanky man who looked to be in his early thirties with a good head of blonde hair gestured to him to walk towards them. Joric immediately recognised the man as Torhan, the leader of this little slave village, who was also the chief of one of the most powerful bandit groups in Southern Reslinor, according to what some of the slaves claimed. Without any noticeable scars or battle wounds on Torhan's body, and wearing a luxurious fur coat with an ornate scabbard holding a sword kept on his side, that man wouldn't look out of place in the court of a noble! If anything, with his steady and unwavering gaze, Torhan had the serious demeanor of a man well-accustomed to command, which made him look more like a noble than the young master Lanidas ever did. Joric wondered how Torhan had even become a bandit. Maybe he was a bastard son of some faraway noble?

Sitting next to the leader was his deputy, a bald and muscular thug who had countless scars all over his arms and face. This was the man who Joric had often seen giving out the orders of the chief to others in the compound. However the third man was someone he had only seen once in the compound, and from a distance, so he hadn't given him much of a thought. But looking at him from here, it surprised him for a moment to see how a man could be that big! This guy was just huge, and the brawny deputy of Torhan looked tiny sitting next to him. While the third guy didn't have overly bulging muscles like the deputy, Joric had no doubt this giant of a man could snap someone like him in two with barely any effort.

Focusing back on the leader, Joric gave him a bow, like he had seen the other slaves doing, even though this was his first time meeting the man in person. "You called for me, chief Torhan?"