Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 4

10th Day, Upper Wind Month, 1 CE

In the darkness past nightfall, a barge silently glided up the river to bump against the pier below Xoc’s ancestral clanhold. Xoc disembarked, padding her way over the wooden boardwalk and ascending the ramp to the top of the ancient stone hillock.

“Father?”

Her father, Itzli, looked up from a stone brazier above the Cuorocos Cliffs.

“Xoc? Welcome back! You’ve been gone for so long that I started to fear for the worse.”

He came forward and wrapped her up in a hug, then examined her at arm’s length.

“Did you get taller? What in the world have they been feeding you?”

She had grown a bit taller, which was very strange considering she was sure she had stopped growing a year previous. As for what they fed her, it was harder to digest than any sort of meat.

“Maybe seeing some things made me stretch out a bit,” she scratched the back of her neck nervously. “Um…”

Xoc looked down at the stony ground. She thought she had figured out what she was going to say, but the words fled her the second she got home.

“Is something the matter?” Her father asked, “That…that Saraca fellow didn’t do anything to you, did he?”

“No!” Xoc said quickly, “I, um…I bought some slaves? I need to put them somewhere.”

“S-slaves? But slaves are expensive. We can’t afford to keep any slaves, Xoc.”

Most could barely afford to feed themselves and their family in Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr. Anyone who owned slaves used them to crew fishing boats or help herd Nug, but all that work was already being done by regular citizens in their clan’s old territory.

“They’re not that expensive to feed,” Xoc said. “Karuvaki and Devi even showed me how to make them profitable.”

“Slaves don’t just magically become profitable on their own,” her father told her. “We only have this inn and some of the jungle around it. How many of these slaves did you bring with you?”

“Uh…two hundred thirty-seven.”

“What?!”

Heads turned up at her father’s startled shout from the row of stone dens nearby. Xoc raised her paws, waving them around in an effort to quell her father’s mounting distress.

“It’ll be okay!”

“How can it be ‘okay’? Do you know how much it takes to feed that many people?”

“Just…just come with me. The explanation is reeeeeally complicated.”

Xoc didn’t get most of it. At the same time, Devi’s efforts met with spectacular success, so she couldn’t argue with the results.

Down at the riverfront, Saraca and his warband were stretching away the cramped muscles that came with their long journey. The strange Beastman named Winter Moon that had randomly attached herself to them was also out with her companions.

“Itzli,” Saraca said. “As promised, I brought your daughter back in one piece.”

“And I thank you for that, good Lord,” her father’s gaze flickered back and forth. “But I heard something distressing just now.”

“Distressing?”

“Something about slaves…”

Saraca’s emerald eyes went to Xoc. She returned his gaze with a lost look. The Nar Lord cleared his throat.

“Well, maybe it’s a bit much to take in all at once. How about we make some introductions, first?”

Only two of the barges in their convoy could fit along the pier. The rest were lined up along the river behind them. They had left Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr on a single barge and had somehow come back with twenty. Half of them were loaded with goods accrued through Devi’s river trade. Devi took her cut of the profits, but the remainder was more than enough to get things started in the city…or that’s what they claimed, at least.

Saraca gestured for Xoc’s father to join him aboard the second barge. He was understandably confused as to why introductions couldn’t be made on the pier, but stepped down to the deck anyway. Just inside the covered deck of the vessel was Master Leeds, the former head of the Rivergarden Merchant Guild.

“A monkey?” Xoc’s father furrowed his brow.

“A Human,” Xoc corrected him.

“This is a Human? But where did its tail go? Removing it seems horribly cruel…”

Master Leeds’ cordial expression faltered just a bit.

“Humans aren’t supposed to have tails, father,” Xoc said.

She had no idea what her father knew of Humans, but she did know that he had never been outside of the city. Most of the residents hadn’t – the only ones who went abroad were those who had secured jobs that required it. Travelling as Saraca and his people did was unheard of, as one couldn’t hunt in the territory of others and few could afford the expense of paying for provisions.

“This is Master Leeds,” Xoc gestured to the black-haired Human. “He’s going to help us set up a Merchant Guild here. Master Leeds, this is my father, Itzal.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Itzal,” the Human bowed slightly.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” her still-bewildered father said, “how did my daughter come into the possession of so many Humans?”

“We had the good fortune of having Lady Xoc visit our home city of Rivergarden,” Master Leeds said. “She assessed our value as being more than our weight in meat, so we happily signed contracts of indenture with her. We’re excited to see what sort of future we can build together with your daughter.”

“F-future?”

Saraca cleared his throat.

“That discussion can wait,” he told them. “We need to get everyone settled. Xoc mentioned that you have a perfect place to put everyone.”

Everyone turned their attention to Xoc. She resisted the urge to take a step back.

“I was thinking we could just put them on top of the hill.”

“But we live on top of the hill,” her father said.

“Yeah,” Xoc said, “but it’s just us. It’s still an old clanhold. We can put hundreds of people up there once we clean it up. It’ll be the safest place to put everyone.”

“Do you even know what these Humans need to live?”

“We’ve spent over a month travelling upriver to find that out,” Xoc replied. “They’ll be fine, father. The Humans can build their own homes and make everything they need.”

“I don’t know…what about the inn? We can’t let them disturb our guests.”

Why is he so hesitant? I worked so hard to learn, too.

Did he dislike Humans? That shouldn’t have been the case. It was probably her. He always advised her to do familiar, reliable things, but she always went off and did other stuff. Now she was doing something that she barely had any clue about.

Xoc stared quietly at the deck. She always went behind her father’s back on all sorts of things, but this was bigger than herself. It wasn’t something she could just casually reassure other people about.

“Why won’t you just let us try?” Xoc asked, “We already put in a lot of work to make it work. Who will it hurt?”

A crushing pain shot up her tail. She jumped up with an agonised yowl, turning to find Vltava behind her.

“Weak,” he bleated.

“I-I beg your pardon? And did you just bite me?!”

Xoc nursed her injured tail in her paws. It was all crooked and definitely broken. People said that Ocelo had powerful bites, but Vltava bit much harder.

“Weak,” Vltava repeated himself. “Your words do not match the weight of the burden that you carry. It is…annoying.”

The glow of healing magic washed over her. Her tail uncrooked itself and the excruciating pain faded away. She touched the injured area gingerly: everything was back to the way it was before.

“What did he mean by that, Xoc?” Her father asked.

She glanced from person to person, trying to work up something convincing to say. As Vltava had noted, however, everything she came up with felt weak.

“I…I’m going to rebuild our clan, father.”

“Hah? But our clan hasn’t existed for generations…”

“I’m still doing it,” Xoc told him. “I can’t help but do it…and our people need it. We’re just wasting our lives away in this city. Everyone works so hard, but no one gets anywhere. There’s nothing to look forward to and, in the end, there’s nothing left behind. Our ancestors could build things that lasted for centuries, but everything that we make rots away in a few seasons. We can’t stay stuck like this. There’s so much we’ve lost, but we can’t just stay lost forever.”

There were so many big problems on their way, too, but she didn’t want to scare her people. Saraca was certain that something terrible would happen because of what was going on in the Draconic Kingdom. He also said that the Jorgulans and some powerful tribe in the Worldspine were up to something in the east, and it meant trouble for Rol’en’gorek. Most were ignorant of the fact that their whole country was at the mercy of the Great Lut because of the dependencies that they had developed.

She didn’t think she could do much, but she still had to do something. Hopefully, other people would start working toward the same goal. They needed to become strong enough so that they couldn’t be so easily snuffed out.

“I had a sense that you were up to something,” her father said, “but I wasn’t aware of the scope.”

“Er…it didn’t start out that way,” Xoc replied. “It just got huge before I knew it.”

“Well, I don’t think I have any right to get in the way of such a thing. You can go ahead and do whatever you’ve been planning – just don’t get us in trouble with the ruling clans.”

“Thank you, father.”

Xoc nodded to Master Leeds, who disappeared into the barge to return with the first set of Humans. Two were his children – his wife had already been eaten – and the rest were in a similar situation. Most of the adults were actually females who were left alone due to the natural common sense of predators: females in a herd gave birth to more prey animals, so they weren’t targeted unless times got desperate, they became diseased or crippled, or they displayed problematic traits.

It took the Humans a good half hour to follow Xoc up the winding walkway to the top of the Cuorocos Cliffs. The cliffs were, in reality, part of a kilometre-long ridge with the local river on one side. The hilltop was her people’s ‘clanhold’, which was divided into three main terraces.

“Xoc,” Karuvaki said, “how come you didn’t tell us that your clanhold looked like this?”

“Looked like what?”

“This entire area is an ancient ruin,” the priestess said. “You can see bits and pieces of what was here before.”

A part of her grew defensive over her home being called an ‘ancient ruin’. They did their best to take care of it, too – the clanhold wasn’t ‘bits and pieces’.

“We just live in the places where our ancestors lived,” Xoc said. “Isn’t that normal? It’s just dens and stuff.”

“The entire area merits study,” Karuvaki told her. “Well, I suppose we’ll have the time to do that now.”

As they made their way through the lower terrace, dozens of people stopped what they were doing to watch Xoc’s procession go by. She hoped that the Humans would remember how to behave. After climbing up to the second terrace, she went over to one of the long, grassy courts stretching along the main street.

“Is this enough space, Master Leeds?” Xoc asked.

“More than enough, Lady Xoc,” the man replied. “We can take everything apart and put it back together up here. Where should we begin building permanent structures?”

“The second terrace is supposed to be a communal space for the entire clan,” Xoc said. “There’s an old market plaza on top of this wall over here.”

“It’s not a market anymore?”

“No,” her father said. “When the city grew around us, this place stopped being the centre of activity. The defences weren’t necessary anymore and all the markets relocated to the riverfront. It’s the same story for all of the other clans that used to be where the city is now.”

“I see. This seems ideal for setting up our industries, though moving water up here might be a pain until we can build something to do it.”

“I still have no idea what Xoc is planning…”

“In short, Mister Itzal,” Master Leeds said, “she wants to introduce various industries from the Draconic Kingdom. Well, they’re not unique to the Draconic Kingdom, but they certainly don’t exist here. From our time coming up the river, we’ve felt out what’s profitable and what’s going to require investment to get going.”

The next set of Humans arrived at the court, lugging bags full of tools and materials with them. One of the Blacksmiths in the group came up to speak to them.

“Where are we setting up our furnaces?” He asked.

“This court here’s the warehouse, for now,” Master Leeds said. “There’s a plaza on top of the wall there. We can set up stands around it like a market square. Once morning comes, we can figure out what workshops go where.”

More and more Humans came in and the court was filled with all sorts of things transferred from the barges. The canvases that covered the ships turned into makeshift pavilions for their goods. Their emptied barges were anchored upriver below the old dam to be used for trade in the future.

Xoc stayed out of their way, for the most part, answering the occasional question from Master Leeds. The Ocelo living on the terrace below also had questions of their own, and the first few approached Xoc not long after the Humans stopped moving things between the clanhold and the pier.

“Xoc, what’s going on here?”

Elder Patli stood at the head of a group of other elders, their faces marred with uncertainty.

“Elder Patli,” Xoc bobbed her head. “I brought some Humans back with me.”

“I heard they were Humans,” the Elder said, “but why did you bring them here?”

“They were going to be eaten, so I bought them as slaves instead.”

“Hmm…I remember what Miss Karuvaki said before you left, but I thought all of the extra food would go to our own people, not Humans.”

Did Humans eat fungus? If she recalled correctly, they could eat some of the mushrooms that were foraged from the jungle by Saraca’s hunters. They could eat all sorts of things, and they didn’t eat much compared to any of the Beastman species living in Rol’en’gorek.

“They’re their own thing,” Xoc reassured Elder Patli. “I brought them here to make things and teach us how to make those things. It’s hard to explain – people will get it once they see what’s going on, I think. Oh, by the way, can you Elders tell the people not to spread the word about these Humans? The last thing we need is one of the big clans coming around demanding some as exotic food or as some kind of entertainment. I can’t replace them easily.”

“I can’t promise that word won’t spread, but we’ll let everyone know.”

We need warriors soon…

Keeping the Humans out of sight and reach would likely prevent most incidents, but people were bound to come sniffing around. Human ways were pretty inconvenient in that sense: they needed so many things to function properly and they couldn’t support a warband until things started to function properly.

The next morning, Master Leeds called Xoc out to join him at the plaza where the Humans had set up their tents. He led her over to where the Blacksmiths and their children were tending to what looked like termite mounds raised on the stone. Devi and Karuvaki were already there with several of their attendants.

“What are those?” Xoc gestured toward the mounds.

“They’re clay furnaces,” Master Leeds told her. “We’ve already fired them up and put them to work, but this next part is what we’d like you to witness. It’s a momentous event.”

Xoc looked around, trying to figure out what was so special about what was going on. Aside from the clay furnaces, there were two tables under the pavilion they had raised. Both had various unknown objects on top of them.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“You’ll see,” Master Leed’s lips were curved up in what Humans considered a smile. “Let’s begin.”

One of the Blacksmiths picked up a pair of metal pincers and reached into the furnace with them. He pulled out a black jar-looking thing that was filled with glowy stuff.

“Watch out, Lady Xoc,” the Blacksmith said. “You might light your fur on fire if you touch this.”

Xoc backed away. The Blacksmith went over and poured the glowy stuff into a hole in the side of a flat black box on the table. When it overflowed, he shifted slightly and filled another hole.

“That’s a block of adamantite,” Master Leeds said. “More importantly, it’s a mould for casting blanks.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Xoc said.

The first Blacksmith went to put the black jar back into the furnace while the second laid the black box on its side. He took off the top half, revealing a dozen circular objects within.

“Those are blanks,” Master Leeds told her. “And, now, we turn them into trade coins.”

“Tr-trade coins?! You can do that?”

“Out of curiosity,” Girika said from her left, “where do you think trade coins come from?”

“Um…some legendary place? A mystical tree that has seed pods filled with them, maybe.”

“Good guess,” Girika nodded. “Your clanhold is about to become a legendary place.”

“Really?” Xoc’s eyes grew wide.

She tried to imagine the transformation that would take place. Maybe beautiful flowers would blossom everywhere while sunlight and coins rained down through the canopy. Girika furrowed his brow at her reaction.

“It was a joke,” he said.

“Oh.”

Xoc shook the image out of her imagination.

“It might become a legendary place,” Mitra said. “The nexus upon which the destiny of Rol’en’gorek rests.”

“That’s too much!” Xoc moaned, “All those big things that you talk about are too big for me!”

“But I wanted to compose an epic of your legend.”

“Noooooo!”

Xoc cringed and covered her head with her paws. Laughter rose around her.

“In all seriousness,” Master Leeds said, “it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Every city branch of the Merchant Guild is authorised to mint trade coins when the situation calls for it. We brought all the necessary tools along. Money was one of the major points of concern when the svamini here shared her thoughts on the state of Rol’en’gorek’s economy.”

In their new environment, the hastily-assembled Human slaves needed to figure out what was edible and what could be turned into useful goods. Devi and Karuvaki spent a great deal of time with the Humans, helping out where they could. Despite being shipped straight into the heart of their long-time nemesis’ territory, the Humans appeared resolved to make the most out of their situation. It was better than waiting to be randomly eaten, at any rate. Many were hopeful that they could improve things for their fellow Humans by changing the way that the Beastmen of Rol’en’gorek viewed them.

“To make what we’re doing here work smoothly,” the guildmaster said, “we need to address the fact that barter is the primary form of trade.”

“So we make these coins,” Xoc looked down at the blanks, “then buy stuff with it? Will people still sell things to us if they know we’re making them for free? Can we become rich by making as many coins as we want?”

“You still need the metals to make them. Also, currency is something people use to exchange for goods and services, so it’s only as valuable as what it can purchase.”

“Rol’en’gorek’s Merchants already use trade coins,” Devi added, “so there shouldn’t be a problem with it. They have a massive influx of trade coins from the Draconic Kingdom, so outsiders won’t notice what we add to the supply of coins.”

Saraca stepped forward, raising a paw for silence.

“You’re trying to answer her questions,” Saraca said, “but your explanation is meant for a Merchant. A Merchant has unwavering confidence and an inherent understanding of the mechanisms of trade, but a Lord does not. Even in the world beyond Rol’en’gorek, most people don’t even understand what determines the value of the coins that they use every day.”

Saraca turned to face Xoc.

“Currency is a standardised medium of exchange,” he told her. “A unit of value. If one went to the docks to look for work, what unit of value does a foreman offer prospective labourers in exchange for their labour?”

“Three portions of meat,” Xoc replied. “Erm, a portion is how much one adult needs for a day.”

“No wonder they hire the biggest labourers possible…” Devi muttered.

“If a foreman offered you coins instead,” Saraca asked, “would you accept them?”

“If I knew I could get the same amount of meat or better, sure.”

“Would you consider this common thinking in the city?”

“Yes.”

“As a Lord,” Saraca told her, “you’ll be ‘borrowing’ this thinking to gather what you require to run your clan. For instance, you’re probably worried about whether you can provide security for your clanhold.”

Xoc nodded.

“How would you go about gaining warriors?”

“I’d have to pay them enough so that they’d work for me. It’s four portions of meat per day for someone strong in the city, but our clan needs its own warriors if we want to be recognised as a warrior clan. We’d have to provide for their training and pay them for their work.”

“Can your herds support that?”

“Not right away, but this was never part of the original plan. I thought we’d slowly train warriors and grow our farms as we could feed more warriors to protect them. Now, I need hundreds of warriors to protect the clanhold and the Humans inside.”

It wasn’t a fair question. They had left the city with one idea and come back with twenty others.

“That’s how most people in Rol’en’gorek think,” Devi told her, “but currency provides a far greater degree of flexibility to an economy. Bartering in perishable goods is inefficient. It is even more inefficient if one needs to produce goods prematurely to pay others with. By creating currency to be used, it allows providers of goods and services to offer those goods and services when it is optimal. This, in turn, allows markets and industries to function more smoothly. It’s simply a superior way to facilitate commerce.”

“What is familiar and seemingly stable is always tempting to cling to,” Saraca told her, “but it’s usually slow. In Rivergarden, I saw an opportunity for you to take a small, manageable hop forward. Devi and Karuvaki have already given you a glimpse of what this small population of Humans is capable of.”

“So you want me to–”

“Stop thinking about what I want,” Saraca said. “Think about what your clan will need in the future.”

Xoc flinched at a metallic tapping sound coming from beside her. The two rows of shiny copper blanks came out of the mould, and the Blacksmiths separated them from one another. Once that was done, they took one of them and placed it inside another pair of dark metal objects with a round spot for the coin to fit in.

“What happens now?” Xoc asked.

She jumped away as one of the Blacksmiths swung his hammer. It struck the combination of objects with a loud clank. By the time she came back, the two smiths had taken everything apart again. Master Leeds picked up the copper blank and presented it to Xoc.

“Isn’t this…”

Xoc reached into her pouch and fished out a copper coin. Her gaze went back and forth between the two as she flipped them back and forth. Aside from one being much shinier than the other, they were perfectly identical.

“Is this real?” She asked.

“It sure is,” Master Leeds answered. “Every city branch of the Merchant Guild has the dies required to strike copper, silver, gold and platinum trade coins. Money supply is one of Rol’en’gorek’s main problems, and we’re equipped to solve that.”

“But where did you get the copper from?”

A Blacksmith placed a green stone on the table between them, then returned to striking more coins.

“This is malachite,” he said before taking another swing. “Your people use it to make jewellery and paint, but it can also be smelted into pure copper.”

“What’s ‘smelted’?”

“Er, simply put, we heated it up in that furnace over there until the copper came out. Any Blacksmith worth their salt knows how to get metals from various ores. The svamini mentioned that a lot of alluvial mining goes on here, and, well, we’ll get around to taking advantage of that once we get established here.”

“If you can make any coin, then shouldn’t you have made platinum coins instead?”

“We could,” Master Leeds said, “but that won’t be of any immediate help. I heard a copper coin can get someone two portions of meat in this city, that sound about right?”

Xoc nodded and the guildmaster grunted in response.

“Then you’re not paying anyone working for you in platinum, gold or even silver anytime soon. Normally, one could just go and trade higher denominations of coin for lower ones where they’re available, but I hear that things are already pretty complicated between you guys and Stormport. It’s best to stick to adding to the local circulation, for now. All that looting you guys have been doing to the west should help some, but it’s not nearly enough.”

“I didn’t loot anything,” Xoc grumbled.

“We know,” Master Leeds said. “You’re trying to get to an honest start. That’s a big part of why we’re all so willing to cooperate with you.”

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