A deal with the merchants

The barley plantation was divided into five zones and then the workers, slaves and the prisoners were grouped and sent onto these zones, and that was when the harvesting of barley began that night.

The moonlight shone upon a certain shade that was made of a roof of reeds. This shade didn't have a wall but it merely had poles at its edges that were holding the roof. Here, Virtya was seated at his seat and there was a table in front of him and beside this table sat Vlad, Alexandre, Tanya, Eugene and five an unknown individuals. There were knights who stood both inside the shade and outside.

"We meet again, Avril and your group. Sorry for forgetting the names of you guys as you can see, I am a busy person and I only remember Avril, do you care to remind me your names please?" Virtya asked the four remaining merchants.

Apparently, the five an unknown individuals were the merchants from the kingdom of Litbridge and it could be seen that each one of them came from a different race. There were two black men, a Chinese woman, an Indian and Avril who was white. Of course, all these five merchants were speaking in a French language because the majority of the people in the Northern continent spoke using French, it was just that the continent was divided due to racism.

However, Virtya's predecessor didn't knew French that well and that was why he was always accompanied by several translators at such a meeting but on this day, Virtya rejected the help of the translators which took the group by surprise and when they heard Virtya speaking with fluent French, they were even more astonished. They couldn't believe it. 

'When did the king learn to speak using the French language?' That was the thought that was going in their minds. For people like Alexandre, they couldn't hear not speak in French, thus, they could only ask the translator to translate the conversation between Virtya and the merchants for them to understand.

"You are really a busy person. I can see it from the little developments. Azuhai kingdom was not like this the last time we came here... Errm, you can simply call me Gregory Bret." A chubby black merchant said quickly before beckoning to his fellow merchant.

"I am Elliot Durant." Replied another black guy.

"Helena Leblanc." The Chinese merchant replied.

"Gilles Paquet." The Indian merchant replied.

"What took you so long to deliver my goods. You should know very well that you have not reported for nearly five years. Azuhai kingdom has been desperate for iron ingots in all the time that you guys decided not to show up, What do you think we should do about this? The demand for iron ingots had continue to go up tremendously throughout the years but the suppliers... you people have a problem. What do you think we should do to fix this problem so that nothing like delayed delivery happened again." Virtya asked with a solemn tone.

"Erm..." Avril paused for a moment as she pondered, the merchants knew Virtya very well, when he started to speak like this, then he basically wanted to be given a discount or a favor.

The merchants were not dimwits, they knew very well that Virtya knew the reason for their delayed delivery, war was war and no delivery could be done during the war because the goods could be confiscated, destroyed, robbed or the merchants could be ambushed and then during the process of struggling, the goods could be submerged into the sea. The merchants also had to look at the situation from different perspectives so that a loss might be avoided.

"We are very sorry for the inconveniences caused, how about we drop the cost of delivering the cargo? You will then have to pay for the cargo only." This time round, it was the chubby merchant that proposed this.

One would have thought that the merchants would incur huge losses by offering this offer but that was not it, the cost of the transportation of iron ingots was miniscule as compared to the cost of the goods from a single ship. Actually, the cost of delivery was merely 1% of the cost of all goods, so the merchants would not be affected that bad if Virtya accepted this proposal.