bookandnovel Chapter 54: Chamber of Commerce
Chapter 54: Chamber of Commerce
Gorubak Fortress, also known as Gorubak Barracks, is a fortress located on the border of the Blackthorn Wasteland, on the south bank of the largest river, the Muna River, in the Saltimen Gorge.
Built two centuries ago, this fortress has many towers and was once the front line against invasions by foreign tribes.
It was a week later when Doron arrived at Gorubak Fortress.
Today, this place is no longer a fortified city, but the largest trading city on the border.
The alien races haven't invaded the kingdom from the wasteland for over a hundred years. After all, there are still more than 170 lords ahead. These lords have pitifully small territories in the wasteland, but they have become bridgeheads to resist the alien invasion. Only one lord has sent back a message.
This is where the transformation into a fortified city can be completed in the shortest possible time.
Doron's caravan was not luxurious; it consisted of only one oxcart, mainly carrying daily necessities. As for business, Doron had to investigate on his own and then write a letter to the lord to report back.
Ron only gave Doron one instruction.
"Business should start with the basics of clothing, food, housing, and transportation."
Doron looked at the bustling Gorubak Castle and felt a headache coming on. After all, the territory was poor and barren, so what kind of business could they do?
The lord intended for him to engage in buying and selling, but as a newcomer, this was no easy task.
As Doron led the oxcart through the gates of Gorubak Castle, he was still figuring out how to use the twenty gold coins to open up the market.
When he looked up at the city, he was momentarily stunned.
They did not pass by Gorubak Castle when they came, so they were unable to go in and see it, and did not know anything about Gorubak Castle.
Doron had seen fortresses before; when he was a knight, he had served with his lord on the border. Those fortresses were all cut from the same cloth: thick stone walls, narrow loopholes, dark and damp barracks, and a drill ground that always smelled of a mixture of horse manure and musty straw.
But Gorubek Fort is not a fortress, or rather, it no longer is.
The city wall is still the same old city wall from two or three hundred years ago.
The wall is made of grayish-white granite blocks, each block being more than a person tall. The gaps between the blocks are filled with lead-gray impermeable mortar, and the foundation is so thick that twenty people can stand side by side.
Duolong touched the wall with his hand; it felt cold to the touch, and the stone surface had been polished smooth as a mirror by more than two centuries of wind and sand.
What's mounted on the city wall isn't a crossbow, it's a crane.
He looked up for a moment before confirming that he wasn't seeing things. The crenellations that were originally used to hold crossbows for defense now had wooden booms extending out. The base of the city wall below the booms was piled with crates and sacks. The porters were shouting as they loaded the goods into baskets, which creaked and groaned as they rose up along the pulley tracks and slid from the crenellations into the city gate.
The city gate tower was not a barracks, but a warehouse.
The city gate is still the same city gate.
The two iron-clad oak city gates were so tall that one had to look up to see the top. The iron sheets were rusty, but the hinges were newly replaced and coated with a thick layer of grease.
The people standing on either side of the doorway were not guards, but two tax clerks, one fat and one thin, sitting behind a crippled wooden table with an ink bottle and a thick register in front of them.
The fat one was dozing off, while the thin one was grabbing a caravan manager and insisting that he unload the goods from each cart and recount them.
As Doron passed through the city gate, the fat tax collector who had been dozing suddenly woke up. He rubbed his eyes, waved his ink-stained index finger in the air, and held up two fingers at Doron.
Doron took two copper coins out of his money bag and placed them on the wooden table. The fat tax collector took the coins and closed his eyes again.
He didn't say a single word the entire time.
The invasion of foreign tribes is a memory of our ancestors; copper coins are the means of trade today; those who collect taxes upon entering the city understand its true nature better than those who guard the city gates.
Passing through the city gate, there is a straight main road.
The road surface was paved with gravel slabs, with two deep grooves worn into it by cart tracks.
The oxcart wheels were stuck in the grooves, and it moved steadily without even wobbling.
The street was wide enough for four carriages to walk side by side, but at the moment it was so crowded that his oxcart could only inch forward slowly, hugging the wall.
At the entrance to the north gate was a temporary market stall.
The vendors used burlap and bamboo poles to build sunshades, under which goods were piled up.
A pottery vendor squatted on top of his pile of goods, stacking the pottery jars into three layers, with dry straw between each layer;
A vendor selling animal hides next to them hung dozens of tanned cowhides on a horizontal bar. When the wind blew, the fur curled up, creating patterns of varying depths.
Further along, the stalls gradually turned into shops, and the stone houses along the street demolished most of their street-facing walls, directly building movable wooden planks on the foundations to create open-door shops.
The tailor's apprentice sat at the door shouting his wares, the tanner's apprentice squatted by the water trough tanning leather, and the sound of the blacksmith's bellows could be heard three shops away.
There was a line of more than a dozen people outside a bakery on the street corner.
As soon as Duolong smelled the aroma of roasting, his stomach growled loudly.
Mad nudged his arm from the side.
"Captain, look what that is!"
Duolong looked in the direction Mad pointed.
At the end of the street, a three-story round stone building stands in the center of the intersection.
The exterior walls of the stone building's ground floor are painted dark blue. All the windows on the second and third floors are open, with more than a dozen bamboo poles extending out from them, covered with dyed cloths that are drying in the sun.
The fabrics, ranging in color from indigo to crimson to bright yellow, hung down in layers, making the whole building look like a giant colorful flag.
"This is a dyeing workshop," Doron said.
He had seen dye houses in the North, but never one this big.
The location, size, and number of merchants coming and going from the entrance of this stone building all indicate that it is not an ordinary workshop, but rather the dye house of a certain chamber of commerce, and possibly even its headquarters.
Duolong led the oxcart around half of the stone building and saw a stone plaque on the south-facing outer wall, which was carved with a raven carrying a copper coin in its beak.
"The Raven Merchant Guild." Doron memorized the name. "Damn, go ask who the owner of this guild is."
Doron had also figured out his business goals for this trip. Clothing, food, housing, and transportation are all essential industries, and the cloth business is a perpetually thriving industry. The only difference is how much money one can make. There are so many women in the territory now. Let them weave cloth in the territory and then sell it here. It's perfect.
Mad jumped off the oxcart, straightened his leather armor, and walked toward the stone building.
Occasionally, a narrow alley will appear between the shops on both sides of the street.
There was no sunlight in the alley, but tables and chairs were placed along the walls. Several small taverns had their kitchens at the end of the alley, and the heat from the stoves wafted out from the depths of the alley, mixed with the aroma of roasted meat and ale.
Several burly men who looked like mercenaries sat drinking at the alley entrance, their breastplates off and placed at their feet, their swords lying across the table.
One of them glanced at the embroidered spring knife at Duolong's waist for a couple of seconds, then looked away and continued drinking.
Duolong also looked at the other person. After a long while, the burly man suddenly turned his head to look at Duolong.
"Doron Ashwood!"
"Gavin Powell!"
The two shouted at the same time, then their faces lit up with ecstatic joy.