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"How is it that dried meat has gone up in price? I see no reason for such an abrupt increase," I said, arms crossed, staring at the smoker. He had informed me that the price per kilogram of dried and smoked meat had risen several silver and bronze coins above the usual rate.
"There's a shortage of salt… there's nothing I can do about it," the smoker replied.
"Uh-huh… and I was born yesterday. There is no salt shortage, liar. Two days ago a shipment freshly extracted from the mines arrived. Lie again and I'll have your tongue cut out," I said, pointing at one of the župan's guards, who rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Tch… fine, fine… the usual price," the smoker muttered.
"Not so fast. You'll give me a discount," I added, eyeing the cuts of meat I intended to take.
"And what makes you think—" he began.
"Remind me, what's the punishment for lying to the župan's servant—and therefore to the župan himself?" I asked, looking at one of the guards.
The guard was about to answer, but the smoker interrupted immediately.
"Fine… fine…" he growled, glaring at me with barely concealed hatred.
"I need one hundred and twenty pounds of dried meat and eighty pounds of smoked meat," I said as I selected the best cuts. I had to do the calculations in my head to convert them, since the Byzantines still used the Roman pound.
I waited while he weighed everything on the scale I carried with me. Then he named the price: 9.2 miliaresia, the normal value in silver coins minted in the Byzantine Empire.
I handed him only eight.
As we packed the goods, I saw him cursing silently while I continued with my purchases.
I had become the most valuable tool of the župan of Karnobat. The fact that I could read and write both Proto-Bulgarian and Greek made me incredibly useful to any Bulgarian noble, especially at a time when the khan of Bulgaria was trying to bring all literate Byzantine slaves to his capital to form an administrative corps of his own.
That had caused a severe shortage of literate people outside Pliska, forcing the Bulgarians to rely on the Orthodox clergy of the Byzantine Empire. Bulgaria was still a collection of Slavic tribes that did not speak a single unified language and were attempting to standardize Bulgarian for administration.
Those who could write it properly were few. And there I was: a slave who spoke two key administrative languages and who also knew arithmetic. Knowing how to add, subtract, and handle the imperial accounting system made me, quite possibly, the most valuable slave in Bulgaria.
And that was painfully obvious.
Inside the župan's manor I had been given clear responsibilities: accounting for taxes, paying the guards' wages, negotiating purchases, and drafting letters.
That gave me considerable power over the guards. I usually accompanied the servants tasked with making purchases in the markets, and it was I who carried the pouch of coins or the strongbox, depending on the volume of goods to be acquired.
Over time I gained a very refined understanding of local prices and how they fluctuated with the harvest season or during winter. I became an excellent negotiator, and thanks to that, not everything that was saved went back to the župan. Some of the leftover coins ended up hidden in the hollow tree in the forest, where I had already accumulated a small fortune after more than a year performing that work.
I also adjusted figures and pressured tax collectors to hand over more than they officially collected, keeping a good number of coins hidden for myself. It was a reserve fund for the day I decided to escape slavery.
For the moment, my treatment was excellent. Considering that I had no legal freedom, I could move almost anywhere within the župan's territory. I had guards at my disposal and the luxury of requesting food directly from the manor's kitchen whenever I wished, eating with relative abundance every day.
That made my parents very happy. They were now household slaves, responsible for keeping the manor clean and orderly. They were satisfied with how things had changed. We had two rooms inside the manor: one for me and one for them.
Except for a few busy days, I had a great deal of free time—too much, really. My work schedule was only a few hours in the morning and almost nothing when the župan was away, and with nearly unlimited food, I began training every day.
Repeating all the military training I had accumulated over twenty years in my previous life, I began to notice improvements over time. I already had a well-toned body from constant work in the forge, but now, with far more food available, I began to see real muscle growth. My arms grew thicker, my torso hardened after hundreds of daily push-ups, and my legs became firm as stone after countless squats.
I also ran through the nearby forest, always sticking to safe areas. There were wolves, but I knew where to move. I devoted all my free time to training. Escape was still a real possibility, and I had to be prepared for any scenario, because I could not know for certain what might happen.
I even began to learn how to ride a horse, something I had never done in my previous life. I justified it as a necessity to move more quickly within the župan's territory. Some of his riders taught me the basics. I would never become a great horseman, but being able to stay in the saddle was yet another tool in my arsenal.
After training and continuing to work with excellence through the end of 824, the best opportunity to escape finally presented itself. The župan had to march north once again. He had already sent a letter to the khan informing him how many men he would take, and the previous time the settlement had been poorly defended when they departed. It was expected that the situation would repeat itself, since the number of troops would be the same.
So I did not take long to obtain a map. It was crude, but it should be enough to reach the Byzantine frontier.
During those days I waited patiently. The župan gave me clear instructions on what I was to do in his absence: the taxes I had to collect and everything related to administrative work. I presented myself as the perfect slave. But the moment he left the manor, I began to move.
I stole one of the armory keys. It wasn't difficult. There were so few guards that it was easy to study their patrols and take advantage of the gaps to enter and leave the manor without anyone seeing me. I prepared a cart and kept it hidden, slowly filling it with chests of gold and silver coins, along with armor and weapons that I removed from the armory whenever no one was watching.
I continued like that until the end of the year. When the taxes were collected, almost everything ended up stored in the cart.
The final step was forging two letters. One, supposedly signed by the župan, authorized me to use the wine cellars. The other granted me permission to move in his name and negotiate the purchase of more Roman slaves near the border.
With the first letter, I waited for the arrival of one of the messengers bringing news from the župan. I added his message and took it to the guards: because the taxes had gone so well, they were authorized to drink wine from the barrels in the underground cellar of the manor.
I gathered all the guards of the village—no more than fifty—and gave them freedom to drink until they were satisfied. The wine was surprisingly smooth; even the stronger ones took time to intoxicate them. I insisted again and again, in the župan's name, that they drink more.
I waited for hours, until dusk. By then, the guards were completely drunk, their bellies swollen with wine after emptying several barrels. Most were asleep. The few still awake could barely stand.
I took a knife from one of their belts and began to work.
One groaned when I covered his mouth and cut his throat. Blood burst out as I severed both arteries; there was a brief attempt to raise his hands, but nothing more. I looked at the next one, who still seemed somewhat lucid.
Thus, one by one. No one was able to defend himself. In a matter of seconds I eliminated those who had once been feared guards. The sound of throats choking on their own blood marked the end of each of them.
When I finished, all the guards of the village were dead.
I felt a deep satisfaction as my heart pounded. The Bulgarians should never have trusted me. I almost had to hold back my laughter.
I made sure to lock the cellar and leave it well secured. No one should be able to enter it except me, the župan's family, or under the župan's orders—and none of them were present. They had followed him to war or had gone to the capital.
With everything done and the servants preparing to sleep, I approached my family carrying a sack.
"Take this, put it on quickly. We're leaving as soon as you're ready," I said, throwing my father a suit of armor from the župan's personal guard, while I began putting on a smaller one I had found.
"Basil… what are you doing? Where did you get that? This is dangerous," my mother said when she saw me.
"We don't have time. Put this on. And you, mother, put this on as well. They're the finest clothes I could find—they belonged to the župan's wife," I replied, fastening the mail shirt and feeling its weight settle on my body.
"Basil… the guards will kill us if they find out you want to escape," my father said nervously.
"The guards are not a problem. They're already dead," I replied, staring at him. "There's no turning back."
"Blessed Jesus, Basil… what did you do?" my mother whispered in terror.
"What was necessary. Quickly, there's no time," I insisted as I adjusted the armor.
A heavy silence followed. Finally, my father obeyed and put on the armor.
We left the manor silently. I took all the available horses to have reserves and to pull the cart. I hitched several to the yoke, loaded sacks of grain and all the food I could find in the pantry and cellar for the journey, and we set off.
There was no one in the village. Everything was dark. The guards no longer patrolled.
Our first stop was near the forest. With a bag, I retrieved all the coins I had hidden in the hollow tree. I left most of the hidden daggers there; they would no longer be of use to me. Still, I took one and kept it with me, if only as a reminder that for a long time it had been my greatest source of hope.
We quickly began traveling south, moving throughout the entire night. We used the roads and old guides the Bulgarians had never bothered to change. We passed through several villages, but the local guards showed little interest when they saw us traveling normally.
Until a group of riders with torches approached us.
"Who goes there?" one of them asked, raising his torch to see us better.
My father gripped the wooden frame of the cart so tightly that I noticed it. My mother stopped breathing for a moment.
"Greetings… guard of the župan of Karnobat," I replied, using my nearly native Bulgarian.
"What are you doing traveling in the middle of the night?" the rider asked, studying me closely.
"Recently some of the slaves on the župan's estates died. I've just received a letter ordering us to travel south to buy more slaves for the estate and to sell some surplus horses," I said calmly, pulling out the forged letter and showing it to him.
The rider barely glanced at it.
"Ah… of course… uh… sorry for the trouble. You shouldn't travel at night, it's dangerous. Forgive the interruption," he said, turning his horse and returning to his post.
I watched them ride away.
"Don't be afraid. If you show fear, they'll notice. The darkness helped us—they didn't see your faces," I said, gently flicking the horses with the rope to make them move again.
"I thought they were going to kill us," my mother whispered, tears running down her cheeks.
"Nothing is going to happen to us. We have everything we need to get out of this hole. Just don't react to anything," I replied.
Throughout the night, every time we approached a village, some riders asked the same questions. I showed the letter, and they let us pass.
Thus we traveled all night. During the day no one stopped us, but we couldn't afford to rest. When the horses became exhausted, we released them and hitched others that still had the strength to continue.
The servants of the manor would not take long to notice the absence of the guards. We had one or two days before the alarm was raised, if we were lucky. If not, it would depend on how quickly the news traveled and what they thought had happened—bandits, perhaps, or something else.
On the second day of travel I bought new horses and sold the rest at almost giveaway prices. With fresh animals, we resumed the journey. I slept very little, only brief naps of a few minutes. I had to stay alert and constantly ask which way to go.
Traveling day and night, we had covered a great distance, though exhaustion was beginning to catch up with me. Even so, nervous tension kept me awake.
On the third day, after several hours of marching, we encountered the last Bulgarian guard post. A rider approached us.
"Are you going to negotiate with the Romans?" he asked, observing our armor, of a quality similar to his own.
"Our župan negotiated the release of this woman for a ransom. We must go to Adrianople to complete it," I replied, pointing at my mother, who was dressed in Bulgarian noble clothing, while showing the letter. I prayed he couldn't read.
The rider gave it only a brief glance.
"Very well. Be careful with the Romans—they're treacherous," he said, signaling for us to pass.
I lashed the horses and moved on. When we crossed the border, I removed my helmet and couldn't help but laugh.
"We're free," I said, smiling as I looked at my parents, who could hardly believe it.
Then I noticed a group of riders approaching in the distance. Their armor was completely different.
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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