Hello, everyone. I hope you are enjoying the story. I would like to ask you to leave your reviews so that we can get the star rating on this platform. As always, please be as honest as possible, as I need your opinion to improve.
-----------------------------
If we reach 6 comments. You have five hours from the time this chapter is posted. If we reach the goal, the next chapter will be posted in eight hours.(Valid comments must include information about what you like or dislike about the story, what you would like to see about the story, or any questions you may have about the story, as the devil is in the details.)
-----------------------------
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.
-------------------------------
By early July we were still camped here, on our hill, which we had already turned into a sort of semi-permanent settlement. We had thrown up a few buildings quickly, and now we had real beds instead of just strips of cloth stuffed with straw.
Now those cloths were filled with wool, which was a constant improvement. We also took advantage of the situation to drill while wearing armor, so the men would get used to the weight. I truly wanted to go raid some villages—my purse was light, and as risky as it was that we might run into a Bulgarian unit, what could be looted would be far more valuable if we moved fast.
So once we were reasonably prepared, I left twenty men behind in the camp, with Lysander among them. He had already begun to handle numbers and reading, since I had taught him the use of Arabic numerals, which made keeping the company's accounts far simpler. The Ionic system—even for me—was complicated, though that was probably more a matter of habit than anything else.
With my group, we began moving north. Since I was the only one who knew how to ride a horse, I also took on the role of scout. I started following the traces left by the Bulgarian troop movements when they withdrew. Even though they had done so weeks earlier, there were still clear signs that a large group of people had passed through the area.
That became my task—finding the routes—because maps of the region either didn't exist or dated back to when the Empire still ruled the land, making them unreliable, unless the Bulgarians had simply kept the area as a settled region.
After several hours pushing through forests and crossing the local hills, we found the first Bulgarian settlement in the area. It appeared to be a small village, no more than fifty houses, with one or two large manors that clearly belonged to the local elite.
I observed the surroundings carefully, watching for signs of danger, but everything seemed calm. There was a group of guards who reminded me painfully of my days as a slave—far more concerned with getting through the day so they could drink at the local tavern.
The real value had to be in the mansions of the local lords—and, of course, in the population itself. For some strange reason, I found the idea of selling Bulgarians into slavery deeply satisfying. Even though I had suffered under that condition myself, the thought that it would now be them filled me with joy.
Seeing that we were playing it safe, I simply gathered my men and began descending toward the village.
I expected the Bulgarians to panic when they saw us, but instead they greeted us casually.
Then I remembered that almost all my men were wearing Bulgarian armor. To them, we must have looked like a Bulgarian force.
"Greetings… how are things on the frontier?" one of the guards asked, eyeing me nervously.
"Oh… yes, perfect… just a group of Romans burning a few border villages," I replied in Bulgarian, drawing a dagger from my belt while dismounting, an axe in my other hand.
As soon as I was down, I grabbed the guard by his padded coat, slammed him against the wooden wall of the village, and drove the dagger into his eye before he could react. He slid slowly to the ground, dead, a steel blade buried in his brain.
"Help!" another Bulgarian shouted—right before I buried the axe into his neck, his head nearly tearing free in a spray of blood.
"Don't split up, there are only a handful of guards left," I said as I yanked the axe free, where it had lodged halfway into the Bulgarian's neck.
Chaos erupted in the village. People in the market scattered, running for their homes or fleeing toward the hills.
My men formed ranks. The remaining guards stared at us for a moment, then bolted, running as far away as they could.
"Well… that was embarrassingly easy," I said, realizing there was no organized resistance left after killing just two guards.
"What do we do now, Kapetanios?" one of my men asked, as surprised as I was by how easy it had been.
"Go into the houses and take anything of value. We're here to loot, so do exactly that," I said, trying to scratch my head and only scraping my helmet instead. "Avoid rape—it takes time, and we don't know when Bulgarian reinforcements might arrive. Anyone I catch with their pants down gets sent to the physicians of Adrianópolis to be castrated. Just go in, drag people out of their houses, tie them up, and search everything."
I approached one of the houses and kicked the door in with the sole of my foot. The wooden door burst open, revealing a terrified family inside.
"Does anyone speak Greek?" I asked before entering.
No response. They were just Bulgarians.
"Fine… you pieces of trash, outside now or I'll drag you out," I said in Bulgarian, jerking my thumb toward the door.
When they didn't comply, I acted.
"I said—" I smashed the axe handle into the father's stomach. "Get out," I said, grabbing him by the hair and clothes, dragging him outside and throwing him to the ground as his wife and children screamed.
I pulled the rest of the family out as well. One group of my men tied their legs, a scene repeating itself house after house.
Once they were bound, I went back inside and searched for valuables. Truth be told, there wasn't much—some sacks of barley, ceramic jars of dried legumes, salt, a bit of honey, a couple of hoes, a somewhat broken axe, and several simple fabrics. There wasn't much to take; the only truly valuable thing was food.
Most houses were the same. In some, we found bronze or silver rings, but nothing close to what I had expected. My attention shifted to the village's manors, most of which were surrounded by a four-meter wall, used mainly to keep animals from escaping.
As I approached the gate with twenty of my men, while the rest continued gathering supplies, I found a group of guards at the entrance, staring at us in silence.
"Alright… alright… don't resist. Open the gate and let's avoid turning this into a bloodbath," I said in Bulgarian, looking at the guards.
An arrow bounced off my steel plate cuirass.
"Kill them," I said, signaling the crossbowmen.
Dozens of bolts rained down on the guards. Agonized screams echoed as I saw them fall from the wall.
I tried the gate, but as expected it was locked.
"Bring those crates over there—we'll use them to climb like a ladder," I ordered after a moment's thought.
By stacking a couple of crates, we improvised a ladder and jumped the wall. Inside, we found wounded guards crawling along, leaving trails of blood; others had died from the bolts or the fall.
I ignored them and removed the bar blocking the gate. The rest of my men poured in immediately. They wasted no time stripping the Bulgarians of their armor—even the wounded ones still crawling on the ground.
We entered the manor without much delay. It wasn't truly fortified. We kicked the door in and found a crowd of terrified people inside, likely the lord's servants.
We went straight down to the cellars and found the armory. Using the guards' keys, we opened it easily and found many swords and axes stacked inside, along with dozens of spears—but very little armor, barely a couple of mail shirts.
We kept searching and found a wine cellar, packed with barrels, which we hauled out immediately.
In another room I found the treasury. Breaking the locks on the chests, I finally found something truly worth taking.
For some strange reason, this manor held an enormous amount of gold coins and many silver ingots—more even than the zhupan I had robbed before—which puzzled me. There was a large chest filled with gold coins and hundreds of silver ingots, something that didn't match the size of such a small village.
I quickly went up to the second floor, to the lord's chambers, where I found a well-dressed woman shielding two children, and a trembling man hiding behind a piece of furniture.
"No… please… don't hurt us…" the man said, his Bulgarian terrible.
"Do you speak Greek?" I asked, staring at him.
"Yes… yes… I'm Roman… I'm Roman," he replied.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, walking toward him.
"I was captured seven years ago… and sold… my skills as a scribe were valuable," he answered.
"I see. Do you know what the lord of this place does? I found a great deal of wealth here," I said, watching him closely.
"Not long ago, a silver deposit was found in the local copper mine… and… well… our lord hasn't spoken much about it to the Bulgarian khan."
"So he was hoarding the profits… I see."
"Well then, you're lucky, Roman brother. You're free now. We'll take you back to Roman territory," I said, clapping him hard on the shoulder as I examined the local lord's correspondence.
"I'd like to stay," the scribe said.
I slowly turned my head toward him.
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," I said, pocketing the letters and beginning to loot the place, taking objects decorated with silver and gold.
"They treat me better here… in the scriptorium where I worked I had to write for hours without rest just to earn my bread… here the work is light and—"
"And helping the enemies of the Romans with their communications… TRAITOR!" I shouted, throwing everything to the floor.
"No… but… no… no… stay away…" the scribe screamed, but the woman's scream was even louder as she covered her children's eyes.
"Stay away… ah… agh… ah…" the scribe cried as I grabbed him and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest, until he collapsed dead.
"Fucking traitor dog, collaborating with the Bulgarians," I snarled as I took everything of value from the room. "And you—Bulgarian mare—stop crying and come down now. We're taking you with us, and if you don't cooperate, you'll meet the same fate," I said in Bulgarian, staring at her as her eyes burned red from crying.
We looted everything of value from the manor. We even found Greek slaves—agricultural slaves working the local lord's lands—and managed to free several Greek families, along with some Armenians.
We quickly moved on to the other manor. It was poorer by comparison—it didn't control the mines like the first—but it had horses. Many horses. And many slaves, as it was apparently an agricultural estate.
We took about fifty horses, several heads of livestock—nearly a hundred cows—hundreds of chickens, and many carts, which we began loading with loot.
Once the village had nothing left of value, we began loading the Bulgarians onto the carts. Finally, we looted the mine in the nearby mountain.
There we found several hundred slaves working, extracting large quantities of unprocessed ore. We freed the blacksmiths and goldsmiths forced to refine the metal for their masters.
That small village left my pockets full.
And it's better not to think about how much I'd be paid later for selling the Bulgarians at the slave market of Adrianópolis.
-----------------------------
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.
-------------------------------