Chapter 33 January 407 AD-Trade Alliance

            Muuza’s time with the Merchant Guild was interesting and longer than necessary. Heading north from the Cuban lands led his small fleet to a massive landmass, and the locals were all too happy to send him in the direction of the Merchant Guild’s settlement, a city called Itsu. From what Muuza could tell, the people he met were not technically Merchant Guild citizens, but somehow they were beholden to the Merchant Guild through some complicated and devious trading practices.

            When they reached Itsu, they found a strange city on both sides of the mouth of a very large river. The locals called it the Great River, but it wasn’t as big as the Roman River, or Malkia’s River, but it was a very large river, the third biggest Muuza had ever seen. The two sections of the city were surrounded by stone walls, with small archers every dozen or so feet. Inside, the archers were steel, not iron, bars to let water through when the Merchant Guild’s Great River flooded, but also kept out Cuban raiders. Furthermore, the reason for the city being on both sides of the river mouth was because they had hundreds of chains spanning the river to make it very difficult for the Cuban longships to make it up their Great River. Once he was inside the city, he was astounded that every building was built on stilts, including the warehouses.

            The Merchant Guild was very industrious. Muuza spotted a shipyard where they were building a Roman navy, or something fairly similar. They also built and completed communication towers, although the locals said it would be years before their network reached every Merchant Guild outpost. Finally, they had machine-woven clothes. It was astounding to Muuza how quickly they put Paulsland knowledge to use in their own territories.

            When Muuza arrived, the Merchant Guild was very surprised and were politely insistent on learning where Muuza had been. When Muuza explained he had been through Cuban territory, they wouldn’t believe him until he demonstrated the power of his weapons, which the Merchant Guild instantly offered to buy at any price. That sounded ridiculous until you remembered that Muuza’s fleet could only carry so much, so the price was limited to what the fleet could carry. Muuza refused. His excuse at the time was that he needed it for his ship’s protection, although the real reason was that he did not want the Merchant Guild escaping the generations-long blockade they faced.

            The Merchant Guild had lots of questions, and so did Muuza, and so Muuza stayed in the city of Itsu for around a month attempting to exchange knowledge with the Merchant Guild. Unfortunately, the Merchant Guild was very good at avoiding answers. That said, by the end of the month, his ship was filled with goods, and prices that were too good to be true. He wasn’t sure if they did this because they wanted to leave a good impression on him and his company, so they would later trade weapons with them, or if it was because they wanted Muuza to exclusively trade with them, and not one of their trading partners further up the coast. Muuza suspected the latter, but he had to return to the colony on Malkia’s River first.

            When he arrived, he was pleased with the colony’s development, unloaded his goods, loaded a new set of goods, and had a long conversation with the colony’s leaders about where the Cuban Islands were, where the Merchant Guild’s outpost was, and the trade strategy with both. Thanks to their clocks and sextants, they were able to give very accurate longitude and latitude information for the next ship. Once his ships were finished unloading local goods, and loading Paulsland goods, he sailed back with the hope of finding the trade partners the Merchant Guild did not want them to find. He had to do it blindly since the Merchant Guild claimed they didn’t have any maps of the coast.

            On his voyage, he found four more Cuban islands and continued on to the coast of the large landmass the Merchant Guild was on. From there, he continued heading west. As they traveled, they kept coming across small settlements, all walled and under the economic control of the Merchant Guild. It took a little while to figure out what a Merchant Guild community looked like, because at first each one was distinctly different, but eventually Muuza realized that each community was very uniform in what they produced. If they produced a crop, it was one and only one crop. If they cut wood, then every tree in the forest they cut would be the same tree. If they fished, its what everyone in the community did. When it came to industry, each village had one and only one industry. When Muuza talked with the locals, they claimed it wasn’t true, for instance, the ones who grew crops claimed they rotated the crops, but their village as a whole always rotated the same crops at the same time, which was extra odd when the next village grew different crops and had different crops in their rotation.

            When they came across the next civilization, it was obvious because there was no uniformity. They came across another walled town, but they had fishermen, their fields had a half a dozen crops, and they had what looked like a small mine nearby. As soon as the locals noticed the ships, they beat warning drums, and a formation of buffalo riders came galloping up the shoreline until they were parallel with the Muuza’s small fleet and shadowed it until the trimarans docked at the harbor. The harbor was far too small for the motherships.

            Muuza was on one of the Trimarans as it docked, and one of the men on the buffalo asked, “Who are you?”

            Muuza gave the man a long look. He wore a cone-shaped iron helmet, armor pieces sewn into pieces of cloth with bright colors that matched the other buffalo riders, likely military colors of a unit, a leather piece fully covering his neck, and a long teardrop shield that was attached to the man’s shoulder with a harness, the shield being between Muuza and the man. His buffalo wore similar armor to him with the same colors. Furthermore, the man had a fastfire bow hanging from his chest with another harness, with the arrow end of the bow pointed down. Both the man and the buffalo had a variety of other weapons attached by various harnesses. All the buffalo riders and their buffalo had the same equipment in the same spots, which suggested a very organized and logistically minded military. The final thing that struck Muuza was that each man was obviously an archer with an obvious muscular chest and arms.

            After a moment of consideration, Muuza answered, “I am Muuza. I am a merchant and explorer from the nation of Paulsland, across the Great Sea.”

            “How did you get past the Cubans?”

            “With steam weapons, we were able to sink their ship from a long way.” As he mentioned the weapons the Buffalo Rider’s eyes lit up, and so Muuza went ahead and said, “My weapons are not for sale at this moment.”

            The man frowned, then asked, “How do you know our language?”

            “Nearly a year ago, we attempted to sail these waters, and a small fleet of Cuban ships attempted to stop us. We killed most of them and captured a few who taught us their language, albeit after the battle, we had to return to our homeland. When we returned, we released our prisoners to the Cubans.” The man nodded along, and after a momentary pause in his explanation, Muuza asked, “What is your name, and is this more Merchant Guild territory?”

            The man laughed and said, “No, we are not one of Bobby’s people. I am Naat, a son of Walker.”

            Muuza looked at Naat blankly and then said, “I don’t know what that means.”

            “Walker, Bobby, Trevor, and Quincy were John’s four sons. John was the founder of the Trade Alliance. He founded the village of Texas, and from there brought peace between the warring tribes and villages. Trevor was his oldest son, and he wanted to leave the shadow of his father, so he led a portion of the people into the sea and started the Cuban nation in John’s lifetime. Bobby was his second son, and he was a merchant from birth, but he didn’t like the rules and limitations of the Trade Alliance, so he went east to the Great River and started the Merchant Guild. Again in John’s lifetime. His third son, Quincy, decided to follow in his brothers’ footsteps and went south, where he was killed by the evil Totonics. Sacrificed to one of their evil gods. When John went to war over the death of his son, Walker, his fourth and youngest son, went with him. John led several successful campaigns against the Totonics, but eventually he died in battle. After his father died, Walker took the mantle of leadership from his father and went to every village in the Trade Alliance and demanded that they support his armies with men, buffalo, weapons, and supplies. Soon after, Walker had a massive army, and from then on, the General of the Trade Alliance was the de facto leader.”

            “Why do you call yourselves the Trade Alliance if you are led by a general?”

            “How do you have prosperity without trade?”

            “I thought you were not allowed to trade thanks to the Cuban blockade.”

            “Two things. First of all, we are well aware that back in John’s day, there was little to no trade between villages and tribes. Because of that, inside the Trade Alliance, trade is protected, because trade is necessary to equip the army to protect our people from the evil Totonics, Cuban sea raids, and nomadic pillagers from the north. Secondly, we do not mind the Cuban blockade as they keep the Totonac Empire out of our waters, so we only have to worry about fighting them in the desert to the south.”

            “South? There is only water to the south.”

            “If you head west a little further, you will see that the land turns sharply south. That leads to the land of the Totonacs.”

            “Oh, I see.”

            “No, you probably don’t, but we have a library where you can purchase books and see our entire history, as well as the books written by John and his sons.”

            “Are there maps in this library?”

            “Of course. We are not the Merchant Guild. We disdain the monopolies that give them power.”

            “So you don’t trade with the Merchant Guild.”

            “I didn’t say that. But we do prefer our people to figure out what’s the best industry for them, instead of using unfair trading practices to force them into an unwise industry.”

            “How would unfair trading practices force that?”

            “Do you know our unit of trade?”

            “The Cubans said square stackable steel nails.”

            “Yes. Imagine if someone offered you three times as many nails if you produced one item, and then offered to sell you hundreds of goods for the nails they just gave you in trade. If someone in your village made the same thing they are selling, then they simply charge half the price, as anyone in the village can make the thing for.”

            Muuza’s eyes went wide, and he said, “Oh. I see. If they want something in a village, they offered a really high price for it, and when it comes to anything else, the village makes they undercut prices so people can only make nails from the one thing they are buying. They create a mono-economic system.”

            “Yes, that means that anyone who works in that village is forced to work that job. In the Trade Alliance, they would be allowed to do any job they wanted without outside interference, or join the military.”

            “How did you stop them from doing the same to your villages and towns?”

            “Oh, that’s simple, the military directly trades with them. The military also directly trade with the Cubans, although on a practical level, it’s hard to tell a raiding Cuban ship from a trading Cuban ship.”

            “Do you trade with the Totonacs?”

            Naat frowned and spit on the ground. He wasn’t the only one; the buffalo riders who overheard Muuza’s comments also spit on the ground. After a moment, Naat said, “I will forgive your insult this once. If anyone in the Trade Alliance is caught trading with the Totonacs, they are forced to go to battle with us, and then we break one of their legs and leave them for the Totonacs to collect.”

            “Collect?”

            “Oh yes, the Totonacs worship insane gods that require the sacrifice of humans. Not just their blood but their torture. The last time a member of the Trade Alliance dared trade with one of them was over a hundred years ago, and when he was left on the battlefield with a broken leg, the Totonacs skinned him alive right then and there.”

            “Ah, so they can’t be reasoned with.”

            “No. Quincy, John’s third son, tried to trade with them, and they tortured him to death. They are an insane people, and they all need to die. Every man, woman, and child.” After a moment's pause, he asked, “What did you bring to trade?”

            “As an explorer, I had no way to know what you would want, but we have a lot of medicines to trade, and books on medicine, although you will need to translate them. But I also have a Paulsland to Johnson dictionary, albeit it was written with the help of Cubans.”

            Naat smiled and said, “That’s wonderful. If your medicine is effective, it will save many lives.”

            As the two continued to talk, Muuza began to plan how he could carefully contact the insane people Naat mentioned.