Stories about merchants or cunning merchant Chapter 44

During the rainy season, in the spring from April to May, the river called "bearing gold" in Small An, rose so much that it flooded all the bridges and crossings . Therefore, within 2 months to get from the city "Stone" that was on the right side of the river in the city on the left side, it was impossible to get . It was during these two months that prices soared up 200-300 percent .

Some merchants stored goods in advance and then raised prices . Other more entrepreneurial, just skirted the river from the northwest, where it went into the sands . They sold the imported goods at 400 percent, since the goods were fresh and not stale .

Especially righteous merchants sold goods with a small profit of 10-20 percent for themselves, but their poor people revered as righteous . It improved the karma of merchants and on the Day of the Last Judgment, it was sharpened by them .
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Therefore, the markets were mixed with the capital Small An, in the month of May from the city to settlements with the name "Thursday", "Wednesday", "Friday" . Where large markets were organized, where farmers, nomads, mountaineers, and merchants from other principalities brought their goods .

Farmers sold - grain, vegetables, fruits . Highlanders - mulberry flour, dry fruits, nuts, medicinal herbs, berries, gold nuggets, precious stones, carpets, saddles, arrowheads, chain mail . Nomads - animal skins, felt, camel milk and mares, sheep meat, wool, horses, wild animals, wood . The merchants brought silver coins, needles, threads, dyes for wool, mirrors, clothes, knives, sabers, bows, arrows, shields, sugar, oriental sweets, click, textile material .

The merchants made the most profit by buying goods from local suburban and mountain markets, reproducing them in the capital of the CAO kingdom and the Tan empire, the Bosses empire (Iran), made a profit of 300 percent .

But the most profitable trade routes were to Afghanistan, Tibet and Northern Europe, Muscovy . Profit reached 500-700 percent . Just reselling Chinese and Persian goods could make a fortune in one trip . And if there were 10 of them!

It was a very profitable business . for mercenaries - security guards, for kingdoms, empires and principalities that remove small customs duties for entry and exit, for robbers . They could buy a "subscription" for a month for a safe passage . But sometimes small robber groups, attacked, ignoring the "tamgsubscription", then mercenaries or the protection of the trade route came to the rescue .

The fortress-fortified fortresses with security were located every 35 km of the road, every 25 km of caravanserai . and wells every 15 km . The caravanserai could accommodate from 25 to 150 people on the route of the trade caravan . The fortress usually had 100 horse riders, 200 archers and 300 infantry . Sometimes they were more mobile groups of elite, equestrian guards of 100 or 50 people . But there one soldier cost 100 ordinary hastily trained security guards .

Usually the "Steep" were not robbed, since the guards "guarding" them could find and cut out the entire village of robbers . But for their services they took a higher payment .

Ordinary mercenaries took 70 gold for escorting a caravan . And editnye could take all 300 . But their protection was worth it .

In fact, the caravan route, fed a lot of people, from the defilers and guards to the poorest segments of the population, not to mention the elite and aristocrats .

And where there is trade, there is inevitably politics, and where politics is, there is intelligence, spies, counterintelligence, double and triple agents . But then these names were without precise definitions . The term "Big Game", that is, the intelligence wars appeared only in 1813 . . . And the author of this doctrine himself disappeared on this "Big Way", by the way, it is symbolic that he disappeared in the capital Small-An .

Trading is a big risk, but also a big profit .

Chapter end