Visitors?
"Kita, the chief always has visitors. If the villagers suddenly stopped visiting, I would understand why you would look this worried, as their complai… their concerns are never-ending. Why bother me?", Leigh said in annoyance.
"You will understand when you follow me to the chief Leigh.", Kita said, and she dragged him to the center of the city where the city hall was located, against his will of course.
As they were making their way over, he saw the villagers looking curiously towards the city center and murmuring things to each other. But what really made him worried was that the children were nowhere to be seen in the streets.
The only time that happened is if there was a possibility of danger.
The two of them arrived at the city hall, and Leigh noticed 10 horses stationed outside the city hall, but he couldn't recognize them at all. The village had 100 000 inhabitants, and he knew all of them and their animals, as he always helped them out, but he never saw those horses before.
A thought passed his mind, but was soon quieted by logic.
The city hall was nothing special, it was rectangular in shape, built from wood with a straw roof. Inside it was a rectangular table with a lot of chairs, to accommodate the visitors that came over and wanted to sit down.
Upon entering the city hall, he saw Chief Harkon Emrys standing opposite 10 strange men.
Chief Harkon was a 1m80 tall man, with refined, lean muscles hidden behind his farmers clothes, as everyone in the village would essentially farm besides doing other duties.
The 10 men hadn't taken a seat on the table yet, but Leigh could see that the villagers were wary of the visitors.
When Harkon saw Leigh, he was surprised, but beckoned him to come over.
"Mister Ilis, this is Leigh Emrys, my son", Harkon said.
Indeed, Leigh bore the biggest misfortune of all. He was the chief's son, and sole heir of the Emrys.
Leigh felt a headache coming, as he would often get dragged into chief business to 'prepare' him for his coming chief days, while in reality, Harkon just didn't want to do all the chief work by himself. Of the many questions Leigh had in his mind, never once did he ask himself where he got his talent in slacking off from.
Leigh looked at the man called Ilis, and he knew for a fact that he had never seen him before. In other words, they weren't from the village. A thousand questions ran through his mind in that moment, but he decided to go with the simple ones first.
"Father, who are these people?", Leigh asked.
"I'm prince Ilis Ilemo, son of Leno Ilemo, king of Hezra. As I was telling your father Harkon here, we came to collect the tax of your people that hasn't been paid.", the man named Ilis said patiently.
His voice was calm, and he radiated kindness, Leigh became curious about the man.
"So you claim.", Harkon answered, "But what is tax, and what is Hezra? More importantly, how did you and your men come here?"
Ilis, slightly surprised by Harkon's question, answered with a smile: "Hezra is the kingdom of which you are its citizens, and tax is money you owe to the king for protecting and ruling over you. As to how we came here, we came after an arduous, long journey trough a foggy path that finally led us to this valley."
The chief and the villagers were surprised when they heard what Ilis said.
"Foggy path, wait, does he mean?", Leigh thought back to the foggy path he tried to go through, but that wasn't possible right? He had tried countless times, and got in trouble because of it, so he was sure that it wasn't possible.
"For now, let's give our guests something to eat and drink, I'm sure they need it after their long journey.", Harkon said, as he gestured to some of the villagers to bring some food and drinks. The newcomers looked like nice people, so the villagers wanted to welcome them, as that is the second thing that was instilled in the villagers since their birth: "Be kind to others."
"Now that I couldn't agree more with!", Ilis said with a tired but smiling expression.
As the newcomers made themselves comfortable and took their seats on the table, the villagers brought in some food. It consisted mainly of roasted meat and vegetables, with water and mead for drinks.
Tasting the food hesitantly, a short-haired soldier among the 10 gasped in shock at the taste.
It was delicious!
"What great food you have here!", Ilis said, "It's a shame there is no wine to go with the meat though."
Harkon and Leigh looked at each other and then Leigh asked: "What is wine?"
The 10 men stopped eating in that moment and looked at the father-son duo in shock.
"You mean to say that you have never had wine before?", the short-haired soldier asked.
"We only have mead, we normally have more varieties of it, but most of it got destroyed during the storm", Harkon said.
The villagers never had a drop of wine before, they didn't even know of it's existence.
"That is something to introduce to you and your people when we continue seeing each other then.", Ilis said while he smiled.
Harkon picked up on the meaning behind those words
"You wish to visit us more?", Harkon asked
"We wish to establish a trade relationship with your village, and start collecting the tax you owe the king.", Ilis answered, after which he took a bite of some nice looking piece of meat. The short haired soldier had spiked his interest in the food, and it was indeed delicious!
"The trading part sounds good, before the storm our farms could always produce more than we needed, so that much is alright. It's the tax part that is still weird to me.", Leigh answered in turn.
"We have never seen you guys before, you say that your king rules and protects us, yet today is the first day we heard about him. He hasn't helped us with the damages the storm has caused, or other problems that occurred in the years before that. Why should we pay for something that didn't happen?", Leigh asked while looking Ilis in the eyes.
Ilis' left eye twitched for an instant, but returned to normal right away. However, Leigh saw the little twitch and took note of it.
"This puts us in an awkward place, but it can be overlooked. We can start collecting tax from this moment forward. As for the trading goods, we weren't as much interested in the crops you grow, as we are interested in the other goods this valley provides."
Question marks popped up all around Leigh and Harkon, as Ilis reached into his pocket and proceeded to take out a blue, shining little pebble.
"We are way more interested in the magic stones that reside in this mountain."
Seeing the pebble Ilis had in his hand, Leigh and Harkon laughed inwardly, but didn't show it.
"Intersting.", Leigh said, "What do we get in return?"
"10 golden coins per small magic stone, the bigger the size, the more you get.", A man with glasses among the 10 men answered this time.
The villagers murmured all of a sudden. Even though they only lived in the village and knew nothing else, gold was gold everywhere.
"What about ones with a different color?", Leigh asked all of a sudden.
"A different collor?! You mean to say that there are other collored magic stones as well here?!", the man with the glasses stood up and said all shocked.
Ilis looked at him from the side of his eye, and the man with the glasses shut his mouth instantly and recomposed himself.
"They are slightly more valuable, we would pay 12 gold coins for that.", Ilis answered this time.
Leigh found that the price didn't correspond with the way the man with glasses reacted, but decided to keep to himself for now. He looked at his father and nodded, and with that done, Harkon seemed to have come to a decision.
"Hahaha, alright then, someone get me some of the marbles that the kids play with!", Harkon said with amusement.