1453: Revival of Byzantium

"History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible"

-        Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy

"Sounds like a good catch to me." Yuri answered as he took out the bow attached to the side of his mount; a Varangian is required to master the art of archery as well. "Sad that we did not bring any dogs on this trip. Admiral, I suggest that we ought to be divided in to three teams to surround and engage the deer for maximum profit."

Antonius nodded, and the riders fluently segregated themselves and rode in to the woods and surrounded the deer. Seeing the time is right Antonius became the first to unleash his arrow, followed by Yuri. The two arrows hit their targets as expected, but the preys continued running in to the woods with the arrow still attached to their bodies. Seeing the signal the Varangians an guards quickly went in to action, unleashing their arrows on to a few more targets before two deers finally collapsed heavily on to the leaves and twigs.

Antonius and Yuri approached their fallen prey, the deer, apparently a female, is there panting heavily on the ground with its eyes still wide open in terror. Blood has already been sipping out of its body since the moment the arrow has hit it, leaving a trail of fresh blood on the leaves along the way. The deer tried getting back up on its hooves again, but failed multiple times with its energy slowly running out. Seeing that the prey is still resisting Antonius shouted to Yuri. "Quick! Yuri! Use your dagger! We can't let this one go away this time!"

Yuri heard the order, jumped down from his mount and searched for the dagger inside his magic pouch while the others pinned down the deer and waited for him. But after a while he jogged back to Antonius with a sorry smile, and the moment Antonius saw the smile he knew that there are some thing amiss. "Sorry admiral, I forgot to bring along the dagger, it seems like I have left it in the camp after using it to cut meat yesterday…"

"Huh? What you are talking about?" Antonius is awed by such words from Yuri. "You forgot to bring your dagger? Which warrior can forget to bring his own dagger? Why don't you say that you forgot to bring yourself here?"

Yuri is feeling embarrassed on his forgetfulness too as he helped to pin down the beast while Antonius got up to take his own dagger, and with a swift strike on to the prey's heart all vigorous struggles from the deer ceased lying still, except for some random twitching in its limbs. Despite all the odds, this animal still turned out to be a good hunt for the team. Judging by its size its meat shall be enough for all of them to consume for a day, with some spare parts that they can sell to profit. And also, one must not forget about its gorgeous furs which too can be sold to the cloth making workers in the towns.

The team set off for the designated town of Milopotamos where they say has a tradition of hunting in the woods providing furs and meat for the bigger holdings in the region for decades, even generations. Before this Antonius is already planning a trip here to inspect the supposed fraudulent local trade market where he supposedly received reports saying that the village chief illegally implanted another set of trading system where by all outside merchants must pay a tax called 'tariff', supervised by the chief's son with a gang of jobless rogues carrying batons around the market, making sure that every merchant pays their tax by force.

Antonius does not know how this tariff thing works and he does not give a damn about it, what he knows is that it is stated clearly on the laws that collecting any form of taxation that is not included in the national scheme are considered to be acts of corruption. Furthermore, in the reports it says that the village chief assembled a band of more than twenty freemen carrying dangerous weapons, which too can be seen as a sign of raising a self employed army within the borders of Antonius' state, and it too can be seen as a potential source of rebellion and treason.

In order to hide their identities, all Varangians including Yuri took off their light armours folding them in to their bags before entering the town. Although this place called Milopotamos is marked as a town on the map, it definitely does not have the size equivalent to a town with most of its administrated area being crop fields, woods and plains. Houses and architectures are littered around every where built in a disordered manner, with muddy water and animal discharge being splashed every where as the hooves of horses stepped on to the puddles along the country roads.

It took a while for Antonius to figure out where is the central market place due to the poorly designed town layout. But Antonius soon found out that when they paraded their prey across the streets, they did not receive many eyes of envy or admiration, instead most of the passing by hunters looked at them in shock, disbelief and displeasure. After a while Yuri too noticed some thing is wrong and murmured to Antonius. "Admiral, is there some thing we have done wrong?"

"How would I know?" Antonius gave a stare back at Yuri, accelerated his horse and went to a stall where it seems like a place for refining and cutting meat, with muttons, chicken and pork being put on sale on a wooden plank, and inside the stall there are two young men slicing off pieces of meat from a just slaughtered sheep. Antonius got off his mount and approached the elder seating beside the meat displaying planks who seemed to be the owner of this stall, greeted and asked. "Honourable elder, may I know how much is it for you to help us refine this deer we hunted today?"

The old man looked up at the deer hanging upside down on a wooden pole, and upon seeing it he too took a big gasp of air just like the reaction of the other people. He stood up, walked to the deceased deer, touched here touched there feeling the wounded part, turned back and asked Antonius who is still standing there not knowing why is the old man showing such a reaction. "Young man, are you an outlander?"

Antonius, who is already feeling that trouble is approaching fast, frowned and answered in a polite tone. "Aye indeed, we are from the south."

"I see… Are you from a noble background who had never tried making a living in the woods before?"

"Nag, I used to be a sailor roaming around the Mediterranean, in fact I have spent most of my time on decks rather than ground before I turned twenty five."

"I see, that should be why…" The old man gently felt the fur of the red deer again and sighed. "remember, young man, you should never ever hunt for wild animals, especially the female ones in spring .Because remember, the season of spring is always a season that is full of blessings and gifts by Christ himself. It is a season when all forms of life cherish and blossom, the animals finally come back to the woods from their deep sleep or another home far away, ready to rebuild their bodies becoming stronger with more meat…"

"… And you chose to kill a female at this point of time, at the start of the spring. There is a tradition in here, that is we shall never kill any wild lives roaming in the woods in Spring except for urgent needs. We only start killing them after their mating season have ended in November, and remember, you can only kill male deer, but never kill female deer, as they are the ones who can reproduce the next generation of deer for us to hunt years later."

Antonius stopped Nikolas who is about to step out to reprimand the old man and reveal Antonius' identity, bowed towards the old man and thanked him, saying that he shall remember the words of wisdom by heart, and vowed never to remake the same mistake ever again. The old man nodded, and still helped the group of people to remove the skin off the deer, removed the bones, sliced the meat and bagged those cut meat for Antonius.

No activities of the supposed rogues and militias stated in the reports are spotted, every thing in the market seemed to be in a mixed state between chaos and order, which is quite ordinary in smaller towns and villages being the central of trade. Thus, later that night Antonius finished his patrol and decided to stay in a local hostel outside the town with his men.