1453: Revival of Byzantium

In the end Antonius got the chief as the guide of the tour, with him promising the admiral that no one mores Drama better than he does.  Satisfied with this answer, Antonius decided that he should embark on the journey wasting no more time, just in case Yuri and his crew gets drunk again taking advantage of the spare time and causing some further trouble for him. Before Antonius left, he found the owner of the hostel through the connection of the town chief Apostolos, and promised him that there will be a courier arriving a month latter with bags of coins compensating him for the lose. Then he wrote two letters, one to Abdullah in Thessaloniki describing the mess Yuri has made, and the other one to his mistress explaining why he cannot come back home for the next three months plus, seeking her pardon. 

The letter goes some thing like this. "Oh! My beloved Anna, please forgive me for not being able to come home and celebrate Christmas with you, and I have to tell you that in order to solidify the stability and prosperity of the state we are residing right now, I will have to spend another period of time over here, do not worry I shall be back home by the second half of the year."

The group of thirty plus people rode through the countryside outside the town for three days, inspecting village after village, exploring one after another market. The town chief took the chance to elaborate further to his boss on what kind of policies did he implement to grow the market to promote the economics and taxation, what ways did he use to motivate the farmers to volunteerily sow more seeds to improve the agriculture and food supply for the following year, and how did he enforce laws making each family send one kid to the schools following the instructions given by the new governor of Drama.

But there is some thing he dared not ask his superior, that is he do not understand why his superior is enforcing such strict regulations to force the kids of the dirt digging peasants to enter the schools and institutions that should be specialised in tutoring the sons of the nobles and scholars. He knows clearly that most of these small rowdy monkeys are not here to learn at all, they play and shout in the classrooms, intimidate the tutors from Serres, skipping classes without reason to help their families in agriculture activities, or trying to flirt with girls. 

There is another thing that he does not understand about the Caesar's education policies, that is he does not understand why the Caesar made one after another order, forbidding all schools and institutions from rejecting female students. Initially this caused a huge turmoil among the scholars of Thessaloniki, resulting in many scholars rejecting their posts as tutors. And it seems like these scholar's arguments are correct through chief Apostolos' observations. 

But of course, he would not dare to voice his opposition to the admiral who is now in his good mood, knowing that those people who opposed the Caesar's policies did not end with a great story.

On the third day of the journey, the group of people arrived in a small, isolated village among the mountains, and decided to take a rest. The villagers are surprised as they are totally not expecting visitors from the outside world, but yet they welcomed the group of people after knowing that the leader of them is a 'student from Serres' coming here for a research. The villagers took out the best offerings that they could possibly offer – a pot of pottage containing nothing but grains and wild vegetables, a pile of rock hard pies and some wines that tasted sour.

Apostolos became wary of these offerings fearing that Antonius might get sick of it and charge these villagers, he peeked to the right and found out that instead of growing furious like any other nobilities, the Caesar and those Varangians he brought are merrily chattering with the villagers while grazing on those pies and gulping down those sour wines as if they are a delicacy. It is obvious that our town chief here did not do enough home work by not knowing that Antonius faced harder situations with worse food during those years roaming on the seas.

Mean while, one villager asked Antonius addressing him by his fake name. "Hey, Giovanni, you said that you came from big cities like Serres right? How many people are there?"

Antonius replied chewing the pie without thinking hard on the answer. "Serres has a population of roughly nine thousand people… Why? Have you not went to Serres before? It is just two weeks away from here."

"No, no, no." The villager hurriedly waved his hands. "I heard that those people in Serres will force anyone coming in their city who is illiterate to go in to college to study those useless knowledge, and the people who graduated from there eventually become brainwashed, not knowing anything about planting crops relying on others to supply them food… We are a small village; we cannot afford to have a lot of useless people lying around doing nothing and get spoon fed all day." 

The other villagers nodded in silence, agreeing with the man's answer. Seeing this Antonius could only try to reassure them that the people in Serres shall not do such things, and there are a lot of merchandise like iron farming tools which they should go and check it out. 

Soon the second question came, asking. "Guest Giovanni, you mentioned that there are a lot of nobles living in the city of Serres… But have you seen the emperor Antonius before? Do you know what he is like? Where do he live?" 

Yuri and Apostolos almost choked in their sour wine hearing the question, Antonius is startled for a moment, then answered the question trying to ease the frown on his forehead. "No, the… supreme leader Antonius does not live in Serres, he lives in another city in Thessaloniki…."

"Thessaloniki, I know that place." A man turned and looked at the questioner with a confident smile. "I told you that the emperor does not live in Serres where only greedy buggers and rogues live, instead he lived in the city called Thessaloniki in the North a few thousand Roman miles way."

Antonius looked at this man filled with curiosity. "Why brother? You have went to the city of Thessaloniki, and had the chance to see…"

"Aye, I have went to Thessaloniki when I was young." The man continued boosting. "And I had a chance to see the emperor himself in face!"

Apostolos and Yuri came to join the chat. "Enlighten us, for we never had a chance to see the…. Emperor himself in face before, what was he like?"

The man loved this kind of feeling whereby he is getting all the focus and attention on himself, he sat on a stool looking down on his listeners shaking his leg and started sharing his tales. "The emperor, is of course not like any ordinary man like you and me. His neck is over one meter long, and he has got three heads to think about all the stuff going on in the empire!"

Antonius felt a cold shiver down his spine. He touched his neck and head while the man is talking.

"The emperor has four arms and hands! To deal with the all the things that is going on around the thousands of miles of land. He got two faces, a good face which always has a smile to show to us and his allies, and a bad face which spits fire to those who stand in his path…."

Antonius touched his face, questioning himself whether he really look that scary in other's eyes.

A good listener raised his hand. "Hey mate! Does the emperor work in the crops like us? Does the emperor herd sheeps like others? Does the emperor drink wine like us?"

"Of course, of course, remember that I just mentioned that the emperor has four hands, one of the hand is used for planting crops… and let me tell you what, the emperor has an iron hoe on his first hand that can never ever be spoilt with a special ability of making every bit of soil in to the most fertile land possible, and he holds an iron plow on his right hand that can make every single seed he plants sprout in just one day!"

The surrounding farmers let out wave after wave of wows with both jealousy and admiration hearing the boast of this man. While the protagonist of this man's story, our dear admiral Antonius seats there with his head lowered and his eyes closed with his face blushing, reminding himself that the word of this man is nothing but a fantasy and there are nothing to feel absurd or ashamed about it.