We'll move out in three trucks, with a barrel of fuel attached to one of them. Twenty-five earthlings, natives, and twenty-five golems, practically all my magical soldiers. All of them are fighters who know how to use edged weapons and wear armor (as the reenactors tell me, that's not as easy as it looks, either... well, unless they're trying to be too hard on themselves, of course). And everyone is armed with a machine gun, a pistol and a "Vepr. In addition, Oliver Wilson handed out one SVD and two RPKs.
He appointed Terry Walker, who everyone immediately dubbed Caesar, as the head of the team. The man was thirty-eight, the oldest in the team, but he reacted well to the nickname, immediately correcting the wits that it was not a nickname or nicknames, but a call sign. Eduard and I became his deputies.
As a product for sale on the advice of the natives, we took the glass and glass crafts - mirrors, glassware, glass beads (in case we buy our own Manhattan, ha ha ha), glass pendants, which decorate the windows and doors, and so on. The best of the rhinestones and glass bijouterie were put aside in a separate box after being examined by the advisors. They advised them to count them at the same price as the local gold and gemstone jewelry, as the quality of crystal processing and manufacturing of the jewelry itself was within the reach of the few mages who specialized in the field of jewelry. Kesta, the same magician who had dismantled the Tin Man for parts, showed off her gold and silver jewelry with rubies. It was of a poor quality, on the level of a bad apprentice to a good jeweler on Earth.
Silver was the most common piece of jewelry, gold only used for important transactions, and only for important clients. Who would want to carry several tens of kilos of metal when you can reduce the weight by an order of magnitude?
Kesta honestly warned us that no goods or money in the closest major city would accumulate for the cargo we took with us. Only ten large mirrors could buy half the barony, a not poor barony, by the way. There was a priestly feud nearby, but they told us not to go there. Too greedy and poor, spending taxes on decorating the main temple and churches in the villages, squeezing all the juice out of the peasants and artisans on their land, not shying away from plucking feathers from their neighbors, those who are weaker.
A little farther away was a small duchy, where there was money and goods for our goods, but Caesar did not intend to go that far. There was no telling how the locals would receive us. And magic had already shown us what it could do. So my grandmother said two words about whether we would have a wunderwaffle, in the form of a firearm, a wunderwaffle.
The send-off was sad. I wanted to say that there was tension in the air and crackling of invisible discharges of misgivings. My, um... probably wives, held my hands until they loaded me into the car, and then simultaneously kissed my cheeks and reluctantly let me go.
- We won't be long," - I assured them, - "I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
If I'd known I was lying now, I... probably would have gone. You can't run away from fate anyway.
===End Chapter===