Chapter 212: Transformation

"You have power over your mind - not outside events, realise this, and you will find strength."

-        Marcus Aurelius,

The villagers stopped their discussion and looked back at their lord on the stage. Their eyes met with the eyes of Antonius, and under the latter's watch the elder of the village stood up, bowing to their lord and proclaiming the final decision of the entire village.

"Your grace! All of us have understood your orders, from today onwards we shall abandon our old ways of living a humble life on the boats and on the plains and go into the workshops and mines serving you and the demesne better. Furthermore, how hard can lives in the mines, construction sites and iron works be? With others paying us, feeding us, and we will not have the need to get our own food from these rocky soils and the filled with pirate seas."

The other villagers of Prōtē cheered and ayed in approval of their elder's words.

"Yes, indeed my lord." Continued a middle aged lady hugging an infant in her warm arms. "We are not those ungrateful twits like those folks on the island of Prínkēpos, we are grateful towards what you have done, we have seen with our own eyes on how things have changed for the better since the first day you arrived on our island. Thus, since you, my lord, has given you so much without asking for anything from us, we must serve you with all of our heart." 

"And we have faith in you, my lord." Another older fisher man chuckled tidying the fish off his net. "Actually speaking, before you came, we are like sea gulls trapped in the dark night without knowing which direction to fly with the sky loomed by the evil beings, you are the one who teared the dark sky apart, removing the evil beings, shining us with light guiding us with a direction… We trust the path you have selected for us, honestly speaking, we ourselves cannot see a better future other than this one you selected for us."

Antonius cannot describe that moment of relief he felt hearing this response from the village elder, with the most difficult part of manpower being solved in his broader building project, he can finally put down some load on his shoulders and carry on with other plans. But still out of curiosity he asked the village elder. "Honourable elder, I thank you and all of  you people with my deepest respect, but what made the whole lot of you to make the decision?"

"O my lord." The elder replied. "I am not sure of your past, but you are indeed the strangest… and undoubtedly the best noble man I have ever seen over my past sixty years of life. I have lived under the rules of many different lordships, under the Basileus in Constantinople, the Emir in Anatolia, and the mayors of the Lombard, none of them are like you." 

Antonius' curiosity is enriched by the old man's words as he sat down there on the edge of the stage interested in how the locals see him. "None of them are like me?"

"Yes, my lord." The elder nodded. "The lords that has ruled over this place, are either campers who stay in their manors for all day long, stabalisers who choose to work with the local land lords to make sure the island is stable, rogues who wants to engulf the wealth of both the land lords and us, or those reformers who came here and try to make a change to the worsening conditions on the island, but the last two would always end in failure."

"Failure?" Antonius lifted his eye brow. 

The elder sighed recounting those memories. "Yes, failure… The rogues may his name be cursed in hell. I remember clearly that since the first day he set foot on the beach of Prōtē, his mind is filled with the idea of embezzling money from us, but he made one fatal mistake, he reached out his claws towards the business of those land lords with out having a clear idea of his own strength, the land lords assembled their wretches and scoundrels, surrounded his manor, stripped him of his cloth and wealth sending him back to Constantinople naked on a boat."

Antonius almost laughed out hearing the last part. "What about the other 'reformist'? What happened to him?" 

"Lord Alexios Palaiologos Tzamplakon, may his name be praised… His one is another story, and his personality kind of resembles you, my lord." The elder wiped the dry tear from the side of his eye socket. "He saw that these islands of Archipelago needs changes for the better, going from door to door asked people what they need, reducing taxes, improving agriculture, encouraging trade. However, when he tried to raise taxation for the rich, the land lords bribed through his personnel guards, surrounded his manor, and also threw him back to Constantinople, this time better at least with his belongings and cloth."

Antonius tilted his head looking at the elder with that similar smirk. "Are you referring to anything?"

"Yes… And no, my lord." 

"Carry on, elder, I welcome all advice from men with experience and knowledge." Antonius jumped down the stage griping the hand of the elder tight. 

"My lord. I can see that you are a man with a superb future, you are definitely going to do some thing remarkable writing your name on the chronicles of history, but there is only one thing I want to tell you… I got shocked, truly shocked, when I saw your good burly boys carrying cutlass and battle axes taking the evil beings as captives bringing their head down to serve justice, but what shocked me even more is that how you did things…"

"… You just recklessly commanded your boys to march into a place totally unknown to you filled with hostiles, with out doing any prior investigations or reconnaissance, that is not how things work,… Just like the two lords I have referred earlier, they have failed because they have no idea who they are, who their enemies are, and the comparison in strength between the two sides."

"Thank you, elder, for your advice." Antonius replied in a confident tone patting the wrinkled hand of the elder. "I really appreciate your advice, but there is another factor that you have ignored, or you have no knowledge about, that is, I know my strength, and I have confidence in them. I am confident that my men has the capabilities to squash even the Venetians in a direct stand off in the Aegean… I have never even seen these land lords as 'threat'. They were not a threat to me in the past, no longer a threat in the present, and will never be a threat in the future against my boys… Have you seen my fleet, honourable elder?" 

The village elder gaped at his lord in awe shaking his head. Truly it is hard for a ordinary village folk who never spent a single day outside this island to imagine what a fleet would be like. The largest ships he had ever seen are those Genoese business convoys passing through these islands. They are like those epipelagic fishes who never swam out of the deep waters to the shallow waters to see how abundant the sun light over there is, how vibrant the creatures over there are, and how fresh the air there can be. 

It seems like the arrest and chopping the heads of the land lords by the sailors and varangian are not a strong enough demonstration of strength to these villagers on the island of Prōtē. Slowly an idea of organising a parade started to form up in Antonius' head.

…

The construction projects started immediately merely two days after the talk between Antonius and the villagers. Abdullah, Anjelo and Orban have already started preparing the resources long before ever since the blue print is drawn. Ships goes in and out of the Prince islands unloading the tools, resources and minerals for the construction on the simple ware house of the island, then being transported to the designated site of the fortress. 

The recruited workers, basically all the men and women on the island counting to around five hundred of them, are organised into different sections and paid with their first month of salary of one silver coin each. A lot of them carefully scrutinized this beautiful minted piece of Roman Stavraton coin, some even biting the coin trying to test the taste of silver for this is very first time for many of them seeing a money that belongs to them in their life.

Antonius and his captains are there too at the foundation ceremony of the fortress, giving the workers another feast before firing the artillery signifying the official starting of the project, which caused another series of gasps among the crowd as it is also the first time they have heard such a blast from a man made weapon that sounds like a rolling thunder.

With this, the massive building project that began the transformation of the Prince Islands began.