Alternately, you could take part in a tournament to get the money you need. If you sell everything you have (including armor and weapons) except your horse you'll have a good bit of cash to work with. The first major barrier is your small wallet. Having a merchant background is probably the easiest for being an effective merchant. This gives you a good amount of storage space. Giving your character 1 or more in Inventory Management is a must. Try to stick to goods with base value>100 if you are buying more than a few.

You should be able to unload it at the next town for at least a little profit. A good rule of thumb, if you find a good at half the base cost, buy it. But how do you know when to buy? Here is a list of the base costs I lifted from 'item_kinds1.txt'. Running trade routes to farm gold is boring, but piles of denars can be made just by checking the goods merchant every time you stop by a town to sell looted weapons and offload prisoners. If you're buying horses solely to carry your gear just go with the cheapest ones, and don't just slaughter the lame ones for their meat. It doesn't matter if they're lame or spirited, saddle or hunter, all increase movement speed by the same amount. The more horses you carry the faster your world map speed is (up to a certain limit, naturally). Horses can't be traded, but are invaluable to a merchant. While regions' supply specialties will not change (Ichamur is always going to be the cheapest place for Salt), the demand characteristics are more fickle (Wercheg may start with the highest price for wine, but that it is unlikely to remain that way throughout the game). Prices change continually, with and without your influence. Yellow labels beside the town names describe what they produce, the buy/sell prices, profit in gold, and profit in percent.

Red arrows indicate the destination of each type of Goods.

Mount and blade warband trade skill