Herald of Steel

Lord Parker would send a messenger the very next morning towards Alexander's lines, who would come bearing a white flag on a luxurious horse, urging the legionnaires that they should surrender or they would have their water supply cut off.

This man, most likely a noble given how well dressed he and his horse were, addressed the men on the walls as such,

"Men from distant lands! Surrender!"

"You have fought well, but my lord is the master of your provisions. He has control over your food. He has control over your water. He has control over your fate. Surrender! There can be no hope for you. Surrender! And all of you will be treated accordingly."

Despite the boisterous words and bold claim, the man was of course rebuked, with the answer being given only in the form of a shot from one of the crossbows that landed accurately just a few paces short of his horse.

He had come here to demand an unconditional surrender from Alexander but this was not acceptable in any way, despite the dire straits they found themselves in.

And the legionaries let the man clearly know that.

Then in retaliation, true to their word, the water tap to the mansion was indeed turned off.

Large stones were quickly rolled over to block the sections leading to the mansion, thus diverting the water to other channels and drying the part up, which was then flooded with seawater to pollute any remaining water.

This was all done under Lord Bernard's supervision, who had his workers dig day and night to create a brand new passage to the underground structure, one that led straight to the sea.

Which was then connected to the existing 'pipes', allowing it to contaminate the existing stock!

Alexander's men could even detect the exact moment this was done, as the color of the water in the wells visibly changed, going from pristine clear to off white and cloudy.

Then it only took a single lick of the new liquid for them to confirm the pollution, as they could only spit out the horrendously salty liquid in absolute disgust.

With Lord Parker having played his trump card, the conflict once again descended into a stalemate.

Because much to his chagrin, Alexander did not surrender 'before the sun goes down' as Lord Bernard had optimistically predicted.

No.

In fact, many suns went down and then came up, and then down again, yet the hopeful Lord Parker received no messenger from the other side bearing the white flag.

The event caused great dissatisfaction in Lord Parker, as the young lord was sick and tired of this boring siege and wanted to be done with it here and now.

He had grown very impatient by the whole affair and longed to grasp his prize, especially when it was so close to his fingertips, to the point it seemed he could just touch it.

Thus the dragging out of this affair made him all the more infuriated.

And feeling as such, Lord Parker mostly lashed out this irritation on Lord Bernard, accusing him of overpromising and under delivering, while the man naturally spent the following days in great anxiety.

He had not been trying to decieve Lord Parker when he had made that claim.

He truly believed that Alexander would not be able to last past maybe one day without water.

Which indeed would have happened under normal circumstances.

It was just that Alexander had found more sources of water that the man still remained unaware of.

Hence Lord Bernard found himself having to spend the following days mostly uttering vows and assurances such as the following, "My lord, that Alexander cannot hold for now long. He is in his last legs. Surely! Believe me, just a few more days and he will come begging," as he tried to placate the irritated ducal lord.

But when Alexander inevitably overcame these days without kneeling, it only worked to discredit Lord Bernard even more and thus fracture the goodwill the two men had for each other even more.

While observing the entire affair from afar, the general of the army Achillas could not help but have a mixed feeling.

Sure, seeing Lord Bernard get bashed and lambasted always felt good. But at the same time, a small part of him could not help but also want this tactic to succeed, so that all this could finally end and they were able to pack up and go home.

And perhaps it was thinking this that Achillas did not go add fuel to the fire, but instead even dropped subtle hints for Lord Parker to exercise patience.

Had it not been for that, Lord Bernard might have had to truly fear for his life.

But with this, the man was given a precious lifeline, while both Lord Parker and Alexander settled in for the long haul, each side starting to hedge that it would be the other one to snap first.

Either Alexander would run out of water, or Lord Parker would run out of patience.

Hence the following days went mostly without seeing much outward action from either side.

However, that did not mean there was no action going on inside the camps.

On the contrary, both sides could be said to be a flurry of activities.

The events concerning Lord Parker have already been discussed- blaming Lord Bernard followed a lot of waiting.

While Alexander's side could be said to be juggling a lot more things.

His men for instance, found themselves acquiring their drinking water from three sources- the stored stockpiles, the underground reserves, and desalinated seawater.

Among these three, the discovered reserves proved to be a mixed blessing.

Some of them were extremely swallow and quite dirty, bubbling up mud and grime after only the first few pumps.

It seemed in those instances, only the top thin layer was clean.

While other sources proved much more fruitful, providing deep clean refreshing water, reassuring the fighting men very much.

Although even those sources had their limits.

Because the fundamental fact was that the dry winter season meant such water stocks were by nature in scarce supply.

Hence Alexander's fears regarding the accessibility of such water had come indeed true, or at the very least half true.

While the third method, i.e.- Remus's desalination idea proved to be a bust at the end of the day.

The physics there was solid, don't get me wrong, and Alexander did set up huge cooking pots over enormous fires to get the now salinated 'well water' well and truly bubbling, using timber from the various abandoned sections of the house to fuel it.

And to collect all the produced vapor, large clothes were draped over the mouth of these pots, soaking them wet in the process, which would then be wrung out to get 'clean' drinking water.

Of course, it did not take a genius to figure out just how 'clean and desirable' such water would be.

Even if chemically pure, water extracted in this way had a strong 'cloth' aftertaste to it that even the draft animals found distasteful, forget the humans.

But if that was the only case, then perhaps Alexander would have continued despite the drink's many undesirable traits.

After all, when the alternative was dying out of thirst, a little 'bad tasting' water was hardly the deal breaker.

However, even when boiling enormous quantities of water for days, Alexander was only able to get a small bucket of clean water from each pot, as the simple matter of fact was that the primitive process being used here was just too inefficient.

Alexander guessed that he needed to scale the entire thing up many times over to make it viable.

Just like they did in modern desalination plants, with much greater volume, much greater automation, and certainly much better condensation techniques.

Hence after a few days, Alexander abandoned this idea and instead asked the men to start collecting all the snow around them and melting that down to get clean drinking water.

This proved to be a much better source, especially given snowstorms and blizzards became much more commonplace as the year entered its last month- December.

The weather tended to enter its most chilly extreme during this month here.

And this usually painful time now proved to be a great boon to the soldiers who were able to easily collect heaps and heaps of the stuff, as it would pile all over the place, to the point they had to use not just buckets, but enormous wagons to collect it.

Thus over the following days, this task was divided as such that each squad (10 men) would usually have a dedicated team of two to three people shoveling the snow onto a cart pulled by their mule, which could then be melted down back at their tent, strained and filtered to remove any grime and dirt, and then mixed with a few drops of vinegar to give it a tangy taste.

Then it would be bottoms up.

The warm water actually tasted quite nice in the freezing weather, and this novel way of getting water also meant the men were idling, thus giving them something to take their minds off the grim situation, as they were able to joke and chat to pass the time.