Herald of Steel

The Zanzan nobles were not the only ones to be pessimistic about Alexander's chances.

Even his allies Pasha Farzah and Ptolomy were skeptical of it, feeling Alexander was needlessly wasting his fighting potential on such fruitless endeavors.

That was also why Pasha Farzah had sent those 5,000 mercenaries,

Not to help Alexander per se.

But their real reason for being was that Pasha Farzah hoped Alexander would use those sellswords to soak up the majority of the damage from the upcoming defeat, and thus preferably manage to preserve his own forces relatively well.

It was also because such widespread negativity was the general consensus that the noble faction under Alexander had no problem signing his contract.

The legal document clearly stated everyone's claim during this campaign and it in great detail divided the percentage of loot that each of the participants would be allocated in case of a successful campaign, while also very clearly laying out the fact that the nobles were to give up any and all land claims if they did not contribute monetarily.

'We are already going to lose so many men. There is no need to lose our money on top of that,' And the nobles signed without any scruples for they had this reasoning.

They thought nothing would come of the campaign and so refused to contribute.

Now, to be fair, not every single noble was like that.

For instance, some of Alexander's close council members did try to contribute.

But people like Menes, Melodias, and others were too poor to give anything of substance to Alexander.

Unlike the generational nobles, they had just gotten their lands, and given the fief was only one and a half years old, these new nobles still regularly borrowed money from Alexander just to keep their day to day operations running.

So even when they expressed their interest in contributing, Alexander simply asked them to first pay back their debts.

Because if he accepted their money, Alexander would be just accepting his own money and then giving them land for free.

It made no sense, just like it made no sense to fill a leaking jar. 

Hence under Alexander's advice, all the council members also signed a similar contract to the nobles, with the additional clause that they would use a part of their loot to also pay back Alexander.

All these legal preparations took Alexander into the new year, and under Alexander's hawkish supervision, the war machine seemed on track this time, ready to be deployed by the first week of April as planned.

The nobles this time no longer dragged their feet and sent the 20,000 levies as soon as the fall harvest ended, so these peasants were already two months into their training, and seemed like they would be all graduating in time.

Alexander also kept the 5,000 mercenaries with him after all, and as he was burning money after them anyway, he had them also take part in teaching some of the green recruits the way of the war.

And this in fact helped keep the levies training on track.

Regarding the road, Diaogosis swore to Alexander that it would certainly be completed by February and that the wide, pristine road would be just 10 kilometers from the doors of Thesalie.

Hearing this of course pleased the young lord, and so even before the road was completed, Alexander by the start of February started to transfer massive quantities of cement, brick, and stone to a huge depot built just inside the border of Jamider (Earl) Tikba, who closely neighbored Tibias, acting as one of the main lookouts.

The idea behind this move was that once the siege started, these materials could be quickly moved to the frontlines within half a day, whereas it would take three to four days if ordered all the way from Zanzan.

Now, many of the nobles as well as all of Alexander's military leaders had asked him about these transfers and their purpose, but Alexander had only mysteriously smiled and simply posed if any of them was smart enough to figure out.

And though many tried, Alexander gave neither a yes nor no answer, leaving them hanging.

It seemed they would know once the time came.

With these building material stocks secured and transferred to the front lines, Alexander then made sure the weapons and equipment for his army were adequate.

And here, there was of course no problem.

Swords, pilla, crossbows, and chainmail were all available in the armory by the droves.

The military engineers had also built 30 of the torsion catapults up until now, but with ranges far exceeding those that Tibias used, going up to 250 meters as opposed to Tibias's 150 meters for the same 20 kilo stone.

And the secret sauce to this success was the rope.

Because the one used to load Alexander's catapult was not made of pure linen like Tibias's.

But it was a composite, possibly the first in the world, made of thin, elastic rubber band threads messed together with linen fibers, thus giving the rope a much stronger 'twist', and letting it shoot farther.

It was one of Alexander's inventions and given this was something truly his and not something he copied or brought from memory, he was very proud of the result.

Though to be clear, this new, better catapult was still not going to be of any use in breaking down Thesalie's walls.

Those were too thick.

But Alexander did not plan to use them for that.

They had a much more nefarious purpose.

And it was because of that Alexander ordered his engineers to continue making as many as they could before the war started. 

In that same vein of helping to win the siege, Alexander also ordered the manufacture of the Roman 'Scorpion'', which proved to be a simple weapon to make given it was just a much bigger bow that shot rally huge darts.

It stood on three legs and was about a meter in height, and worked by having a bolt loaded manually between the string, and then having a cranking mechanism to pull it back.

  This string or rope to be more precise would be of course very thick, much too thick to be pulled by any human.

So once the rope was properly wounded with the help of a manual crank, it would then be at last let go, thus instantly shooting the giant wooden arrow with a thick iron head out and skewering anyone standing in the way.

Very useful for taking out those pesky wall defenders from a good distance away.

By now Alexander had made about of a few hundred of those, all for attacking Thesalie, and every day their numbers increased.

And speaking of shooting arrows, Lady Miranda had also very punctually delivered her 10 million bolts.

That delivery was also quite a sight to behold, as an entire ship was required just to deliver the ammunition, which weighed a total of 5 tons.

When trying to fit the entire order into one ship, its cargo hold, and even its deck, got stacked with one thing and one thing only, bundles and bundles of the sharp, pointy sticks all placed on top of each other as far as physics allowed without them toppling over, like the leaning tower of Pisa.

And as the ship made port, unloading it was actually somewhat dangerous, as no one wanted to be punctured by thousands of cross bolts falling on them.

Along with that ship, the newly remarried lady also delivered a large part of the sword and halberts Alexander had ordered, thus letting him equip his army with the latest and greatest.

And as a side note, she or more specifically Harold who was sent on behalf of her also bought similar quantities of goods from Alexander this year too, but unlike last time, they paid a large amount of it in gold, showing the Margrave's business was going very well.

Harold also left with the promise to complete the rest of the transfer of the 50,000 people before the end of next year, while also informing Alexander that a dozen or so of the newly built navy ship would be available to him by that point too.

It appeared the ship construction was going well.

And this news also meant that even if Alexander failed in this endeavor this time, he would get new types of weapons to try a different route, the route preferred by the nobles.

This fallback plan pleased Alexander to a large extent, as though he was confident, Alexander of course could not say with absolute certainty that he would be able to take Thesalie with his current plan.

So it was always to have a backup.

That was almost all there was to it his preparations.

Now Alexander only needed to wait till April.

With the last major thing he would need to do was when came March.

Because it would be then when everyone would be frantically employed to get the spring planting in for the fall harvest.

And as soon as the farmers were finished seeding the field, they would be made to report to their respective military units as the army would start to gather.

So until then, Alexander could only wait.

And fortunately, Alexander did not need to wait long.

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