Herald of Steel

732 Tibias Court in Chaos

When Lord Theony informed his prince of Thesalie's demise and urged him to turn back, it was not done out of malice or as a way to in any way to deceive him.

Lord Theony genuinely believed the city was lost, and the only reason he was doing this was because he wanted to save the ten thousand men from certain destruction.

As to how he came to that conclusion, well aside from seeing everything firsthand, the main sign he used was the lack of messenger birds from the city.

And ultimately, his reputation and recount managed to win Philips over, who abandoned his course and chose to return to the capital to deliver this horrific news.

Now in reality, the city had not actually fallen.

So why were there no cries for help like Lord Theony predicted?

Well that had happened mainly because Philips and the others were simply negligent in their jobs.

They had thought that since the ten thousand men were promised to them, they would be here regardless.

They saw no reason to doubt that.

Hence they did not bother telling the capital about their recent fiasco.

Furthermore, a few of the smarter ones even intentionally chose to hide it because they feared they might be abandoned if the royal court came to know about their true state.

But that had the opposite intended consequence as seen now.

The men they might have gotten got turned around and Lapitus would be left none the wiser, waiting for them for five days, when suddenly he would be provided with a golden opportunity to take advantage of the situation and off Petrino and his crowd once and for all.

While in the meantime, upon Philips and Lord Theony's return to the capital, the news they brought naturally caused widespread panic in the court.

"What!"

"How can that be?"

"Fallacy!"

"Did you see it? Did you see the city get taken!"

"No! I don't believe it!"

At first many of the nobles simply refused to believe it, some of the older and hotter heads even going as far as to accuse Lord Theony of lying.

While a few of the ladies in the court even directly fainted.

As for Perseus himself, the king appeared visibly shriveled.

'Ah! Will my dynasty end with me? Leosydas, are you disappointed in me?'

The once brave king who had even withstood the god king Amenheraft in his full fury now appeared to be faltering.

Particularly after Leosydas's death, Perseus suddenly found himself very listless and lacking the will to do anything, which was why he was more than happy to let his son take over much of the day-to-day.

And in that vein, Perseus did not seem to respond to the news with the same energy and gusto as he once might have.

He did not question Lord Theony's rhetoric, for he did not think the man would be foolish enough to lie.

Nor did he believe he would be negligent enough to be misinformed about such an important thing.

But instead he felt like being a dream-like stupor, as if the loss of Thesalie was all an illusion, and instead of panic, Perseus surprisingly felt hollow in his heart.

As if the gravity of the whole thing was yet to dawn on him.

While the king was in a dazed state of delirium, the rest of the court was in total chaos.

Shouts, curses, and surprisingly even a few fistfights broke out at one point, as small instances of infighting occurred between a handful of agitated nobles.

These mostly included men who had gone red-eyed at the loss of the city and attempted to rush at Lord Theony to smack him for lying, while others tried to stop them, resulting in the scuffling.

Thus soon the floors of the court that day were graced with men rolling over them, each trying to strangle the other.

And it took the combined effort of Mithriditus, the crown prince, and even the royal guards to forcefully end this madness.

That day was certainly a 'memorable' one for the Tibian court, if not for all the wrong reasons.

Though fortunately there were no major injuries that day, only some reddened faces and bright stretch marks where the nobles had pressed their fingers against.

But this act did cause the crown prince Philips to blow his head, something few had ever seen the usually level-headed man do, as he shouted at the top of his lungs,

"What are you doing my lords! Have you all gone mad! The enemy is at our doorsteps and here you are squabbling among ourselves?"

"Is this how the nobility of our great nation acts?"

"Get it together! We have our arch-enemy to fight!"

Philips's speech that day would calm the men down, though not for very long, as the court would be in a state of jittering flux for quite some while.

During that time Lord Theony and his entourage would be repeatedly grilled on their account of how the city was lost and their part in it, even though by then they had already said it a million times over.

But still they would be questioned in court, in informal gatherings and even among friends, each time being asked to describe in every tiny detail about everything that happened there and the things they saw, as the people tried to find any faults in their duties.

At the same time the nobles would try to use their own connections to try and verify the news, sending messengers out to see the city for themselves.

And lastly, under Mithriditus, the ten thousand men (10,000) originally recruited as reinforcements were proposed to be augmented with another twenty thousand (20,000) consisting of newly raised levies as well as many of the nobles' own men, who then were intended to be made to march towards Thesalie.

Their goal- either to relieve the city defenders if Thesalie still stood, retake it if conquered and if those were not possible, at least stop Alexander from invading further into their country.

But raising this army had several penalties, as Mithriditus would let the panicking court know.

"My lords, as you know, we have already exhausted a lot of our manpower when we first recruited those intial 20,000 men to reinforce Thesalie."

"We also must not forget the 20,000 we lost during our attack on Zanzan two years ago, or the ten thousand (10,000) additional men we had sent to bolster Thesalie's garrison after that."

"We no longer have those men."

After saying this Mithriditus paused a bit, as he articulated his thoughts while letting others guess what he was about to say.

And a while later, he predictably declared,

"As many of you guessed, the reason why I'm saying this is because this new 20,000 is our limit!"

"Once we get them into the army …. that's it. We will have used up all our available young men. And there will be no more for almost the next two decades!"

"So if they is not enough to stop the enemy.... well cannot raise any more."

Mithriditus repeated that last line, not willing to utter what an Alexandrian victory would mean for all of them.

But everyone there would easily understand the underlying tone, as many of the nobles were seen visibly shaken at the thought.

"Peac … what about a peace deal?" And hence one noble could be heard squeaking this idea, which quickly gained quite a bit of traction.

Even a high-ranking noble like Lord Theony expressed his interest.

After all, given their current predicament, a peace treaty, even a humiliating one would be likely better than what was possibly in store.

For if Alexander chose to annex their country, all of them would be displaced and their lands be divided up among the Adhanians.

That would be the end of them.

But although a peace treaty sounded very lucrative to them, Philips, the crown prince only gave a hollow chuckle hearing so, saying,

"Hehe, even if we want peace, why are we so sure that Zanzan will accept it? Once they have taken Thesalie, they will surely push south, taking all the defenseless land. That is what any army with the slightest brain will do."

"So, I ask you, my lords, how much are you willing to sacrifice to get that peace? How many are you willing to sacrifice to get that peace? Because even if we do get peace, I can tell you one thing, it will certainly not be cheap!"

Here Philips was of course telling the nobles that if they wanted to placate Alexander, they would likely have to give up large swatches of their northern territory, which of course would mean many nobles losing their peerage.

After all, a landless noble was like a wingless bird- dead meat.

"........" And at this, he was met by mostly a wall of silence.

None answered.

But in that same vein, none protested.

It seemed many were willing to make that trade.

They were just not shameless enough to say it out aloud and through their once fellow peers under the bus so openly.

But seeing this, the crown prince knew which direction the winds were blowing.

So he ended by saying this, "Okay, we will send envoys to Zanzna. Let's see what happens next."

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