Herald of Steel

In this day and age, a widow living alone in a city with her daughter was a very dangerous prospect.

Especially if it was someone as beautiful as Lady Felicia.

If she was left all alone in the city without any protection, Alexander was sure that thugs and gangs come knocking at her door within days of her moving in, allured by her beauty, as they would visit at various times of the day, wanting to 'chat' and 'check up' on how she was doing and if they could do anything to 'help'.

And they would not even bother to hide the innuendo behind those words.

Facing them, without a strong man, Lady Felicia would find it very hard to get rid of these pests.

As for asking for help, well the most obvious one- calling the guards, would almost never be of any help.

They cared little for these minor inconveniences, and would mostly only act when a crime has actually been committed.

In their eyes, the distress of a widow would not be even seen as trivial.

And sometimes, telling the guards would bring fresh trouble, as the next day, being made aware of the sweet treat available, the widow might find herself being visited by an additional man- the guard! 

And compared to the thugs, he would be a much more terrifying foe to deal with. 

As for the alternate route, asking the neighbors for assistance, well they would almost never be of any help.

In fact, the widow might consider herself lucky if all they did was act as simple innocent bystanders.

Because most of the time, the neighbors would hate widows, especially beautiful ones.

And it would mostly be due to simple jealousy. 

A widow minding her own business might suddenly get a visit from the housewife next door, but instead of coming bearing gifts, the housewife would almost always come to curse her in unspeakable tongues, saying that her husband stole a few glances at her during the day or worse she was trying to seduce him.

At other times, 'helpful' neighbors might pretend to be friendly and introduce her to their male relatives or even themselves.

And refusing them would simply call for more harassment.

From simple things like occupying the front of the door, to loudly singing lewd songs about her, to even stalking her all day and night for days, even weeks on end.

Some would even get physical, throwing rocks at the windows, dumping their trash in front of the house or even bullying her children.

If the widow still did not budge after all of this and continued to resist them, well the man would finally lose his patience, and wait for the chance that would inevitably present itself.

The window would then be attacked.

Following that, even if guards then chose to apprehend the culprit given a crime had been committed, well the damage would have been already done.

And besides, with this one gone, the next one in line would gladly step in to try his luck. 

But perhaps none of this would happen.

Perhaps the widow would face something much worse- being targeted by the gangs!

And if a widow was to face them, most of the time her fate would be sealed.

They would force her into prostitution if she was beautiful enough, where she would be made to entertain who knows how many men, both as customers and the numerous men in the gang.

Or if she was really beautiful, she would be sold into slavery.

Most of those gangs had deep connections with many slave traders after all.

And at that point, her fate would be to be brought by some nobleman as a sex slave, where her fate would be unknown.

If she ended up at the hands of someone like Pasha Muazz, where she might be hunted down as a human animal for other's sport, to say her fate would be tragic would be an understatement, 

Whereas if she ended up at the hands of someone of a neutral or good natured master, she would able to make ends meet without too much bullying.

But by that point, she would have almost no control over her own destiny.

So to survive in a place like that, one either needed a strong man in the house or if one was a single woman, needed to be big and strong, and tough as a nail, in order to make it clear that one wouldn't back down even if it cost you your life.

Lady Felicia could not do that. 

She might be a great seducer, but she was no fighter.

And besides, given her beauty, no amount of fighting prowess might have been enough to deter them, unless she could wield flying swords like those in cultivation novels.

So in Alexander's mind, he could see why she would want to sleep with him and try and obtain more security.

If he was in her shoes, he might have done something similar.

But though such events were common in other cities, Zanzan was an exception.

And the reason had to do with how Alexander came to know about these harassments in the first place.

Alexander knew about these things from two sources.

One was from Mean, who had iterated that her mother was killed by a such a man accidentally when her father was gone from the house for a few months as he was levied to a fight.

It was also because of that experience that she was so spicy and testy, never showing any weakness in her day to day, fearful that she would suffer the same fate as her mother did if she did. 

The second source was from Cambyses, who would inform Alexander of such happenings in Zanzan itself.

There were a lot of widows living in Zanzan, courtesy of the war, and Cambyses's officers would almost regularly report being notified of this kind of harassment.

And though they would try to help as much as they could, the efficacy would be limited.

At first, Alexander would order the guards to try and stop this.

But the policemen could only keep an eye on so many women and only for so long.

The city guards neither had the numbers nor the twenty four surveillance capability.

So the hooligans could simply scuttle back into their snake hole when the patrols came and emerge once the danger passed, going about their business as usual.

So that kind of report continued to fill Cambyses's desk and unable to find a proper solution, she then urged Alexander for a solution.

But even Alexander found it hard to solve, causing the man to rant a bit, 

'Who said people in the ancient times were more straightforward? All I have met are scoundrels and scums.'

Here Alexander was referring to how people in his previous life used to look back nostalgically at the 'good old times' with rose tinted glasses, saying how everything was better back then.

'Back in my day….' was perhaps their most favorite phrase.

 But Alexander, being actually transported to the 'back old days' found just how 'good' and 'old' everything was.

Not only did the lack of technology suck, the people were far from the 'straightforward' nature his elders used to tell him about.

In fact, he personally found many of the people here to be crude and rough.

Compared to that, the one and a half decade of compulsory education in modern times had transformed society into a much more mellow, mannered, and civilized one, one where people, even if artificial, at least pretend to care and help.

But here, most people could 'fuck all' about you

Life was rough and so were the people living it.

Now, of course, there were good natured people.

But most of them lived in villages and rural areas.

The phrase 'honest, hardworking farmers' was still mostly true, though it was doubtful that would be said as a compliment, for it was perhaps why they were trampled on the most, by nobles, by the clergy, and even the hooligans.

But for those living in the cities, Alexander found their wit and cleverness not to be any less cunning than the various scammers and swindlers of modern times.

So dealing with them proved quite challenging for him.

Until finally, losing all his patience at the incessant reports which demanded his attention, Alexander decided to do something brutal.

He at first ordered Cambyses to have the police identify all the hooligans suspected of committing these acts, and then two months later, he led a full scale crackdown on all of them, utilizing the entire police force and even some of the army, arresting almost everyone in one go.

And once every street rat was picked off the streets, came the brutal part.

 Alexander had at random every tenth one executed!

A 10% execution rate.

Yes, it was the same punishment as the Roman decimation.

It was a very cruel order.

But its efficacy could not be doubted.

Because once the remaining ones were told why this was done, these scoundrels suddenly had their spines straightened.

And Cambyses had not received a single such report till then.

A result which made Alexander feel that perhaps the strict laws many of the Asian and Middle Eastern countries had were the reason why they were so safe, compared to Western countries which usually handed out much lighter sentences for the same crime.

Perhaps the mere existence of these harsh laws, with one or two living examples, repelled a hundred would be criminal from committing any crime.