Herald of Steel

The man that had just spoken to Alexander was named Hysper and was among the biggest land owners among the gathered noblemen, controlling nearly 1,000 sq km of personal land- almost equal to Alexander's.

But one would have a hard time discerning the man was so influential just from his name because Tibias did not have a noble tiering system like Adhania.

Instead, all nobility were painted with the same brush- as Nobles.

Of course, in reality, the richer and more powerful noble houses who controlled vast swathes of land wielded a disproportionate amount of power in court, kind of like how a country's finance minister is far more influential than say the sports minister, even though they were both members of the parliament and technically hold the same level of post.

But this arrangement made things very hard for any outsider, for it was impossible to discern how important the person talking to you was.

Sometimes even weak nobles able to raise barely a hundred men talked to Alexander like he could call rain and wind at the wave of his hand.

Alexander would many times be astonished at the level of delusion.

Alexander recognized the Hypser for he had studied the backgrounds of many of the nobles here and thus knew his words could be seen as representative of the whole.

"......" And looking around the room, he indeed felt that was indeed the prevailing mood around.

Most of the nobles wanted to wait and see the result of Alexander's next move.

This to the man himself appeared very foolish, as in his opinion, the faster these nobles submitted to him, the better the deal they were gonna get.

But it seemed the nobles still held out hope.

They did not say it aloud outright, but by their body language, Alexander could read that they still held great expectations for their king, who was viewed as a great commander,

Many believed that he could yet turn things around.

Regarding this, Alexander scoffed but he did not immediately destroy the delusion.

He could have changed many minds if he wanted to right now, by just showing the various papers Lord Ponticus had about the country's affairs and the dire straits it was in, making them understand a miraculous comeback was simply impossible.

Sure it was still possible for Perseus to be able to win or two battles against him, but unless Alexander let some shitty AI take control of him and commit brain dead mistakes one after another, even in the worst case scenario, he would be able to turn the war into a stalemate, locking in his gains and then in the subsequent years eventually grind the Tibian king down.

For the latter simply lacked the necessary men needed to fuel his reconquest.

But though aware of this inevitability, Alexander did not reveal so.

Because once he won some subsequent victories, it would be far easier and cheaper to make these nobles flip then.

So at Hypser's request, Alexander simply replied, "Then I will try to come to some sort of agreement with Perseus. In the meantime, if any one of wants to strike a deal with me, my arm is always open. You will not leave disappointed."

After this, in the following days, Alexander did get a few men who came to him to ask for a deal.

But all of them were quite low along the tiering influence ladder and exclusively shared the characteristic of having lands very near Thesalie.

Meaning unlike the rest of the nobles, they were not so optimistic that the king would be able to penetrate so deep so as to come to rescue them, not when they were so small to begin with.

Regarding these flips, Alexander outwardly was very welcoming and offered quite some favorable terms, even lowering the ransom amount of their captives while internally, he mumbled at the tacit resistance the nobility as a whole displayed towards him.

He had hoped for a far better response but the other sides showed remarkable unity.

It seemed that though they did not show it, most nobles inherently disliked Alexander- for he represented Adhania, their most hated enemy.

Regarding this Alexander would do nothing right now, but wait out and grind these prejudices down, be it using force or benefits.

 But for now, he turned his focus to much more important matters, particularly reports Menes was starting to send.

By now it had become February and winter had been promptly replaced by the much temperate spring, driving away the cruel ice queen and replacing with weather with a much milder ambiance.

The ground quickly started to thaw and the river Diannu had by one became clean of any ice, allowing Alexander to restart his supply runs, while up above, clear skies with the gentle grace of the sun appeared almost every day of the week.

The weather was glorious. 

Which also meant the time to restart their campaign had come.

Thus replacing the generalship of Melodias with Menes to give the latter a chance at glory, Alexander ordered a general advance towards the enemy capital, and within a week, a messenger came to Alexander bearing the news of an imminent battle with Perseus.

Mithriditus ever the resourceful man he was, managed to scrape together in the past five to six months not an insignificant amount of force given the dire limitations, and Perseus had set out to meet Menes out in the field with them, for one last shot at saving his kingdom.

As for the reason why he simply did not stay behind the walls of his capital Parthenigh and just turtle, well one only needed to look at what happened to the fortress city of Thesalie to know how well that strategy worked out.

Hence around mid February, Menes's forward scouts started to deliver scant reports of enemy sightings nearby, and over the week or so, upon multiple sightings, their presence was truly confirmed.

Though the true numbers of the enemy forces yet alluded Menes.

And that was because of the terrain they were currently in.

Wanting to take advantage of his legions' mobility and put the enemy phalangites at a disadvantage, Menes had ordered the army to take a detour along a series of nearby mountain ridges called The Sissilpond Ridge.

This way he hoped to avoid fighting on the flat banks of the Diannu where the enemy would be in his element.

But this also resulted in making his scouting efforts very hard.

The enemy appeared to be scattered enough among the various wooded patches and a thick dense fog hung around there almost till midday every day.

This made it so that although the keen eyed scouting units were indeed able to confirm the identity of the shadow in the fog as being Tibian units, they were unable to get a solid count of their numbers.

This frustrated the general quite, as he repeatedly sent multiple units, even scolding many of his officers, 

"What do you mean you do not know how many enemies are there? How am I supposed to come up with a battle plan without knowing how many men I'm facing?"

"Is it a scouting force?"

"Or has the enemy's main force come up to meet us?"

Facing this fuming general, the officers had little answer, with some mumbling to themselves, 'If you had stuck to the river banks, none of this would have been a problem.

It appeared that Menes's decision did cause some controversy among the ranks.

Of course, all such dissent was kept to themselves, as a high ranking officer quickly sought to calm Menes down, 

"General, although we do not know the enemy's numbers, they should also not know ours. We have detected a lot more units around our camp, trying to poke and prod. They must be as anxious as such."

The man tried to show that both were on an even playing field.

And this worked, as Menes quietened down and curly nodded.

It seemed both sides would have to wait till the very imminent start of the battle, where they would form together to form proper battle lines to really know the numbers they were facing.

This to Menes stung a bit.

And then to add to this slight hitch, the ridge also came with some other disadvantages- particularly denying Menes the full use of his heavy cavalry.

The uneven ground would make mass cavalry charges too dangerous, as the horses might trip and fall.

But all these inconveniences were trumped by Menes's experience of fighting on phalanxes on even grounds.

He had suffered too much on straight head to head confrontations with that formations to want another fight there.

Besides, although the problems he was facing sounded great on paper, Menes knew it was in a pretty good position.

Being informed by Alexander, he learned that Perseus barely had enough men in the whole country to perhaps gather at best 20,000 men.

Whereas he had commanded 29,000 men in the field, with a further garrison of 3,000 men along various cities.

As for the loss of cavalry, well being a true Thesian, Menes, unlike Alexander or the rare Grahtos, wholeheartedly followed the school of thought that- Battles were won by heavy infantry with the calvary being only an auxiliary component.

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