Herald of Steel

With the plot about him revealed Alexander wasted no time formulating his own counter plan, one designed to turn the tables on the other side.

And the way he intended to do it was to take advantage of the attack to launch his own attack.

That was why he gave those kinds of orders to Remus and Hemicus.

And since the time on their hand was really short at best a few hours, the men wasted no time in trying to prepare themselves as best as they could.

Hemicus's job was relatively easy, he only had to find two unlucky servants and ask them to take over Alexander's shift from them.

And to this effect, he ordered them, "The lord has called us into his room tonight for some drinks. So you two are to stand guard instead of us."

The stoic gentleman had no problem in claiming that Alexander swung both ways, something that the young Pasha would have greatly objected to if he was there, as the lord certainly would never spend the night with his men like that.

However the veracity of any such claim was moot here, as it was only a pretext to get the two slave servants to agree, who would likely die anyway when the assailants attacked, taking this 'secret' with him.

Something that the two male slaves were naturally completely oblivious to and so instead jumped at the chance with great alacrity.

They had no problem understanding what Hemicus was really saying as such relationships between a lord and his retainers were actually quite common, with the only condition in such an engagement being that they did not outright flaunt it, but kept it a secret as best as they could.

Kind of like an open secret.

Hence being familiar with such events and unable to sense any foul play, the two slaves quickly jumped at the opportunity, before turning especially happy when Hemicus's hand produced a shiny glitter, "Here is 5 ropal as an advance. And you will get 5 more at the end of your shift."

The promise of rumination was enough to spend the two men on the moon.

For these slaves, who usually received little to no wages, this gold might as well as the entirety of El Dorado.

They knew that it took a farmer two days to earn this amount of gold.

And now they were being offered the same amount just to stand in front of a door for only one night. And not even a full one night at that.

They would be fools not to accept.

Thus as night dawned, the two men took their at the door after supper, donned in the iconic full fledged blue legionary armor.

It was a gift from Alexander, who felt slightly bad at using them as bait, and thus gave them the whole kit- a linen thorax, covered with chainmail, and topped off with a bronze cuirass.

Along with the usual helmet, shield, and sword, all working to give them the best chance at surviving the ambush.

And when fully garbed in the gear, they looked undifferentiable from Alexander's personal guards even when observed up close, forget when looking at them from far at night.

The ambushers would absolutely have no way of seeing through this unless they had a prophet with them.

And presuming that they didn't have such a person, they would also not know that in Alexander's room laid in wait ten fully armed men just for them, all of whom had entered it right in front of the two slaves without raising the slightest suspicion.

The two comrades had only given themselves a knowing smirk seeing these tall, muscular men fully clad in armor enter the room, before one chuckled to another with the barest audible whisper, "Hehehe, the young lord is too young for this don't you think?"

Both were astounded by the fact that it was an astounding 'ten' men who were invited to this party.

This was the first time seeing something like this for anyone.

Because up until now, the two slaves had at best seen three men enter a room simultaneously for such activities.

Thus towards his partner's innocuous wag, the other man giggled, "I wonder who will be on the top and who on the bottom?"

This phrase referred to the fact that usually in such male on male union, the custom was for the one with higher status and authority to take the one with a lower status.

While the vice versa was seen as very abhorrent and furiously frowned upon. Even to the point it was seen as worse than even licking one's slave's muddy, dust ridden feet.

So a lord becoming the lower of the two during the union was almost unthinkable.

However given there were ten of them and one of Alexander, this man was wondering how the pasha, who was shorter and less bulky than some of the men was going to cope.

After all, no human could ever hope to cope with so many men at once.

So they assumed that Alexander was sure to get exhausted and 'expose his flanks'.

And the thought of this happening appeared to excite the first man, who could not help but vulgarly chuckle, then suggest, "Hehehe, let's keep our ears sharp. We will surely get to hear some sweet moans soon. Oh! I cannot wait to hear the sounds that will come out of there. If only….!"

The man suddenly trailed off, eagerly licking his lips, and swallowing the rest of what he wanted to say, which was- 'if only they would let me join them'.

If it was not obvious enough, the man too liked other men and dreamed day and night to be able to join in this intimate act with other men, especially when they were men as handsome and dashing as those in Alexander's guards unit- with abs looking as if they were chiseled out of stone and muscles carved out of mountains by the gods themselves.

These men were at the peak of their lives, athletics of the highest caliber, each a model of the perfect male physic.

Thus the slave covertly lusted after them.

While knowing his proclivities, his friend only rolled his eyes at these unrealistic fantasies.

The man had a better chance of becoming a noble than being invited inside that door.

Hence he lightly scoffed to break the man out of his delusion, "Stand straight and keep it in your pants, you fool. Or you are gonna get both of us killed!" as he quickly took the attention position himself.

In the second slave's mind, this was going to be a long night.

While Hemicus and his group accomplished his tasks relatively quickly with ease, and were only waiting for the other party to move, Remus's job proved to be far more involved.

First, he had to reinforce the already existing lines, such as those in the front lines, those guarding the Royal Harbor, and even the units that oversaw the various escape tunnels the Margraves had out of the mansion, a knowledge gained by Alexander courtesy of Lady Miranda.

Then he had to form new teams with brand new objectives, such as the ones that would be responsible for entering and taking over the mansion once the attempt on Alexander was made, the ones that would secure the outer perimeter and the unit with the biggest task of all, the one that would dash into the Great Harbor and burn all the ships to the ground… or in this case the sea.

And Remus had to do this all within just a few hours, because he only got the message around late afternoon, while Lord Parker was scheduled to strike sometime after dinner.

Hence the sheer time crunch and the huge amount of work that needed to be done in the meantime made the young, relatively inexperienced general suddenly feel like he was out of his depth and drowning.

And his only relief was that the officers under him were very competent and thus made up for Remus's lack of know how in commanding such a large force.

These veterans quickly got to work as soon as they were debriefed on the recent development and began to perform just as was expected of them.

So they helped to iron out the various small details all by themselves, while also doing some things on their own, such as bringing forth the dinner time as otherwise the soldiers would not have enough time to eat and prepare for the attack.

While others, particularly those chosen to go on the raid were given an early order to sleep, having gotten their meal from the mansion's kitchen, the one that was originally cooked for the Margraves family.

The meal was half seized, half snatched under a mixture of threat and coercion by the men from the cooks,

Something that was of course sanctioned by Alexander, an act that was later vehemently protested by Lord Nolan during the supper, who appeared incensed.

The spicy old man blamed Alexander for being unable to control his men and made another strong demand to have them removed from the premises.

And if it had been prior to Alexander catching the old man swindling him, he might have actually paid his two cents to this.

But now?

He put it through one ear and through it out the other, only symbolically promising that this was a one time thing and that he would see to it that the men responsible were properly punished.

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