HERALD OF STEEL

“…all you can do is wait and see!”

As the Tibian queen gave her plan regarding the flood, Alexander’s lips visibly pursed in disappointment. He was hoping for a bit more… ‘oomph’ to her answer, not satisfied with just sitting around while the water level rose and rose and his people suffered.

So stepping up until he was side by side with the regal lady, he pressed,

“The flooding in the city is still alright. Water can rise… it can also fall, the things here will remain where they were and the people can manage. But the fields…. and the crops, what about that? Will they be alright?”

“…..” Lady Parthia first crossed her dainty arms around her still revealed chest, turning to give Alexander a good look, and thinking to herself, ‘Why are you asking me this? Do I look like a peasant?’

The noble queen obviously had no idea of the answer- how was an aristocrat like her to know how many days wheat stalks would last underwater or how to rescue the crop?

She might have dealt with flooding before but such ‘minor details’ were not within her purview.

In fact, given the extremely low status peasants had in society, it would have been almost insulting if Lady Parthia bothered to remember even a single fact of that base craft.

‘Hmph… just because he is a peasant, thinks I am one too!’ Hence the prideful queen sounded almost offended, even silently cursing Alexander and sending him a concealed, disdainful look.

However, the look was so quick and Alexander was so distracted by the unfolding disaster that he failed to catch the meaning of the look. He only thought Lady Parthia was blaming him for asking a very difficult question.

While the lady, remembering she was technically talking to her superior, also did not outwardly rebuke him but tactfully suggested,

“Hmmm…. I am hesitant to say anything for sure… but perhaps my lord should pose this question to the surrounding farmers and nobles here. This is surely not the first time a flood has occurred around these parts. So if anyone should know how to rescue the crops, it should be them.”

“…” And Alexander slightly paused upon hearing this, producing a thoughtful expression.

Something that surprised Lady Parthia, as she thought the man would be over the moon at this. At least there was hope.

However the pasha was still clever enough to read between the lines here and after a small while of trying to figure out the true message, pointedly asked,

“After the floods in Tibias… how much crop did your peasants manage to save?”

He noted that if farmers in Tibias could not save their crops, there was not much hope of his own farmers being any better. After all, both were professionals with similar levels of skills.

“Hmmm….. I do not remember the exact amount… but it was not much.” And Lady Parthia, after a bit of hesitant pause frankly answered as such, matching Alexander eye to eye.

She also did not bother coming up with any sort of made up excuse like the lands, soil, or farming methods being different here.

Because she indeed wanted Alexander to understand that such an attempt at rescue was futile. Once the fields got flooded, most of the time, a majority of the crops were lost.

This was just a simple fact of life.

However, she was also a bit afraid that her boss would not like her answer, then she also a bit placatingly added,

“But that was only after three days of straight rain. I do not think this rain will last that long. Look, the downpour is already starting to slow down.”

Indeed, as Lady Parthia pointed, Alexander turned his sight outside the widows to notice that the rainfall that had been relatively heavy even as they started speaking had by now turned into a moderate drizzle, the flood waters underneath only gently rippling around from the hits.

For now, it seemed that the hearty squall had just been that… a one night furious shower.

However, despite the encouraging sight, Alexander himself was still very skeptical of Lady Parthia’s analysis.

One because he figured out she was just trying to please him.

And the far more important- two, because even though the strength of the rain was ‘watering down’, he began to also feel the wind picking up and much more alarmingly, looking up in the overcast sky, spotted a great mass of darker clouds starting to gather in the distance.

Instantly Alexander understood what this meant- the ‘first batch’ of the low pressure, cold air had been used up by now, causing the storm to lose its strength. However, the heavens were quickly preparing for the next batch.

So this was just the ‘reloading’ phase.

“Lull before round two.” As he grimly muttered under his breath, much to Lady Parthia’s confusion.

However even though she turned to give the man a curious glance, asking for the meaning, Alexander did not reveal that he expected the rain to once again get worse around afternoon to evening time.

He was not in the mood.

Hence he quickly changed the topic, posing, “Lady Parthia, how did you deal with the aftermath of the flood?”

“….. Like any other disaster.” Lady Parthia answered a while bit later, thoughtfully elaborating on the list one by one,

“First, we of course held various prayers and rituals to appease the ancestors… asking them to stymie the flood. Then, once the water began to recede, we quickly arranged to have grains and other necessary produce sent from the treasury to the affected areas. To some places, we even sent tents.”

“In the meantime, the roads were also cleared of mud, debris, and wreckage, and then slowly various damaged bridges and temples were repaired, mostly using men from the army or the local garrison.”

“And sometimes, to stop it from happening again, we even ordered new dams or dug new canals, diverting the river.”

“Hmmm.. I see!” As Lady Parthia finished, with a touch of pride in her voice at her own generosity, Alexander also hummed with satisfaction, thinking the answer was mostly as he expected. Indeed, he had seen similar actions during his time as a mercenary, when he came across similarly ravaged lands.

As for the quality of the answers, well they were similarly ‘adequate’… although in his eyes the prayers were little more than a waste of time, and also felt there were a few things missing in the relief package.

For instance, there was a lack of emphasis on medicine and fresh water, which no doubt contributed significantly to secondary deaths from dysentery and other water born diseases even after the water had retreated.

There was also no compensation in place for the affected farmer who had suddenly lost so much, such as a subsidy, tax exemption, or even free/discounted priced seed for the next planting.

Which ultimately forced many of the destitute folks to borrow from nearby loan sharks instead and then possibly endure a whole new different sort of tragedy.

But Alexander did not point these out to Lady Parthia right now, knowing all these were done mostly out of ignorance.

First of all, since germ theory did not exist yet… the concept of sending medicine never even occurred to them.

In fact, that was where all the prayers and rituals came in. People in this time literally believed prayers warded off diseases, so during floods, people prayed much more than normal, hoping to ‘cure’ the folks.

Sometimes, if the flooding was particularly bad, the priests would even hold special praying sessions, chanting various sutras in batches the whole day.

As for compensating the farmers… well again, such a policy probably never crossed their mind. As already mentioned, peasants and farmers were seen as very low class people. So although there might have been a local effort to help these people get back up to their feet, there was never a coherent policy from the nobility as a whole.

There was never that much money lying around to splurge on such charity and more importantly, the ruling elite simply did not care.

Or perhaps possibly worse, they did not even know that they did not care.

People of this time just accepted that lemons happened in life and expected others to rebound all by themselves.

Ahhh the tragedy…

However to be fair, all was not extreme negligence either, as Alexander turned to curiously pose, “Did you always build dams to stop the floods? Wasn’t that expensive!”

“We tried to make do….” Lady Parthia simply answered with a small nod, subtly indicating it might have not been as frequent as Alexander was thinking. After all, building and maintaining such structures were expensive. So only the biggest tributaries were cordoned off.

Other smaller rivers were more often than not channeled off using ditches to irrigate various inland farmlands, thus ‘increasing its capacity’.

“I see…” Alexander got the message, then changed the question, “Then my lady… if the crops here are not able to salvage, what do you suggest I do?”

“Of course, import it from surrounding provinces. The flood appears very localized. So simply have the nearby nobles make up the shortfall. And if even that is not enough…. I believe Philips and Theony will be more than happy to compensate!”

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