Herald of Steel

Chapter 794 Winter Months End The Third Year

Regarding the doubts Alexander had about the intel Lord Theony provided to him, they were quickly erased.

It made no sense because predicting what Alexander would do with it was so hard.

And even if they could, much of the information here was so precious, that the reward would not outweigh the loss.

As for suspecting the veracity of all the information, well fortunately, Alexander had a secondary source to verify many of them- Lord Ponticus's collection.

And for the ones he could find a match, both sides showed the same picture.

So Alexander had reasonable confidence to believe the unverified ones were also true.

And it was from them that Alexander learned some things more precious than nuggets of pure gold.

Such as the fact that the original attack in his city had been orchestrated by the Kaiser Family, a powerful ducal house of Sybarsis, who had paid PR a large lump sum of money as well as supply of various military equipment such as the elephant and catapult, in revenge for Alexander supplying the Margraves with processed iron.

Or that the passage up the Cisran Hills was revealed to PR by a Zanzan defector, though that information was unable to give a definite name, only the condition upon which that traitor had chosen to act- control of the city.

And lastly, Lord Theony revealed the very latest updated version of Tibias's treasury and manpower, as well as the cracks in the court.

It was far, far greater than what was recorded in Lord Ponticus's collection, the situation having deteriorated to such a grave extent in just a month or two.

It was also in those pages that Lord Theony described why he was doing this, how he had been betrayed by the court, and how he became disillusioned with the people running the country.

And this reminded Alexander of the small parchment Lord Theony had attached to the very front of the treasure trove- "I hope my lord will find my contribution of service, no matter how small."

'Heh!' The very explicit way Lord Theony was trying to ingratiate with him was very gratifying to Alexander, and his mood turned excellent as he became aware of the enemy's weak state.

But before celebrating too early, he sent a messenger bird to Lady Miranda, the matriarch of the Margrave Family letting her know of her enemy's moves, though perhaps the revelation was a few years late.

But nevertheless, he felt it was worth warning his ally about, as alongside the bird, he sent a messenger too, laden with gifts as well as a letter containing many details that the small scroll carried by a bird was unable to contain.

As for the revelation of there being dissenters among his rank, ones who wish to harm, well it was really not news to Alexander.

Given that Alexander conquered many of them, of course, there would be dissatisfied voices.

But the scant information provided to him left him little to do other than summoning Camius and Laibak to urge them to keep an eye out.

Also as a side note, he had asked Camius about that Tibian business partner's well being, and it seemed as though his house was looted and his wife 'suffered', they managed to ultimately survive, with few losses of familiar life.

The man was still capable of doing business.

Lord Theony's part in the story ended for the time being with this.

And following so, Alexander was forced to turn his main attention to other more pressing matters.

Firstly, there were the frequent messages Menes was sending him, which detailed the ever increasing cold alongside the good news of new cities falling day after day.

However bolstered by the rapid, unimpeded progress, as well as knowing of PR's weakness, Alexander

hoped to cut off Perseus before he got the chance to raise another army.

So to combat the cold, he thought back on the winter jackets that were piled up in his military warehouses.

Heliptos, the one in charge of the overall logistics even promised him they had enough warm clothes for the entire army.

But when he attempted to cloth his men, the true problem bloomed.

Alexander's logistic chain was too fragile to quickly and properly equip his men so far away.

If Alexander wanted to send his men clothes, he would have to compromise on the food.

And making a huge group of armed to the teeth men go hungry during a winter as cold as this was a very bad idea.

Perhaps even worse than making them go cold.

Then to further add to his troubles, the snowstorms came, unending and unyielding in their might, making all large scale movement basically impossible.

Life itself came to a figurative stop.

'*Sigh*, so close and yet so far,'

Thus Alexander's hope for a third consecutive mild winter was denied, and with that his hope to have Tibias before the new year.

Hence Menes was told to garrison himself in well stocked, fortified cities, while facing the bleak, overcast skies, as well as frequent hailstorms Alexander had little option but to huddle up obediently in his mansion, in the few rooms that had internal heating.

And since all his kids were in rooms very close to each other, even Alexander's fun time with his wives was drastically cut.

Alexander was not big a pervert.

Only when the snow occasionally subsided was Alexander allowed to walk around the painted white landscape around his house, feeling the fresh cold air and enjoying the frankly breathtaking scenery, as well as sometimes even playing snow fighting with the two, sometimes three kids.

As for all the other times, all he could do was entertain himself with the various board games he invented, but even that got boring at last.

So feeling bored out of mind, Alexander at last decided to catch up on the miscellaneous, tedious administrative activities that had backlogged in his six months of absence from Zanzan.

He asked the men to send many of the documents over to Thesalie, a task made significantly easier given the road between the two cities was among the best in the world for its time.

It was also during this campaign that the nobles and military officers leaned through every inch of their body just how nice it was to have a good road.

For despite the enormous quantities of supplies the huge crowd of 80,000 to 100,000 people consumed during the campaign, there was never a single instance of shortage or even a crisis of one.

Alongside those tedious paperwork, many of the procedures being invented by Alexander himself, he then turned his attention to the new lands he personally took.

If one properly recalled, it agreed before the start of the campaign that since Alexander would be bearing the cost of all the war expenses, all the lands around Thesalie belonged to him, while the nobles would be only allowed to take the booty and loot.

Hence he spent some of his time consolidating his hold over these lands, making the previous administrators of the various towns and villages swear loyalty to him, or if they were unwilling or dead, placing his own men there.

In this way, Alexander's personal land expanded by nearly 500 sq km, totaling to more than 1,000 sq km, comparable to Los Angeles city.

Though all the meetings were quite tedious, as Alexander had to meet many nobodys and listen to names of the weird villages they represented, alongside rivers and or forests he had no idea where those existed.

These settlements were generally so small that they were not significant to be even on any official map, and the people in charge of these were so unlearned that neither could they properly point them out.

They referred to many of these remote villages as being on that hill, next to that village.

And all this was with the fact that the suburbs of Thesalie were relatively barren.

Even then it took Alexander quite a bit of digging around to properly identify them, and once done, he had to make note of their particular circumstance, so that he could make accurate plans for their development.

Or if Alexander felt that was too much of a hassle, or the village was too barren and remote to develop economically, he would ask that village chief to provide him with a certain amount of men who would work in the city in his industries for a fixed wage and send some of it back for their families back there.

This type of internal immigration after the conquest of new lands was quite common, as people from the war ravaged, or even just poorer regions from those parts would migrate to the richer, more populous centers of their new overlords, looking for more fertile opportunities.

Hence Alexander's instructions were actually received with much enthusiasm by these small leaders.

And the last thing that Alexander worked on during the winter was spending his time evaluating,?promoting, and rewarding many of his exceptional military officers.

To enable this, Menes and his officers were not allowed to idle away in their quarters, but had to prepare detailed reports of men under them who deserved further advancement up the career ladder.

And once these reports were delivered by special riders, Alexander, and other high ranking officers reviewed them, before deciding on how to reward those men, be it gold, slaves, or promotions.

And the very last memorable thing Alexander did during the winter was meet with the Tibian nobles, to discuss their fate.

Author's note:

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