Herald of Steel

Despite all their impediment, the caravan was indeed able to make it to Zanzan before Alexander reached the city, reaching it on the evening of the next day.

Although even this favorable traversal did not spare the son from the usual earful by his father.

"Bah! I told you the pasha would be able to cover the remaining distance in a day at most! The road here is very good! We barely got a decent spot."

"We could have gotten much better ones if you had not slept with that cheap whore and made us so late!"

The old man incessantly grumbled about his son sharing the bed with that local maid, while the son put these complaints through one ear and discarded them the other.

Currently, it was the dawn of the day after they had reached Zanzan and he was too busy setting up their makeshift wine stall near one of Zanzan's main gates to care.

So he instead focused on serving the customers that were starting to gather.

The entire place was already bustling with a sea of men, women, and children dressed in their most colorful attires.

And their numbers were only swelling with every passing second as more and more of them flooded the place.

The day was declared a public holiday and everyone in the city was invited to the city's western gates to witness the victorious parade of their triumphant lord's return.

And although most did not know what this exactly meant, starved out of any kind of decent entertainment for most of the year, this was enough for every able bodied citizen to come and have a look.

"The sun is not even up yet there are so many people! Feels like the entire city is here."

And seeing the density of the crowd, Niloy could not help but mutter so in astonishment.

"That is only natural, brother. You should have been earlier."

The man's light mumble was instantly picked up by his younger brother, who had decided to come and help them out at the stall.

And it was from him that Niloy got to know,

"Lady Cambyses has been preparing this for months. The shop where Kalid works got one of those contracts. And we were even told about it in our school."

"The entire city had been decorated with festoons, ribbons, and colorful placards and even the city guards went door to door inviting everyone to come to the gates today."

Hearing the details of such elaborate preparation, Niloy went a bit wide eyed as he easily discerned whatever was being planned for today, it was going to be huge.

So with his curiosity peeked, he lightly smiled, "Look's like it's going to be a busy day! Hopefully, we will have enough drinks to go around."

"There! Look! They are here. They are coming."

It was around the start of the day, when the surroundings became clear and warm that Alexander finally decided to commence his triumph, and the the very first ones to lead his parade were gorgeously decorated horses in red and gold pulling large carts hosting various wooden and paper 3D models and paintings.

These depicted illustrations of Alexander's all victories over Tibias, with multiple carts dedicated to each battle.

Such as his conquest of Thesalie where one of the paintings stared humungous catapults throwing flaming balls into a city that was already burning, creating a dark, smokey background, while in the distance, many Zanzanites, recognizable by their distinct blue attire scaled the heaps of already demolished walls with swords raised high into the air and other heroic poses.

It did not take long for surrounding people to understand what they were being shown.

And the great cheer that erupted from them clearly showed that they loved it!

"I see. This is how the lord captured Thesalie! Awesome!"

"Hey! What are those things shooting fire?"

"....Hmmm… who knows? One of the lord's new weapons?"

"I heard the priests in the Gaia temple describe them! They said it was a gift from the goddess to the Pasha. He can summon a brimstone of fire and death with them!

"By the gods! So what they said was all true? No wonder the Tibians surrendered. There was no way they could have stood up to the lord, hahaha! "

"Yes! Yes! It is all true. My own brother fought in that battle. He described it to me just as shown in the painting."

Such and many more exaggerated stories started to course through the sea of people, the air carrying these waves to all types of ears, with each recipient then adding their own embellishment to the facts.

Until there were no facts, just a pure legend.

Following this painting, there was the artistic depiction of Alexander winning against Lord Ponticus.

That was shown by having the Pasha personally drive his huge lance into the enemy commander's chest and toppling him with his horse under a grey, blue sky

In that painting, neither Alexander nor Lord Ponticus's face was visible but hidden by their respective helmets. since that proved too hard to replicate accurately the raw emotion of the time.

The duo was instead identified by their distinct armor set- the blue and golden of Alexander, contrasting vividly against the red and black of Lord Ponticus, the colors have been chosen specifically to give the victorious Pasha a lighter and morally better look, and Lord Ponticus a darker and more menacing costume.

Alexander's heroic portrait caused many of the ladies, especially the few noble ladies who came here in their carriage to gaze into it longingly and bashfully.

The third painting showed the sacking of the city, and Alexander really did not try to sugarcoat the details or leave out the gory bits here.

He let everything be depicted as mostly what had truly happened there.

Set against a backdrop of burning houses and buildings, the particular portrait featured naked men forcefully taking many screaming and crying women right on the streets of the city, each gaudily dressed in enormous quantities of gold and jewelry, while another group in the back laughed manically holding the decapitated heads of defeated men, those headless corpses donning red armor, thus clearly illustrating their identity.

Besides the actual recounting of the event, this painting was also very symbolic.

The dead men here were the defenders of Thesalie while the expensively dressed women were all the riches they were protecting.

All of which were now the property of Zanzan.

Now, you would think that such a grim painting would elicit disgust in many Zanzanites, and heavy resentment among the Tibians.

In modern times this would have even been an undeniable war crime and scandalous to the extreme.

But that was not at all how the natives of the city saw this.

"Look! That is us! Conquering the Tibians. Hahaha."

"Heh! Those women do not look half bad. Firm tits and good hips. *Tsk*, why didn't I join the army back them? What a missed chance!"

"Yeah, you're right! So much gold! I thought all the Tibians were beggars. *Sigh*."

The gathered crowd only cheered and laughed at the paintings, even feeling a bit rueful that they could not join in those acts.

This mindset came along because they saw these acts as being only natural, the right belonging to any victor of the time.

The idea was somewhat like, 'Since you men failed to protect your women and riches, what right do you have to keep them? Let the heroic men of Zanzan have them. We will take better care of them.'

Many even felt their Adhanian superiority being stoked seeing the men and women of the lesser country being brought under their heel.

This type of thinking might seem absolutely barbaric to any modern people, but that was the line of thought for the time.

This was also the reason why Alexander chose to show them the unedited footage.

Because he knew the public would not only approve but love it.

As for the Tibians, well again, unlike the modern audience, they did not mind that much.

Sure some were bitter as it dug up painful memories, but in general most accepted it as the norm.

Because this was indeed the normal fate of the losers.

And they themselves had done similar things to their enemies.

So they brushed the whole thing with a few shrugs to the shoulder.

And the last painting regarding the capture of Thesalie was Alexander entering the city through the gates of the city on a pure white horse, dressed in golden, ceremonial armor, his handsome chiseled face causing many ladies to blush.

He was surrounded by his entourage of generals and nobles, along with various colorful musicians and barbs, dancing and playing jovial music.

At his feet laid many small heaps of gold, silver, and other precious jewels, as well as the defeated armors and swords of the enemy.

And proceeding these carts, all the other battles were equally as vivid.

There were a few paintings showing Menes's battle of Sissillpond Ridge where the elephants on horseback were skewered and hosting the heads on a pike.

While the battle of Lilybee showed a fierce contest between two evenly matched armies.

Such as the sword wielding legionaries fighting furiously against the Corinthian helmet wearing Tibian phalangites, and the brave crossbowmen shooting at the enormous, grey colored charging elephants.

And at the thick of it all, were the commanders of each side, Alexander in gold, Perseus in blood red.

And lastly, the battle of Kalimat showed Alexander surrounding Perseus and the armored king kneeling.

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