Herald of Steel

Alexander's job was not finished with just discussing treaties with pasha Farzah and getting his people ready, though just that would have kept him on his feet all day.

No, in addition to those, Alexander had to also devote time to many other things.

He met with the artisans, especially blacksmiths, stone carvers, carpenters, and tanners, where he personally offered them extraordinary salaries to tempt them to join him.

Whereas an artisan typically earned two hundred to two hundred and fifty roplas a month he offered them a fixed salary of five hundred ropals.

And even promised them two and a half hectares of land after ten years of service.

This produced a lot of eager volunteers, thorough there were some that still refused, citing familiar, personal or even religious reasons.

Among them, there was one who had been involved in the making of chainmail for Alexander for whom he found the rejection to be unacceptable.

This project had been kept at the highest level of secrecy by Alexander and the whole thing involved just five people in total and he would be a fool to let one escape.

The individuals involved had been told that this was the secret weapon to be used to defeat the evil rebel and because of suspected spies everywhere they were instructed to not speak a word of it to anyone, not even to their family.

And because of the short labor force, and the labor-intensive nature of the work, coupled with the complete ty of the whole thing, till now, in about a month just four full-sleeved chainmail had been produced, and even then they were of quite poor quality.

A skilled chain maker would mix different-sized rings together to make the whole thing flow smoothly with the body.

For example, they would use large, thick rings on the front to better protect against enemy thrusts, while using smaller, thinner rings that mesh well together on the arms and fingers to make movement easier.

But the blacksmiths and armorers here had not done these at all, instead just using the same sized ring for the whole body, resulting in a much stiffer armor.

Though, in all fairness, it was not fair to criticize them for something they had never made before.

So, even with the shoddy quality, Alexander was pretty pleased with the result as these men had demonstrated it was very much possible to make chainmail with the existing technology.

What he was not pleased by was that one blacksmith's refusal even after Alexander's repeated offer to migrate to Zanzan with him.

And so, in a cruet twist of karmic fate, while the man and his eldest son, along with a few of his apprentices who were busy working in their workshop, a group of 'rebel' spies suddenly got wind of the secret armor being developed by the Ptolomic forces, and to stop its production, raided the workshop late afternoon, killing all inside and burning the whole shop down.

How tragic!

And to make it even more heartbreaking, that blacksmith's entire family got assassinated that very night, the ruthless spies attacking them inside their house as the phantoms somehow managed to infiltrate even the inner ring to carry out their sanguinary plan.

Oh! How even more tragic!

Or at least this was the way Alexander portrayed the events after the orchestration of his macabre plan.

And since this 'attack' was made in the inner city, supposedly the most secure part of the city, against a patriot and his family nonetheless, this sent Alexander flying into fury, as he launched a city-wide combing search for any suspect spies and Amenheraft sympathizers, and managed in two days to catch around a hundred suspected individuals and then got Ptolomy to promptly execute them for the crime of espionage.

In truth, if anyone bothered to look closer, they would have found all the suspects to be either high-level artisans such as guild leaders who had refused Alexander's offer or members of rival gangs who had not submitted to be on Camius's payroll.

This was not just in the heat of the moment plan.

No, Alexander had already taken into account that some of the blacksmiths would not go with him and thus thought of a contingency more than a month ago.

The plan started when he had asked the artisans to move into the inner city and take over the many recently emptied nobles' abodes, even though it did nothing but increase the artisans' commute time to work.

On the surface, the excuse he had given was to provide better security and amenities for the artisans and their families in exchange for their services.

In reality, what this allowed Alexander to do was to easily spy and survey these people, hence always keeping them under surveillance.

He also had hoped that these people would recognize him for the 'generous and benevolent' lord he is and thus choose to move to Zanzan with him.

And for those who didn't...well tough luck.

Alexander had little intention to leave Ptolomy with any significant production capabilities and this was his way of ensuring it.

Thus Alexander had managed to keep his secret armor secret, cripple Ptolomy's industry, while also making the capital of the country, the base of power of his king and a likely rival, into a gold mine of information, all with the help of the king- Ptolomy.

But in all fairness, Ptolomy really could not have been blamed for this.

How was he supposed to know that Alexander was developing a brand, new, revolutionary armor in the backyard and he had one of its makers killed just because the blacksmith had refused to go to Zanzan with him?

In Ptolomy's eyes, for Alexander to kill a perfectly ordinary blacksmith seemed as significant as him killing a fly or a bug, utterly pointless.

No, instead to Ptolomy, the clandestine murder appeared to be a genuine attack by Amenheraft's royalist forces, designed to sow chaos and fear in the city and so when Alexander had handed him a list of suspects on a silver platter, he saw no reason to doubt it.

He even thanked Alexander for taking the time to deal with the city's internal issues even though the former mercenary leader was so busy getting ready to leave.

Speaking of leaving, this exodus proved a bit of a challenge for Alexander's spymaster Camius.

He had spent the last month working tirelessly, almost sixteen hours a day to expand Alexander's reach into the bowels of the city and until now had managed to at least create the skeletal structure of an intelligence network in the capital.

But he naturally could not stay here in Adhan as he had to follow Alexander to Zanzan, which made him a bit muddled on who to choose as his representative here.

He had not had enough time to get to know the various gang leaders well enough and so after much deliberation he had decided to leave the network at the hands of a man called Goruk, who was the leader of one of the biggest gangs in Adhan.

How right or wrong was Camius to choose this almost unknown man?

Only time would tell.

But this was not Camius's only job as he had also been tasked to convince the soldiers to join Alexander and immigrate to Zanzan.

This proved to be a mixed bag, as some were eager, some ambivalent and some outright said no way.

The first party mostly consisted of Alexander die-hards- people like Menes, Camius, Batholomew, etc.

People whose agreement was a no brainer

There was another group that was very eager to join, which was the Cantagenan slaves and servants.

Almost all of them agreed to come with Alexander when he had promised to set them free in exchange for living in his territory and Alexander accepted his first five thousand foreign immigrants.

The next group, those unsure whether to accept the offer made up the majority of the people.

They ranged from men from the various mercenary groups to even Alexander's own group.

The main excuse of these people was mainly that they had family in Thesos and although Alexander offered to bring them here using his own money, many were reluctant to leave their homeland.

Even some of the soldiers from Alexander's own group deserted, and all in all, out of the original ten thousand, Alexander only managed to retain four thousand.

The majority of them have from Menicus's original group of twenty-five hundred, followed by Alexander's and then Melodias's.

The largest percentage that 'deserted' was not from Petricuno as Alexander had predicted, but from Heliptos, who had, at last, decided to stay, but his mercenary group had not.

Heliptos's control over his mercenary group had always been weak and most of them were born and raised true Cantagenans.

So for them to leave their homeland and serve a country they had been at war with for so long was unthinkable.

These people formed the last group, people who didn't even entertain the notion of settling in Adhania, which included Petricuno, the other two mercenaries, and the bulk of Damious's group.

All wanted to reach their motherland and protect it.

But surprisingly, most of the Cantagenans decided to stay.

Alexander would later find out the reason being these men were primarily from Cantagena's sister states and had little love for their big brother, who according to them was overbearing and dictatorial.

'Hmmm, looks like even Cantagena's allies don't like her very much,' Alexander was now more interested to know about this frequently mentioned city-state.