Herald of Steel

The next week went in a blurry whirlwind for Alexander as he had to juggle two very important thing at the same time.

The first thing was getting prepared to leave for Zanzan.

To do this, he stocked up on all the food he could get his hands on, both by swindling it off Ptolomy and by buying it in bulk from him and Pasha Farzah.

He also got Pasha Farzah to promise him to send thirty thousand tonnes of grain over the next year at a rate of three ropals per kilogram.

This was almost a rip-off for Alexander as the market price for grain was two ropals per kilogram before the drought, but what could he do?

He was desperate and also he had to pay the transportation fee as the journey by sea from Matrak to Zanzan was close to five thousand kilometers.

'A fifty percent markup huh? I will remember to return the favor!' Alexander acidly thought in his heart though it was unknown how much of it he meant as he understood that the price he quoted was before the drought, while the current price of grain was virtually infinite.

People who could get their hands hoarded it and the people who couldn't get it were not able to acquire it no matter how much money they offered.

After all, one cannot eat gold.

Over the past few days, after their initial frosty start, Alexander and Pasha Farzah had surprisingly warmed up to each other, growing closer, and even signing a few secret treaties.

This was because Alexander did not sense any outward hostility from Pasha Farzah in the later days, while the latter was impressed by the former's quick-wittedness and the ability to instantly get a grasp of things.

And because their territories were so apart as to make border conflict an impossibility, in addition to the fact that they had a common enemy who was much bigger and stronger, such close ties certainly made sense.

'I'm glad he is not a slimeball,' Alexander remarked about Pasha Farzah.

He did not fear schemers as every noble was a schemer to some extent.

What he did fear were wishy-washy flippant people who changed sides regularly.

Those types of people thought themselves to be extra smart and tried to have a foot on both boats thinking that this will guarantee them a win either way.

And most of the time these over-smart people would fail in their objectives because most of the time they did things half-assed.

Alexander feared Pasha Farzah might have been those kinds of people, where he would try to play off Alexander, Ptolomy, Cartagena, and Tibias against each other and then somehow try to eke out an advantage.

And hence he was glad to see the silver-haired man was nothing like that and his ambitions were really grounded to reality.

Thought this was not because the pasha was unambitious, but because he felt juggling the four powers together had too great a chance to backfire.

After all, they were not mindless puppets of his, but free people with their own individual minds. thoughts, desires, and aspirations.

There was little guarantee that they would all dance to his exact tune.

The secret treaty between the pasha and Alexander discussed economic, political, and defense matters.

Economically it was a one-sided exchange as Alexander had little of value to offer the Pasha at the moment.

So, he spent everything he had to buy as much stuff as he could- horses, cattle, mules, and various other livestock animals like chickens, goats, sheep, etc, clothes and bundles of linen, slaves of all types, females, males, skilled, unskilled, etc, various merchant ships to carry his goods, few types of ores, good timber, stone, and so many other things.

The exhaustive list had been made by Theocles and Cambyses over a period of three days as they were told by Alexander to assume that Zanzan would have nothing.

Thus in a single day, the pasha had earned more than five hundred million ropals, about the annual income of his territory, leaving the man grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the day.

But whereas trade was just a one-sided affair, on the side of the defense, it was a much more even exchange.

Alexander learned of the various tactics and military traditions of Adhania, how they liked to organize their army, their preferred tactics, their way of calling up people to form an army, etc, while the old pasha felt his eyes opened as Alexander pointed out how he defeated the phalanx formation by exploiting its weakness, how he placed his captains at the back of the line on horseback to give them better visibility and situational awareness, and how his medical tent at the back helped drastically reduce casualties.

However, the thing the pasha was most impressed by was the Thomas Splint which Alexander showed while he was introducing the pasha to Laykash as the man who killed Kefka.

The pasha's flat territory up north was the dream paradise for cavalrymen and he naturally employed large numbers of heavy cavalry,

Thus he was very excited by the prospect of how Alexander's invention would surely save many lives who usually died of leg-related injuries.

But the most important of these matters they discussed was related to politics, where the two men swore to oppose Amenhearaft while also limiting Ptolomy's influence, preventing him from seeking third-party support.

And perhaps the most important secret of the secret treaty was how the pasha had asked Alexander to open some temples of Gaia in his territory, in an effort to unshackle his populace from the iron grip the royal family had on them.

Of course, there was no way Ptolomy could tolerate the unsanctioned practices of another religion in another territory.

So the two men prudently decided to hide the temples, understanding that such things would need years, if not decades to show their result.

For the time being, the two men were content to just figure out the basic framework of their alliance and decided to add on more things later, depending on how well the trust between them developed.

So the deal was reached that Pasha Farzah would use his significant influence within the nobility circle to help Alexander gain recognition with his peers, assist Alexander in making treaties with third parties, and in general, take Alexander's side in the event of a conflict with any other third party.

In exchange, Alexander would do the same to the best of his abilities for Pasha Farzah as well, while also training some of the pasha's men on his clinic's medical techniques and the most important thing of all, sending some priests and missionaries secretly to Matrak to spread the good word of Gaia.

Alexander naturally did not spend all his time just in conference with the pasha.

He first bought two thousand personal slaves from the slave traders in the city, intending to use them to start some businesses he had in mind.

He also bought a huge amount of slaves, about twenty thousand of them from Ptolomy, with most of them being former soldiers which he captured the other day.

He did this because Camius told him that these prisoners were mostly conscripts levied forcefully from Zanzan and so Alexander felt that they should return to Zanzan with him.

Of course, he had done this not purely out of altruism, but also because he hoped doing this will boost his popularity with the people of Zanzan when he became their lord.

And sensing this, Ptolomy decided to exact a small bit of revenge on Alexander as he demanded a price tag of eight thousand (8,000) ropals per slave from Alexander, which was similar to daylight robbery as unskilled slaves like them were typically traded around at three thousand (3,000) to four thousand ropals (4,000).

Alexander had little choice but to accept this, which he comforted himself by telling, 'Welp, after swindling off so much from him, I guess it's only natural that it would happen to me,'

Alexander also settled the payments of the soldiers who won him the war.

He gave each of the ten thousand mercenaries and the Cantagenan soldiers a thousand ropals (1,000), the five thousand Cantagenan slaves and servants that fought were each given five hundred ropals (500), and the native Adhanians three hundred ropals each (300).

The captains and the various officers were given large bonuses too, with captains getting two thousand ropals (2,000), stratos getting five thousand (5,000) ropals and legenus (ten thousand men leader), which were the mercenary leaders got twenty thousand ropals (20,000) each.

The blacksmiths, carpenters, and other artisans were paid another few million for their service and for the supplies they provided.

All in all, Alexander had spent around forty million roplas in this war and pocketed the rest, earning a total of hundred and ten million, sixty million from the war funds, and another fifty million that he had outright stolen.

He had also gotten a cut out of the ten billion ropals he helped Ptolomy steal and then there was the loot he got from sacking the inner city.

Thus in total, in just about a month, Alexander had gone from a pauper slave with nothing to his name to being worth around a billion ropals!

An astounding amount and an astonishing fairy tale!