Herald of Steel

Melodias did not mean anything when he was discussing Alexander.

It was just some lighthearted banter and a way to bond between colleagues.

After all dissing one’s boss was always a true and tested method to form bonds between workmates.

‘I was just making casual small talk, old man.’ Melodias gave a wry smile as he watched Menicus’s carriage speed away and then decided to forget the insignificant incident.

“Time to test out the legion’s performance against spears,” Melodias murmured his plan aloud as he too quickly got on his carriage and sped off to the barracks.

Alexander, done with his morning work, found that it was already close to noon, and thus asked the meal to be served, which was revealed to be a kind of meat curry with beans, taken with bread.

‘All these people know to do is put everything in a pot and boil it,’ Alexander complained in his heart as he ate his meal, not at all satisfied with its quality, as all the tastes became blended together through this method of cooking.

The thing that Alexander missed most about his last life was a proper bathroom.

But the second thing that he missed was the good food.

‘I should get on with the design of the new kitchen and get Takfiz to start on it,’ Alexander made a mental note and then decided to finish that shop visit he could not yesterday.

After meeting with the old man and the usual small talk, suddenly Tafkiz informed Alexander, “Oh, master, I wanted to tell you earlier and but today at dawn some of the men while working the fields found a mass grave in the field over there,” he pointed to his right.

“Mass grave? Soldiers?” Alexander did not find the discovery too surprising, thinking it might have been the corpses of some rebels or invaders.

“Perhaps. But there were also children,” Takfiz additionally informed.

“Hmm, where are the bodies now?” Alexander’s curiosity was drawn at the mention of children and so soon he was led to a shed that was being filled with skeletons, while next to the shed large, deep proper graves were being dug to soon house them.

The skeletons, in addition to having broken or pierced bones which were likely their cause of death, also had other various marks on them, showing just a trace of the large abuses they must have suffered while they were alive.

And this made Alexander think back on something the fat Pasha Muazz had said to him, ‘I hunt your kind you know’.

“Pasha Muazz used to hunt slaves and the townsfolk for entertainment. And the skeletons are all his and his cronies’ victims,” Alexander said this loudly, letting the fifty or so slaves working around him all clearly hear it.

And then he loudly proclaimed, “This is why the pasha lost the mandate of heaven and lost his land. He is an evil man and the heavens demand justice,”

Alexander said this in such a way because he wanted these slaves to talk and spread the vileness of the previous lord and thus in contrast make him look good.

“That’s right, that’s right. And the heavens have sent the lord to punish this degenerate,” Takfiz then loudly added, nodding his head strongly as he did.

Alexander then quietly told the old man, “Mmm, send three skeletons to the manor later, Takfiz,” thinking up of a new way to use these tortured bones.

And then after dealing with this little distraction, finally, sometime later, Alexander was at last taken to his third shop.

This shop was much further than the other two, about two kilometers from the manor, and a few times larger, the wooden shed having been converted from a secondary servants’ quarters.

The reason for this was because the production process demanded a large space and also because one of the raw materials used was very stinky.

Yes, this was a soap factory and the stinky material was animal fat.

It might sound weird but as a metallurgist, Alexander knew how to make soap.

He knew it very well.

In fact, he knew more about soap than many soap makers knew about the stuff.

This is because soap was a critical ingredient in ore extraction, particularly in the step where the ore is separate from dirt.

This step can, among other methods, use the method known as the froth floatation technique and what this technique did was basically put all the ores and dirt in a giant washing machine, add water and soap to them, and then spin it.

This separated the lighter dirt that floated to the top from the heavy metal ores that sunk in the bottom, which can then be easily collected.

But for this process to properly happen, the use of the correct soap was vital as different types of dirt reacted differently with different soaps.

Sometimes even custom-made soap just for that extraction sites with its unique dirt composition would be used.

So Alexander knew not only how to make soap, but also the mechanism of how soap worked, its individual ingredients, how each of the ingredients worked, and even some of the thermodynamics of the stuff.

And thus, Alexander had decided to start a soap factory using this esoteric knowledge.

The basics of soap making were very simple, use any kind of fat and mix it with a type of alkali while using water as a mixing medium.

When this mixture is heated, the fatty molecules react with the alkali to make soap molecules and glycerin.

And the type of fat used determines the kind of soap one made.

Alexander had decided to make both two types of soaps, an animal-based soap, and a plant-based soap.

The animal-based one used animal fat, mainly lard from pigs, but any large mammals could do.

The plant-based one came from olive oil, though any plant oil was viable.

Alkali was usually gotten from ash.

In fact, alkali is an Arabic word that comes from the word ash.

But in addition to using ash, which contained potash (potassium carbonate, K2CO3) and was extracted by dissolving it in water and boiling it, Alexander had decided to go fancy and use four other alkalis to get a total of five different types of soap.

These other four alkalis were sodium carbonate (Na2CO3 or soda ash), which we got from the mineral-rich streams running through the ore-rich hills of Zanzan, limestone, lye(sodium hydroxide, NaOH), and caustic potash (potassium hydroxide, KOH).

The last two alkalis were derivates extracted from the potash and soda ash using basic high school chemistry.

First, limestone was heated till it decomposed to form calcium oxide, CaO, while the carbon- dioxide flew away.

Next the calcium oxide CaO was mixed with water to make calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2, also known as slacked lime or limewater.

And when this lime (Ca(OH)2) reacted with potash( K2CO3) and soda ash, (Na2CO3) they produced caustic potash (KOH) and lye (NaOH) respectively. 𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝘭.𝘦𝑡

“Master, all these things that the men are doing, what it is?” Takfiz asked curiously, pointing to the men doing all types of various, in his eyes, weird things.

Some were throwing large amounts of limestones into a huge earthen pot and healing for an hour or two.

Then it was being taken out and dumped into separate pots of water by others.

Potash and soda ash were then being added to the desired pots and the water was seen turning from clear to murky.

This was happening due to the formation of the precipitate of calcium carbonate (Ca2CO3), with potassium or sodium hydroxide (KOH and NaOH) dissolving in water.

This waste precipitate was then being strained with a piece of fine cloth and separated, while the water with the product in it was being added to a vat of boiling, either animal or plant oil, and then stirred.

Alexander really did not know of a good way to explain these ‘complex’ reactions to Takfiz and only said, “Making soap.”

‘I have seen soap making, but nothing like this,’ Takfiz said to himself, but outwards only smiled, “As expected of master, even the simple soap you make is using divine knowledge. This old man’s eyes have been opened.”

Alexander ignored the usual bootlicking and moved on to the real topic, wanting to know how his soap-making was going on, “Who did you put in charge? I forgot his name.”

“It’s Haquim, my lord. Here let me lead you to him,” Takfiz quickly trotted ahead to find the man, though the anger and frustration at the soapmaker for not coming to meet the pasha by himself was evident.

‘Wait till I size you,’ Takfiz swore under his breath.

He had informed the man that Alexander would be coming today, and to be prepared to greet him immediately, but it seemed that advice went over the workaholic head.

And so finally, a bit later, he led them to a cleaning a bit away, to meet the man who was personally stirring a huge pot.