Herald of Steel

“So this is where all the cost came from,” Alexander said weakly as he added up the number.

He calculated that one-time equipment cost came at 125 ropals, which though large was nothing compared to the monthly running cost.

According to Grahtos, vets and grooming came at 10 ropals a month while the biggest expense was food, producing a bill of at least 15 ropals a day, or an astronomical 450 ropals a month.

Thus it gave Alexander an annual spending of roughly 6000 ropals per horse, which was more than three times as much as employing a peasant!

So for Alexander, the cost of owning five hundred horses (500) came to two hundred and fifty thousand ropals (250,000) a month or 3 million ropals a year! ．𝚌ｏ𝚖

And this was on top of buying the animal which was an average of ten thousand (10,000) ropals per beast if one wanted to get a very well-trained horse, like the ones Sycarians used.

And even if Alexander wanted to breed one from birth, he would still need to hire trainers to train the foals, because war horses were different from regular horses.

Regular horses were prioritized for their strength and high stamina, whereas war horses were prized for their burst of power.

Horses with powerful hindquarters, able to easily coil and spring to a stop, spin, turn, or sprint forward quickly were the desirable breed and this was not available in all horse breeds, making them much rarer than regular riding horses.

And that was only the physical requirements.

As a concise list, a war horse needed to have the following qualities:

a) could be well-trained to work in concert with their rider

b) not panic in the noise and confusion of melee combat

c) actually be trained to attack

d) actually trust its rider enough that it will go into combat in the first place

Starting with the last point, much training was required to overcome a horse’s natural instinct to flee from noise, the smell of blood, and the confusion of combat.

Horses had to be taught to face the weaponry of the enemy and not panic even if it was struck with one, learn to accept any sudden or unusual movements of their riders when utilizing a weapon or avoiding one, and be conditioned not to be scared of unknown sights like a giant flaming ball.

Developing the balance and agility for such activities was crucial, and would be usually done by making the horse ride with as much athleticism as possible while carrying a rider as they did.

These warhorses would be further trained to be controlled with limited use of reins, and respond primarily to the rider’s legs and weight.

They would be made to develop a tolerance for the noises of battle and would be made to become accustomed to any necessary tack and protective armor placed upon it, all while learning to balance under a rider who would also be laden with weapons and armor.

In addition, some war horses would be trained for specialized uses.

For example, a horse used in close combat may have been taught, or at least permitted, to kick, strike and even bite enemies, thus becoming weapons in the extended arsenal of the warriors they carried.

Other horses, such as those used for raids or reconnaissance, would be taught to remain quiet at all times, to avoid whinnying to other horses or otherwise betraying their presence.

And all these highly esoteric training procedures would be known only to select breeders and trainers, who would inherit this knowledge from their fathers or teachers on a learning-by-hand basis.

And even after all this, it would only complete the training for individual horses.

Who would be pretty useless in a battle all by itself.

For in battles, horses would be employed in massed groups in a cavalry formation or by pulling chariots, where horses would stand shoulder to shoulder with each other.

This would require the animals to learn to work together with other animals in close quarters under chaotic conditions which necessitated further training.

And it was a difficult training to complete as war horses would be usually male (stallions) and they generally tended to not like each other which they would display by trying to bite or kick one another whenever they got close.

Female horses would be generally much tamer, but stallions were almost always faster, taller, and stronger than their female counterparts and so made for better-fighting animals.

This was why Eupeean knights tend to especially only use stallions, called destriers in battles or tournaments; while for everyday riding he would use a palfrey, and his baggage would be carried on one or two sumpter horses (or packhorses).

And after doing all this, after finally training a horse to not run from battle but stay and fight alongside its other brethren, there was the not-so-small chance of the horse simply dying from illness.

In Alexander’s previous life, horses could live above thirty, but in ancient times, this number was not halved but quartered.

Horses typically lasted 7 to 8 years.

This was because like how a young healthy man might simply die at 30 because of almost an innocuous disease modern humans would just take medicine for, the same was doubtlessly true of horses.

For example, horses would have intestinal worms, lots of them.

These little buggers would be very dangerous and horses would get them by eating worm eggs off the grass or licking them off their coats when they groom each other.

These worms basically chew their way through the tissues or form huge clumps, which was generally not good for any living organism.

And this was present in modern times by regularly issuing medicine to horses so it never got that bad.

Another killer was colic, which referred to certain deadly intestinal issues that could be cured with modern surgery.

And lastly, there was something as mundane as teeth.

Horses’ teeth like humans wore down with age, making them unable to properly chew and hence digest their food, starving them, whereas in modern times there were special feeds for horses called senior feeds.

As Alexander understood all these costs and difficulties, he began to fully appreciate some of the histories of his previous world.

For example, he now understood why chariots came before cavalry.

Because chariots horses did not need much of the individual horse training, which likely developed later.

They also did not need to be stallions, as chariots, being pulled by two or four horses could substitute with females, for speed and power was not the greatest requirement for them

And lastly, it was because the horses could be attached to the chariot much more securely, making controlling them much easier.

And this was ignoring making inventions like the saddle, bridle, and stirrups, and that the general primitive economy with a smaller population made horses simply too precious to be risked in battle and dying.

There was also the fact that breeding horses only for war was much too expensive.

These would be purposely bred to be a bit unruly and hot-tempered so that they would recklessly charge forward at the command of their riders and so they generally could not be used as pack animals for laborious work.

That meant that outside of battle, which there might be one large of per year and last a few hours, war horses generally ate food and did nothing.

And to use cavalry effectively, a small number of horses did not work.

So one could not just bite the bullet and build a small cavalry force.

They needed to be used in large numbers to be effective and so breeding them, training them, and finally learning how to use them in large, orderly formation was very hard.

Humans needed literally thousands of years to learn this, and only then did they transition from chariots to cavalries.

Which Adhania was currently in the midst of doing.

There were some generals who sang the praises of the values of the new calvary system, saying riding atop a horse gave one much more mobility over all kinds of terrains as opposed to the flat terrains required by chariots, greater ability to dodge and run away, and more attacking angles from the higher ground.

All of which were true.

While a few stubborn old-fashioned commanders still held on to the chariot, either due to stubbornness, or military tradition, or simply ignorance.

This second group also claimed that cavalries cost too much for their worth, and it was more trouble than it was worth.

And the first part was certainly true to some extent, more so when one considered that a cavalryman would usually need multiple horses for him.

Usually, the number would be three to four, one for fighting which would not be ridden on or have any burden placed on it, one for riding, and another one or two to carry the servants and all the baggage.

So in the same way, Alexander’s expenses was actually not 3 million ropals a year on the cavalry but around 10 million, which was about the same as his entire legionary’s cost, but one that gave him ten times the men.

And it was because of such expenses that only the super-rich empires could afford a cavalry, and why when Alexander was trying to do this with his tight purse, it was stretching his budget so much.

But it was because of this high proportional cost that Alexander said to himself as he gazed at the armored horse, ‘I need to make them the best cavalry force in the world.”