Herald of Steel

Alexander began by pointing to the papers in his hand and offering, “Although, the conditions written here are pretty simple, but for everyone’s ease, let me read it aloud, and expound on each point.”

“I believe that will make it easier for everybody”

Alexander offered this method not only for its utility purposes but also because some of his council members like Grahtos could not yet read Azhak.

And then finished his opening statement by saying, ．

“If you have questions or objections, or rebuttals, please note them down, and ask after I have finished speaking. But please do not interrupt while I’m speaking.”

With this said, Alexander looked around to see if everyone was on the same page.

And after seeing no one object, Alexander smiled and nodded, “Then let us begin.” as he then pointed to the papers and commenced the discussions.

“Here, right on the top of the paper, you can see it is headlined ‘General Offer’.” Alexander started, explaining, “This means that these demands apply to all of you, whether you choose to join King Ptolomy or not.”

“And right below are these demands written in bold points.”

Alexander then used his index fingers to trace the first of the bullet points which were all shaped like a beautiful flower,

“The number one of these points is obvious- We demand that all of you must become neutral actors in the following conflict between Amenheraft and His Majesty Ptolomy.”

“This means that in the case of a conflict between us and Amenheraft, you must promise to not side with him.”

“Of course, that means we will not force you to side with us either.” Alexander elaborated.

And then moving on the second time, Alexander declared,

“The second point is that you must abolish all trade barriers between Zanzan and her allies with your fiefdom and engage in free trade with us. That means no tariffs or taxes when our goods enter your cities, and no toll for the merchants when they enter the city.”

“And certainly nothing such as a road tax, or other similar extortions.”

Following this Alexander offered, “And of course, we will do the same for you.”

Then came the third point.

“The third point is that you must allow safe passage of our goods through your territory. The merchants must not be attacked or harassed in any way on their way to business, and if they are attacked, you must aid us in every way with the following investigation.”

“And in exchange, we will ensure the same.”

“The fourth point is that all of you must remelt and remake all of your personal coinage and adopt a common currency that is used by us all. This will be done so that merchants will not need to waste enormous amounts of their time making conversions between tens of different currencies.”

“This will make trading between us easier and faster.”

“And we will give you the exact details of the coin later.”

Alexander here was referring to the fact that although the ropal was the most commonly used currency in Adhania, as it was issued by the royal family which was the richest family in Adhania and thus had the most gold to print the most money, but it was not the only kind of currency there was.

No, in fact, there were hundreds of different kinds of other coins in the market, all minted and produced by various nobles, most of them owing silver and gold mines.

And though this gave the nobles the power various economic and political power, it also meant that with this many coins with this many variant values in circulation, many times just calculating the change from a transaction took several times more than the time for the actual purchase.

Alexander had experienced a similar thing in Thesos where each city-state issued its own currency, and he knew very well just how inconvenient it was, causing him to many times avoid going to the market just to dodge that hassle.

He did not want a repeat of that here.

Moving on to his next point, Alexander then loudly stated,

“The fifth point is that you allow us to open both King Ptolomy’s temples and Goddess Gaia’s temples in your territories. And guarantee the protection of these divine houses and its residents- i.e- the priests and priestesses.”

“Rest assured, all of you will be allowed to pray in your solely Ramuh temple with no problem. And your priests and priest trees will be protected just as well as ours.”

“But you will not be allowed to open new temples in our and for that matter in your territory without permission from us.”

Alexander had discussed this very issue with the Pasha Farzah and the others, and it was determined it would be best to let the nobles practice whatever religion they wished.

For now.

As a forceful conversion would only sow the seeds for rebellion.

So for now the strategy was containment, which would be done by restricting the number of temples built.

Alexander then continued saying,

“The sixth and last point is that you will restrict your garrisoned men to 50 men for shordars (barons), 100 men for talukdars (viscounts), and 200 men for Jamiders (Earl). And you are not allowed to send notices to raise levies without our express permission.”

“For we will not allow you to raise armies that could threaten us.”

After this long recitation, Alexander paused to give the nobles some time to digest the six points demand and observed the nobles to be reading and re-reading the bulleted points.

And as one would expect, they were divided into three groups.

Firstly for some, the terms were not as harsh as they had expected and they were quite pleased with it.

They had certainly heard of Alexander’s demands that he had iterated to the nobles during the ransom exchange, and came in here with that mental preparation.

So seeing the absence of a 1% land tax made all of them very glad.

Many even liked the commerce-originated demands of Alexander, viewing it not as Alexander trying to suck them dry and give nothing back, but rather trying to boost trade and income between them.

Something Muazz was very damn cared about, because the fat noble already made enough money to not know what to do with it.

They even liked the particular restriction on the number of garrisons, as it would allow them to save some money.

This thought came about due to them being neutral and in the heart of Alexander’s territory. meaning any attack by Amenheraft’s force would have to be met by Alexander’s forces to secure his perimeter.

So Alexander would have to come to their aid to protect his borders, but Alexander himself could not attack them due to the treaty

It was a win-win in some’s eyes.

Such penny-pinching, money-grabbing thoughts were particularly prevalent among the shordars (Barons) and some talukdars (Viscounts), who were really not that affluent for nobles and were generally a lot more receptive to Alexander’s demand.

The second group was in the middle, with some concerns and some positive thoughts.

Such as some not liking the new religions and others the garrison restriction.

And lastly was the group that was completely against it, with either one or more points that were a non-starter, or they simply refused to bow to Alexander due to ideological reasons.

Alexander gave all three of the groups about ten to fifteen minutes to go through the short points, which he felt was long enough for some of them to have memorized the short points, as he then finally asked,

“Does anyone have any inquiry regarding these points?”

“…..” First, there was blanket silence.

Until one shordar (Baron) spoke up in a slightly quivering tone, “The sixth point….. regarding the garrisons…how will we know you will not attack us after making us weaker with this deal? Can you guarantee it?”

As this was asked, Alexander noticed several heads nod following this, buttressing the concern.

But he casually blew it away with a sneer and snark.

“Heh! Weaker? Why would I need you to be weaker?”

“You are already weak!” He mocked and then said,

“If I had wanted to, I could have attacked you the moment I defeated Djose, and learned of all of your treacheries.”

And then in a hard, commanding booming voice, he shouted,

“So do not dare speak of fears of me breaking the treaty.”

“Because all of you here know better than anybody else what it is to break a treaty.”

“Remember it was you folks who broke the armistice first.”

“I only attacked Jabel because my spies told me that an attack was being planned against my city from there.”

“And once I did and caught the rats,… Voila! Would you look at that!”

“There was Muazz’s son and a high-ranking military Jamider (Earl) there skulking, planning, and plotting.”

Alexander was very forceful in his rhetoric, mixing lies with truths, and coincidences with accidents, until no one knew which was which.

As he then swung his arms forcely and declared,

“And do not bother telling me you had no idea of the attack.”

“Because I will never believe that all 12 of you collectively, with all your spies and relatives had no idea that a 60,000 army was coming to attack me.”

“That was a clear violation of the treaty.

“Where were you then!”

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