Herald of Steel

At the sight of the group performing a collective bow, Ptolomy leaned back on his throne with a small smile before gesturing with his hand, “Haha, get up! Get up! Quick!”

“We are all friends here. No need to stand in ceremony.”

It seemed at least his mannerism and speech had improved.

And he was especially in a good mood upon laying his eyes on the Queen Mother and Hellma, both of whom seemed radiant and well.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” The group got up saying such, and after a few bits of small pleasantries such as him asking Alexander about him and his family, they were excused with Ptolomy saying,

“You must all be tired. Please rest. We have prepared the best Adhan luxuries has to offer to comfort you.”

And as Alexander turned around to leave the throne room after bidding the king goodbye, he very accurately felt most of the gazes of the nobles present in the court fall on him. all of which seemed to contain all sorts of emotions in them.

There were curious gazes sent his way, mainly from many of the young maidens who wanted to see how this ‘young barbarian’ looked, intrigued looks from many of the nobles who could not help but be astonished by the youth of this successful warlord, and the most common of all, disgust and hate, both because Alexander had slaughtered a lot of their kin, and also simply because of plain old racism.

‘The honor of his throne room has been tarnished by the presence of this low-life,’ Many pure-blooded nobles cursed Alexander in their hearts. 𝒃𝙚𝙤𝙫𝒆𝒍．𝙘𝒐𝙢

While Alexander fully aware of such thoughts accepted the looks and then simply shrugged them off like rainwater bouncing off him.

These people could do nothing but stare and cuss.

So he saw them as much as worms as they did him.

Hence instead of minding about those nobles, he focused on the beautiful maid who was escorting him to his room, a voluptuous woman in her early twenties with thick auburn hair similar to the Queen mother.

“I have never seen you here. Are you new?” Alexander made small talk as he made his way to his residence, a luxurious room he had stayed in before.

And along the way, he pointed out that if such an eye-catching woman like her had been present before, Alexander would have certainly noticed.

“Yes. My name is Maya, my lord.”

“I arrived at the capital just three months ago.”

“And now, I have been assigned by His Majesty to be my lord’s exclusive maid.”

“If lord pasha has any requests, please inform me, and I will try to fulfill them to the best of my abilities.”

The beautiful maid had a very stoic, professional tone to her answer and expressed neither joy, nor sorrow, nor excitement at being able to serve Alexander.

“Oh? Any requests? Like those too, hehe,” Alexander sniggered the joke.

But the stolid maid did not seem to catch the tone, only seriously answering, “Yes, of course. I will perform any acts my lord wishes.”

“And if lord Pasha wants me to arrange for more women, I will surely endeavor. Two, three, four, I can get my lord how many you wish.”

“I can even arrange them according to your tastes.”

She spoke quickly, seeming eager to please him.

And the detailed options given to him certainly surprised Alexander.

“You don’t seem like the normal maids here,” He said so as he had not met such kinds of maids during his last visit.

And this got a nod from Maya who informed, “Yes, maids like us are new here.”

“We have been specifically trained to only serve high-ranking peerages like Pashas, and Emirs (adult princes who were brothers and cousins of the king) and exist only to please them.” Her voice was low and servile, adding,

“I heard all our preceding seniors seemed to have suffered an accident.”

“And so we are the only ones of our kind here.”

Maya here had very cleverly managed to use euphemisms to remind Alexander that his soldiers had violated and killed many of the maids in the palace when they had raided it in search of Amenheraft, and as these special maids were quite beautiful compared to the others, they had suffered the most casualties by Alexander’s soldiers.

“Haha,” Alexander could only chuckle hollowly at this accusation as he tried to wipe away the awkwardness by roughly grabbing the soft peaches of the maid from the back to have a taste and then whispering, “I hope you have been trained well. Because I will depend on you to warm my bed every day.”

This kind of brazen action right in open daylight made the inexperienced maid flinch at first, but she quickly composed herself and gave a confident smile,

“Of course my lord, anytime. Would you like to start now?”

The professional girl seemed ready to strip right then and there if Alexander ordered.

But he was only joking with her and so said, “Maybe later. Let me first make rest a bit.”

At this the maid gave a solemn nod of acknowledgment, and as they have finally arrived at Alxx’s designated room, the maid performed her very first duty.

“Oh Your Lordship, there was a message for you from Zanzan. Here please see it,”

She said suddenly as she bought out a small scrolled paper from under her apron and handed it to him.

The presence of this note certainly surprised Alexander.

‘I was thinking of sending a message to Cam after I got here. So why is she sending me one?’ He wondered curiously as undid the knot on the string binding the paper and slowly rolled open the message.

And once he started to read the message written within, the first thing he did was this.

“Fuck!” Alexander swore this curse out aloud.

Because this was the following message, written using the smallest font that was still possible to read,

“Husband, hope you are doing well.”

“After about two weeks you left, Camius got the news that Tibias is planning on attacking us.”

“Menes is currently organizing the army to fight them.”

“Keep us in your prayers.”

Short, succinct, and to the point, the message was highly potent with bombastic news.

And the surprising information it held made Alexander’s heart restless with confusion and unease.

‘Why is Tibias attacking us now?’

‘What about the treaty? Fuck! My 15 million ropals.’ He cried indignantly.

While Cambyses’s report also made Alexander totally confused about Tibias’s intention to launch another war so soon after the brutal 3 years war had just ended.

Alexander was sure the country yearned for some peace.

And it was based on this assumption that he had made that peace offering, pretty confident that it would be enough to bring tranquility to his borders for the time being.

And he had even given them a large lump sum of money upfront to grease the wheel.

So, he was totally fluxed about where he had gone wrong.

Hence he dropped his head down and read and re-read Cambyses’s message in the hope of finding some extra hidden line he had somehow missed which could explain this discrepancy.

But naturally, there was no such explanation.

‘Dammit Cam, how could you leave out the details?’ So Alexander gritted his teeth and chided Cambyses for not giving all the information, as he then tried to douche his burning desire to know until further messages reached him.

But Cambyses had her reasons for omitting such details.

Or reason- singular.

And that was that she also did not know the reason behind the impending attack, or why Tibias had decided to break the treaty.

She, like Alexander, was also one day simply informed of this out of the blue, in her case by Camius, who had come to her office unannounced one afternoon.

This uninvited visit certainly surprised the acting lord of the city, and her heart had skipped a beat thinking it was bad news.

And her instinct proved to be on point that day, as after Camius took a sip of the wine he was served as refreshment, reported, “Some of the merchants I have contacts with inside of Tibias has told me that their king has called a levy.

“And instructed all the peasants to report to their lords as soon as possible.”

“This can only mean one thing.”

“War!”

Camius had a rare instance of solemnity and graveness to his voice, much different from his usual light, frivolous tone he liked to carry himself with as he made the ominous prediction.

“What! Didn’t we just conclude a treaty!” At this, Cambyses slapped her palms against the hard table as she almost stood up from her chair.

She did not, she could accept Camius’s deduction.

There had to be another explanation.

“…” But Camius only gave silence as his response.

It was clear that Tibias had decided to break the treaty

After all a treaty was just a piece of paper.

It had no way of coming to life to enforce anything written on it.

“…” So for a while, the two pair of eyes stared down at each other, with Cambyses giving a hard look at Camius as she waited for him to answer as if trying with her eyes to pressure him into giving an alternative explanation.

But Camius would not budge.

No matter how inconvenient the truth was, it was better than lying to oneself.

After all, once the truth was accepted, one could start to prepare himself for the upcoming challenge.