Herald of Steel

Chapter 933 Returning to Zanzan

?It was already approaching November by the time Alexander was finally able to finish tying up all the loose ends at the capital and start his journey back. 𝘳.𝑐ℴ

He had wished to start far sooner, but new developments arose which required much of his attention, costing him a month more than he had anticipated.

The primary one eating up his time was of course the retrial of all those nobles.

With Philips’s support, Alexander was also able to gain Lord Theony’s support in this endeavor and when all three were in consort, the other nobles had no teeth to bite with to challenge Alexander’s rule.

Hence the heads of these noble houses were executed by hanging for cowardice in battle, and the favorable access their family had to Alexander’s unique goods was suspected for three years, as Alexander finally got the chance to make an example of the consequence of desertion in the face of danger.

Aside from this Alexander also worked out some of the details on how Philips and Lord Theony should govern Tibias, as well as giving them some new infrastructure projects, like building nearby roads and digging new irrigation channels.

However, Alexander was intentionally sparse on the number of these projects here, since he already had his hands full with others.

His cement supply could only keep up with so much so he planned to open new plants in Thesalie before pushing these latest large projects.

And lastly, Alexander dealt with Lord Theony’s succession crisis, with the result being, long story short, Theony being reinstated as his heir.

Those meetings had been particularly tedious for Alexander, but at last, Alexander was able to make the father and son makeup.

Even if at least outwardly.

However the same could not be said with Lord Theony and Philips’s relationship which was as frosty as the temperature outside- i.e.- close to freezing.

The former still blamed the latter for his favorite son’s death even though they were on completely the opposite side of the battlefield.

But with Perseus not in the picture, Philips was the next best candidate for Lord Theony to meet out his anger as the distraught father was able to let go of his dead son yet.

And Alexander honestly did not know how to feel about that.

On one hand, he did not want to see these people get along too well as it would undermine his own rule.

But on the other hand, he also did not want them to be at each other’s throats constantly since that would simply make ruling the lands harder.

So Alexander tried his best to urge Lord Theony to not do anything rash and let it go, saying this was the unfortunate reality of war.

How well that worked to convince the man still remained to be seen.

Alexander’s personal entourage for the journey back consisted of his two girls, one of Lord Theony’s granddaughters who was chosen to be Cambyses’s handmaidens, Lady Parthia, Philips’s younger brother Perikles, and lastly Princess Camelia, all of whom were dressed very warmly. .

For winter was already here and snow was starting to fall by varying intensity.

Which is why Alexander found using the rivers to navigate increasingly dangerous.

Sheets of ice as large as houses were occasionally seen flowing across the river that was several kilometers wide even at its narrowest, while at other times, mighty blizzards would manifest themselves out of seemingly nowhere, wanting to smother everyone to death in snow and hail.

During such times, any wooden boat would become a perilous rocking chair, far too dangerous to reside in one.

Hence Alexander was forced to take the high road, marching his army down the downtrodden trail that spanned 600 km from here to Zanzan.

And let me tell you, the entire journey was miserable.

The weather was biting cold, hovering just in the low single digits during the day (or mid to high 30s for our freedom loving friends) while blizzards and snowstorms were frequent, constantly blinding everyone and everything with snow.

Meaning more often than not, the road would be filled anywhere from their ankles to their knees with snow, which made trudging through them an extreme slog.

But perhaps the greatest torture was the howling winds and the ever present perpetual drizzle that soaked everyone and everything, sapping all the warmth and making everyone feel like frozen zombies unable to even feel their faces.

It even got bad enough to the point that although the officers and generals were initially intending to ride their horses during the travel like they always had, soon these bare chested, hot blooded men found themselves shivering and quivering in cold and thus forced to share a carriage with the delicate women.

Even Alexander was no different, as the wetness, the cold temperature, and the light wind worked to give him a very runny nose, one that turned it almost as red as a reindeer’s and made him constantly sniff and blow.

And he was not alone in this, as many officers suffered the same, some even catching fevers that ran up temperatures dangerously high.

And if this was the condition of the pampered and sheltered officers, imagine the state of the regular soldiers that were forced to cover this distance on foot.

Like it was said before, it was miserable.

The soldiers certainly could not simply scuttle back to the sheltered carriages, but instead simply had to bear through it,carrying the very large baggage train with them.

The oxen drawn train was particularly large this time given all the extra supplies for the winter they were carrying, more grain, more meat, and more salt, as well as the ever valuable loot, consisting of not only gold but also clothes, pottery, metal utensils, stone, artwork good timber and even many livestock.

Along with the all important slaves to boot of course.

Almost every squad (8 man team with 2 servants) had managed to snag a few slaves during their campaigns, and although many were sold to the slave traders, some still remained as a handful of soldiers wanted to keep them as individual possessions.

The huge train made Alexander’s already slow even more of a crawl as men, women and even the steeds became very quickly exhausted and so a typical marching day only lasted half of the usual one, and even then you would perhaps cover half the usual distance due to all the obstacles.

There were even weather spells so bad that Alexander was forced to call a complete halt to the march several times as the Winter King danced and roared and blew across the lands in any way he pleased, turning the entire place snow white.

And the king’s rage could last from anywhere a single day to even close to a week.

“Thank god we are not at war.” And the only sigh of relief that Alexander could breathe during times such as this was that this was no campaign or worse a retreat following defeat.

But thankfully a victorious march back home where his supply lines were robust and intact, ensuring him access to adequate grain.

This enabled him to increase the regular soldier’s rations by 30% to even 50% on some especially frigid days, in order to help boost morale and then themselves warm.

After all, cold sapped heat from the body like a vampire’s touch.

But even then Alexander would regularly get reports of many soldiers being admitted to the medical clinic, to the point that the place was already starting to get overwhelmed, while a few soldiers would regularly die from various cold related complications.

Not even the nobles were safe as two lesser nobles were already reported to have passed away after succumbing to high fever.

(P.S. Author inquiry- I was wondering how would you feel if I killed a major character like this. From a common cold, fever, or other illness. Because such things did happen in real life. Many, many important figures just got ill and died.Imagine Menes taking a bath in the icy cold water with a few of his bodyguards as a fun pass time, catching a fever, and then suddenly dying. How would you feel? Shocking or underwhelming? Comment.)

Due to these bouts of bad weather, at some point, Alexander even seriously considered turning back and returning to the capital to quarter there instead.

But knowing many of the levies wanted to reach Zanzan as soon as possible no matter what in order to start preparing their field, Alexander refrained.

Instead, he urged the men forward, while he spent his time on the road inside the huge, luxurious carriage pulled by six horses, accompanied by two of his wives, with whom he played cards or chess or snakes and ladders that he invented, or simply shared various stories and tales including brain puzzles and various philosophical debates.

While at right, they mostly huddled together and just slept.

Because frankly, Alexander felt too cold to bring ‘it’ out.

Even for the lustful Alexander, the winds of winter seemed to have snuffed out the flames of lust.

It took Alexander’s army of 40,000 an agonizing 2 months to finally reach Thesalie 500 km away, where Alexander decided to rest for a couple of days because Gelene had fallen really ill.

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