Herald of Steel

Miss Linda watched Alexander rub his chin with that smug look on his face and felt a bubbling anger grow in her heart.

He looked at her the same way she would look at those beggars on the streets in the rare times she went to the city- equal parts scorn and amusement.

But that anger soon turned into helpless lamentation as Miss Linda recognized her powerlessness.

This was quickly followed up by shame as she recalled just how happy she had been just because Alexander did not outright reject her petition for the loan.

Her face felt flushed, and she whispered to herself, 'Oh how far I have fallen.'

But Miss Linda quickly masked these insecurities before Alexander could detect them and tried to strengthen her case for the loan by appealing to Alexander's own sense of camaraderie with his soldiers,

"We Margraves have always treated those who fight for us with respect. We could not have gotten where we are now if we did not. I'm sure my lord can sympathize."

Alexander first produced a gentle smile at Miss Linda's words, thinking, 'You could probably only do it because you were a rich, mercantile family. But now?'

Alexander had his own thoughts on what Miss Linda was trying to do, but for now, he kept that to himself.

Instead, he gently chimed,

"The money that you asked for is no small amount. Have you tried asking others for it? What about the surrounding nobles? Or even the city's various guilds? Don't they support you?"

"Heh! Support me… *Snort*!" Miss Linda instantly let out a mock chuckle as if she had heard a very bad joke, "Why should they support a loser like me? If they want, they will simply support the Heeats! That's what all those old farts are doing."

Alexander was a bit surprised by how frank Miss Linda was in revealing her current, weak position.

He had assumed she would at least try to mask her complete loss of support among the elders of her family and rather, try to show Alexander she was still in charge.

That seemed the most logical way of getting the loan from him.

But Alexander appeared to be proven wrong here, while Miss Linda was not finished and went on to further vent,

"Even the nobles who might have supported me now cannot! Those northern barbarians slew half of them and plundered the rest down to their breaches. Heck, they are coming to me asking to save them! So where will they save me… hahahah!"

That last bout of laughter was tingled with such sadness and desperation that it made even Alexander's cold heart beat a few bits faster in sympathy.

'So you have been abandoned?' He lightly mused inside, recognizing Miss Linda's position in the family.

"What about taking from Lord Castell's men? 10,000 men so far from home. Surely each of them must have some significant funds. I reckon you could get even a million wesas if you squeezed them dry enough!"

Then suddenly Alexander made this bold statement while doing a few simple calculations in his head.

Assuming that the Heeat men were paid similarly to his legionaries and that for this campaign, these men would have to be paid at least six months of their pay, they stood to gain roughly 1,200 ropals or 120 wesas.

Multiply that by the total number of men and viola- you got a significant amount of money there.

However, contrary to Alexander's expectation of a cry of joy from Miss Linda at this amazing answer, the lady initially only appeared stunned, before soon turning somewhat angry,

"Sailors are always paid six months of their salary in advance before they set sail. If the deployment lasts more than that, they will be paid the remaining amount after they get back. This is general knowledge!"

The way Miss Linda said it, it appeared as if she was a bit peeved that Alexander made such a foolish comment.

"Paying six months of salary at once is common? Are all navies in the world that rich?" However Alexander did not seem to get that memo, as widening his eyes, he inquired so curiously.

Needless to say, the amount of money involved here was quite substantial, and according to what he knew, there were not many in the whole world who had so much cash on hand.

This was because in this time period, most nobles and even countries ran quite thin budget surpluses, and even then that would be more in the form of goods like precious stones, gold items, paintings, clothes, food, etc., not usable tenured coins.

Treasuries filled with heaps of gold, silver, and gems did exist and they were all very eye catching to see, but when compared to the total wealth in a country, even the king's personal stash fell short.

While hearing the question, the scowling Miss Linda felt a sudden strange kind of joy.

At last, there was something she knew more than Alexander's.

Hence she could not help but show off.

"Yes, that's right. Giving out salaries each month is considered too much of a hassle. It is much more convenient to pay semi annually."

"It also helps us lighten the burden on the treasury because we do not need to maintain so much cash for the whole time of the year, only for two months- September and March. Those are the autumn and spring harvest months and the time we have the most amount of money on hand."

Alexander was quickly enlightened by this piece of new news and found it very reasonable.

Such an arrangement was indeed much better for letting the families ride out many monetary difficulties.

He had not thought about it like that because- one- his logistic chains were much more robust than most forces in the world and could efficiently give out the salary, and two- because he was not that dependent on income from his fields.

In fact, although sugar was his most profitable good per kilogram, his biggest source of revenue actually came from selling iron.

The blast furnaces could be run twenty hours a day seven days a week without really caring if the outside was warm, wet, dry, or windy, and as long as Alexander was diligent, the quality of this produce would never deviate too much.

This was in much contrast to the sugar production where there were many times Alexander had to discard vast tons of the beetroots because either the weather did not play ball, or there was some kind of insect germination, or the produce caught a blight, or small rodent took a bite of it or a million other different things.

Sometimes it would be so bad that Alexander would have to discard almost the whole batch as it was deemed unfit for human consumption, turning it into low quality animal feed.

There were two times when even the animals got sick eating the thing, the disease transferring from plant to them.

Relying on agriculture for one's income really was subjecting one to the whims of mother nature. Sometimes she graced them with her bounties, and sometimes with her fury.

Alexander was able to circumvent all this risk by having a steady stream of income from other more reliable sources but most noblehouses could not- they were still very agrarian in nature.

Hence the preference for periodic payments.

And this was also not the only reason as Alexander heard Miss Linda continue,

"And this also helps lighten the weight of the ships. I am not only talking about the weight in terms of precious metals here. More than that, there is less need for security to safeguard the coins. I hear theft in the army is one of the greatest challenges it faces in maintaining discipline."

As Miss Linda said, that last bit suddenly caught Alexander off guard because he initially thought the lady was talking about pirates.

But he found that thought preposterous the moment he gave himself a second to think about it.

Not even all the pirates in the whole Central Sea combined would have the guts to attack a 10,000 strong navy fleet. There were easier ways to commit suicide.

So what Lord Castell was really afraid of was his own men stealing the coin.

Indeed, theft and robbery among fellow soldiers were usually rampant in all militaries during the time.

It was because of this that Lord Castell and his men ultimately carried only a few hundred thousand wesas with them, just enough to cover everyday costs and deal with typically seen problems along the way.

The trouble was having to ransom a few thousand high value targets did not fall into 'typical' problems category.

And as Alexander realized this, he could not help but muse, 'Hmmm, maybe I should do the same!' The logistics of his army would indeed become simpler this way.

But for now, he shelved it to the back of his head and instead, turned his attention to the lady opposite of him, posing with a tone of appreciation,

"I must say I am surprised you know so much about all this my lady! Did your husband tell all this to you?"

Womenfolk were generally quite sheltered in affairs such as warfare and so Alxx thought Lord Parker must have shared such secrets.

Let us say no to piracy! Don't take part in a crime! Don't patronize thieves!

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