Herald of Steel

Lord Parker had of course spotted Alexander's slow lumbering army marching towards him at that snail's pace from tens of miles away.

The scouts he sent quickly returned to inform him of the numbers- around 25,000 to 30,000 when including men and servants.

"Hmmp! Those ungrateful northern traitors. They dare stand against us?"

Hearing Alexander suddenly go from 5,000 to 30,000, Lord Parker at first snorted contemptuously as such in rage and anger.

He of course assumed this was a collision between Alexander and the Margraves nobles there.

The fact that Alexander could call for reinforcements had not even occurred to him, just like Alexander was still oblivious to Lord Parker's own plea for help.

As for the presence of the northern, it was doubtful Lord Parker even knew they existed. Their current presence in the southern parts of the island was really too little.

Thus Lord Parker felt this was the northern nobles rebelling and feeling incensed, turned to glare at his wife as if asking how this could happen and how they knew nothing about it until it was so late.

Miss Linda also naturally had no idea either. Because such a thing had not actually happened. Hence her, or more precisely her family's spies in the north gave no such warning.

And such a phenomenon quite puzzled her, as she said to himself,

'This should have been impossible. After the incident at the time of my grandfather, my family has always been wary of those traitors We have the best spies up there and a lot of our men.'

Here by 'our men' Miss Linda meant a lot of her cousins, uncles, and aunts lived there.

After being betrayed by the tribal alliance and suffering grievous defeat at the hands of the rebelling lords, the Margraves had spent the better part of five decades trying their best to plug up this serious breach in their defense.

So under Miss Linda's grandfather, enormous time, effort, and money were spent on creating a robust spy network, the powerful lords were placated by binding them with the Margraves through marriage, intentionally weakening them by restricting trade with them.

This was another reason why the northern area was less developed with bad infrastructure, as it was assumed with less money, these troublemakers would have less capital to cause headaches.

All this meant that if 20,000 to 25,000 levies were to be generated there, there was no way her spies would not have raised the alarm.

Miss Linda however did not bother to present these discrepancies to her husband.

Given the rage state he was in now, she knew he did not want to hear excuses.

Hence clenching her beautiful teeth in anger, her immaculate face turned black as she hatefully chimed, "The northerns have always been troublesome. A lot of them even have barbarian blood in them. My sister must have promised them something huge for supporting here…. Like not having to pay her any taxes. They have always wanted that."

This shifting of blame worked wonders, as although Lord Parker produced a large frown, he still bought it.

So he shifted his properties next to order Miss Linda,

"Write to your family there. Find out the exact details of the deal. Such a huge thing could not have been kept hidden. Then come up with a way to break the alliance."

"......" The pretty lady only silently nodded in agreement.

However, if Lord Parker had bothered to observe her a little better, he would have found his wife's onyx like eyes had become like the pool of a deep abyss, as if containing all the world's rage.

After losing Achillas as well as the rebellion from the Margraves, Miss Linda had become almost like a stranger to Lord Parker. All the affection he once held for her seemed to have evaporated, leaving behind only a cold, hard facade.

And sensing she was rapidly losing the support of her powerful 'Patreon', this over ambitious lady too changed coats, and was now more busy deciding how to jump ship. ᚱАŊꝋΒĚ𐌔

Patching things up with Lord Parker appeared impossible, so the lady began to look elsewhere.

Thus it seemed that this once great love ship was a single disaster from sinking forever into the depths of the lonely abyss.

Lord Parker remained totally oblivious to the poisonous snake that he was sharing his bed with.

Rather he was much more concerned with the immediate threat posed by Alexander.

The young lord quickly calculated that he only had 20,000 men and even among that only half were directly under his command.

He did dare bet on Lord Bernard and the Margrave's loyalty on the battlefield.

Especially not when facing someone like Alexander, who had given them such a bloody nose even when he was grossly outnumbered.

And now that he was on par, if not outnumbering them, how could Lord Parker dare to give battle?

Hence when Alexander first revealed himself, the first thing he did was personally go to the top of the walls despite the risk of flying stones and fired arrows, and observe the reported number for himself.

And indeed, after carefully scanning the spawning tents that lay on the green field ahead of him, he confirmed the veracity of the report.

Alexander was fielding an army greater than his.

"There is no need for us to fight Alexander now. We will stay inside and wait for father's reinforcements."

So Lord Parker wisely declared thus, choosing to use the walls and play defense for now.

He would only meet the dangerous enemy once he had absolute superiority in number.

And since as many as 20,000 men were reported to be soon joining them, all his officers and commanders too sang the same tune, very happy that their young lord had chosen to be patient and wait.

Originally they had been afraid that the brash man would be driven mad by the reappearance of General Achillas and sally out to meet the enemy in an attempt to rescue his lover.

Thankfully for them, Lord Parker seemed to have matured a lot and heeding their advice, simply cooped himself up in his manor, letting Lord Macht take charge of the wall's defenses while he enjoyed his life, mainly playing with his son who was just learning to walk.

The thing that pleased the Heeat commanders on the other hand irked Alexander to nearly his wit's end.

Because even after a week of pounding the wall with his catapults, it did not show any real sign of breaking.

There were cracks and splits in the stone for sure, but even if those parts broke off, it would not mean the whole wall would fail.

They were too shallow.

And because of this relative lack of danger, Lord Parker also had no reason to go out to stop Alexander, like Lord Ponticus had done in the battle of Thesalie.

And the root of all this was the simple fact that Alexander did not nearly have the 'firepower density' to quickly destroy the walls.

He had with him exactly 32 catapults.

This number came from the fact that typically a battalion (500 men) was assigned a single catapult.

So Alexander's roughly 15,000 infantry should have 30 with them.

Luckily, Cambyses had given the reinforcements 5 extra ones from her stock just in case, while Alexander also lost three during previous combat- one was seized by Lord Macht during his attack on Phyrros Island, one sunk when the bridge collapsed, and the last one snapped right down the middle while transporting it here, sinking into the mud and breaking under its own weight.

However, although 32 catapults along a single line might sound impressive, it was nowhere still near enough to get the job down.

Or at least not quickly enough.

When he was attacking Thesalie for example, Alexander had close to a hundred of these, and even then it had taken him a few months to knock the wall down.

And that was combined with all the various plans and preparations.

The elevation disadvantage was mitigated by building a wall using cement and Alexander was even insane enough to use solid iron balls as projectiles, making those much denser shots very deadly.

But here, Alexander of course had no access to cement and instead of iron, had to use stones.

This was because most of the iron balls he had brought with him had been used up in the defense of the manor and naval battles, while due to a lack of enough ships and time constraints, Cambyses had been unable to provide any significant amount of the stuff to the reinforcements.

They were given just enough to last a single battle, not a prolonged siege.

This soon resulted in an ammunition shortage.

Because good quality large stones were surprisingly hard to find around here. Experience tales at mvl

The area around Caira was quite flat, with good, fertile farmland that was dotted with many, many villages.

It was prime real estate of the time, producing an enormous amount of food that was required to keep the Margrave's capital city running.

But unfortunately, it could not give Alexander what he wanted right now.

So for now, it was those hamlets and small towns that had to provide Alexander with his 'missiles'.

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