Herald of Steel

Alexander was quite genuinely surprised by this sudden turn of seriousness among the leaders.

He did not think his idea was not too radical or revolutionary, as he had copied it from the Romans.

So, he tried to play down his brilliance: "Leader Menicus is too kind. But I am just a humble, ordinary mercenary." Alexander flashed a shy smile.

"*Shake*, no." Menicus shook his white-haired head. "You are humble, I will give you that. But you are the furthest thing from ordinary."

Then without giving Alexander a chance to stop him, Menicus continued, "In my thirty-five years as a mercenary, I have seen and met many people. I have even met some Cantagenan senators. But people like you, with your kind of intellect, I can count them on one hand. And those were all old veterans."

Then he kept on going, "And this is all the more impressive when considering your backstory. How could a slave from a tiny mercenary group, with no access to proper education be so erudite?"

Menicus then cryptically finished, "Such thoughts are worth thinking over."

To Alexander, it seemed the old man was saying this not to others but to himself.

'Are all old men so scary?' Alexander lampooned as he felt a similar feeling from Menicus as he did from Aristotle.

Their power of observation and making a solid conjecture based on that observation was frightening.

"Haha, I have always known the commander was special from the day I met him. I believe without a doubt he is Gaia's chosen." This time was Menes, who could not hold his silence when it came to praising Alexander.

"Commander is singular. My previous leader would just bark orders if he wanted something done. But the commander takes the time to patiently explain the reason for his command before issuing it. He treats us like actual humans," Heliptos too praised him from the bottom of his heart.

The other two leaders were also nodding in concert, while Melodias was silently staring blankly at Alexander as if his mind was lost in some deep thought.

'I have made up my mind,' Melodias clenched his sweaty palm as he spoke in his mind, like he had reached a pivotal decision.

But, then, Petricuno spoke up to point out a potential problem of Alexander's new command, "Commander, if the phalanx captains are not the in the front line, sharing life and death with the soldiers, I fear morale will decrease. Many soldiers might feel discontent at the captain's relative safety compared to them."

"That...Petricuno with the captain safe, naturally he can better maneuver the formation and thus keep the phalanx safe." Heliptos hurriedly jumped to defend Alexander.

"But, the captain might also launch reckless attacks," Petricuno argued.

Here Alexander decided to intervene and stop this from becoming a debate, "Petricuno has made some excellent points." He praised.

'Oh, here it comes..' This thought flashed inside many minds as they had understood a bit of Alexander's speech pattern by now and sensed a rebuke of Petricuno was coming.

But surprisingly there was no rebuke as Alexander instead suggested, "Let's do some military drills. I'm sure the soldiers are bored in their tents anyway. Have one side lead the traditional way and another my way. Then you can decide."

Alexander finished with a smug smile as he was confident about the results.

"Thar's right. Let's do a full-scale exercise. It's always prudent to test new formations before using them in battle." Menicus readily agreed.

"Yeah, my soldiers are just sitting idle. A bit of exercise will be good for them," Heliptos was excited to try this novel approach.

"Good, then let us meet in the clearing once the rain stops," Petricuno decided,

Then thinking the meeting was over, seemed ready to say his goodbyes.

But, "Ahem" Alexander then coughed a bit to tug their attention back to him, "Fellow leaders. I am not done yet."

He announced, "We have around ten thousand men. With each phalanx being around two hundred and fifty strong, that means we will have forty captains and need forty horses."

"Also each of their heralds will be given a horse so they can quickly deliver messages. I have found that delivering messages running on foot is too slow. Many times it takes so much time that the captain finds the situation has completely changed so that the previous order is no longer valid."

At last, Alexander added, "The remaining twenty horses will be used by the stratos (thousand-man leader) and their heralds. Ten stratos and ten heralds- so twenty horses."

Alexander did not count horses for the leaders and their heralds because all of them already had a few horses with them from the start.

"So that's where the number hundred came from," Heliptos, who was illiterate, was amazed by how Alexander was able to combine seemingly random numbers to get a nice whole one.

"Haha, to assign horses to even heralds. We sure are being generous," Petricuno had a good-natured laugh at their extravagance.

"Leader Petricuno, with all our recent misfortunes, we have earned this. Don't be a killjoy! Rejoice, haha, rejoice," Heliptos boisterously laughed.

"Yeah, I guess you are right. Who knows when we will get a chance like this again," Petricuno formed a reluctant, rueful smile.

If they were not in such trouble, such extravagance would have called for celebrations.

"Hehe, it seems the commander had thought of everything," At last, after a long time of silence. Melodias opened his mouth.

"Almost," Alexander lightly smiled, "There's still the matter of how to deal with the mules."

"What does the commander plan to do?" Heliptos understood that since Alexander had bought it up, he must have already thought of something.

"If no one has any objections I would like to give them to the slaves we will leave behind. I do feel bad about just leaving in such a place."

Alexander really did feel sorry for them.

But what could he do?

This dire situation called for such actions.

"Sure, we have no problem," Menicus consented on behalf of everyone else.

After all, they could not carry them, had no one to sell those to, and had no need for their meat.

After Menicus finished, a sweet, sugary, sycophantic voice floated into the tent, "Commander has a kind heart. As expected of a divine being, full of benevolence."

This sentence was not uttered by Heliptos as one might expect, but by Melodias!

'What has gone into Melodias today?' Alexander asked himself.

And such similar questions were also asked by the surrounding others, who all gave Melodias a weird look.

But Melodias seemed disinterested to explain himself.

And so Alexander decided to ignore it and chose to ask about the last topic of the day.

"So, the last topic how's it going with the. re-possession of the Cantagenan properties. How much have we got?" Alexander asked with a bit of eagerness mixed in his voice.

After all, he too was looking forward to the large loot

"We are still counting, but conservative estimates put the total numbers at around a hundred million tustas." Menicus had a very happy undertone to his voice.

"Oh, that much!" Heliptos felt his greed rise. Divided five ways it was twenty million for him.

Enough for his two thousand mercenaries to last for about half a year.

"So, how much is it in coins?" Alexander suspected most of this value was in stuff like leftover clothes, carpets, tents, small gold ornaments, cooking pots, etc.

Otherwise, if Samaras had so much cash, he would have already paid them some coin to get them to join the second battle.

And this suspicion was proved true, as Menicus said, "We have found both ropals and tustas. Tustas are about only twenty million. Ropals..which we took from Acme....well when converted to tustas, would make around another twenty-twenty-five million."

"Those bastards never intended to pay us in the first place," Petricuno cursed aloud.

Twenty million tustas divided by twenty thousand mercenaries was one thousand tustas per person.

While Cantagena owed them five thousand tustas each as two months of unpaid wages.

Even when only counting the ten thousand mercenaries, it was still not even a month's pay.

And even when Damious, with his five thousand alive troops, had forced Samaras to hand it all over, Samaras still was five million tustas short.

"It seems the Cantagenans have gone as poor as a temple's mouse," Menicus sighed, adding, "Thesos will not be peaceful."

The veteran mercenary had the vision to understand that Cantagena would not have such an act that tarnishes their reputation so much if they were not desperate.

And with their current loss in Adhania, this desperation will turn into weakness.

And when a superpower becomes weak, the states under its influence will start getting ideas of their own.

Treaties will be broken, new alliances will be made as client states seek out new protectors and war and hunger will spread as the big tries to eat the small to get bigger and stronger, while the small might try to bite a chunk of the big to get bigger and stronger itself.

All this biting and ripping will soon cause bleeding and then the sharks will come smelling the blood.

And this is especially true if that shark is called Exolas.

Alexander, who lacked the proper geopolitical knowledge did not understand Menicus's last sentence, but he had little time to pay attention to such cryptic sayings anyway.

Because, he was instead busy calculating how much stuff would he realistically be able to carry, and how much he would have to leave behind as ten thousand men carrying the stuff of fifty thousand men would create such a huge baggage train that it was in no way feasible.

He would have to pick and choose what to carry and what to leave behind.