Herald of Steel



Lord Janus never thought the problem he would have to deal with coming here would not be having too little iron but too much.

And so cheap too.

Hence he had to fight against his innate mercantile impulse to buy as much iron as possible.

For the profit margins on them would be truly astronomical.

But given they were at war, he also had to consider that perhaps their limited resources would be better spent elsewhere.

And so Lord Janus and Lady Miranda were seen furtively glancing at one another.

Finally, after a while of consideration, Lord Janus spoke with gritted teeth,

"My lord, we are unable to buy your entire stock. But we would like to buy as much as we can."

"Harold told us that you preferred food, slaves, and draft animals for your transactions. So we will use them." Lord Janus at last determined.

The reason for his decision was that the iron could both be used to fight and sold in foreign markets to raise funds.

"Oh? How much do you have?" Alexander really hoped they had a lot of food.

"We have 10 ships of various grain, vegetables, fruits, and wine, totaling for 3,000 tons.

"We have 5 ships of slaves numbering 2,000."

"And lastly we have 6 ships amounting to 500 horses, donkeys, and mules."

Harold gave the exact numbers and even sounded a bit proud.

This was the first time he had traded in such volumes.

'Sure enough, the nobles do it differently,' He said to himself.

While Alexander was actually a bit disappointed hearing the numbers.

Because the amount of food was much lower than he had expected.

Given the 3,000 tons were not purely grains but a variety of food, Alexander estimated this would let him run another 2 weeks, and that was without mentioning the fresh addition of more people and animals.

But anything was better than nothing.

So Alexander was still happy to accept.

"So much do you want to sell for?" Alexander then asked.

And as an experienced businessman who had been bought here precisely to negotiate this, Harold quickly gave the prices.

"My lord, we were hoping to get 4,500 ropals per ton for the food. 4,500 ropals for each slave. And 1,000 ropal for one animal. That makes everything a total of 27.5 million ropals."

Alexander paused a bit to verify the maths in his head, after which he raised his eyebrow a bit and asked, "Hmmm? The prices seem 10% higher, doesn't it?"

To which Harold gave a loose smile and said,

"But my lord, didn't you list these prices the last time we met?"

Harold was referring to how Alexander had promised to buy the goods at a 10% markup.

But Alexander would not pay more if he could get away with paying less.

And so gave this retort. "And didn't you list iron at 200 ropals?"

Which made Harold's lips twitch and he could not help but inwardly cuss the young lady.

"I will pay the market price for the goods. So let's say a total of 25 million ropals. Which will buy you 500 tons of iron. Agreed?" Alexander then gave his own offer, and after the three looked at each other for a while, and with a nod from Lady Miranda, Janus was there to accept.

"Sure. That seems fair. We accept," He said

They were actually quite satisfied with the trade, because according to them, they had bought at least 75 million ropals worth of goods, netting them around 50 million ropals if they could sell it to the right customer.

So the 2.5 million did not seem too big a deal.

"Great! Then it's agreed! " Alexander gave a loud clap and a large smile signifying the completion of the deal, and finished by saying, "We will get you the things within three days."

The party could finally let out a breath of relief at having secured their weapon materials, and Lady Miranda, who had gone quite quiet after her foible with Alexander, even spoke up in a grateful tone, "Thank you. The Margrave family will not forget your support, my lord."

"No problem," Alexander gave a light smile, and then asked a simple question that had been bothering him, "Though, I have to ask, if you needed iron to make weapons, why didn't you just buy the weapons directly? I heard Sybarsis is a great trading power."

This semeed like a no brainer.

Lady Miranda first gave an awkward smile to this, before quickly hiding it as she did not want to embarrass Alexander.

The reason for the smile was because she could not believe Alexander had not heard of the Margrave family.

And here Harold decided to help the lady out.

"The Margrave family is one of the biggest arms suppliers around here. Everyone buys from them. So…."

He meant to say that they were the ones who sold the weapons.

There was no one to sell them back.

"Oh? Not even Thesos or Tibias? Or the warring states?" But Alexander sounded skeptical.

The world was a large place and given they also sold weapons to these regions, Alexander was sure they would be able to resource some of it.

"*Sigh*, unfortunately, Thesos is too far away to get them quickly. And Tibias does not have enough stocks. So the prices they asked for them was outrageous. We could not afford them."

"We would have gotten them nonetheless if we failed here," Here Lord Janus helped fill Alexander's confusion.

"I see," Alexander understandingly nodded, and then glanced at Lady Miranda to say, "To think I would be in the presence of such a powerful family. I'm honored."

He actually meant what he said, for being someone big enough to supply all the parties in this war-torn era was not anything easy.

This family must have serious muscles behind it.

"Haha," Lady Miranda gave a proud chuckle to this, but then quickly said, "No, no, it is we who should be honored. Our family cannot make 1,000 tons of iron like you can after all, haha"

Lady Miranda's eyes were naturally drawn to that huge amount of iron and its production process, as would anyone's.

And only the civility of meeting Alexander for the first kept her from asking for the details.

"Haha, yes, well I cannot seem to make weapons out of the iron I make. 'Cracks if heated, breaks if beaten' my blacksmiths tell. Alexander lightly chuckled the lie, and then praised, "But my lady seems to have solved that. It seems the Margrave family's smithing skills are truly the best in the world."

The latter was not as big a lie as the former, because if they were indeed able to refine Alexander's 'civilian steel', they had to be given credit for that.

"Oh really?" Lady Miranda sounded genuinely surprised at Alexander's inability to manipulate his steel, and after looking at Lord Janus, she spoke in a doubtful tone, "But I have been told that Lord Alexander's iron is certainly among the best ingots in the market. Who is your blacksmith? What's his experience? Perhaps my lord would like someone from Galiosos?"

She seemed to genuinely offer him that advice.

Which caught Alexander a bit off guard.

For he had never thought his junk steel would be really any good.

Now, Alexander had expected that weapons would be made from even his bad steel.

Because junk or not, it was still good steel made using modern techniques.

But he certainly never excepted that it would be much good.

For goodness sake, Alexander would even intentionally add impurities to make it crap.

And if even after that it was said to be one of the best steels in the markets, then Alexander could only blame the abysmal standard of iron smelting of this time period.

And this was in fact the truth, as compared to the blast furnace and Bessemer process, even the best steel of this time was junk.

This was not to just say that the blacksmiths of this world were incompetent, as even the blacksmiths of the middle ages made quite poor steel when compared to modern times, be it the katana, or the even more famous Damascus steel, as chemical analysis of those weapons showed the presence of large amounts of impurities and slags.

But it just went on to show how much quicker and better modern steel-making techniques could make the product.

But it did not mean Alexander's precautions were useless.

Because Lady Miranda had lied a bit here.

Alexander's ingots were indeed not suitable to be made into good weapons, but the blacksmiths' of the Margrave family had been starting to use powered limestone during their hammering process to forge weapons, which would remove some of the impurities such as sulfur and phosphorous in the steel, and enable them to shape the weapons.

This was one of the most highly guarded secrets of the Margrave family which was why Lady Miranda had lied, and though this was nowhere near as efficient and efficacious as Alexander's process, and the weapons would be significantly worse than the latter's, it was good enough.

As a matter of fact, this refining technique was likely the biggest reason the Margrave was able to dominate the arms market of the eastern region of Galiosis and was even among the reasons for the attack against them.

But since Alexander had no idea about this, he simply presumed that the steel-making standards of this time were simply that bad.

And agreed to the deal.

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