Herald of Steel

As Alexander started to slice up the pie that was called Tibias, he naturally sought to determine exactly how much land he had, how much he could give, and where these were situated.

And to do this he mainly asked for Philips and Lord Theony's help.

"How much fertile land does Tibias have?" And as Alexander sat across the table, his very first inquiry was this, for given current society was a fully agrarian one, the amount of fertile land one possessed was directly proportional to how populous and thus prosperous one was.

Alexander was eager to know the exact worth of the prize he had won.

"My lord, two years prior to this, we produced an estimated total of more than two million tons (2 million tons) of grain, with close to another one million (1 million) tons of other food produce."

Lord Theony was ready with the data, quickly revealing it from a large book made of papyrus that he had in front of him.

This was the royal tax ledger, and currently, Lord Theony was seen reviewing the data from 2 years ago.

As for the reason why he was looking at this 'outdated data' instead of information from the last year, it was quite obvious really.

Because there was no reliable data on it due to a small thing called Alexander's invasion.

Now, typically this royal leger should have belonged to Philips.

But Alexander let Lord Theony have it nevertheless to display his clear preference for the man.

And Philips for his part did not actually appear much perturbed by this, finding the act only natural.

Anyway, bound within this particular volume of the collection of these ledgers were very accurate records of all the national collections and spending made in the last few years by the Tibian royal family

Among the expenditures there was included the salaries of civil servants such as judges, clerks, and magistrates, the expense of the army and the navy including their maintenance, the running of the temples, coin to host various religious festivals, giving to various charities and poverty relief programs, running the royal court, and of course, least one should forget, the royal family's own expenses.

Although it might have been quite shameful to put one's tab on the people's money in modern times, it was a perfectly fine and even expected thing to do in this time period and Alexander even found the number in that section to be quite a large proportional of the total spending.

Clearly the Tibian royal family loved the good things in life, like so many royal families before them.

But for the moment, Alexander was not interested in the very long and admittedly quite exhaustive list of Tibias's expenses as tempting it felt Alexander to scrutinize and cut cost where even possible.

Instead, he turned his attention to find the earning section, because that was what most mattered to him currently.

And by earning he meant taxes because Tibias really had that one source of revenue,

And in that section of the ledger, he found quite detailed records of the name of the people who were taxed, or perhaps more accurately the provinces that were taxed under the supervision of that particular nobleman appointed as a governor, the type of tax collected, the rate for that year, and most importantly the total amount gathered.

And it you knew the tax amount as well as the tax rate, well then it was very simple arithmetic to find the size of the total amount.

Alexander had already figured all those out by himself, but needed Lord Theony's help to convert those numbers into a relatable, estimated quantity of goods.

Which in this case came to 3 million tons of food.

'2 mil wheat…3 mil total.' As Alexander subconsciously mumbled the heard amount, to say he was overjoyed would not be wrong.

For one of his primary concerns till now had been his inability to feed his ever growing population due to a lack of adequate manpower and good arable land, forcing him to import a lot of grain from the outside, such as Pasha Farzah, and even Lady Miranda from Sybarsis.

But now, with Tibias's fertile grounds within his grasp, it seemed his worries of starving to death were a thing of the past.

Because 2 million tons of grain was a lot of grain.

To gives some context of much it was, well Alexander's capital of Zanzan with its 150,000 men had an annual demand of just 30,000 tons, or only about 1% of the total production.

And thus, encouraged by this result, Alexander then subconsciously began to calculate a few more things.

For one he reasoned inside his head, 'Assuming the average yield of a hectare of land is 1 ton given how fertile in general the country is, then to produce 3 million tons food… will get me around 30,000 sq km of total arable farmland.'

It was an answer that sounded very reasonable as the number showed that about 10% of the total landmass was farmable.

Although it had to be noted that Alexander here was over generalizing a bit, given the yields for grain, vegetables, and fruits were all different and Lord Theony, facing his boss was certainly rounding up and embellishing the figures a bit.

But still it was a good enough yardstick and even if Alexander's estimate was 10% to 20% off, it would still make him a very happy man at the thought of being able to feed and grow his manpower using these lands.

"That's quite impressive! So how many men does Tibias have?" Thus encouraged by the results, Alexander then wanted the number.

And he posed this to Philips as evidenced by the turning of his head.

"..." While Philips, being presented by this query, took a bit of time to compose himself, as he searched for the answer in his memory.

Before finally he found the relevant information.

"We had around 6 to 7 million men before the Adhanian king invaded us six years ago." Here the Crown Prince was of course referring to Amenheraft,

"But now… after all our losses from the battles and other disasters… well …." Philips paused to stroke his chin, trying to think of an appropriate number, before confidently claiming, "I would say we have about 5 million people. Definitely not more than 6."

It was a number that instantly caused Alexander to murmur,

"So low!" under his breath with shocked trepidation.

The loss of 1 million men due to war, famine, and disease within just the span of six years shook him, finally opening his eyes to the brutal hurricane of destruction that must have been Amenheraft.

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Sure Alexander had heard how the king had ravaged and pillaged the country, taking all the grain he could get his hands on while slaughtering all before him.

But hearing something and seeing the evidence of the devastation were two very different things.

It was said that at that time, Amenheraft did not take any Tibians prisoners or slaves, for that would have meant only an extra mouth to feed.

Thus, instead of accepting surrender, the cruel king would simply snatch everything of value from all the countless villages and towns around, before setting alight and torching the place and massacring the native populace.

It was a brutal tactic and in response to all this, Perseus could only hang on to his rule by the mere skin of his teeth, employing clever ambushes and other guerilla tactics to goad Amenheraft into unfavorable, opportunistic battles, inflicting small but constant harm on his troops and thus making life as miserable as possible for them.

But despite the brilliant king's success, it was later said that if Amenheraft had managed to keep up the pressure of Perseus for a bit longer, the latter might have snapped.

However all those ifs and buts naturally were relegated to 'what if' scenarios as when Ptolomy rebelled, it took all of Amenheraft's attention there.

Thus Tibias had survived.

Although tragically that victory had been ephemerally short.

Interestingly, it was really only with this question that Alexander began to appreciate how much Amenheraft had softened up the target for him, and he could not help but smirk a 'thank you' towards the man in his heart.

Alexander would also come to realize later that during the war many of the Tibian nobles might have gone a bit soft on him.

Or perhaps more accurately, they might fought much more zealously if Alexander had been a native Adhanian, given the kind of atrocities their king had committed.

Many surrendered only because Alexander was Thesian and even spoke the language.

Otherwise, they might have chosen to fight to the death.

Or engage in a long, brutal guerrilla warfare just like they had with Amenheraft.

Although the last part might have been avoided because the populace was already too tired as well as Perseus being captured by Alexander.

Anyway, if there was one silver lining to take away from this grim report, it was that despite the loss of more than 10% of the country's life, their agricultural output was still phenomenal- 2 million tons of grain, which was enough to sustain a population of at least 8 to 9 million, '

Clearly Tibias's lands were very fertile.

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