Herald of Steel

If Alexander's intention behind the generous loot dividend was truly to win the hearts of his soldiers, then the move's efficacy could hardly be questioned for it was clearly out on display for all to see.

The men could be heard loudly and openly cheering and praising Alexander for his sumptuous reward.

"Long live the Pasha. Glory to his rule."

"May Ramuh bless our great lord. The cherished general."

"As long as we follow him, victory will always be ours."

And many more such wild praises.

It was certainly clear they would respond eagerly if and when Alexander called them to battle next time.

This alone was enough to make Alexander dole out the 30 million ropal 'severance package'.

He even wished that perhaps enticed by these rich rewards, many of these men would give up farming and come join the army permanently since Alexander intended to increase his standing force from the current 10,000 to a staggering 30,000 in the near future.

And he would love to have these men on boards since they have already whetted their blade with blood.

Besides, what was he going to do with those 30 million ropals anyway?

Most of it would simply end up in his treasury gathering dust anyway.

And some of the spoils were even perishables- like pickled fruits and salted meat which would simply go to waste unless Alexander went through a lot of hassle to preserve them.

He had little need for it.

Hence instead, he found it much better to let the men who actually needed the stuff have it.

That way the goods would also enter the economy and start cycling through it, benefitting all.

To make the decision even easier for Alexander, much of these 30 million ropals was not in gold but in goods.

Meaning there would be little demand pulled inflation, i.e.- the phenomenon where too much money was chasing too few goods, which happened to occur frequently after conquering new lands.

Due to all these reasons, Alexander parted with roughly one third of his loot then and there despite some opposition from his retainers.

The dismissal of the army was Alexander's first task while in Thesalie.

The second was checking up on the well being of the city.

And so he first had Lady Felicia meet him in the study one glorious, sunny morning.

As for the reason why it was her rather than her husband, Lapitus, reporting to Alexander, well that's because while in theory it was him who was in charge of the city, in reality it was Lady Felicia who truly ran it.

Lapitus was just the figurehead used to placate the crowd because they would never accept a woman as their liege.

The man had almost no talent or even interest in governance and still spent most of his days at the old guard building with his men, drinking and making merry as well as leading the city watch.

While it was his wife who did all the heavy lifting.

Alexander started the meeting with a look at the tax ledgers and found the city's coffers were being fattened at a very respectable rate, much more than in Lord Ponticus's time.

And what made that truly incredible was that since Alexander exempted the city from all land tax, it meant everything came from the sales tax, indicating the sales of goods had increased dramatically in the last few months.

Although Alexander had expected the flow of goods into the city to increase, he had not expected it to increase so dramatically, that too in just the last six months.

"Hmmm. The numbers look quite good." Hence satisfied, Alexander closed the large, leather bound red paper book and gave a pleased smile to Lady Felicia.

"All due to your grace, my lord." And the lady replied back with almost an ingratiating grin, saying, "The volume of taxes were so much that we have had to frantically hire more magistrates at the gates and harbors to process them. Haha."

The lady in charge sounded quite pleased with herself,

This was because she had always loved power, she knew that.

And its allure had only gotten more and more stronger over the last few months, turning it almost like a hypnotic drug as she got used to wielding it almost without restraint during this time.

And she really wanted to keep it that way.

Which meant pleasing the man in front of him.

That's why it was such a relief to see that the pasha was satisfied.

Following this, Alexander then decided to move on to the next topic.

"How are the housing projects going on? Have you finished building them?" He posed.

This was a directive he had given Lady Felicia to build a series of newer and better housing along the city's poorer district to provide cheap housing.

"Ummm… we are still in the middle of completing them, my lord. It's a lot of buildings you see."

However this time, the lady opposite of him was unable to give a positive answer and drooped her head a bit.

She had tried to complete them as fast as conditions would allow, but still found the speed to have hit a bottleneck.

"It's okay. Try to complete them as quickly as possible." While Alexander appeared to be quite understanding here.

Because to him, this kind of made sense.

The new buildings that he asked for were the traditional, simple three to four stories consisting of units holding two to three rooms, the kind of ones found in any medieval cities.

These were made of wood, mud clay, and in some very specific parts stone, and took quite a bit of time to build.

At least relative to the Soviet style concrete apartment blocks that Alexander commissioned back in Zanzan.

So he was willing to be much more lenient here.

As for why he did not also use cement for these buildings, well simply because Alexander did not have enough spare material to fund this project.

15:39

Hence the choice of the slower, costlier, and also much more Directly support the authors on WebNovel!

prone to fire alternative until he could build more kilns to rectify that problem.

"Ahem! About that my lord," Responding to Alexander's urging to finish the buildings quicker, with a fake cough, Lady Felicia sought Alexander's attention, before claiming in a somewhat pitched voice,

"Although we are continuing to build new houses, at the moment however the city seems not to be able to keep up with the demand."

"Just take a look at last month. We had 3,000 new inhabitants in the city! And that's just entering the city! I'm not even counting all those coming to the surrounding towns and villages! And this is in winter!"

The raven haired beauty spoke each sentence with an ever increasing stress on the expletive, her pupils quivering a bit, as she at last pleaded at the impending problem,

"Lord Alexander, allow me to close the gates. If it keeps up, the city is soon going to become too crowded."

The lady was very alarmed about the place's burgeoning population as Thesalie was not built to house so many people, at least not so suddenly.

But to this, Alexander had a much cooler, relaxing posture.

To him, a bursting population was hardly a bane.

More of a boon as it meant more economic activity.

"What's attracting them so much? Is it all the trade?" He thus instead posed in an intriguing tone, as he rested his back on the back of the chair.

Such mass migrations from the countryside were usually quite rare outside of disasters like war or famine and he wanted to know the exact reason.

"Yes. The newly opened trade route with Zanzan has proved especially lucrative for many my lord." Lady Felicia answered with a nod, pointing, "All kinds of cheap and new goods have started flowing in like the floodgates have been opened."

"And the relief money my lord had given to the populace after taking the city over meant these people had a lot of coins to spend."

"It is the perfect marriage."

The lady draped in a large, red woolen shawl was quick to reply, smirking a bit by the end, before continuing,

"Also, Thesalie has shown itself to be a central hub for goods from Zanzan to flow to the rest of the country since it possesses the largest harbor along the Diannu for at least the next 200 kilometers."

"This also has attracted a lot of merchants and wholesalers from all over the region, who wish to buy low from here and then sell it high elsewhere inland. These greedy parasites are all flooding to the gates like a moth to a flame, with mouths drooling to try and capitalize on all the new business opportunities. They are the cause of all the trouble!" Lady Felicia frowned her sharp eyebrows a bit as she cursed, her face darkening a bit in anger.

The term 'greedy parasite' really revealed a lot about the woman's worldview to Alexander.

Lady Felicia viewed them as nothing but lazy parasites who produced nothing but nevertheless profited the most from others' hard work, a truly unscrupulous way of living in her eyes.

And if she could have had her way with them, she would have certainly made these men know their place.