Herald of Steel

Laykash did not need to twist the arm of the old man after saying his piece

Helping the enemy forces was a capital offense and so after screaming the villagers knew nothing, the village chief quickly convinced his people to migrate to Zanzan.

This would have been pretty easy to do even without the threats as no one wanted to live in a place where tens of thousands of soldiers were going to be landfall.

Because soldiers were basically bandits with legal immunity, laying their claws on the general population’s food, homes, and women.

So the villagers quickly packed up whatever clothes and small pots and pans they could fit in their carts, their surprisingly well-stocked food rations which they had managed to swindle off their lord, and with a melancholic face set off on foot for Zanzan.

But not before they were ordered to set alight the village, destroying all the houses, filling up all the wells, demolishing the port, and dismantling all the defensive structures.

“*Sigh*, and they were so well made too,” One of the scouts could not help but regretfully sigh looking at the burning village.

Hatamum was no dilapidated village as they had expected, but a fully-fledged small town in the making, with many houses, marketplaces, butchers, and all other everyday necessities.

So seeing it all go and knowing that Alexander had promised to pay for their reconstruction saddened the soldier’s heart.

But it was what it was.

“This is not the only place. Lord Alexander has ordered all the lands around Zanzan to be scorched. The invaders must not have any food or shelter.” Hearing the lament, Laykash reminded his subordinate of their reason for doing this.

“Couldn’t we have ambushed them here? You know, hide and then attack them the moment they land,” His reasoning was challenged by another young man who asked eagerly, feeling like it was a missed opportunity.

To which the middle-aged patient man in the group simply replied, “Leave the planning to the higher-ups. You focus on your task.”

As the scouts practiced a scorched earth policy around Zanzan, removing all people, feedstock, and animals from falling into the enemy’s hands, and destroying all the wells, Alexander was busy making last-minute preparations.

In particular, he was busy splitting his time with Faziz in charge of crossbows, and the military workshop in the eastern district which officially supplied the military with all its gear.

“My lord, 2 million crossbow bolts will be impossible to make before February. We will need at least two more weeks. I’m sorry that’s the best I can do…” This blacksmith had dark, concentric circles below his eyes as he said, his voice low, weak, and regretful.

Clearly Faziz had been pushing himself to meet the quota.

“….Hmmm. Okay, try your best to make as much as possible,” Knowing this Alexander did not scold the man, but only encouraged him with a pat on the shoulder.

2 million bolts was a mammoth target given the extremely limited time window of just two weeks.

But why 2 million exactly?

Because Alexander calculated that since in the Battle of Agincourt, 5,000 English longbowmen were given a million arrows, for 10,000 crossbowmen, it should be double.

Of course, crossbows and longbows could never be a one-to-one ratio, simply given the difference in the rate of fire.

But Alexander ordered 2 million bolts nevertheless to be on the safe side.

His workshop was already capable of making 25,000 bolts a day, which made been reportedly boosted to 60,000 bolts a day by the additional personnel added.

But it appeared this was the absolute limit of the production chain.

The surprising reason for it was that there were no more expert fletchers to tie the feathers to the arrows.

Yes, of all things, this was the bottleneck, tying feathers to the arrows.

There were already around half a million crossbow bolts already in storage made before the Jabel offensive, thus simple math said that making the other one and a-half million would take about a month

And there was no way around it.

For the workers were already up working as hard as they could as long as they could, starting at the crack of dawn, and only finishing once the last glimmer of sunlight faded out.

And many times their work would be illuminated by the soft glow of candlelight as the sleepy, wintery sun might not even choose to show itself on some days.

Alexander toured the crossbow bolt-making plant, which had been expanded massively to get him his 2 million arrows, and observed the manufacturing process, while also listening to the needs and wants of the workers.

Many said there were not enough blacksmiths, some complained of the lack of light, but most smiled and said everything was alright.

Alexander smiled, nodded, and encouraged the workers to keep up the hard work for just a while longer while knowing himself, there was really nothing he could do to improve the situation in the short time.

Because he was already his best, as he had switched the economy to a complete war economy.

This meant that he had hollowed out a lot of the other sectors in order to transfer the required personnel for the war effort, and making any improvements would need time and manpower.

Both of which he was sorely lacking.

In fact so much manpower had been siphoned off the other industries, that they come to a screeching halt.

For instance, the ‘luxury’ workshops such as the paper, soap, sugar, and glass were all making arrow shafts, while the lingerie shop was busy spinning out yarn for the thread that would tie the feathers to the shaft.

The blast furnace had halted its production of iron ore because there was enough stockpile of the stuff and only a skeleton crew was stationed there, to guard the place and also to make sure the fire did not go out as it would make restarting the furnace very hard.

And most of its workers were sent elsewhere.

The specialists such as the blacksmiths and other artisans were sent to their work in their respective fields, mostly helping with weapons and armors manufacturing, while the regular people were relegated to either helping with the construction effort such as strengthening the southern walls, or digging a ditch around the city so that the enemy soldiers could not simply run up to the wall and put their ladders against it or to be trained as an infantryman, a garrison militia, etc.

And this type of reallocation occurred in all the industries, brick, salt, road making, etc, except for the cement industry because that was the very thing being used to strengthen the outer walls.

Alexander’s siphoning even extended to shops and businesses to the point that most shops were closed and their people relocated to other projects.

And Alexander had also reintroduced daily food rations instead of the weekly ones to save on food, in case of a siege.

The long hours, fewer portions of food, and mostly closing of the taverns had drawn some grumbling in the populace, who complained that they could not even get a good drink after a hard day’s labor.

Which promoted Alexander to promise that this was only temporary and everything would go back to normal.before March.

And this placated the citizenry enough to go back to work.

Finished with his examination of the arrow factory, Alexander next went to visit the eastern military district weapons workshop, which was responsible for making the actual crossbows.

There he saw all the blacksmiths, carpenters, and mostly regular folk hard at work making the stock and bow individually, before merging it together with hemp ropes.

Nest to there was another shop, dedicated to making ten thousand pavises.

A pavise was an oblong shield large enough to cover the entire body that was used by archers and crossbowmen to safely shoot behind from.

Alexander’s pavises were just the shields the infantrymen would carry, except it had a spike at the borrow to drive it into the ground so that archers and crossbowmen could crouch behind them to shelter against incoming missile attacks when they were reloading their weapons,

This weapon was nothing new, as many times the soldiers would hold their shields above their comrades’ heads while he was shooting, and this was simply a different way of employing the same technique.

And Alexander knew this structure would be critical for protecting his archers from the camel archers’ fire.

And lastly, Alexander checked out the last workshop there, one which employed only blacksmiths.

And they were busy preparing a very special weapon.

A weapon that would scare off the camel lancers.

Yes, the Jahal mercenaries were not just archers.

They also carried light spears and shields to engage close quarters, thus acting as light cavalry.

And Alexander’s special weapon was designed to prevent any cavalry charge, be it camel or horse from simply smashing into his relatively squishy longbowmen and destroying them.

“My lord, will this work?” One of the blacksmiths asked as he showed Alexander the piece, concern, and doubt bubbling out.

The solution seemed too simple. 𝒃𝙚𝙙𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡．𝙘𝙤𝙢

“Let’s see,” And Alexander could only hope that his theory would work.

In this way, the preparations continued, until finally on the thirteenth of February, Alexander’s scouts spotted a large contingent of men make landfall at multiple points along the long shoreline of Zanzan and were reportedly marching to link up with each other before presumably heading for Zanzan city.

“They are late,” Alexander gave a confident smile as he received the report.