Herald of Steel

When collecting ransoms, hard currency was not the only thing nobles had to exchange.

If things were tight and they were short on coin, there were many precedents to them paying it back in other ways- such as political concessions, agreeing to certain policies even if it hurt their own interests, marrying their children to form various alliances, etc.

And as Lord Kite kept constantly bugging him, Alexander suddenly found he could use the desperation to get quite a few things like this from him.

Hence just as the nobleman was giving up, Alexander made this offer.

And it instantly made the other side's eyes light up with joy! As long as Alexander was willing to talk, it meant there was hope.

Thus letting go of all his weariness, Lord Kite made the offer with a crafty grin, "Then what does my lord have in mind… something like our 'goodwill?'

Alexander was glad to see he was working with a clever man.

"I want the family members of the roughly 10,000 infantry I captured." He frankly revealed without further ado.

Yes, these were the same men Lord Castell refused to redeem, Alexander had not forgotten them.

"......." But Lord Kite, hearing this suddenly felt like he was being electrocuted!

He appeared stunned, which soon turned to immense anger as his eyes blazed.

He spat out with a flushed face, "If you want to treat me like a clown, then I guess this meeting is over my lord!"

Alexander was a bit caught off guard by this sudden show of hostility, unable to figure out where he went wrong.

'Isn't this how you are supposed to negotiate? Make a sky high ask and then slowly drop down?'

It seemed he had made the ask a bit 'too' sky high making it go past anything reasonable and becoming rather ridiculous.

And Alexander quickly found out why that was.

The family members of the roughly 8,000 men would go number anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000, which was hundreds of times higher than the number of prisoners Lord Kite wanted in return.

Even if Alexander had asked for that many cats and dogs in exchange that would have likely been too much.

Hence to Lord Kite, this sounded like Alexander playing with him.

Alexander quickly called back Lord Kite recognizing his mistake, "My lord, please, please, I believe there has been a translation error. I am serious about the deal."

Fortunately following that small debacle, the duo managed to hash out a much more reasonable agreement.

Alexander offered, "The nobles can have the guards and other servants they wish to be freed. But I would like to take twenty of the most beautiful women from them… as well as some of the engineers or others with special talent. I also wish for Lord Kite to covertly arrange for the families of all the captured senior commanders to be sent to Zanzan."

"This…." Initially, Lord Kite thought Alexander was asking for too much while offering too little.

So gritting his teeth he grumbled,

"The families of such senior commanders are not easy to 'buy'. Forget me, not even the Duke would dare to displace so many of them at once.

The same problem applies to women. I highly appreciate that these noble ladies have not been harmed by your men but… many of them are wives of nobility. Let me thank you profusely on their behalf. And we can give you twenty no… even a hundred women in gratitude. But just not the twenty most beautiful ones here." Lord Kite was sure many of the married women would rank high on that list.

Not to mention the word 'beautiful' was too subjective. It not only involved looks and figures but illusory things like temperaments and family background as well.

So how could he not worry that Alexander would take only the most 'precious' ones?

But when it came to the young pasha, this latter part was hardly the gross dilemma Lord Kite was making it up to be.

He had really asked these women because of the favor Laykash had asked him- to get the cavalry captain that woman who caught his fancy. Alexander himself was really not interested in bedding any of the captured women.

Thus with a casual fling of his palms, he let out,

"Okay fine! I will only take the women who are not officially married to the nobleman, i.e.- mistresses and lovers. They should be statusless right?"

Lord Kite was caught tongue tied at this point.

Indeed, almost none of the women that were with the noblemen here were their official wives. Sybaris was a monogamous society and the nobleman could only marry one so naturally their official consort would be from a similar, high ranking noble family. These women were hardly fit to bear the hardship of campaigning, nor would most noble ever dare to bring such prestigious women to such 'filthy' grounds.

'A battlefield is no place for any respectable women,' The Sybarian high society staunchly believed.

And this was in addition to the fact that for most of the nobles, wars were also a kind of getaway escape.

They could use this opportunity to easily hide from their wive's prying eyes and take pleasure in things they truly enjoyed, with the people they truly enjoyed being with.

Marriages between nobles were of course almost always of political convenience first and everything else second, thus many of them found their partners far from being ideal.

Which is where their multiple mistresses and lovers came in, these desperate, nearly statusless women were willing to go down and get far more dirty than any respectable noblewoman from a powerful family background ever would.

This type of 'red' culture was an open secret among the Sybarian nobility, but it was still frowned upon if it was ever revealed openly.

So where could there be a more convenient place to hide these illicit activities than a battlefield thousands of miles away from the gossiping metropolis of Sybaris?

Virtually all the noblemen practiced this and with everyone doing it, no one ever dared to poke the other.

The nobles could do whatever they wanted in their tent as they wished.

This was of course a very convenient thing for them… most of the time.

The problem was unfortunately this time, the same tacit understanding stumped Lord Kite here.

He could neither say yes or no to Alexander's point.

He did not dare to lie to the pasha and claim all the women were the actual wives as it would be too easy to expose his fib.

Alexander would not even need to go through 3 questions before some of the women gave themselves away.

Many of these mistresses were not the most refined bunch and lacked that feeling of aristocracy. And that was forgetting the fact that some of the more foreign lovers who were taken as pleasure slaves could not even speak the language or spoke it with a heavy accent.

But at the same time, saying no was also detrimental to Lord Kite because those nobles really wanted their beautiful lovers back.

However, after weighing the scales, Lord Kite chose the lesser of the two evils.

"Okay! You can have the women my lord!" He produced a solemn nod, saying to himself,

'I can just tell the men that Alexander was too lustful and wanted them all. All Adhanians are like that!'

Thus Alexander managed to get that woman for Laykash.

His luck however ran out when it came to the other issue- the reallocation of the family members.

Even when Alexander was willing to pay a large portion of the 'purchase and shipping price,' to make up for whatever funds Lord Kite might lack, the nobleman was unable to guarantee he could deliver all the intended goods in the intended volume.

As he said, it was very risky to trafficking humans since he was technically breaking the law.

If Lord Kite tried to be too aggressive, even a nobleman like him would get implicated.

Not to mention, many of those families were not even in his fief. Lord Kite would have to start cutting deals with other friendly nobles to get them… which would pose its own security challenges, with not even heavy compensation guaranteeing their mouths.

For some nobles, it was always more profitable to take whatever money Lord Kite was offering and then rat him out for their own or their faction's benefit.

Hence the best Lord Kite could promise was, "I can send some of the men's wives and any unmarried daughter if they are willing to go. The sons…. I will try."

The reason behind this statement was self explanatory.

A lord might turn a blind eye to the departure of 'unproductive and burdensome' widows and young girls, but the men who worked the fields were a different story.

If a large number of them were to start leaving, most would start asking questions.

Hence the best Alexander could do was ask Lord Kite to try his best and get as many families out as possible, whatever rank their men may hold, promising to exchange some of the noblemen's leftover entourage in return.

"Haha, great, great! I knew Lord Alexander was a man of great generosity!" Lord Kite boisterously cheered.

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