Herald of Steel

However, that knowledge did hardly anything to soothe his frustration.

Then, feeling that officer was too much of a small fry to pick on, Lord Parker instead turned to lash out at Lord Macht,

"Why is father taking so long? Why are not the men here? Did you explain our predicament properly? What exactly did you write in that letter? Could he have misunderstood you?"

Lord Macht felt properly incensed hearing this.

The way Lord Parker put it, it was very easy to construe the things as him taking a dig at Lord Macht\'s impoverished background, mocking him as a man who could not write.

A proud, veteran warrior like Lord Macht felt like grabbing the brat by the throat and strangling him then and there.

While Lord Kite who was watching all this from the sides immediately felt the hairs on his back stand.

He understood that tempers were running high all around and this was just a manifestation of that frustration.

So stepping forward, he loudly spoke to draw attention to himself,

"My lord, remember that Lord Macht was the first to raise the request for reinforcement. His commitment to this campaign is perhaps only exceeded by yours!"

Defending the pride of that elder warrior and cooling him down as such, Lord Parker quickly then turned to Lord Parker explain,

"The problem here is the season, my lord. Winter is really not a good time to raise men. You should know very well… traveling is difficult and it takes much more time to send messages.

Not to mention how some of the waters around here turn very dangerous. I\'m sure the duke is doing everything he can to send help.

And who knows, the fleet might just be waiting for us off the coast… only waiting for the weather to improve a bit before making contact. They might very well be here tomorrow, surprising us all! Then we will teach these Margraves why we are a ducal family and they are a mere marquis. So please hold your patience a bit longer until then."

Lord Kite tried to sound as optimistic as possible while saying these things, hoping to inspire confidence in the young scion.

While internally he lampooned, \'If only there was a way to contact the ships. Then we would not be in such a flux!\'

Indeed at the current level of technology, there was really no way of contacting a fleet out in the ship other than sending scouts ships to manually search for them.

But in the vast sea, this was harder than looking for a needle in a haystack. And the Heeats could not even do that due to the same reason Alexander could not use his ships- bad weather.

So they had to rely on the fleet contacting them according to their will.

The fleet could still communicate to the headquarters using message birds that were trained to always fly to a predetermined position, however even that was very limited.

It was only a one way method like a pager and worse, it had too many ways to be intercepted. Birds of prey, bad weather and the birds simply losing their way were all known dangers.

And it seemed for whatever reason the approaching reinforcing fleet had no intention of letting Lord Parker of their current status as of the moment, leaving the group in Caira totally blind to their situation.

They did not know if relief was a day or a month away.

Hence Lord Kite could only paint the most optimistic picture and hope for the best.

Of course, the clever man also made sure to lace enough of that with truths of varying extent to make it more believable, but there was one last crucial point that he did not list.

And that was the fact that it was very hard to raise the asked 20,000 men within just two or three months.

If it was simply for the defense of the lands, it would have been more than enough.

During winter the peasants were relatively free without having any fields to attend to, so taking them from one\'s land was easy. Even raising 30,000 might have been possible in dire situations.

The problem however came when one tried to raise an attacking force and then send it over the sea close to a thousand kilometers away in such a short time.

At that point, men and perhaps more crucially supplies had to be gathered from other parts of the fief which were typically under the rule of different nobles.

And that meant negotiations regarding the numbers to be supplied and the price.

Even the more friendly nobles would need anywhere from a month to two to get it all done, while the more reticent ones would employ far more bureaucratic red tape.

For context, Cambyses needed to spend three months to organize a force half of the size asked by Lord Macht.

Hence to gather so many men within such a short time was a daunting task for even the likes of a bone fide duke.

Delays were inevitable even if Duke Heeat was an ultra efficient machine.

Lord Parker had simply sent the plea for help too late.

But Lord Kite would never accuse Lord Parker like this, and especially not now. He was trying to cool the man, not set him off.

Hence giving a plausible explanation behind the delay, Lord Kite then cleverly even proposed a solution, chiming up with a smile that looked like a cat that had just gotten the milk,

"Also my lord, if you think about it…there is no need for us to follow the Margraves. Why don\'t we leave the city on our ships? Wait for reinforcements out in the ocean and then return after rendezvousing with them?"

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"...????..." His idea suddenly made a clap of thunder burst into the minds of every man that was there.

None of them had dared to think like that.

Indeed, since the Margraves did not want the Heeat army to be in the city, and the Heeats family did not want to get into battle with Alexander, they could use this to satisfy both.

The first to jump on this was none other than Lord Parker, who shouted in glee,

"Right! We can load the ships with enough supplies and anchor a few kilometers out of the harbor! We can easily last a month … or even more! Then once we have enough men…."

As the man trialed off excitedly, the gloomy look the lad had till now seemed to have been wiped off in an instant, thinking he had finally found the key to solve all his troubles.

Lord Parker was just about to let out a torrent of expletive praise to Lord Kite, and even offer him the position of his right hand man.

"Snort! Where are all the ships?"

When all that happiness was almost instantly turned to dust by none other that Lord Macht, who had chosen to unceremoniously gate crashed into Lord Kite\'s \'brilliant\' idea then and there.

He was perhaps the only one who resisted getting washed away by Lord Kite\'s \'fantastic\' idea and instead, upon carefully thinking about its feasibility on the spot, quickly found a major glaring flaw.

He thus reminded everyone that even if they wanted to do such a thing, they lacked enough vessels to take even half the total force, since a majority of them were currently underneath the harbor as charred wood courtesy of Alexander.

And then, as if to get revenge for Lord Parker questioning his literal skills, Lord Macht was still not done, but went on to further add,

"Not to mention the weather is currently really bad. Who knows when a huge storm will hit? What will happen if we get caught in it?

Then there is the matter of pride- how can we call ourselves a ducal family if we run like such cowards?"

And lastly, what if the Margraves loses to Alexander and then without us, surrenders the city to him? How will we take it back? Through another siege?"

"....." The whole crowd went silent hearing the veteran commander tear apart Lord Kite\'s idea will a rapid dog tears meat, shredding it until it basically disappeared.

While Lord Kite\'s lips twitched with regret as well as quite a bit of anger,

\'You damn fool! You think I could not see such an obvious flaw? You think I came floating by a river yesterday? I was just saying it to placate the young brat. Would it kill you to shut your trap for a minute?\'

Many who saw Lord Kite\'s face turn red then thought it was because he was embarrassed, while in reality it was because he was very angry at having his plan foiled by his own allies.

If things had all gone according to plan, he could have safety ended the meeting now and then slowly soothed the frustrated Lord Parker later.

However now,

\'To be pitted by such good natured fools….\' Lord Kite helplessly lampooned.

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