Herald of Steel

Alexander watched the Helvati raid and plunder the surrounding countryside with a complicated look in his heart.

First of all, he could not believe how easy it was to convince Metztil.

The man had gone giddy with joy the moment Alexander made the barest hint of it.

And looking at that ruddy, excited face, Alexander could not help but 'tsk' a bit in his heart,

'I just swindled you from letting your people get a land border with your homeland using this exact technique. Yet you so easily jump into it again. Should I call you foolishly greedy or greedily foolish?'

Alexander personally did not think Metztil was a good chief and could see how the man had landed in the hot water he was in.

He was too short sighted, and easily swayed by whenever a good enough reward was presented to him.

However, a greedy chief was also not bad news for him.

It let him rest assured that the man was not going to easily betray him.

Hence Alexander kept all this disdain to himself and instead presented a facade of great encouragement.

As for Metztil, he really did not care what Alexander was plotting.

In fact, the idea probably never occurred to him because at the moment he was likely feeling too overwhelmed.

There were very few joys that could compare with killing and looting these outsiders. It let him vent his frustration and get revenge while simultaneously becoming rich.

What was there not to like about this?

Even if he failed to win this campaign, even if Alexander went back on his word, as long as Metztil could suck the wealth from here, the chief was confident he would be able to recoup the cost of raising this army as well as placate most of the dissident voices back home.

He was that assured of the quantity of loot that could be taken from here.

And it was a trust that was well placed.

Caira, the home turf of a mercantile Marquiss was perhaps one of the richest provinces in the world at the time and so the amount of stuff that could be taken from here was truly mind boggling for the poor, impoverished Helvati.

They had already gotten a taste of what was to expect while they marched here-

homes overflowing with numerous iron pots and pans, and other metal tools like plows and hammers, huge mounds of stored grain the likes of which few men had ever seen, thick rolls of high quality clothes and fabric that appeared extravagant to even the tribal elites, livestock in the numbers they could scarcely believe, and of course lots of slaves.

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And this same looting and burning was repeated here now, only on a much larger scale.

Since the southern part of the Margraves was much more prosperous than its northern counterpart, naturally the volume of loot the Helvati managed to snatch was also much higher.

For instance, the surrounding homes here were awash with so many iron products that the looting Helvati did not even recognize some of them or what their use was.

Aside from the usual things used in day to day, and various weapons like swords, pikes, and halberds, all of which were quite rare to find in the north, many of the more luxurious homes were filled with various decorative art pieces like intricate showpieces, ironworks furnishings, and even beautifully worked iron gates and windows.

The Helvati were blown away by that last display of opulence because, for them, even a single sword was precious enough to a family heirloom of the highest quality.

In fact, a sword was so precious that it was not something that could not be even bought.

The ones who had a sword got it one way and one way only- stealing!

Meaning it was either robbed from an outsider or taken as battlefield loot.

Yet here the Sybarians were making huge gates and windows out of it, and using it to make statues!

Given the Helvati produced virtually no iron products of their own, the use of such a scarce resource like this was simply unimaginable

And unless the men had seen it for themselves, they would have never believed iron could be used so wastefully.

They even doubted their family back home would believe them if they told them about it.

Thus, to not let themselves be called a drunkard, they decided to take proof. All the iron products, even the door, windows, and gates were dismantled and taken as loot, the men flashing the widest grin they could as they did so.

Selling them even as scrap was bound to make each of them rich enough not to have to work for at least a few years.

Now, this overabundance of iron was naturally not caused by the Sybarians being ultra wealthy as the Helvati were making themselves out to be.

It was but an innocent by-product of Alexander's invention of the blast furnace and its ability to produce progidal amounts of very good quality iron.

Caira was also its largest export market since it was a major hub for iron processing and this access to very cheap iron resulted in the bizarre phenomenon of people switching to this metal instead of bronze or even the relatively expensive wood.

If others were to hear iron was cheaper than even wood, most would have called the person mad or if proven true, simply vomit blood.

But such a thing did happen due to the bizarre appearance of someone like Alexander.

Hence the current fashion trend among the nobles and upper class people living around Caira was to decorate homes with as many iron products as you could as a way to show off.

Iron was of course not the only thing Helvati found to be in abundance here.

They also found something much, much more elusive, something they only heard of never seen… Glass!

Or more specifically, clear, transparent glass.

If iron was a 'rare' metal like gold or silver, then to the Helvati, glass was something like adamantine, one that only existed in stories and folklore.

And even that was the muddy, cloudy kind, one that was used in the modern day to make things like marbles and other toys.

Transparent, crystalline glass was something so new to them that at first, the looting men did not even know what they were looking at.

"What is this? Looks like water!" A brutish unkempt man gruffly spat while taking the glass statue of a dog from a nearby shelf, looking utterly confused.

This man and twenty of his brothers had broken into a local noble's manor and after killing the man was currently busy taking everything.

This of course not only meant loot, but women too.

The numerous mournful screams of those who did not want to be taken were still reverberating across the manor.

This man who was the first to observe the glass showpiece however was in the rear of the formation and thus one of the last people to enter the manor.

Hence he missed the opportunity to take the prize he liked as all the good ones, as well as the bad ones, were taken.

So he instead began to ransack the place looking for the best loot he could find before others joined in.

This was then he came across this glass statue.

And his loud voice and strange claim naturally drew the attention of his nearby colleagues, particularly those who were still waiting for their turn.

Charmed by the shimmering glow being refracted off the artifact and the strange material it seemed to be made of, those men who were ready to drop their pants quickly left the women they were crowding around and instead began to observe the statue.

Handing it around one by one, they spoke in hushed, excited, and puzzled voices,

"What is it? Indeed it looks like some kind of solidified water." A man repeated, raising the thing up above his head and placing it under the shimmering sunlight that was drifting in from the nearby window, as if looking to see if the thing would melt.

"Solid water is called ice you idiot. This is different!"

Quickly berating his colleague for making such a foolish comment, another man snatched the thing away from the man like a hawk, before starting to feel the temperature and weight of the thing.

The man would comment it felt cool to the touch and quite heavy for its small size.

"Looks like it's some kind of clear stone."

Getting it on his hands, another would comment such, finding it logical to think that since the thing was shaped like a statue, it should be made of some kind of unknown stone.

And it was clearly not made out of metal.

This hypothesis quickly led another clever man to chime up in excitement,

"Gems! Maybe it is a statue made of gems! Like the clear ones bards sing."

The Helvati man was of course referring to diamonds here. Although these poor sods had never seen the ultra precious stone, they knew of its existence from songs traveling poets and bards sang.

And that memory was enough to make these men feel giddy with great excitement.

If the bards spoke of it surely it had to be precious.

So they quickly bagged the thing.

Let us say no to piracy! Don't take part in a crime! Don't patronize thieves!

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