Herald of Steel

Chapter 1226: Cambyses's Hurdles (Part-2)

"Here, mistress, have this. It is hot chicken. Eat before it becomes cold."

Standing beside Cambyses in her large, beautifully furnished study, Mean had a complicated face when she saw the state of her mistress.

The young lady in her early twenties no longer had that usual fresh, refreshing aura about her, being instead replaced with an air of gloom, tiredness, and melancholy.

Her usually fluffy cheeks were no longer rosy, her eyes had dark patches of ring underneath, and most striking of all, she looked a lot thinner.

Mean knew she had her lady had lost a lot of weight, something that was not readily apparent when she went out and met out with the nobles as Cambyses would be draped in heavy winter clothing. But now that she was alone in her study that was being kept warm by underfloor heating alongside a burning fireplace, her light clothes easily revealed her state.

"......"

That however seemed to be hardly any real concern for Cambyses, and did not appear to even notice the girl's voice next to her or the hot, piping soup from which wafted an enticing armora.

Instead, she was currently deeply frowning at a stack of paper she was holding in one hand while twisting and plucking hair with the other.

This 'stress relieving' habit was something that Cambyses had recently picked up after she found out that the sudden sting of her hair being ripped out helped her focus.

And due to the intense pressure she was in, Cambyses did it so regularly that by now, the legs of her chair had become littered with her long, silky strands.

Mean's heart felt torn after seeing her mistress in such a sorry state, causing her to cry in her heart with a heartful prayer, 'By the gods, she is going to become bald at this rate! Oh Alexander, get back here quickly! I don't know how long can mistress last!'

Until that happened though, all Mean could only was try her best to take care of Cambyses, thus gently moving the ornate, crystal cup filled with soup forward, she repeated her words to Cambyses, hoping to elicit some kind of reaction from the sitting noble lady.

Cambyses still appeared too deeply engrossed in reviewing her report to care. Because the numbers listed there were too incredulous for her to believe.

The report in her hand listed the total amount of supplies that would be required to raise and maintain a single legion, and Cambyses would have to admit, she had grossly underestimated how much supplies an army needed to move.

The time old adage- an army marches on its stomach was finally made clear to her with hard concrete numbers.

For example- according to the rule laid out by Alexander himself, each man in the legion was expected to carry about a week's worth on himself.

This meant each soldier had to have 1 pound of grain, 1 pound of meat or other protein and 1 pound of wine per day. The ratio of these combinations would be varied a little, depending on what could be supplied, but at the end of the day, 3 pounds of food per day was mandatory.

And 3 pounds of food times 6000 men came to the snug number of 18,000 pounds, or 8 tons of food.... daily.

Given an ox cart carried only 600 pounds of grain, that meant a legion needed 30 ox carts of grain just for one day.

Extend that of a week, and that number suddenly became two hundred and ten (210), or two hundred and fifty (250) if you wanted to account for contingencies such as some of the carts breaking down.

Siege equipment such as catapults and siege towers were also requested by Alexander.

The siege towers were indeed built on site. But the equipment and supplies to do so had to be hauled in.

This was because it was rare to readily find trees large enough to make these gigantic behemoths. The same was needed for battering rams, thus such trees had to be hauled by the legion along with the ram's bronze or Iron head.

While in the case of catapults, not only did the machine need to be carried, but also the rope used to operate it.

And it was not your regular linen roped.

Dried animal sinew (muscle tendon) had to be used as nothing else came close to it in strength till modern materials such as steel fibers and Kevlar appeared in the post world war 2 era.

Dried sinew however was expensive to buy and hard to obtain.

And since each battalion (600 men) was assigned one catapult, Cambyses had to gather enough rope for 20 catapults, not an easy thing to do in just two months.

The only thing that the young girl had to thank was her luck that the supplies would not have to be hauled by land but could be instead shipped.

This meant not only a tremendous save in time, with ships able to cover 8 to 10 times the distance as an ox driven cart, but they could also carry 100 to 150 tons of cargo, as compared to a measly few hundred pounds.

Best yet, these giant wooden beasts did not need a single grain, letting Cambyses save on a lot of weight and hassle.

Her problem was though, gathering enough of them.

Cambyses needed around 60 to 80 ships, and the only ones who had such large ships in those numbers were the many rich merchants.

Convincing these people to sail in winter when the waters got really rough proved was not easy.

Cambyses had to order, haggle, and oil them with copious amounts of gold to make them acquiesce to her.

In this endeavor, Cambyses thanked the gods that her husband had left her with a treasury bursting with gold.

Hence, she could offer exorbitant prices to those greedy men without batting an eye.

As for the supplies, luckily, Alexander's constant wars had worked to put in place a lot of established protocols. All Cambyses needed to do was activate them, and the civil administrators worked to collect everything that was asked for as fast as they could.

In this effort, Menes and the other council members also helped her a lot, be it with materials or the security of the city.

Thus finally, after two long months of struggle, just as the dawn of the new year came, a total of 13,000 men were boarded into close to a hundred ships and under Menes's leadership quickly set sail, intending to meet up with their lord as soon as possible.