Herald of Steel

"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.

And it would not be like that only the soldiers that require food.

The stock animals needed food too, such as the oxen pulling the cart, the horse going the fighting, and the mules carrying the legion's heavy baggage.

Again as laid out by Alexander, each squad of 8 men shared a mule, used to carry the heavy tent, other unit equipment such as buckets and shovels, and a stone mill to process wheat.

While each officer, generally had three mules for his equipment and paperwork.

Each of these pack animals had to have 5 pounds of grain per day and 10 pounds of foliage such as hay or straw

Leaving the mule to graze over an acre of land per day could substitute for the hay, but the grain still had to be fed to the mule.

Then came the oxen, who were much more fuel efficient than their hard working brethren, able to subsist on 10 pounds of hay alone but did better if given some grain. 𝙍ÄNỔ𐌱Ěș

The trade off here was speed, with an oxen cart able to only cover half the distance that a mule could- from 12 miles to just 6.

Combining all this, a 6000 fully infantry legion had 750 mules for the enlisted ranked man and 200 mules for all the officers.

Then came the 'gas guzzlers' of the ancient world- horses.

Each horse of the legion had to have 5 to 8 pounds of grain and 15 to 20 pounds of hay per day. And each legion had 600 such cavalrymen.

Now, that did not mean there were only 600 horses, oh no.

Because each cavalryman was expected to have at least three horses. Many had four,- one for the servant who took care of the mule and two other horses, which the horseman rode during the day. The warhorse that was used to fight was usually kept in reserve so that it would be as fresh as possible when the battle started.

Thus to support a 6000 man legion with 600 horsemen attached included 1,000 more mules, (sick mules needed to be replaced), 2400 horses, and about 100 oxen hauling their food and equipment.

In this way, it could be seen that a legion actually had more animals than it had soldiers, which was actually the norm till the invention of the railroad and then the truck.

All this meant that to keep only a single legion fed per day, around 30 tons of food was needed per day!

And Alexander wanted two such legions.

Since the round trip to Galiosos and back would take four weeks in total, and with Alexander's request for additional grain for his besieged troops, Cambyses thus figured would have to gather close to 4,000 tons of grain or around 40 to 50 ships worth of it.

This was a lot.

Not to mention, men, animals, and grain were not the only things that were needed.

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.

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