Chapter 933 Returning to Zanzan
?It was already approaching November by the time Alexander was finally able to finish tying up all the loose ends at the capital and start his journey back.
He had wished to start far sooner, but new developments arose which required much of his attention, costing him a month more than he had anticipated.
The primary one eating up his time was of course the retrial of all those nobles.
With Philips's support, Alexander was also able to gain Lord Theony's support in this endeavor and when all three were in consort, the other nobles had no teeth to bite with to challenge Alexander's rule.
Hence the heads of these noble houses were executed by hanging for cowardice in battle, and the favorable access their family had to Alexander's unique goods was suspected for three years, as Alexander finally got the chance to make an example of the consequence of desertion in the face of danger.
Aside from this Alexander also worked out some of the details on how Philips and Lord Theony should govern Tibias, as well as giving them some new infrastructure projects, like building nearby roads and digging new irrigation channels.
However, Alexander was intentionally sparse on the number of these projects here, since he already had his hands full with others.
His cement supply could only keep up with so much so he planned to open new plants in Thesalie before pushing these latest large projects.
And lastly, Alexander dealt with Lord Theony's succession crisis, with the result being, long story short, Theony being reinstated as his heir.
Those meetings had been particularly tedious for Alexander, but at last, Alexander was able to make the father and son makeup.
Even if at least outwardly.
However the same could not be said with Lord Theony and Philips's relationship which was as frosty as the temperature outside- i.e.- close to freezing.
The former still blamed the latter for his favorite son's death even though they were on completely the opposite side of the battlefield.
But with Perseus not in the picture, Philips was the next best candidate for Lord Theony to meet out his anger as the distraught father was able to let go of his dead son yet.
And Alexander honestly did not know how to feel about that.
On one hand, he did not want to see these people get along too well as it would undermine his own rule.
But on the other hand, he also did not want them to be at each other's throats constantly since that would simply make ruling the lands harder.
So Alexander tried his best to urge Lord Theony to not do anything rash and let it go, saying this was the unfortunate reality of war.
The huge train made Alexander's already slow even more of a crawl as men, women and even the steeds became very quickly exhausted and so a typical marching day only lasted half of the usual one, and even then you would perhaps cover half the usual distance due to all the obstacles.
There were even weather spells so bad that Alexander was forced to call a complete halt to the march several times as the Winter King danced and roared and blew across the lands in any way he pleased, turning the entire place snow white.
And the king's rage could last from anywhere a single day to even close to a week.
"Thank god we are not at war." And the only sigh of relief that Alexander could breathe during times such as this was that this was no campaign or worse a retreat following defeat.
But thankfully a victorious march back home where his supply lines were robust and intact, ensuring him access to adequate grain.
This enabled him to increase the regular soldier's rations by 30% to even 50% on some especially frigid days, in order to help boost morale and then themselves warm.
After all, cold sapped heat from the body like a vampire's touch.
But even then Alexander would regularly get reports of many soldiers being admitted to the medical clinic, to the point that the place was already starting to get overwhelmed, while a few soldiers would regularly die from various cold related complications.
Not even the nobles were safe as two lesser nobles were already reported to have passed away after succumbing to high fever.
(P.S. Author inquiry- I was wondering how would you feel if I killed a major character like this. From a common cold, fever, or other illness. Because such things did happen in real life. Many, many important figures just got ill and died.Imagine Menes taking a bath in the icy cold water with a few of his bodyguards as a fun pass time, catching a fever, and then suddenly dying. How would you feel? Shocking or underwhelming? Comment.)
Due to these bouts of bad weather, at some point, Alexander even seriously considered turning back and returning to the capital to quarter there instead.
But knowing many of the levies wanted to reach Zanzan as soon as possible no matter what in order to start preparing their field, Alexander refrained.
Instead, he urged the men forward, while he spent his time on the road inside the huge, luxurious carriage pulled by six horses, accompanied by two of his wives, with whom he played cards or chess or snakes and ladders that he invented, or simply shared various stories and tales including brain puzzles and various philosophical debates.
While at right, they mostly huddled together and just slept.
Because frankly, Alexander felt too cold to bring 'it' out.
Even for the lustful Alexander, the winds of winter seemed to have snuffed out the flames of lust.
It took Alexander's army of 40,000 an agonizing 2 months to finally reach Thesalie 500 km away, where Alexander decided to rest for a couple of days because Gelene had fallen really ill.
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