Herald of Steel

Lord Parker's extreme reaction towards the loss of Achillas worked to make Lord Macht produce quite a stained record about him in his heart.

All nobles suffered loss, hardship, and defeat in life, and seeing Lord Parker acting like this at his very first instance, Lord Macht began to worry that the man was not tough enough for the job.

The first or second time was okay, but it was to become a habit for him…. Lord Macht determined he intended to have a talk to the man later regarding this, regarding self control and perseverance.

For now, though, he first worked to try and placate the pair of Margrave's sisters as best as he could, especially the elder one, since even a layman like him could see how bad it would be to antagonize the two sisters at this moment in time.

The Heeat family was so close to having it all, so the last thing they needed was the Margraves pulling out of the deal because of something like this.

Thus in order to reassure the duo, Lord Macht even had no problem openly cursing his future lord in front of them, calling him out for his foolishness and promising the pair this was a one time affair.

Both sisters chose to honor Lord Macht's generous acts and sincere words with curt nods and an understanding smile, claiming that they understood these were extraordinary times and that Lord Parker was under a lot of stress so they never took it to mind.

Although their actual thoughts were hidden by a mist of ambiguity it remained to be seen how efficacious those efforts by Lord Macht truly were.

After all, it would be very hard for any self respecting woman to forgive and forget such an injustice so easily, never mind when it involved distinguished noble ladies such as them.

The only silver lining in all of this was Lord Macht was blessed to get there when he did- on time.

If he had delayed it by a bit more, there was a high probability these ladies might have caught a serious cold or fever, and if he had missed them by sunrise, well they would have likely lost their heads.

When Lord Macht thought about it like that, the current circumstances did not seem at all bad.

Lord Macht left the Margraves sisters to rest and warm themselves up and then worked to quickly seek out the captured officers, asking them their version of today's events.

The recount mostly coincided with what the Heeat commanders had retold, with the only exception being that according to their version, it was the Heeat soldiers who started the fights aboard the ships and them who stabbed Lord Bernard, not a panicked Margraves soldier.

But much more critically than that, one of the Margrave's officers swore that their flagship fled the scene only after the fight had broken and Lord Bernard had been attacked, possibly because they thought they had been betrayed, as put forth by him.

Lord Macht felt a headache hearing all this, not only because it clearly conflicted with the 'official' report but also because of how hard it would be to verify these.

Both sides had every reason to lie.

So Lord Macht first tried to find the culprit who had supposedly stabbed Lord Bernard and interrogated him about it.

However, he soon found out that the man had already been thrown overboard by Officer Rick as punishment.

At the time, this was done with the intention of hiding the fact and thus shielding the Heeat family from being implicated. It was assumed that without the assistant's own testimony, the Margraves would have a very weak case, one which could be buried with brute force by the Heeat family.

The loss of Achillas and Lord Parker's insanity made that plan quickly go bust, and instead that brash action only got Rick another earful from Lord Macht.

But at the end of the day, the milk had been already spilled and no amount of shouting could bring the attacker back for interrogation.

So Lord Macht was forced to turn to Lord Bernard- the man at the center of it all.

The only problem was this commander who had seen it all was still recovering from his wound, unable to move and barely conscious.

Able to form only the smallest of tangible words, there was no getting anything out from him anytime soon.

Lord Bernard had wondered how a simple wound could make a man so delirious, even if it had become septic. But he was no doctor and could only take the Margrave physician's word for it.

Which also meant that Lord Macht had run out of leads for now.

Whether the other side was faking it or not, Lord Macht could see there being little recourse for him other than to wait for the man to recover and resolve this dispute.

That greatly peeved him because he was worried that if he waited too long, it would give the man's side enough time to get their story straight and he would not be able to discover how Achillas was truly lost.

"Tsk! This is getting so troublesome! That stab to the stomach complicated everything."

However after around a few hours of fruitless searching, Lord Macht determined he was unable to proceed any further with any of the leftover clues, thus causing him to let out this aggrieved moan.

With various sides giving him conflicting reports and him being no great detective, he had been still unable to determine whether Achillas's capture was just a pure accidental convergence of coincidences or a determined methodical plot.

And until he could find evidence of the latter, the current situation with the Margraves family necessitated that he assumed the former.

Of course, the reality was a mixture of the two, with the overly ambitious Lord Bernard choosing to take advantage of an evolving situation. So Lord Macht's search for a black and white answer was doomed to fail from the start.

"Sir! Dinner is here."

Lord Macht was suddenly broken out of his thoughts by this announcement from outside his tent, and *Growl*, *Growl*, his stomach quickly responded to the declaration as such.

If there had been a clock with Lord Macht, he would have certainly been very surprised to find how much time had passed since dusk.

Given the time and how he was stuck at an impasse, the man decided to take a break from hunt and re-energize himself, quickly stuffing his mouth with a kind of flat bread eaten with meat and a type of vegetable curry.

But that did not mean his mind was idle.

Apart from the missing Achillas, there were many problems still plaguing the camp, and Lord Macht's mind worked fully to resolve them.

'Given what happened today, I should separate the two family's troops and keep them from deploying together. Hmmm, yes, I will put the Margraves troops in reserve and only use our men in the upcoming fight. That will strip them of any relevance. And our battlefield accomplishments should help soothe all the nasty things that happened today.'

Lord Macht decided to do this as a kind of punishment towards the Margraves as well as a way to protect his own family.

Then with that done, continued to note,

'Then tomorrow I will order an attack with all we have on Phyrros Island. We should have around fifteen to twenty ships here. That means around three thousand men can make landfall. Yes, that should be enough to overwhelm the garrison there. Alexander at best has a thousand men there.'

'I will also order the bridge debris floating to be removed. With that route open, we attack the harbor and sink Alexander's fleet. After that…'

Lord Macht would not get to end his long train of thoughts as,

"Ahhhhhhh!"

"*Bang!* *Clang!*"

"I will kill you!"

"Bastards! You dare try to kill our captain!"

Suddenly this great roar of indignation broke through the man's tent and fearing an enemy night time, he forced himself to immediately check it out, dashing his way outside.

The sight of the brawl became clear to him instantly, and while Lord Macht was at least glad it was not Alexander trying to take advantage of the fracture of two families, and the fighting still greatly incensed him.

Thus even though the disturbance was brought under control relatively quickly with him and a large entourage of officers, the outbreak of the symptoms made the man take some much more drastic measures.

The plans for all the attacks the next day were halted and instead, Lord Macht over the following days, the Margraves army had their formation slowly broken up into much smaller section and their officer corp replaced with those from the Heeat family.

In his way, Lord Macht decided to effectively remove the Margraves troop as a separate entity and assimilated them

Alexander would wake up the next day, oblivious to the unfolding chaos in his enemy's camp, after feeling the strong sun rays beginning to filter through the closed curtains and onto his eyes. And given it was winter, it clearly meant dawn had long since broken and they were actually closer to noon.

The man had slept a good twelve to fourteen hours. And even then he felt groggy.

And strangely cold!

*Cough*, *Cough*, *Cough*

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