Herald of Steel

Under Miss Linda and the other nobles' directive, it was made very clear to Heeats that there was no the Margraves would tolerate the Heeats hiding behind the city's walls and eating their supplies while their countryside burned.

Even Lord Parker's repeated insistence that they should wait for a just bit longer and have his 20,000 reinforcements join them before they set off went unheeded, as Lord Bernard under Miss Linda's direction urged that they could not wait so long due to the deteriorating situation inside the city.

"My lord, we have already told you those barbarians will not stay wait for us. Once they have enough loot, they will run rather than fight us and risk losing everything. We cannot let this happen. The people want these scoundrels hanged… especially the nobility. So many of them have suffered indignity at the hands of these beasts! Please try to understand our position!"

Lord Bernard in one of the meetings also frankly begged as such, showing that unwilling to act even now would seriously hamper their relationship with the nobles around these parts.

And this rage came due to all the things Metztil's men had done to them.

The nobles could have still pretended to forgive and forget if all the Helvati had done was loot, plunder, and set their homes on fire.

After all, these were all material things and could be eventually regained.

However what they had done to all the womenfolk they came across, regardless of their status, had all of the elites around this part properly incensed.

The conservative nature of the Sybarian society made such acts extremely hard for them to swallow.

It should be known that here, women who suffered like this were looked down upon by society for the rest of their lives, having salt constantly added to their wounds as people would never treat them the same from that day forth.

Various nasty looks, venomous name calls, and snark remarks of being a 'loose woman' would be constantly thrown at them, as if somehow this disaster was their fault.

Ahhh… the tragedy of being born a woman in this time period.

And this tragedy would turn into a catastrophe if the woman was to get pregnant and have a child,

Married women could be immediately kicked out of the house by their husbands at the first evidence of pregnancy while for an unmarried girl to have a child out of wedlock was basically a social death sentence.

Finding a reputable family willing to take in such a disgraced daughter in law was harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

Most of the time these women would be even disowned by their families out of shame, and then the only way for her to keep her and her child fed would be to end up as prostitutes, slaves, or if she was very lucky and someone powerful took pity, as a very lowly maid in some small noble's manor, where a new kind of struggle would await her.

And this time, such a catastrophe had occurred in a massive scale that had not been seen in perhaps at least a century or two.

The last time the native barbarians had pushed so far inland was perhaps during the age of that enlightened chief.

And even back then not so many noble ladies had been harmed.

Because they at least had prior warning back then whereas this time, Alexander had basically come out of nowhere.

Nobody expected the man to launch such an attack and with such a huge force, especially not in winter.

This was because winter campaigns were very uncommon.

The cold and snow made movement very difficult as personally experienced by Alexander first hand. Plus it was a season for diseases and illness, ranging from the ever present cold, to fevers to widespread dysentry as a lot of the potable water would become frozen, forcing men to look for alternative, lower quality sources.

Alexander even forced his army to boil their drinking water just to try and mitigate this, as well as decreeing that all human wastes had to be dug and buried, instead of leaving it out in the open for flies and bugs to feast on.

Needless to say, digging frozen earth in the middle of winter was not an easy feat and if not for Alexander's great prestige, his soldiers would have only pretended to follow the order.

What would have happened then was soon made evident to them as the Helvati who had not listened to Alexander's advice were now in his clinic, the lot receiving treatment for all kinds of winter related diseases, having to pay for all the care and medicine with whatever loot they had collected or by borrowing from friends and families.

Because Alexander was certainly not going to treat these rebellious ingrates for free.

The only silver lining here was that after seeing things going south for him while Alexander's forces remain relatively unaffected, Metztil quickly heeded the young man's advise and began to follow the same practices.

But if not for the two sides following such procedures, indeed the winter campaign would have halted before it could even begin.

But how could the Margraves nobles ever known this?

They would have to possess prescience.

Thus, taking refuge in the safety of the cold and snow, everyone was content to just huddle themselves together in their homes, not suspecting a thing.

Even when the Helvati started attacking and raiding their lands many did not react because the information did not reach them in their seclusion.

Everyone was cooped up without any real contact with the outside world and so even before they even realized it, they found themselves trapped!

The unprecedented attack launched without any warning caused many of the nobles' wives who managed to survive the attack to become pregnant with bastards, while many noble maidens lost their purity.

This was an unprecedented social disaster for the noblemen.

Not only were their women attacked, they were attacked by the natives, their most hated enemies.

The mere thought of their loved ones carrying the spawn of such 'demented' beings was enough to make all of the nobles lose their mind altogether.

If the Margraves were unable to give them a proper 'confession', these nobles would be very hard to pacify in the next few decades to say the least.

Their combined sentiment was perhaps best represented by this loud, impassionate address to Miss Linda,

"My lady, we have faithfully served your family for seven generations! Never once in all those years have we missed a tax payment. And this is how the family protects us? By hiding themselves inside these walls while the rest of us burn?"

"My daughter and granddaughter were taken right in front of me and sons, while my wife…*sob*.. *sob*.. they chopped her head saying she was…*sob*... *sob*... too old and then… *wuuu*, *wuuuu*....made my grandson kick it until …*sob*... *sob*... those beasts said they would chop one of his mother's limbs for ….

Every time he failed to kick the… *sob*... *sob*... head into the fireplace… *wuuuuuu*... *wuuuu*."

This was the partial recount of the torture one of the oldest and most prestigious nobleman had suffered, one who almost completely broke down near the end.

This poor man had the misfortune of coming across one of the most sadistic Helvati units and because of the speed and surprise they were attacked with, the nobleman had no chance to summon his guards.

His family manor was quickly captured and the people in there were tortured and humiliated for two whole days.

It was during that time that the little grandson of only nine years old was made to repeatedly try and kick his grandmother's severed head into a nearby fireplace like he was shooting a goal, one which he managed to get on his fourth try.

By that time his mother had lost three limbs and soon died due to blood loss.

While the traumatized boy became so broken that he would then try to commit suicide a day later by jumping from the third floor but because he did not know how to take do this, he would simply land on his feet and become crippled for life.

The cruel Helvati would only laugh at this and even treat the boy's injuries, not out of any kindness, but because they wanted to send a message.

They would leave all of them alive after two whole days of immense psychological and physical torture,

"This is what you have done to us. It is only natural we repay back the favor. Live and retell your people of our just revenge," The leader of that unit, a young Helvati noble man would sneer these last words.

Indeed, before you began to label the natives as barbarians and savage brutes, know that the Margraves and the other Sybarian powers were also guilty of committing similar brutalities.

In fact, over the centuries they have been on this island, violence against the natives especially the native woman was nothing new

So in the mind of these Helvati men, they were simply equalizing the score. Read latest chapters at мѵʟ

It was just that after centuries of bad blood and atrocities on both sides, no one was really keeping count.

Everything had devolved into a cycle of hate and revenge, and now the Margrave nobles demanded their own deliverance.

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

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