Herald of Steel



Tafkiz did not attempt to argue with Alexander's decision, though his heart did have a slight acridness.

For he felt that this young lord was a little too generous.

Takfiz was a well-to-do merchant before becoming a slave and he even had certain distant relations with a minor noble.

Hence, being a man of age, Takfiz had seen a lot and firmly believed in the saying, 'Give them an inch and they will ask for a mile.'

And if Alexander could read Takfiz's mind, he would have most likely agreed with the old man to some extent.

Giving the people something without them asking for it was a dangerous way of developing greed among the populace.

But Alexander decided to do it this particular time anyway because, one- he felt bad for the women who had almost no say about their wages but mainly because he wanted to portray himself as a generous lord, an image that was crucial for him to maintain as he was a foreigner.

And besides, spending an extra thousand ropals a day was peanuts to him.

"By the way, why are there so many women employed? What about the men?" Alexander then asked curiously, noticing the skewed distribution.

It was not like he disapproved, but just that he found it unusual for someone like Takfiz to follow such an unconventional recruitment process.

"My lord, after your instruction, Lord Menicus suddenly came to me asking me if I could spare some men. He said he needed them to prepare some new fields for the spring."

"And when I told him about your plan, he simply took the woodcutters and instructed me to use women instead."

"His exact words were, 'Since it's not too hard labor, use those good for nothing who do nothing but shamelessly strut around the street tempting men.'" Takfiz even did the old man's gravelly voice.

Alexander only lightly smiled upon hearing this tale, feeling that was in line with Menicus's character.

"You did well," Alexander nodded approvingly.

And then he set his mind to calculating the cost of one briquette.

For convenience's sake, he simply took the average wage to be 5 ropals and then multiplied that with all the employed workers to get 10,000 ropals a day of labor cost.

There were some other running costs such as feeding the horses and regular wear and tear of the carts and wheelbarrows, which Alexander simply rounded off to 1,000.

And then assumed the set-up cost to be zero because it was relatively negligible.

So, given that around 550,000 briquettes could be produced per day, one would be able to buy 50 briquettes for 1 ropal.

This was equivalent to 250 kg of firewood and that would cost someone 25 ropals.

The massive price difference was because surface coal just needed to be dug up, as opposed to firewood that needed to be chopped, cut, and then dried for weeks before being usable.

The maths really pleased Alexander, as this meant that fuel for boiling the salt would be really cheap.

And so, finished with inspecting this plant, Alexander got to instructing Takfiz about creating another new plant- one which would make salt.

And once that was finished, Alexander went on a tour to visit the important site, the salt producing plant.

The history of salt was as old as time.

In the Iron Age, the British evaporated salt by boiling seawater or brine from salt spri­ngs in small clay pots over open fires.

Roman salt-making entailed boiling the seawater in large lead-lined pans.

In that empire, it was even used as currency, and the roots of the words "soldier" and "salary" can be traced to Latin words related to giving or receiving salt.

And this traditional way of collecting salt persisted till the middle ages, where the salt would be collected from the evaporation of saltwater, either from the sea or from natural salty springs.

And because of this process of driving out the water to leave the salt behind, it would also leave some other bad residues with the salt.

Because it was not like there was only salt dissolved in the seawater.

Dirt, small bits of organic matter like leaves or dead tissue, organic wastes, and tiny fishes, were just some of the many miscellaneous stuff that would remain with the salt after this type of extraction.

So this salt would be frequently purified by merchants before sale, or by households before use, by redissolving, filtering, and evaporating it again, though such meticulous care was only given to salt being directly eaten with food, and not when it was being used as a preservative.

The inherent impurity present in this type of salt extraction presented an opportunity for unethical salt merchants who could and did add bulk to their product by deliberately mixing in sand.

And unfortunately for people who lived inland, they would need to buy or barter for salt in any way they could and hope that they got more salt than sand in the trade.

In this way, because salt was so precious, in many instances, it's presence and abundance not only to have determined the site of human settlements and their prosperity but also influenced the social climate.

In places where salt was plentiful, such as along the shores of the Mediterranean and the North Sea, societies tended to be free, independent, and democratic.

But where it was scarce, "he who controlled the salt controlled the people."

For example, in the ancient river valley civilizations of the Nile, in Babylon, Mexico, Peru, and some parts of China, the rulers and priests monopolized salt and used it to manipulate their unfortunate salt-addicted populations.

And a similar case could be applied to Adhania too, with the royal family's huge monopoly on salt being a major reason why they could control Adhania.

And it was not only because of the astronomical amount of money they earned.

But more so because Adhan as an inland city had access to its own salt, and could transport these further inland at less a price than other cities and provinces that produced salt from the sea and hence needed to be coastal.

This way, the royal family from Adhan could project much of its authority way inland than other cities and pashas could, thus letting them exert their will on a much greater area.

In fact, one reason why Pasha Muazz was so loyal to Amenheraft was because the king was his main salt supplier, and hence crossing him would mean death and starvation for the fat noble.

A role that Ptolomy had taken over from his brother over Alexander.

And a monopoly that Alexander was eager to break.

The precious nature of salt and it being taken over by the powerful and the rulers, caused traditions and customs to slowly grow up around salt, giving the white powder an almost mythical quality.

It was used as medicine.

It was thought to increase libido.

It was used in many of Adhania's religious ceremonies and similar to the Japanese it was assumed to be able to ward off ghosts and evil spirits.

And it was also Adhanian custom to place salt as the first item placed on the table and the last item removed from it.

Lastly, salt was historically a source of conflict and war.

Since it was universally consumed government found it a great way to tie their taxes to the stuff and when taxes rose, i.e- the price of salt rose, revolutions had a tendency to follow.

For example, anger over the salt tax was one of the causes of the French Revolution.

And in colonial India, only the British government could produce and profit from the salt production conducted by Indians living on the coast, which led to a revolt by Gandhi and had significant consequences for India gaining its independence.

Because of all the significance salt had, Alexander's decision to produce salt was a no-brainer, even if it would piss off Ptolomy a bit.

And the way Alexander had asked Takfiz to build the salt plant was very different from how the old man knew salt was made.

The traditional way of making salt was to first choose a plot of land on the beach and loosen the sand using one's feet.

Then using buckets, the seawater would be sprinkled on to the sand, wetting it.

Each worker would usually sprinkle 70 kg of seawater per round, for a total of 20 rounds per day.

This large amount of water would be carried by a pair of huge buckets, which would be connected to a wooden rod.

The workers would place the rod over their shoulders and thus carry the 70 kg on their shoulders.

Or in some places, thick bamboo would be filled with seawater and then be sprinkled onto the sand through holes drilled in the front.

This procedure would be usually repeated for six days, while each day, workers would use a large rack to shift the sand to help it absorb more water until it became saturated.

After six days, a large wooden box with a pipe sticking out of it near the end would be constructed near the beach.

The saturated sand would be filled with it using shovels and then even more seawater would be added to the sand, after a few rounds of which seawater, or brine as called would come pouring out.

And up to this point Alexander's and the traditional way matched.

But diverged radically in the next step.

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