Nearly seven thousand warhorses, two thousand draft horses, all to be delivered before sunset tomorrow...
Inside the Retalian command tent, Sebas remained silent after hearing Lord Cassani's account. He was thinking.
The Retalian Army could provide seven thousand warhorses. Even after the enormous losses it had suffered that day, this was still no problem for Sebas.
The captured nobles were not Sebas's concern alone. Their friends and relatives were all in the army, and they would certainly be willing to open their purses and offer their own warhorses to ransom the captives.
All Sebas needed to do was press the nobles to contribute their shares of the ransom, taking into account their holdings, their titles, and the compensation he himself would offer.
In fact, the arrangement had even given Sebas a slightly favorable impression of Chris.
Throughout the history of warfare, prisoners had been taken and ransomed. Under the feudal system, such negotiations should actually have involved the captor sending someone to bargain with the families behind the prisoners.
But what had Chris done?
He had skipped that entire process. Rather than contacting the captives' families, he had sent an envoy to Sebas to discuss the ransom directly.
This made Sebas feel that Chris respected him... of course, that feeling rested on the fact that Chris was the victor and Sebas the defeated party.
The victor ruled while the loser was branded a villain. That principle held true in every age and every land.
By doing this, Chris would save a great deal of time and tedious negotiation, but he would also lose out considerably. Had he negotiated separately with the other nobles, he could have obtained more than seven thousand warhorses.
Sebas, meanwhile, could use the affair to raise his personal standing within the noble circles whose members had