Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 267: The Fierce War

To be precise, this should be considered Trajan's first battle in a sense. Before this, he had only been doing relatively safe jobs on the battlefield, such as guarding and messaging (although it was not that safe). This was his first time to seriously fight against other gifted people and fight them to the death.

Judging from the results, Trajan did a pretty good job. He did not hurt himself, assisted Stilicho in successfully suppressing the opponent's gifted player, and created an opportunity for Stilicho when the opponent knew he was defeated and was preparing to retreat, allowing Stilicho to successfully kill the opponent with one sword.

On the other side, Ivar is not as strong as his potential competitor [Walker] Rollo. His personal combat capability is just at an upper-middle level. He is OK against ordinary soldiers, but when facing other gifted people, especially when the opponent is also strong, he can only be evenly matched in the battle. He did not risk chasing the opponent when he saw the situation was not good, and let the opponent board the ship to evacuate. Orville could understand this very well, and did not blame the opponent for his incompetence. He knew the abilities of his men, and in fact never asked the opponent to kill the generals on the battlefield.

But the other side's retreat did not mean that all other soldiers could evacuate. Most of the soldiers were left on the island, and those who did not have time to evacuate were either killed on the spot or captured by Orville.

There are about three to five hundred prisoners. For now, Orville's army can still keep them under control, but there are disagreements within Orville on how to deal with these captured soldiers.

The food reserves on his side are still good. If the lives of the residents in the town below the city are taken care of, it can probably last for more than two months. During this period, even if the response of the Roman central government is slow, a decision should be made, but the prerequisite is that the number of people does not increase.

If the enemy attacks Orville every time, there will be hundreds of more people on his side, and the number of people on his side may double in a few days. Whether he can keep an eye on them by then will be a question of whether he can keep an eye on them or not, as the food pressure will be very great.

So it was obvious that no one wanted to keep so many prisoners, and the question now was how to deal with them - kill them on the spot or let them go.

There were two factions within the organization who were arguing over this issue. Orville listened to the arguments of both sides and finally decided to release the person.

The other side is fighting at home, and killing a few thousand more people on Orville's side will have no actual impact. Instead, it will arouse strong resistance from the local people, which is not worth the loss.

Orville did not negotiate with the other side, but directly loaded them onto the boat and let them row to the other side. Even if the other side saw that Orville's military rations were not enough, they had no choice but to accept them. They could not just throw the prisoners back rudely.

…………

After this little episode, the fighting continued.

After realizing that traditional methods could not make any progress, the opposing commander quickly changed his strategy.

During the fifth day's attack and defense drill, the Greeks on the other side used something similar to a siege tower - about seven or eight meters high and just over three meters wide, like a moving wall. The soldiers pushed this device slowly forward, trying to move forward and break through the embankment.

Obviously, this was specially customized. Orville had no other choice with this heavy equipment. He could only choose to retreat a step, put the enemy near the exit of the causeway, and then use rockets and asphalt to try to ignite the enemy's siege tower. This was a method Orville learned from the Palphian rebels, but with some modifications. The soldiers poured asphalt on the siege tower, and then the special arrows that burned red at high temperature would completely ignite the flammable asphalt.

This type of siege weapon was fireproofed, with a thick layer of mud applied to the surface of the wood, and soldiers behind it scooping water with buckets. The fireproof performance was good at the time. However, after all, it was a wooden structure, and under the persistent efforts of the Roman soldiers, the siege tower finally caught fire.

The other side still showed good organization at this time, quickly removing the burning siege tower. The ships that were always ready around them quickly approached the causeway, and the ships docked on the embankment, and the soldiers boarded the ships and retreated directly.

After the siege tower burned down, the soldiers pushed up a new siege tower and started the attack again.

Apparently, the other side was very sure that Orville didn't have much asphalt and special rockets, and they were right. Even if they didn't organize a new landing battle, the siege towers alone were enough to give Orville a headache.

After several rounds of attack and defense, the Roman army had to withdraw from the causeway, and the Egyptian soldiers poured into Soros Island. They thought that the subsequent attack and defense would be smoother, but unexpectedly it was still as difficult.

The resistance on the causeway was at best a means of buying time, and Orville had prepared comprehensive fortifications in the rear.

The terrain on the island was already quite rugged, so he built layers of stone walls on all the passages to block the enemy, and he also demolished all the houses on the road that could be used as cover and used them as materials to build the stone walls.

These two or three meter high stone walls posed a great obstacle to the attackers. Orville's long-range firepower was stronger than theirs. In addition to conventional weapons such as spears and slings, they also had a large number of bows and crossbows. The soldiers relied on the stone walls for defense, and the soldiers who landed on the island suffered heavy casualties.

It was already late, and the attackers did not want to engage in a field battle with Orville under such circumstances. After taking down two stone walls, they chose to stop and withdraw, and began to urgently build fortifications at the end of the causeway to resist Orville's possible night attack at night, so as not to waste today's victory.

By night, Orville did launch a charge on the position as they had expected, but failed to achieve any results. The two sides fell into a fierce hand-to-hand fight. After realizing that the other side had a firm will to fight and a good level of training, Orville did not lead his troops to attack again, but ordered them to retreat to the defense line and wait for orders.

He also ordered small groups of elite soldiers, each consisting of a dozen men, to disperse and attack the enemy's soldiers on duty with bows and arrows or javelins under the cover of night. The Egyptian side quickly responded in the same way, and the two sides' small teams often clashed five or six times a night.

Generally speaking, the Romans still have a certain advantage, but it is far from the level of crushing. It is a bit of a loss to exchange casualties with the opponent, but there is no other way. Orville does not want to retreat back to the fortress so quickly and completely lose the only remaining initiative.

Orville was not in a hurry either. He relied on the layers of defense networks and various traps scattered around the islands to inflict casualties on the Egyptian army. Instead, the Egyptian army's attack seemed more and more impetuous, and it was obvious that the quality of the opponent's army was also declining. From the initial guards, they quickly turned back into ordinary soldiers, which made their attack even more difficult. Under the frequent harassment of the Roman army, they could only maintain the results of the battle, and the speed of advancement could not be expected at all.

(End of this chapter)