Eagle Byzantium

"Please ask His Majesty to give a reply by tomorrow at the latest. Otherwise, it is not a good long-term strategy for the empire to keep the army on the other side of the swamp for a long time, and the relationship with the ministers cannot be improved. After taking Fort Alaman, Gawain is likely to continue to advance. If it offends His Majesty's dignity, it will really make people sigh." Gawain threatened the old man Maupoulos with impatience.

And Maupoulos did not show any rebuttal, because before he left, the emperor only gave him the task of negotiation and did not grant him any power to negotiate. "Just get Gawain's more detailed conditions," this is what the emperor said to him.

Sure enough, what Gawain said was different from the original peace agreement. This should be the "enhanced version" carefully planned by the purple princess Anna Ducas behind him. However, Gawain then added his own terms to the peace agreement drawn up by Anna to show his "loyalty" to the empire and His Majesty. That is, by June of next year, Gawain will pay a full 6,000 pure Byzantine gold coins as compensation, which is also the "tribute" that the entire Seleucia should pay to His Majesty the Emperor. After that, he and Anna will continue to retain the governance of South Cappadocia for three years, and will pay His Majesty 3,500 gold coins of tribute every year (also regarded as the rent of the de jure territory of the empire) until they capture the inner city of Melite, and then continue to return South Cappadocia to the emperor.

The piles of peace documents were placed in a lead-sealed box and locked, and Maupoulos was more like an intermediary errand boy, moving them to the boat and sailing back to the emperor's camp amid the cheers of the guards of Fort Alaman who did not understand why.

Everyone saw that the emperor asked everyone else to leave, and then he opened the sealed box alone in the tent and studied it silently. No one knew what the emperor's reaction and mood were after seeing these things. It was not until the afternoon of that day that the emperor finally called in his trusted imperial ink officer. Then it is said that in the middle of the night, the imperial imperial ink officer Meles sat in a simpler boat, holding the agreed torch as a signal, secretly rowed to the other side of the swamp, and talked with Gawain in the scarlet tent for nearly an hour.

The content of the secret conversation was almost unknown to anyone except Andeodate, the most trusted herald officer of the Grand Duke, but the deputy herald officer Wright was able to stand outside the scarlet tent and vaguely heard some words, such as "Antioch and Bohemond", "the treatment of Hugh's murder", etc., and even the alert Wright could not hear the rest clearly.

But what is certain is that when the sun rose from the east the next day, the emperor's army on the other side of the swamp suddenly withdrew in large numbers without any signs beforehand. Even Taitsius, who was responsible for the rear guard, took the remaining 5,000 soldiers and horses and retreated a full 20 to 30 Roman miles towards the coast of Attalia City, and set up camp on the other side of the Alaman Cape, which was equivalent to completely abandoning Alaman.

When the disheveled guards on the big city climbed up the battlements, they saw that behind the two deep trenches surrounding their vision, Gawain's camp of more than 7,000 soldiers and horses was like a copper wall and iron wall, with no confusion in the military flags, and it was motionless...

"What is going on?" In the central tower, the old man, Servin, couldn't hold his breath and took the lead in pacing back and forth and roaring. And Ace over there was pale, squatting slowly against the wall, and even said that we were betrayed by the emperor, Alaman had become a Jedi, and our family would be wiped out by this ocean.

"Don't we still have three months of food reserves?" The eldest brother was naturally optimistic. He walked over and grabbed the third brother's arm to encourage him.

Who would have thought that Ace Calegos would cry and say, "I was deceiving the soldiers and the people. In fact, the food stored in the cellar can only last for a month at most."

Now, the two brothers hugged their heads in panic. They looked up at the central tower where the family base was located, the airtight walls made of high bricks and stones, the narrow and curved stairways, the criss-crossing reinforced wooden frames, and the black bats hovering in the sky from time to time. The barrier that they thought was extremely safe in the past now looks like a suffocating coffin tomb. What's more, the real coffin of the second brother Taro was lying in front of them, in the corner next to their father's seat.

Nika was lying on a chair, seemingly having not moved for a long time. Although he was covered with a brocade robe, his white hair was loose. Several military servants in charge of duty told him that the old general only drank oatmeal twice a day and nothing else. At this moment, an old voice sounded, "The grave of our Calegos has been identified a long time ago..."

"Father!" The last two Calegos fell to Nika's feet.

"Don't say anything. When the time comes, you will take all your personal soldiers and defend this tower to the death. Maybe there is still a glimmer of hope." This was Nika's answer.

"Break out, there are still a few boats in the dock of the big city, father, let's break out..."

"Shut up, Sis City is gone, Mut Castle is gone, and if Alaman Castle is abandoned again, then why do you still call it Calegos?" Nika shouted angrily, "Leave this seaside and plateau, do you think we will have a place in Constantinople? Calegos' roots are only here after all, and there is nothing wrong with the painting drawn by the princess. The emperor can abandon us without scruples today, and he will never show us mercy in the future."

"What should we do, father."

"Disappear gloriously on this land, use the last bow and arrow and fight to death." Nika raised his cloudy eyes and stroked the heads of his two sons with his hands, one on the left and one on the right. "Those two are no longer members of our family. The future of the fourth and fifth sons is uncertain. Let us here abandon all hope, happily play a elegy for Calegos, and erect a monument."

A few days later, the emperor's troops were no longer seen, and a fleet appeared on the sea of ​​Fort Alaman. Their decks and sails were full of sailors carrying wine jars and smelling like fish. There were Greeks and Syrians. , and people from Flanders and Antwerp, but their identities were the same, that is, cruel and shameless pirates, and the commander of this group of people was Wenmoha Eustace, who was previously released from the Latakia prison. Other Italian city-states did not dare to openly intervene in the war of Alaman, but Wenmoha, a notorious pirate, never scrupled, not to mention that he personally had a grudge against the emperor. This time he brought a full twelve rowing warships and countless light ships, and joined several galleys of Andreev and Jarguba in Seleucia. Now he was riding the rolling waves and heading towards Alaman. (To be continued ~^~)