Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

"Brother, are you saying we have a guide?" Wubi continued to play double act with his brother.

"His Royal Highness found an experienced merchant ship captain as a guide for us, and by the way, there is also a navigator who is proficient in astronomy to accompany us, and he even gave us this thing."

Ivar took out the scroll he carried with him, and after shaking it open, it was a very detailed map of the Red Sea, with detailed footnotes and supplementary information. In this era when the route is basically passed down from generation to generation by human memory, this kind of map is very precious.

"I see! That's OK, no problem for me." Wubi looked at the map carefully and nodded repeatedly.

Seeing that Ivar was well prepared and not planning to sail on the ocean, the sailors were a little relieved. Both sides of the strait had exchanges with the Romans or Egyptians, and this was considered an inland sea with calm waters. If there was an accident, it would only be stranded. The safety factor was relatively high. With these preparations, even if the hands were new, there should not be too serious accidents.

After confirming that the sailors understood his request, Ivar silently took back the Red Sea map, then gave his brother a cold look, and the other side also stepped aside tactfully, and the play was over.

In fact, whether it is a long voyage depends on the situation. Anyway, he has prepared real long-distance voyage-level supplies. When they arrive at the Red Sea outlet, if they are in good condition and familiar with operating these ships, then he is really ready to continue sailing and drive all the way to India.

Orville is very interested in the Indian route and hopes to get spices, medicine, precious metals and other things from there, but he is not in a hurry. The real one is Ivar himself.

He knows that Egypt is in a critical period of reshuffle recently. If he cannot show his usefulness at this time, it will be difficult to get a bigger share in a few years. It is not difficult for Ivar to get a bigger piece of the pie now. As long as he is useful, Orville will naturally give him more benefits.

If he could open up the Indian trade route, the Vikings would be a more useful group. Orwell might hand over the foreign trade work to the Vikings in the future. Then the Vikings would no longer have to worry about their livelihoods. Trade alone would make them rich.

Orwell did not lie. After arriving in Egypt, Ivar also saw the prosperity of this place.

"The market is where all the merchants gather. There are hundreds of tunnels and thousands of shops. Bribes are piled up like mountains, and the fine goods are numerous. The people and women in the city wear beautiful clothes and make-up. Merchants trade and sell goods in disorder. Strange things are strange and strange in all directions. Cloth has 橦花, and flour has 桄合."

If Ivar had the literary talent of Zuo Si (a writer in the Jin Dynasty) that could make Luoyang paper expensive, he would probably use this kind of words to write about the prosperity of Alexandria and Rome. For him, who grew up in the hard north, everything aroused his greater ambitions.

Ivar had been thinking seriously about how to realize the "Indian Ocean trade" that Orville had mentioned, and finally he found the answer by his side.

He also inherited the part of his father that was good at learning. After learning that Ptolemy, an aide to Orville, was a very accomplished astronomer, he had been humbly learning relevant knowledge from him.

After Orville's instruction, Ptolemy reluctantly taught him some practical knowledge, a large part of which was the knowledge in Ptolemy's "Almagest" in the future. In the future, Arab navigators regarded it as a criterion and revered the teachings of this book as the greatest art.

Ivar himself is also an experienced navigator. Although he has not learned knowledge systematically, he has really learned a lot of knowledge by relying on his talent, experience and perseverance that surprised Ptolemy himself.

This time, Ivar plans to apply the things about astrology to actual navigation to see if the practice is as accurate as the theory.

"Get everything ready! Cheer up, we'll set sail tomorrow!"

--

On the other side of Alexandria, Orville felt that Tiya had been a little confusing since she came back. She was sometimes good and sometimes bad to him in the past few days, often wandering in thought, but she returned to normal in the next few days, but she always felt like she was venting her anger on him, and often got angry at him for a little thing.

By eliminating the control variable method, it is not difficult to guess that something happened between her and Cleopatra on the Nile River, but no matter whether he asked Tiya or Cleopatra, there was no direct response, and it can only be said that it was quite mysterious.

Let's not talk about Cleopatra for now. Orville also knows what kind of personality Tiya has. It should not be a national event that affects her, otherwise she would have taken the initiative to tell Orville at the first time, and would not hide it.

Most likely, it was some family matters that were not convenient to talk about. Tiya was also a bit awkward in this regard. Orville fully understood this. His desire for control and curiosity were not that strong, so he didn't necessarily have to know. As Tiya gradually returned to normal, he let the matter go and didn't pursue it.

However, these military matters attracted most of his attention again - Trajan had completed the screening of part of the Egyptian army.

Originally, among the 70,000 Egyptian troops, there were about 5,000 Nubian black mercenaries. Now he had simplified it and sent away 4,000 people, leaving about 2,000 people.

Originally, there were about 15,000 Egyptian tenants. Trajan picked and chose about 3,000 of them to stay. These were the soldiers who barely qualified in his eyes. They were not legion soldiers, but auxiliary soldiers.

Orville roughly checked the quality of these soldiers and confirmed that they were probably fine. Then he handed them over to Trajan for training and waited a few weeks to see the results.

The remaining people were directly dismissed by the Nubians and sent back to Nubia. The Egyptian Orville first arranged for them to be transferred from the military to civilians and serve as a construction team to repair the city.

Now there is no place to find jobs for 10,000 or 20,000 people, and there are still a lot of unresolved employment issues for Greek soldiers. Orville can't solve these problems at once, so he can only use this method to delay for a while. Anyway, Alexandria was burned quite badly, and it would take at least more than a year to repair it. This period of time is enough for Orville to think of a solution.

Through these Egyptians and Nubians, Orville's men roughly understood how to select warriors. Then Orville asked them to select the best 10,000 Greek immigrant soldiers. He planned to use these people as auxiliary troops.