The Sun and the Lion

Under the city of Mosul, a dozen badly damaged siege towers stand on the flat ground outside the city wall. The siege engines, including the ladders, were turned into a pile of unusable parts by the tenacious defenders. An unknown number of corpses lay dead next to the siege engines. No one had dealt with them for several days.

The city gate slowly opened, and Romlu Khan, who had been guarding the city for several months, left the city surrounded by guards and met Ahmed, who had just arrived. In front of him was the messenger sent by Ibrahim to lead the way.

The team rode to the temporary camp, then dismounted and walked to where Ibrahim was.

After Romulukhan saluted, Ibrahim asked: "How many troops do you still have on hand? What are the losses in the city?"

"Your Majesty, I still have four thousand captains under my command, but the number of subordinates of the thousand captains is not full. And after several months of fighting, our warriors also need to rest."

Ibrahim made some calculations. He led twenty regiments himself. The garrison strength in Mosul was less than 4,000 remnants. They were in bad condition. Taking them into Kurdistan might not strengthen the army. Combat strength.

As for the Armenians? The remaining survivors of the battle were already on their way back to Tabriz.

"In that case, then your department will continue to defend Mosul. At the same time, let the military judges and quartermasters under your department tally the battle merits and battle losses and report them to me, and reward them uniformly after the war. If possible, you can still fight if you are deployed The elite men were organized into several hundreds of troops to go south for reconnaissance and harassment." Ibrahim finished giving his order in one breath.

"My lord, I obey." Romlu Khan retreated after receiving the order.

"Your Majesty, the troops have rested and can continue marching." At this time, Hashayar, who was responsible for inspecting the troops in each battalion, came back. After half a day's rest, the troops replenished their supplies of food and grass, and at the same time relaxed the tense nerves of the red heads.

But the rest is short-lived after all. The straight-line distance between Mosul and Diyarbakır exceeds 300 kilometers, and the actual distance will only be longer. Although Ibrahim abandoned the cart and asked his cavalry to have multiple horses per person to try to balance the marching speed and supply carrying, the marching speed of the cavalry was still affected.

"Bring up camp and march."

The heralds who received the order quickly conveyed Ibrahim's will to various troops to complete the last journey of less than a week.

In Ergani, which is only about 50 kilometers away from Diyarbakır, Bayram and Heraclius, who joined forces, crossed the Taurus Mountain Pass and delivered more than 10,000 troops under their command to The northernmost point of Mesopotamia.

In addition to these ten thousand military masters, they also gathered some stragglers, and some volunteers of varying levels of skill constituted this small infantry unit.

"Emir Heraclius, well, according to the information sent back by the scouts, Ahmed is indeed gathering an army near Diyarbakir." Byram talked to Heraclius unnaturally. He didn't quite understand why his brother-in-law wanted to promote a Qimi to be a senior officer.

"Gharamanluhan, we can launch a probing attack. If Ahmed is still gathering his troops, then we can just go and interrupt his movements. Even if he is ready, we can also probe Regardless of whether he is false or true, I think conducting a test will be beneficial to the current war situation." Heraclius pondered for a while and then gave his own opinion.

"A test? That's fine. We can't wait here just to waste military supplies." Byram agreed. After the two agreed on the combat strategy, they made arrangements very efficiently.

Heraclius was responsible for staying in the camp, arranging troops to maintain the smooth flow of communication lines in the rear and collecting supplies in this area, while the bold Garamanlu Khan approached Diyarbakır with nearly three thousand Asia Minor red heads.

Forty to fifty kilometers, for the cavalry on a long-distance attack, it was neither far nor close.

The Aries cavalry patrolling outside the city were so frightened when they saw the large red hats surging in the distance that they ran away and went directly to the big tent on the edge of the city to report to Ahmed.

At this time, Ahmed was still worried about the problem of soldiers. The two failed battles of Mosul cost him nearly 20,000 troops, but the severe battle situation required more troops, which forced him to take the risk of tribal trouble and seize every horse he could from under the felt tent. , a man who can draw a bow.

Even after squeezing manpower like this, he still felt that the troops were not enough. He first wrote to the three Kurdish emirs who had surrendered to him, asking them to send troops to join the war. Find Shuyuan www. zhaoshuyuan.com Then he sent recruiting officers to catch young men and formed a large cannon fodder unit.

Just in time, the red heads of Asia Minor who were galloping on the plains ran into a group of recruiting troops returning to the camp.

The red heads who saw the enemy did not hesitate to draw their bows and arrows, sending pain and death to the people walking on two legs. In the chaos, the recruiting officers lost control of the strong men, and the sheep fled in all directions.

Scimitars and arrows quickly subdued the rabble, and the battle was quickly over.

Gharamanluhan first arranged for security troops, and then began to ask his subordinates to interrogate the prisoners.

"Sir, this is the recruitment team of Sultan Ahmed." The captured recruiter looked at the red heads wearing Ottoman plate and chain armor in front of him and said tremblingly about the identity of himself and this team.

"How many people have gathered in the camp in Diyarbakır?"

"My lord, I don't know. I can only tell you that Sultan Ahmed's camp stretches for several miles, and there are thousands of tents..."

Snapped!

The interrogator interrupted the recruiting officer's narration with a whip: "No matter how beautiful you use words and distorted praise, you can't change your master's situation."

"I only know so much, sir..." the recruiting officer cried sadly. He was not a senior officer. How could he know so much about the army? The brothers he is most familiar with have become dead souls under the arrows of the red heads.

The interrogator tortured him several more times, and after finding that he could no longer obtain information from the recruiting officer, he reported to Bayram: "Dear Khan, we only captured a low-level officer, and the humble officer only interrogated him about Ahmed Ahmed." General information about the camp.”

"I understand. Don't kill the prisoner, just put him back."

"yes."