Augustus Road

"Hunting, bathing, playing, laughing - this is life." - Inscription on the square of a Roman city

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"Ask Serhis, who is in charge of the rear guard, to come to see me on horseback." Surena said this after thinking for a while.

Under the scorching sun, Serhis's face was colder than ice. He rode his horse humiliatingly to the side of the carriage where the wheels had temporarily stopped, waiting for Surena's plan.

Unexpectedly, Surena did not even come out, but called a servant to pass on the message: "The general has decided to split his troops into two parts. He will take his private soldiers to attack the city of Carrhae first; and the general will take his own troops to stop the Roman army here."

"Asshole." Selhis cursed in his heart, and his hand holding the hilt of the sword was creaking. The other party's arrangement was obviously to eat meat for him and leave him to drink sand and sacrifice, but Selhis thought about it and put on a hypocritical smile again, saying that he was willing to obey General Surena's wise arrangement. He would do his best to stop the Roman army from rescuing the city of Carrhae.

Then, Selhis took the initiative to make a suggestion, "In order to prevent the crossbows and attacks from the city of Carrhae, the baggage, pack horses and camels of the entire army can also be concentrated behind my defense line."

Surena agreed to this proposal without thinking much.

After about a day's journey, Surena, with the main force, arrived at the city of Kale after settling his concubines, camps and baggage at the node between him and the Serhis tribe to the north.

After the fall of Crassus, the Fifth Legion, which he despised the most, lived well in Kale. "If no one saves me, I will save myself" became their creed. Coponius temporarily served as the commander of these people. They dug trenches to draw water from the stream outside the city, and built several deep water storage wells in the city. Many soldiers dug out their luggage, and of course some of their companions had left behind. They exchanged a lot of sheep, dates and other food with the cattle dealers in the city. The camp under the city of Kale was full of parasols and tents. After the supplies were sufficient. The Fifth Legion began to dig horse-blocking ditches outside the city frantically. The limited wood was all used to make crossbows. They used sand to tamp up earth walls behind the ditches, determined to defend this castle like a lonely boat.

When the scout saw Surena coming back, Coponius drove all the merchants out of the city, and then gathered all the citizens together, collected half of their food, and let them keep the other half by themselves, hiding in the basement in the city, and wait until the war was over before coming out.

The first person sent by Surena was a messenger to persuade them to surrender. After entering the city, he was immediately surrounded by angry Roman soldiers. Coponius stood in the center of the market, spread his hands and said to the messenger, "I'm sorry, because of your repeated betrayal, and he couldn't turn the anger of nearly 5,000 soldiers, so you can only be sacrificed."

So the Romans killed the messenger, poured all his blood into the drainage ditch beside the market, cut off his head and limbs, and stuck them on the tip of a spear, just like the people of Paia treated Crassus and his son, and planted them on the city gate, and then burned his internal organs and sacrificed them to the goddess of vengeance, begging her wings to cover the shadow of death over the heads of all the people of Paia.

Seeing the body fragments of his messenger, Surena sighed and decided to attack the city of Carrhae.

But what he wished for was that the resistance of Carrhae was unprecedentedly fierce. Under the command of Coponius, the desert fortifications of the Fifth Legion were no worse than those they built in other areas. These soldiers inserted shields and heavy javelins into the earth walls to resist the arrows of the Paya people, and then the hired archers collected them and shot them back. There were also many eye forts on the periphery. Surena's cavalry dismounted and tried their best to remove a few of them. After removing them that night, the Romans would build another one in a nearby place.

In this way, Surena gradually lost his patience. He still realized that once the Romans relied on fortifications and cities, Paya would not be able to do anything to them, and the Fifth Legion had no intention of going out for a field battle.

At this time, the rear guard of the Lepidus army, who could still see the majestic and majestic Mount Sinaca, drove large groups of camels, carrying baggage and tents, and walked into the depths of the increasingly dark brown desert. The neat footprints left by the front column were trampled by the camels' toes. On the side, two large battalions of heavy infantry shouted identification commands and marched firmly in the same direction. They were the two chief battalions led by Sabo to meet.

"Hurry over to launch a counterattack, rescue the city of Kalai, and teach that bastard Surena a lesson." This was the common wish of Lepidus's subordinates. They were different from the newly defeated army, and most of the Serapis Legion were from the desert natives, so they ran even faster. However, the Vipicinus and Matthias cavalry lined up in a column, leisurely, especially the former from Gaul. This kind of weather made their skin and nostrils feel painful, and they had to constantly get water from the camels to drink.

When the attack on Carrhae lasted until the fourth day, Surena, who was somewhat tired, suddenly received a message from the scouts in the rear that a Roman detachment had appeared in an area seven or eight Roman miles northeast of Carrhae, and had reversed direction, heading towards the area between the baggage camp and the siege camp!

"What the hell is Serhis doing!" Surena's heart suddenly sank, and the bad premonition from before came back again. Damn it - it was this Serhis who was always making trouble. He had clearly said before that he had successfully repelled the Romans' detachment and caused them huge casualties, but 20,000 enemies soon followed, and there was no sign of "huge casualties" at all; then he asked him to set up a defense line to delay the enemy's advance, but the Romans appeared outside the city of Carrhae within a few days!

Just as Surena was thinking in confusion, two messengers, covered in smoke and fire, ran to his siege camp, about two days apart. The former brought him a letter from Serchis, saying that he was entangled by the Roman cavalry, because the other side had a large number of camels to transport supplies, and the two were evenly matched and fought hard; and the latter was sent by the Armenian king Tegrenes, saying that he led 10,000 light and heavy cavalry, found that the Romans abandoned Chinodosia, and occupied this area. After that, our army quickly advanced to Carrhae after receiving the intelligence. Can we work together with the general to annihilate the last remnants of the Romans?

"Tegrenis, Sersis, they are all fools. Do they want to share the glory of my victory? Well, the victor should always be generous to the weak." Surena combed his hair like the Medes again, painted his face with bright and scary colors, rode on a horse, and personally held up the double snake flag. "Tell Sersis to hold out for another day and night. I will withdraw the siege of Carrhae and lead the main force to defeat Lepidus who came to die!" (To be continued...)