Eagle Byzantium

Hearing such a shout, all the Armenian soldiers shot arrows and charged more frantically. Their opportunity was time-limited and they had to seize it.

All the cavalry attached to the brigade jumped off their horses, protected the injured earl and the battle flag, folded their small shields, and withstood the compound bows and arrows that were pouring in from all directions like mad bees.

"Charge, charge!" Hector waved his sword and led the way, encouraging all his men to bravely move forward to cut off Melo's head.

Hector had no choice. He knew that Gawain could forgive all other Armenians, but not him, because he defected when the Melo contingent attacked the inner city of Melite before, and sold the army deployment and plan. So now for him, "It's either you die or I live."

"Toot, toot, toot." Hector, who was bouncing on his horse, could almost see the earl surrounded by the enemy's dismounted cavalry. His arms were hanging down, and he looked injured. At this moment, a sharp horn sounded, but Hector couldn't tell whether it was from his own side or the enemy. His sword blade was facing the target, and he was approaching rapidly as his mount galloped.

However, the trumpets were blown by the blue-clad shooting soldiers on the hillside. When they saw the chaotic group in front of them, they shouted, "Turn around!" At the command of the flag officers of their respective teams, fifteen companies of shooting soldiers turned around and faced Hector's ambush troops in the valley below the hillside. Every sixty soldiers formed a wing and overlapped each other. "Raise your guns!" The shooting soldiers held their long guns horizontally, half-knelt down, tucked the butt of the long gun under their armpits, and held the front muzzle of the gun with their left hands on their knees. According to the military drill requirements of the shooting army, all soldiers must load a tube of ammunition into the dog-head long musket in advance before going into battle, and clip a short fuse between the dog-heads so that they can directly fire a round.

"Fire!" With this command, the soldiers on each wing of the shooting army pulled the trigger, and the dog-head hooks on the long muskets were taken off one after another, and the tinderboxes lit the fire gates. "Bang, bang, bang", hundreds of lead bullets whistled out from the muzzles, and the ambush infantry and cavalry beside Hector screamed as they were hit. Hector's helmet was also smashed by the lead bullets, and half of his ear was blown off, and blood immediately flowed. He looked sideways and saw that the entire field was full of dead and wounded soldiers, but he could not retreat, "Follow me, don't worry about the enemies on the hillside." Many brave Armenian soldiers also dragged their injured bodies, some leaning on spears and swords, chasing Hector, limping and continuing to rush towards Melo.

"Everyone lie low, don't move." Behind the horses running around, Melo stretched out his still movable left hand and shouted to all the attached cavalry around him. He knew that the shooting troops on the hillside over there had started to fire in volleys. If they ran around randomly, they would be shot indiscriminately.

After the smoke dissipated, the shooting troops of the first nine companies put away their guns and stood up, and began to pull out their sticks to clean the inner chambers. Some of them pulled out the unburned paper tube fragments by turning the firing gates, and the sound suddenly rained; and the shooting troops of the next six companies stepped forward, passed through the gap and continued to move forward. After approaching the enemy for about twenty steps, "Shoot straight!" This group of shooting troops directly put the butt of the gun against the ribs or abdomen, holding the front end with one hand, without aiming at all, they aimed the black hexagonal muzzle at the ambush troops who were still running.

Another round of thunderous volleys.

Hector and his horse were knocked over only fifty feet away from Melo, along with dozens of soldiers around him, who were screaming and having their armor and bodies shattered. Many of them were coughing up blood and covering their horrific wounds pierced by lead bullets. They were covered in smoke and were either lying on the ground or kneeling on the ground, wriggling. At this time, a cavalryman attached to the brigade beside the Earl Melo drew his sword and prepared to rush out of the front line to chop off the heads of the dying people, but was stopped by Melo with one hand:

Amid the mess of corpses on the ground, there were still a few stumbling remnants, including Hector, whose armor was almost broken. He was shaking, covering the wound on his broken ear, and his eyes were smoked with blood and tears. At this time, in the midst of extreme burning and pain, he turned his head to look at the group of densely packed people standing on the hillside, holding smoking iron sticks, the kind of "fire gun soldiers" that were previously looked down upon by the brave Armenian warriors.

The tasseled flags fluttered, the drums sounded, and the group of musket-shooting soldiers wearing blue robes, leather armor or half-body chain mail lined up in a row, and continued to move towards his position, seemingly to launch a third round of volleys...

The rows of shooters closest to Hector blew away the ashes on the fuse and clamped it on the nose of the machine again. Hector could almost see their squinting eyes, the fuse head that was bright red again, and the black muzzle of the gun, which was close at hand.

In fact, it was only a distance of more than ten steps, so aiming was unnecessary. The soldiers of the shooter army only needed to point the muzzle at the target and squeeze the trigger.

After a burst of smoke and loud noises, Hector's body was almost shot into a sieve, with holes everywhere and blood gushing out. One leg was broken, and soon he knelt on the ground dejectedly, and then he died among the densely packed corpses with a thud.

The hundreds of Marashian soldiers who ambushed the Great Earl were completely defeated by the three rounds of volleys of long muskets fired from the hillside by the shooting army that they had never taken seriously...

Soon, a large number of spearmen from the rear detachment also rushed up, and the ambush troops of the Armenian army that attacked from the Lavodra Castle collapsed. Only the commander General Saliki and the remaining three or four hundred men fled back to the castle to defend it.

Almost at the same time, in the direction of Tubercena Castle, Gawain's detachment from the inner city of Melite appeared: they also crossed the border from a different place, led by Walter Sansavall, and the herdsman officer Reinstein also came. There were 2,000 border troops from the Great Frontier District of Caesarea, 400 border cavalry from the Cilicia Gate, 400 Oghuz volunteer cavalry from the Iconium County District, and more than 1,000 civilian workers and drivers driving more than 80 modified covered wagons, with 20 light perfume bottles and 4 long perfume bottle cannons, coming from the northeast road of Marash, and suddenly appeared in the back area of ​​Tubercena Castle.

In front of the castle stable, the bald Parkard holding a saber was full of surprise.

Because his son Hercules half-knelt in front of him and said calmly, "Father, it is meaningless for you to fight against Gawain. We are surrounded on three sides by Gawain's territory, and the other side has an absolute advantage in military and national strength - so I decided to surrender the castle."