My new story already has many chapter posted. If you want to read it, it's called "Old Bloodlines."
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Anno Domini, 831-March-15-25
The battle had ended and the city was ours, but it was nothing more than a ghost city where no one remained alive. The city had burned, reduced simply to rubble, since I had not made even the slightest attempt to stop the looting after eliminating all the defenders and inhabitants of the city.
And with that, the tactic that had characterized this war had changed completely. I had arrived trying to achieve a quick victory with great Coptic support, but unfortunately that support had never materialized, and all that remained was to wage a traditional war.
I had tried to keep the war from affecting the Copts because I expected their collaboration, but it seemed my soft hand had made them far more reluctant to cooperate with me, so now it was time to be much more aggressive.
Beginning with refusing to recognize property titles over conquered lands and cities, placing everything under direct imperial administration, sparing from that fate only those who had surrendered without any kind of resistance.
The two fortresses that had been a thorn in my side did not take long to surrender once the heads were catapulted and the Coptic defenders, who were the majority, were informed that none of them would be spared if they continued helping the sarakenoi.
They did not take long to open the gates once they learned that no one had survived our previous siege, and they did not take long to begin cooperating, more out of fear than anything else.
Likewise, because of the number of men I had lost during the siege of those fortresses, I did not give them fair treatment and simply spared their lives, but any kind of property they had inside the city was now property of the Roman state.
So, once the ring of fortresses that had prevented us from continuing had been broken after all that time wasted in a siege that should never have happened, we began our journey south once more, following the flow of the rivers to continue reaching the settlements that had to be captured.
This time, with little concern for looting and treating the place much more as we would in a campaign against other Christians instead of a zone that had to be liberated.
Just like with the Croatians, we were looting their reserves and leaving them only the bare minimum needed so they would not starve to death, which was already quite generous of me toward those traitors who continued supporting the sarakenoi, who would not hesitate to sell them into slavery if that were politically possible for them.
That would force them to enlist into the forms of Roman government, trying to find work with the themata soldiers, since with these lands confiscated, the themata was beginning to expand in the regions around Alexandria, as it was the only city that had opened its gates to me without much of a siege.
They would be responsible for turning these people who did have some kind of property title into a system of temporary workers, which would surely be much worse than owning the land directly, and that would be their punishment for not supporting the recovery of this region.
"My strategos Basil, we have detected that the sarakenoi presence is crossing the Mare Rubrum. The admiral in charge of raiding the area is trying to intercept the ships, but it is certain that part of the sarakenoi army has already crossed the sea. Before departing with this message, the admiral reported that the sarakenoi are still trying to cross the sea even with our fleet present in the area, so it is possible they are desperate to do so" said the messenger who brought me the bad news.
"Just what we needed. How is it possible that they managed to gather a fleet to cross the sea? It should not have happened so quickly. Almost the entire sarakenoi fleet was in the ports of Damietta, Thmuis, and Alexandria. How is it possible that there was something large enough to allow that army to cross the Mare Rubrum?" I said, bringing my hand to my nose after hearing that news.
"From what I managed to observe with my own eyes, they were using merchant ships and fishing boats, small vessels that could barely carry a couple of men at a time and were having difficulty doing even that. With our arrival, we managed to capture and sink many of the larger sarakenoi ships, so we probably prevented more of them from crossing the sea" the messenger said, lowering his head as he continued speaking.
"An improvised fleet, then they requisitioned the boats from their fishing villages. There should not have been many ships, so if we were lucky, only a small part of the army managed to cross the sea. Any number of ships they managed to count? With that, we could estimate how many troops managed to cross the Mare Rubrum and see whether it is worth maintaining the blockade in Arabia Petra or simply concentrating our forces for a battle" I said, looking at the messenger.
"We do not know for certain. I am the first messenger to be sent. Surely my next companions will have more information about what happened, but for the moment, the admiral is asking for instructions on how to operate, since in the meantime he is dedicating himself to raiding every coastal village he finds, using the fast drakkar to ravage those villages and weaken the possible places where supplies can be landed by sea" said the messenger.
"Then it could not have happened long ago, but the army of the wali of Aegyptus should not be large enough to take much time, so I assume that a decent number of troops, but not the entire army, has crossed the sea. So we have to stay alert. We have to remove some garrisons from Arabia Petra, since I doubt they will try to return through there, and all their following attempts will be by sea" I said, thinking over the news.
"Yes, but something we noticed is that there were not only the banners of the wali he has been using and that we have been seeing. We also found other banners, a black banner with a golden center that had letters on it, but we could not recognize them properly before we fought the ships we sank" said the messenger.
"What? Repeat that" I said, leaning on my horse while looking at the messenger.
"We observed additional banners besides those of the wali. They were black banners with a circular golden symbol in the middle" the messenger said again.
"Shit… shit" I said, biting my thumb, although I only felt steel between my teeth.
The men stared at me for a long while as I looked everywhere.
"The Abbasids defeated the wali, or they joined together. Their civil war has ended. That means we will soon have the pressure of all the sarakenoi against us. We have to reach Memphis quickly and try to finish the siege. It is only a matter of time before the united army of those men falls upon us. We have to secure as many positions on the Nile as possible and try to keep our conquests safe" I said, looking at my tourmarches, who understood the dilemma.
"The wali's army was already large. So we are talking about having the Abbasid sarakenoi against us as well. That will probably put us at a numerical disadvantage. Should we request reinforcements from the empire?" one of the tourmarches asked, looking nervous at the news.
"The empire has already sent everything it can send for the moment. What will keep arriving are foederati reinforcements that have a training system where they will send me more Slavic troops, but only a few hundred each month. I will see what I can do if the basileus can send some tagmata from some region, but we have to move quickly. The last thing we want is to have our enemies in the capital of Aegyptus. That would make the siege completely unviable and the campaign would end unfinished" I said as I began to spur my horse.
"Then what do I inform the admiral, my strategos? Do I confirm that he should continue doing what he has been doing until now?" the messenger asked as he tried to keep pace with my horse.
"Yes, tell him to burn every port he can find in the area. The harder it is for them to embark troops, the easier it will be for us, so tell him to burn everything. It does not matter if there are Christians there. We have to reduce the possibility that a large part of the sarakenoi army crosses" I said while riding.
Without wasting much time, we continued our march south, looting every village possible to keep increasing our reserves, since I did not want to depend too much on having to use my trade networks to obtain the food needed for the campaign.
This undoubtedly increased our marching speed enormously, since we no longer had to distinguish between Copts and sarakenoi to avoid looting them, so changing the doctrine of plunder had considerably increased our marching time. It did not take long for us to make many advances after being stuck in the siege of those three fortresses.
Several days passed, during which our march was halted by Coptic and sarakenoi contingents that intended to stop our advance, something they managed to do somewhat by using large amounts of cavalry to harass the vanguards, making our vanguards fail in our attempt to reach the capital of this province.
After several more days, we managed to force another fortress, mainly protected by Copts, to surrender. When they learned the fate of their brothers, they did not hesitate long before opening the gates and receiving us with open arms.
"God damn these outdated maps" I said, seeing that there was another fortress protecting the place where the Nile branched.
"What happened?" Sigurd asked, wiping the sweat from his face with a damp cloth.
"It seems some maps are too old and do not have the new cities the sarakenoi have created, so we have many cities and fortresses that have no names on our maps, and I did not expect this fortress. Besides, Memphis is not the capital as I expected. It is nearby, but it is al-Fusṭāṭ, a city that was created around the Roman fortress that protected the area while they were besieging it. So we are close to the capital. That fortress is blocking us from our objective" I said, pointing at the fortress in front of us while checking my maps, seeing many fortresses and cities that were not on them.
"And was the spy not supposed to give you information about all these things?" Sigurd asked, crossing his arms while observing the enemy fortresses.
"Yes, he was supposed to, but Shimon lost almost everything when his network was discovered. The maps he had prepared for me were captured in one of the wali's raids, so the man had nothing to show except his contacts, since the cartographer who made the maps had his head cut off" I said, marking down the cities I could now see and the fortresses while thinking about what to do with this new dilemma.
"Then what do we do? The heat will not stop beating us down, and it seems the sarakenoi managed to cross the sea, though not in great numbers, but we will have problems" Sigurd said, beginning to drink from an amphora of boiled water.
"In front of us is Qalyub, which is supposed to watch over a crossing of the Nile toward the sarakenoi capital. We have to take the fortress and the surrounding fortifications in order to reach the capital and place it under siege" I said, looking over the landscape and making notes on my maps.
"Nothing is going well for you in this campaign, from what I can see" Sigurd said with a slight smile.
"Yes, I know. Everything has gone wrong for me so far, but that is no reason to become discouraged. We only need to carry out the final sieges. From what I understand, the garrisons in these cities are sarakenoi, so they are not going to surrender, but they are not great fortresses. They are small forts meant to guard trade, so they should have around two hundred or three hundred men, easily assaulted. What we have to do is cross the Nile and reach al-Fusṭāṭ, and with that, make preparations for when the Abbasid troops arrive, since they must be gathering in some port before marching. So ideally, we have to prepare for an army to arrive from the south" I said, looking toward the area where the capital we needed to strike so badly had to be.
"I will be eagerly waiting" Sigurd said with a slight smile as he took another amphora and poured it over his hair.
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I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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