Chapter 55: The rise of a regional power (part 2)

<Notice: Aspiring Commander +2 Command-> Commander +3 Command>

Oh, this is a nice upgrade each command will supply my troops with morale and small skill boosts, now I need to get upgrades on my bureaucratic and merchant skills! Man what a way to start a battle, I was... *Bam* "My SULTAN!!! The enemies their knights they they are attacking from the south!" A young messenger screamed at me whilst rushing into the room...

Watching the messenger run in the room frantically then as he began to inch closer to me… My shadows quickly detained the young man, and said "You may be in a rush but this here is your sultan… mind your manners and your actions in his presence, or lose your head!"

The other assassin on guard duty just shook his head and said "Well, I do not know who trained this messenger boy but he clearly wasn't trained to deal with our sultan…" The Assassin began to walk closer and bent down to look the boy in the eyes.

Pulling a small blackened steel dagger out from… Actually, I couldn't even tell where it came from, then pointed it right at the boy's eyes and said very calmly "None of us here have seen you before… Who sent you? Where did the information come from? And I will say this only out of kindness for your age but tell the truth or else it's pretty tense already so you know what will happen right?"

The messenger boy who I thought looked relatively panicked when he first burst into the room screaming… But right now I can see there is a difference between the sheer fear and panic on his face at the moment and the face he was making when he burst in here.

The messenger boy after a few minor pleas to let him loose, and that he meant no harm by his brash actions and that he is sorry… Finally realized the assassins weren't just angry about his outburst but were now suspicious of him in general. The messenger boy still struggling with one of my assassins on his back looked in my direction and said with tears welling up in his eyes "M-M-MY SULTAN PLEASE! I made a mistake with my manners but I did not seek to do anything else...

-I was sent here to deliver a message and that is it! I am a simple common runner, I have no experience in royal etiquette... Please allow me to deliver the letter and leave... I am very very sorry!!" The messenger boy droned on and on for about a minute repeating himself and panicking at not receiving any response.

Until my assassin who kneeled nearest the kid's face said "Boy how old are you?" to which the boy responded "19... I-I mean I am 16!" Both my men looked up at me to which I nodded to them, basically giving them the authority to arrest and interrogate this imposter and get the details of how he replaced a real messenger.

They grabbed the boy dragging him away and all in the room could hear the boy screaming "NOO! You cannot do this... This is tyranny you all would listen to this tyrant and kill one of your own???"

No one even acknowledged the screams of the Imposter almost as if he wasn't there, or screaming to the top of his lungs for that matter. Looking back onto the battlefield, I noticed that the enemy's cavalry was still there, clearly, they do not possess multiple cavalry contingents numbering in the thousands... So, it is easy to deduce the info as fake, destroying their own schemes in their infancy.

The enemies are still having a hard time even entering within range of our skirmishers and artillery. Leading to a sort of stand-off testing the enemy's competence and will at the same time, what will they do next retreat, all-out attack, or scheme?

I truly wonder what they will do to win this engagement with my entrenched army, I made sure to force Tsar Stefan's back against the wall as best as I could. I planned all according to how I believed my enemies would act and react, this is something most did not encounter in the middle ages using cloak and dagger to use and abuse your enemies.

Viewing the battlefield I can see the enemies do not dare to enter our range still and seem to be planning to retreat after testing our defenses enough... My loyal commander Omar said at this moment "Just like you said my sultan, the enemies will not attack immediately but test our new defenses and see our reactions to their assault... I bet you will be right about their future actions as well! Any of you guys here dare to bet against my sultan?"

shaking my head at this loyal soldier, I saw the remaining commanders shaking their heads saying no to a bet against me. I said to all in the command room "Welp let us who are not on night duty get some rest, tomorrow we will most likely face an all-out assault be ready for anything tomorrow!" Then I walked out of the room, heading to my bedroom with the remaining assassin guards in tow.

*BOOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM* HUH...? WhAt TiMe iS iT? *CREAK* "My sultan the Infidels have begun their assault sorry for interrupting your rest... We await you in the command room" *creak* *Step step step*

Damn! They just had to start this nonsense so early, I would've preferred a noon attack because I would've at least had a decent breakfast and a small coffee... "Let's go to the command room, also one of you assassins head to get the two of you that left with the imposter yesterday I want the information they received from the boy."

Walking into the command room the first surprise of the day was how calm the room was, the commanders were all just chilling out watching the intense battle happening outside. They all calmly greeted me as I took my seat with a great view of the battlefield once more, and then slowly gave me a rundown of all the enemy's movements this morning.

Omar again like last night spoke up he said "My sultan, all is going as planned some of the heavier and more slowly moving cannons were moved already after firing a few times this morning... Many of the skirmishers have already begun to move back into this fortress through the tunnels connecting us to the trenches and destroying them after.

-The enemy's casualties have begun to amass well, they have begun the day with an all-out assault using small siege weapons to launch projectiles at the skirmishers in the trenches. But mostly we see soldiers running holding ladders attempting to reach the walls but have so far been stopped because of the overwhelming might of the musket, cannon, hwacha, and bowmen constantly showering the attackers with projectiles.

And any men who made it to the walls have so far been systematically put down by our soldiers defending the walls. So far the defenses have remained rock solid but soon the enemies will succumb to desperation launching a full-scale attack, no way to defend against them in this small fort, we designed just to hold high numbers of black powder weaponry and not sword-holding infantrymen.

As predicted after a few hours of continuous unsuccessful assaults the enemies have begun to send larger and larger amounts of soldiers in each wave, and we do not have enough cannons or stock of munitions to defend against this zombie-like attack method. If one were to look around the fortress one would notice one peculiar happening going on... That being that the defenders are evacuating a fortress still holding strong, and moving all the supplies and weaponry away as well.

By the time the enemies are able to breach the walls of the fort, we will be long gone... Once we reach the second fortress in the area we will begin the second phase of the battle plan, a field battle, or what could seem to be a field battle.

Now by mid-day, I see the enemies already rounding up their forces for a full-scale assault, one we have no chance against, already having all of our slow and heavy cannons moved away... We are now capable of defending for a while by using our muskets and small cannons to cause high casualty rates among the enemies for a small period of time before retreating in full...

Letting the tentative balancing act that is a fortress defense play out for a very short amount of time, as we continuously pelted the idiots rushing toward our walls. Somehow we managed to keep the enemies back with a small force of fewer than two thousand soldiers still left in the fortress.

Fear is our greatest asset in keeping the horde back as of right now, we are trying to keep up the pressure on the enemies at all times as we retreat the remaining forces including myself left in the fort. Using all our assets including the cavalry to pressure the enemies into staying back for at least a moment, as that is all we need to disappear before being devoured alongside the fort itself...

And by sundown, our retreat was completed and the fortress was completely abandoned and empty except for the number of traps left behind, including the main trap this will make the fortress undefendable and unusable. Just as I was thinking this, *BOOOM* the black powder barrels under the walls have finally exploded, destroying the defenses we worked so hard on for a few weeks and killing even more enemies along with them.

After a long night for my troops and the enemies as well, the first sunlight has finally arrived lighting up the new battlefield. All infantry and cavalry were lined up on the battlefield early in the morning, that is right the battlefield, not in a fort but standing and waiting for an enemy to battle.

Surrounding the new battlefield is two fortresses, one to the south and one to the north, and behind us the city of Ragusa itself in the distance. In front of us the previous fortress where the enemies will come from, and we will wait for them here, ready to combat and slowly surround the enemy whittling away huge chunks of their army as we continue to attack using all our forces.

On this beautiful spring morning, the enemies began to spill onto the battlefield led by their heavy shock cavalry numbering in the thousands even after all the sabotage I subjected this country too. The cavalry itself was not like the 15th-century knight we all know, some knights had their horses armored in the mail, while others had a fabric covering some had no armor on the horse at all.

The armor of the rider, was rather unique as well because there were many different cultures unified within this crusader army it truly varies. The armor of the two thousand Serbian knights was rather similar to each other so I will generalize.

The Serbian knights wore full mail suits, all the way down to the hands and all the way to the feet. Covering the chest area they used coats of arms and plated armors of this nature covered with their lieges crest. Many of the knights had plate armor greaves and sabatons covering the shin and foot, while on the knee they sported a plate mail covering similar to what my Cav uses.

On the arms, they wore plate armor from the shoulder down to the hands completely covered with it, but the majority of the knights just wore a form of lamellar covering their wrists and shoulders. Now we move to the bulk of the crusader knights, coming from Bosnia, Germany, Hungary, etc…

They have a hodgepodge mix of armor that are culturally exclusive so it'll be hard to truly cover all the armors I see in front of me in detail… but generally, they wear the same mail suit covering the whole body, then we see a form of the plate covering the chest area or a coat of arms plastered with crests. Arms and legs can be armored with full plate armor covering the entire leg and arm, but there are also small plates tied to the mail that covers just the shoulder, knee, and elbow.

This is generally what I see from the cavalry and the infantry isn't much different for the Crusaders at least the ones wearing armor. But the Serbian infantry that bears armor is significantly different from their knightly counterparts.

They wear a Byzantine style of armor mostly mail covering the important areas of the body, while metal lamellar armor covers the neck, arms, and legs. But the chest is still covered by some form of metal-plated fabric like the coat of arms. But I must say the majority of their forces are indeed unarmored and if they have armor it is just a thick fabric armor at best, or maybe a mail shirt passed down through the family.

-There will be another chapter tomorrow morning Eastern time as well, it is already finished.