NOVEL NEXT
Chapter 11
“Incompetent trash! Those useless things!
“I entrusted 3000 elite soldiers to the Ink Sea Chief Inspector so that he can guard the Ink Sea on my behalf, but that’s how he repaid me?”
Sultana Momoana was so infuriated upon hearing the report that she swept all of the exquisite porcelain and invaluable antiques on her desk to the ground.
“Dilber is a good-for-nothing too! I praised her valiance and made an exception by promoting her as a pasha. Yet, she let me down. Relay my orders. Capture all of her family members and sentence them to death!” she coldly issued the order before asking the envoy for further details.
The details only further stoked her rage.
“It was just an army of 3000 people?! How did an army of 3000 siege Sochia? Even if the garrison troops are a bunch of monkeys, it shouldn’t have been possible for 3000 people to take down a fortress city within a single day!
“The Khitans were there too? So what?”
There were many rumors going around about how frightening the Khitans were, but Sultana Momoana had been through enough battles to know better than to believe mere hearsay.
We all have two hands and one head; how strong can the Khitans get? Dilber was just weaker than the rumors put her out to be, and the Ink Sea Chief Inspector was negligent in his defense of Sochia.
Those two fools have created an opening in our encirclement of Constantinope, and it could introduce unexpected variables in our plan.
While Sultana Momoana was thinking about how she should punish those who returned from Sochia, she suddenly heard exclamations outside her tent, and the voices only continued to grow louder over time.
Thus, she walked out of the tent with the accompaniment of her subjects and looked in the direction where the exclamations were coming from.
She saw several ships flying a white flag with a black cross on the sea.
【My host, there’s an update on the main storyline!】
System 12345 was doing its best fixing the program while joyfully relaying the update to Shu Yichao.
【Momoana now has an impression of you, which means that you have entered her eye. This is a good sign. Go and break a leg. I wish you all the best in conquering this femme fatale!】
The sea was glimmering, and there was a wonderful breeze.
Shu Yichao stood at the forefront of the ship with his Superior Scimitar hanging by his waist and a bow in his hands. He looked at the distant city, which was tattered but still grand nevertheless.
“Hahaha! Constantinople, here I come!
“This game is incredible in replicating the war. I’d have thought that I was in the real thing. It’s just a pity about the flag,” Shu Yichao murmured as he glanced at the white flag with black cross flown by his ship.
His current army belonged to the grassland faction, so he thought of flying the Khitan flag, the Jurchen flag, or the Mongolian flag… But he had no idea what their flags looked like!
Thus, he opted for the Roman flag instead, but despite his desperate gesturing, the seamstress couldn’t, for the love of her life, figure out what he wanted. So, he compromised and went with a simple cross flag, so that Constantinople would at least know that they had reinforcements.
“The Ottomains’ ships are coming!”
Hearing an exclamation, Shu Yichao turned over and saw a pale-faced Madam Marti pointing into the distance with a trembling hand.
In order to enter Constantinople, they would have to first steer into the Bosphorus Strait before they could reach the Golden Horn.
Yet, there were more than 300 war ships crowded in the narrow Bosphorus Strait.
Compared to the Ottomains’ massive navy, the four cargo ships occupied by Shu Yichao and the others looked like an ant before an elephant.
I thought that Ottomains have a weak navy? What’s with that huge fleet they have?
Madam Marti was in despair.
“Khitan Baturu,” Madam Marti turned to Shu Yichao and anxiously urged, “we need to retreat right away. We can find other ways to enter Constantinope.”
No response.
“We need to retreat now, else it’ll be too late!”
Then, Madam Marti saw a smile creeping onto Shu Yichao’s face. The latter nodded before drawing his Superior Scimitar.
“Brothers, charge!”
“What?!”
…
“Where are these people from?” Sultana Momoana, who was watching this scene from a higher altitude, murmured with a frown. “Are they here to reinforce Constantinope? Relay the news to Pasha Baltoghlu!”
She casually waved her hand as if she was merely ordering her subordinates to crush an ant. “Sink those ships and behead everyone. Place their heads before Constantinope’s gates.”
“Pasha!” A green-faced Ottomain messenger clutched onto a wooden board and retched while addressing Ottomain’s Admiral Baltoghlu. “Our sultana has ordered you to eradicate that little fleet. You should leave no survivors at all.”
Baltoghlu’s face turned greener than the Ottomain messenger.
O’ great Sultana, I am flattered by the great faith you have shown in us, but shouldn’t you know better the state of our navy? We, Ottomains, are ferocious soldiers, but the moment we enter the water…
Our 20,000 strong navy, founded for Constantinope’s siege, was put together in a rush in just six months. Our ships are made out of inferior material and shoddy craftsmanship, so they are slow and even prone to self-dismantlement.
Most of our soldiers can’t swim, so our crew members comprise captured slaves from other tribes and bankrupted citizens. Every day, we would have some casualties from drowning.
It’s also common for our boats to bump into one another, hit skerries, and suffer from leakages and ship grounding. Sometimes, there are even fire hazards.
We can still bully our enemies with our sheer numbers in a narrow strait like this, but if our enemies attempt to flee, there’s no way we can chase them with our pathetic naval force!
However, Baltoghlu soon realized his worries weren’t a problem at all.
To his astonishment, the enemy made no attempt to escape. Instead, they even raised their sails and charged over.
“Ready!” Shu Yichao roared as he steered his ship toward the closest Ottomain ship. “Fire!”
At his order, all of the Grassland Horse Archers simultaneously released their arrows.
Swoosh swoosh swoosh!
The fired arrows darkened the sky as if the God of Death was gazing down at the Ottomains.
The arrows from Shu Yichao’s side were accurate and lethal. In the blink of an eye, the Ottomains had already suffered dozens of deaths, leaving bright blood flowers on the deck.
The shackled slaves responsible for rowing the ship looked at the collapsed Ottomain soldiers and wondered if they were dreaming.
“Fire back!”
The commanding officer of that ship tried to retaliate.
However, most of his soldiers struggled to keep their balance due to being seasick, so how could they oppose the powerful soldiers summoned by Shu Yichao? The few arrows that they released at all failed to even hit Shu Yichao’s ship, let alone a target.
“Nock your arrows!”
Shu Yichao noticed that some of his archers had fired their arrows into the sea, and that made his eyes twitch unstoppably.
This bunch of wastrels! How is their archery still pathetic despite having been upgraded? I’ll have to settle it with close combat!
The Ottomains’ navy was a dry duck, but so was Shu Yichao’s army. Traditional naval ship maneuvers such as periplous and diekplous were beyond him.
But it’s fine. I’m here to revive Rome anyway. It’ll be fine for me to use some of their strategies.
So, the dumbfounded Ottomains witnessed the enemy ships that came close to them suddenly dropping its corvus, a mounted boarding ramp with a hook at its end, thus creating a platform to cross between the two ships.
A young man dressed in a chainmail and armed with a scimitar ran onto their ship and charged from the starboard to the port, slaughtering everyone in between.
It only took minutes for everyone on the ship to be massacred.
“Are those plate mails? I’m rich! I’m rich!!! Clean the battlefield and head to the next ship!” Shu Yichao shouted at his subordinates.
“Ah?” It was only when Shu Yichao returned onto the boat that Madam Marti finally let out a word.
—
I have warped a few terms here and there (in reference to the story), but I’ll refrain from doing so for some of the lesser-known characters, locations, and details, etc. so that it’s easier for those who aren’t familiar with the downfall of Constantinople to know what is what and who is who.
Starve’s History Explanation
Periplous is flanking the enemy fleet, whereas diekplous involves charging into the middle of the enemy’s naval formation to separate them.
Constantinople is a city that’s located next to Bosphorus Strait, so there are two ways of attacking it—land and sea.
Sea defense wise, Constantinople has this boom chain in a region of the Bosphorous Strait (known as Golden Horn) that can be raised to block ships from entering (think of a toll gate!).
Land wise, Constantinople has a multi-layered wall defense system (including a moat where soldiers have to swim across in between the walls) that makes it incredibly hard to siege in the medieval era.