The slaves staggered to the deer, and the soldiers of the city began to fire arrows, and the screams of the city began to ......

Just as Kolebus and the others were again bending their bows and arrows and drawing their javelins, the slaves in the city cried out: "Don't let go of the arrows, I am Sifnos, the son of Siparchus!" ”

"I'm Parlarus! Neighbors of Askamas! ”

……

The soldiers of Crotone froze: it was not the slaves who were under the city, but their compatriots who had been captured after the defeat of the previous battle!

"Damn the people of Syracuse! Dionysius, who deserves hell! Ascamas angrily punched the battlements, blood immediately stained his fists, he did not expect Dionysius to ignore Greek tradition and let Greek captives serve as meat shields for siege and consumption.

At this time, Dionysius, who had already followed the archers to the earthen ramparts, looked down on the situation under the city, and a sneer appeared on his face. You must know that after the last battle, Syracuse took nearly 10,000 prisoners, intimidated, beaten, and fasted...... It took torture to force more than 2,000 people to be willing to pull out the deer under the city and fill the moat for Syracuse, in exchange for a promise not to be tortured and killed, not to be sold into slavery. Among the 2,000 people, there were not only Crotone, but also a few Siritins and Trinas, but no Ionians. On the one hand, Dionysians had the fewest prisoners, and more than half had been replaced by Dionia, and the rest of the Bruti were taken prisoner, Dionysius had other uses, while the pure Greeks and Lucanians were mostly hard-tempered......

Ignoring this annoying little problem, Dionysius was now pleased with the tactic he had used, and wanted to see how the Crotonees would respond, so he ordered the archers not to shoot arrows at first, to conserve their strength and arrows, and to wait until the whole army was attacking, and then remove the obstacles at the head of the city.

At the head of the city, the adjutant eagerly asked, "General, what should we do?!" ”

Ascamas did not answer immediately, and while asking the guards to bandage his left hand, he watched sadly as the Crotone captives under the city were forced by the Syracuse, walked to the moat, threw the dirt bags he was carrying into the moat, and then turned back to destroy the carefully arranged deer barn of the defenders.

Ascamas secretly scolded these traitors, but he did not dare to order an attack on them, because he thought: Crotone's former sworn enemy, Turiyi, their chief general Kunogorata, ordered the city gates to be closed, although he saved the city, but because it caused the death of some citizen soldiers, the people did not forgive it, not only drove Kunogorata, but also injured his family, and now he directly ordered to kill the prisoners of Crotone below, even if he repelled the enemy's attack, How can the families of these thousands of dead not hate themselves in the future, and I am afraid that their fate will be worse than that of Kunogorata!

Askamas is not a general who only knows how to fight, and he has been elected as a general many times in the powerful Greek state of Crotone, which has tens of thousands of citizens, and his political literacy is not low. After quickly weighing the pros and cons, he said to the adjutant: "You go to the town hall at once, tell the council about the situation here, and let them decide." ”

After the lieutenant had left, Ascamas saw that a small part of the moat was about to be severed, and he sighed and commanded, "Go find some ropes and hang them down the city, so that they can climb up with them." ”

He did not dare to open the gates of the city, for fear that the people of Syracuse would take advantage of the opportunity to enter.

The soldiers hurriedly fetched ropes and hung them down the city, and then shouted to their countrymen: "Come here!!" Grab the rope and climb up!! ”

Some of the captives staggered across the filled moat, but the light infantry of Syracuse immediately fired arrows at them, so that the weak captives, who had never had enough to eat, were easily shot down.

The soldiers at the head of the city returned fire angrily, but most of them could not hit the Syracuse people who were hiding behind the arrow-blocking vehicles, but accidentally injured their own compatriots.

The captives no longer dared to act rashly.

Seeing this, Askamas reluctantly gave up his attempt to rescue his compatriots.

The Council of Crotone was apparently unprepared for the siege of Syracuse with its captives, and the debate was fierce, but it was never able to make a decision, which gave the Syracuse ample time for the captives to fill in several long sections of the moat and clear the deer on both sides of the moat.

Ascamas watched all this depressedly, but he quickly forced himself to cheer up again: In this case, let's fight face to face!

As if hearing Askamas's inner cry, the captives were driven back and never reappeared.

Seeing that everything was ready, Dionysius gave the order from the high platform: "Attack!" ”

As soon as the words fell, I suddenly felt a cold on my face, and when I reached out and touched it, it turned out to be water.

It's raining? Dionysius looked up at the sky, the previously clear sky had somehow become a little overcast, although it was only a small raindrop, but Dionysius was a little worried, because the weight of the siege tower would cause the land to be soaked in rain and become soft, causing the wheels to sink into the mud and not be able to push.

"Speed up the attack!" He gave the order again.

The trumpet sounded.

Stone bullets continued to whizz over the city of Crotone, and the black and crushed enemies under the city slowly poured in like a tide......

The sound of bugles, war drums, shouts, footsteps...... Mixed together, hitting the eardrums of the soldiers defending the city, making them breathe short.

"Here we go." Ascamas whispered, picked up his javelin, and walked to the battlements.

At this moment, a black dot suddenly passed over the sky behind his head, followed by another ......

His eyes widened suddenly, and he looked up, and he heard the soldiers next to him shouting excitedly: "Our ballistas!" Our ballistas are finally starting to wield!! ……”

It wasn't a ballista from Crotone...... Ascamas thought to himself, but when he saw that the morale of the soldiers was rising, he didn't mind, but felt glad in his heart: Fortunately, Dionia and Crotone stood together!

The Crotone soldiers were excited, and the people of Syracuse were anxious, especially Dionysius, who saw with his own eyes that almost all the stone projectiles flying from the city smashed near the siege towers not far from the earthen ramparts.

He had heard Fasipesas say, 'Dionya also has ballistas.' Since he had not seen Crotone use it for the first two days, he thought that Dionya had not lent Crotone this powerful weapon, which was complicated and expensive, but used it to defend against Asprarustum, but he did not expect that Crotone had been hidden until Syracuse was attacking the city with all his might.

"Cunning Crotone!" Dionysius scolded, knowing that the target of the enemy's ballistae was the siege tower, but he could only hurry: "Inform our ballistae to attack the area of the enemy's city where the ballistae may be placed!" ”

Although Dionysius gave the order, he also knew that the accuracy of the ballista was not high, and it was too difficult to hit it when the enemy's ballista position could not be seen, but when the siege force had approached the city wall, the ballista could no longer bombard the city wall, so as not to accidentally injure his own people, it was also good to make some attempts to disturb the city of Crotone.

In front of the huge siege team like a tide, the enemy is only a dozen ballistas, and they can't make too big a splash at all, the key is to capture the city first! Dionysius made a quick decision, and under his instructions, hundreds of archers on the earthen ramparts began to throw arrows at the head of the city directly in front of them, suppressing the enemy's attacks on the soldiers below.

The Crotone light infantry at the head of the city began to rain arrows on the enemy approaching the moat.

The Syracuse crossed the filled moat and braved the javelins dropped by the Crotones to carry the ladder they carried up the walls. The ladder made by the Crotone people after many sieges has two curved iron hooks at the end, which can hook the battlements so that the ladder will not easily slide down or be knocked down.

Unable to quickly knock down the ladder, the Crotone soldiers threw javelins and stones downwards to attack the enemies who climbed the city, dumping tung oil and burning the ladder with fire......

The Syracuse light infantry also came out from behind the arrow-blocking carts, rushed to the bottom of the city, and fired arrows at the head of the city to relieve the defenders of the siege soldiers......

Syracuse's siege engines were the slowest to advance. Under the protection of the roof, the people in the car picked up their tools and began to re-tamp the ground, fill the gaps with earth, and then lay wooden planks to ensure that the heavy siege towers could pass through the moat.

Dionia's ballistae were concentrated not far behind the western wall, with wide spacing and houses on all sides, making them relatively safe. However, due to the wide dispersion of ballistas, it was impossible to adjust the trajectory with the same data after the target was calculated, and there were not so many gunners from the academy, so Kurdorod made a suggestion: ten ballistae bombarded an area or a target at the same time, so the accuracy of the hit could be improved. After the ballista under his command was fired first, the other ballista gunners could adjust the firing data according to the height and speed of the projectile.

This suggestion was accepted by the Ballista team, whose primary target was now the approaching siege towers directly ahead.

Kurdorod kept his eyes on the observer holding the bunting on the wall, and the position he stood in was to indicate the direction of the siege tower, and the number he used the bunting to compare in the air was the distance between the siege tower and the city wall, and then the observer pointed to the left of the bunting, and after repeating this action twice, the number was the direction and distance of the stone projectile fired by Kurdorod earlier.

The first two shots failed to hit, Kurdorod felt the pressure, he wiped the rain from his face to make his vision clearer, he knew that he had to hit as soon as possible, otherwise the rain would keep falling, and the spring group of the ballista would change its elastic force when it was wet, and it would be even more difficult to judge the accurate trajectory.