"What other bird doesn't prey on its own kind like it does?" - The ancient Romans praised the eagle

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On the brownish-yellow slopes, overgrown with stubby pine shrubs, the cautious Apis was on them, monitoring the meandering march of the entire Sixth Army on the road, although he believed that the final outcome of this war was not optimistic at all, and that his officers and men would either die or surrender, but this dutiful corps commander still had to hold on until the last moment and accept the arrangement of fate.

In the cold wind, the Sixth Army holding the Eagle Banner, its number and action, had already been detected by the vanguard Hansk appointed by Li Bida, this Germanic brave cavalry led four hundred Mattia cavalry according to Li Bida's arrangement, this number is very strange - you say that it is too big to reconnoitre, but if you say that it is a battle, the scale is too small anyway.

Therefore, the task dictated by Li Bida was "armed reconnaissance," that is, after discovering the movement of the Sixth Army Corps, he would go forward to engage in a small-scale battle with it to contain and delay them. In this spirit, Hanske's cavalry whistled out from the side of the hill and fired fierce arrows at the avant-garde cavalry of the Sixth Army of Appis, "There is a battle ahead!" The shouts of urgency, mixed with the sound of hurried whistles and horns, quickly reached Appis's command position on the hillside, and the commander observed it intently, and said angrily, "The other side only has a few hundred cavalry, and our army should not set up camp on the spot to resist, just send a few wings of Ala cavalry to disperse them!" And then. All the soldiers of the Sixth Legion obeyed his orders. Keep a dense and well-organized column. Continuing to speed in the direction of Taktun, they believed that this group of Mattia cavalry was indeed just an enemy raiding team.

After the Sixth Legion accelerated, Scipio and the Eighth Legion behind felt a little difficult, because Pompey's father-in-law carried out a lot of baggage from Ephesus, and it was transported by nearly 2,000 pack horses and mules, which were loaded with equipment and grain, but more of the soldiers' salaries. For a man of such a realm, money is the most fundamental motivation for his progress and struggle, and it will also be the strongest shackles that imprison him.

Gradually, unconsciously, the distance between the two legions was widened, from three romans, to five romans, and finally to ten romans.

And just like that, it was late afternoon. Tired to the point of death, Scipio ordered thousands of soldiers of the Eighth Legion, who felt the same way as him. The team of bloated baggage outside, in a snowstorm, ran around the small wasteland to rest, "Quick, send the trumpeter and the token officer, together to find the legion of Appis, let them slow down and move back to us." ”

At this time, Scipio looked at the scattered soldiers who were scattered, pulling pack horses, or preparing to set up tents to make fires for cooking, and then looked at the undulating hills around the moor, and instinctively felt a sense of unease in his heart, and the tragic scene of the previous ambush in the Andabukia Mountains came to him, so Scipio was very angry, and ordered that there be enough sentry and patrol cavalry to "guard our camp." ”

As a result, a terrible trumpet sounded, with a dull Parthian sound of brass drums, from all sides of the moor, far and near, one after another, and the pack horses of the Eighth Legion began to panic and frighten, and they ran about uneasily, and neighed at each other, and the soldiers could easily distinguish the sound made by it, which was completely different from the trumpet of the Roman legions, "Beware of the enemy's attack, beware of the enemy's attack!" After all, the Eighth Army Corps had a lot of old soldiers, and threw their untied luggage backpacks to the ground, and then began to line up in an engagement formation under the logo of the team logo.

After a while, the sound of the brass drum became louder and louder, and with the cold night of snowflakes, it felt simply terrifying, a dull and long sound, like the summoning of the god of the underworld.

I don't know which soldier was the first to exclaim, and now Scipio looked up, and on the slopes of the hill in all directions were full of holding pines, and shadows of people and horses shaking like ghosts, and strange bone whistles, shouts, and voices that resembled chanting, like the tide of the sea.

It was evident that he and the Eighth Legion were surrounded by enemy cavalry, and that this cavalry was quite delicately interspersed, and that it had been carefully reconnoitred and had made a detour through the gap between him and Apis' troops.

A burst of flame, suddenly rising from the forest on the western slopes, and then shot into the middle of the exclamation of pack horses, where four horses, a modified Samontoga cannon, shot all the cork rockets mounted in the chutes at Scipio's legions. The cork rocket had also been refined, with a small hole drilled in the middle and an improved recipe for the incendiary agent, which allowed it to emit a terrifying whistling sound and flash as it flew over the heads of the Scipio soldiers, causing great confusion and panic, and those who could still calm down in the formation were swept away by the pack horses running and jumping around.

Then, throughout the wilderness, there was the sound of weapons handing over and horses' hooves thundering, "There are enemies over there, too!" "At some point, on the northern slope of the hill, the army of Li Bida also erected a few samontoga, and in the sharp whistle, the rolling rockets dragged their strange spark tails into the cracks of Scipio's troops.

But when Scipio's army launched a counterattack, it could not find any way, and the enemy was obviously in a chaotic battle, and would use the horses and terrain very nimbly, constantly shooting arrows and throwing spears, so that the Eighth Army could only constantly regroup, clumsily moving the left and right flanks around. In the fireworks melee, Scipio's two cavalry captains, with more than a dozen cavalry and guides, rushed towards the mountain road outside the wasteland, trying to get in touch with Appis's six legions and call for all the other side to come to the rescue.

"Rex, Leus!" Suddenly, a group of men and horses rushed out of the mountain pass, shouted such a command in Latin at the two cavalry captains, and made the other party not know what to do.

As a result, the men and horses saw that the command did not match, and without saying a word, they shot a volley of arrows, and immediately killed several cavalrymen, and the two captains wolf-escorted the guide down the hillside, and then led a hundred-man infantry, and attacked upwards in an attempt to open the passage as much as possible. But the arrows of the men and horses were extremely skillful, and the arrows flew and splashed like water, and the Samontoga cannons everywhere from time to time shot out fierce and whistling fire arrows, which by the way illuminated the target, so they gnawed the nail, and when they gnawed two sentry points, one of the cavalry captains was killed in battle, and the other was wounded, and they rushed over, only to see a dozen or so cavalry corpses dressed as barbarians lying on the mountain, all still holding bowstrings in their hands, and arrow feathers scattered all over the ground.

But at this time, even if they rushed over, it was meaningless, because the thousands of cavalry sent by Li Bida to attack the Eighth Army Corps retreated one after another before dawn. (To be continued......)