Chapter 448 - Cleansing Teeth Is A Good Habit

After some more discussion about the geography of this region, Antonius and his men took their leave towards the next observation point on another high land, leaving the clergy man from Constantinople, who has already been showing signs of dismay on his face since just now here. But just before they left, the prince of Moskva suddenly asked. "Your majesty, I know that you are seemingly very confident in breaking through those walls, but forgive my curiosity can you tell me how are you going to do it?"

Antonius laughed and gave a pat on this young prince's shoulder. "You shall see it this afternoon."

Then they did some more reconnaissance works around in the local terrain where they managed to craft out a clearer terrain map with all the enemy encampment labels with the help of their infiltration scouts. In the process Halfdan pointed out that this kind of terrain is being taught to every commander as the most suitable place to set up an ambush. The entire valley only consists of two exits with one in the north and one in the south, the surrounding elevated terrain have a relatively smooth inclined angle which allows the ambushing troops to charge in to the enemies from the top, and so they can block the two exits, separate the enemies in to multiple pieces and then terminate them all at once in this valley.

But why did the commanders of the Ottoman warlords decide to not use any trickery in his battle planning, instead building up a chain of walled defences in the valley to fight a rather caution and conventional head to head warfare? The answer is soon to be found out once the crew of commanders managed to climb all the way up the ranges of mountains, going to a close proximity to one of the smaller enemy encampment outside the valley consisting of around a thousand men.

"Look at this encampment, admiral." Abraham seems to have discovered some thing as he waved towards the rest and ushered them to a good point where they can have a good sight of the camp. "Can you see any thing about this piece of troop from the lay out of their camp?"

"Layout of their camp?" Antonius scrutinised the camp.

"I do think I know what Master Abraham means." Khalid responded. "Back there in the deserts and grass lands of Africanus, the top priority for a group of people, not only the army, but also travellers and merchants, are to form up a decently designed and organised encampment when night approaches in case any bandits or hyena come paying them a visit, or to prevent the entire camp being covered up by sand storm or burnt down by fire."

"If you look carefully, you will find out that this camp is being built in an extremely disorganised manner, admiral." Abraham pointed towards the camp. "It is approaching lunch hours and look at the places they place their pots and pans, it is literally scattered every where which is one of the top no dos when constructing a temporary military camp, telling us that the commander of this army is either an unexperienced newbie, or some incompetent commander who does not know how to command. Most likely some young noble from the Ottomans who spent the bulk of his time hunting and is handed over with a thousand men for the first time of his life."

"And if you look at it even more closely, you will find out that the entire camp structure is being built in an ambiguous manner your majesty." Khalid continued. "There are no observable central dump site in the camp and no mass toilets being built, the animals seems to stay in a close proximity to the living area for the men meaning that a plague can occur pretty easily among their foot men. There are no parade squares being planned, no central ways between each gates and they have… what is it… a bunch of obstacles, another thing to avoid when planning an encampment, as if a fire breaks out, these things can easily become a death trap prisoning any one who fails to run out in time."

"All of these combined proves one thing, and I am here to congratulate you first your majesty!" Fisnik bowed on horse back towards Antonius. "These enemies are obviously weaker than what we have expected them to be back on the planning tables of Acropolis, so I must congratulate you, your majesty, prior to achieving another grand victory and gobble up all the territories of Epirus!"

However, Antonius reacted with a stern face to Fisnik's words of appeasement and congratulations as he turned a cold back to the later. "Say no more Fisnik, first of all, I remember telling you people just a while ago to not discriminate or look down your enemies no matter how weak they are, instead treat them with caution and respect. Also remember Fisnik, the reason why we launched this operation against the Epirus war lords a year ago is to revenge Yuri and liberate the people of Epirus from the reign of tyranny. If we attacks for the sole reason of gaining territories, then what makes us different from those Ottoman war lords we are attacking right now?"

Fisnik kept his mouth tightly shut, while Helio who came in around the same time as him sighed and gave him a pat on his back, wandering why his fellow pal's words of appeasement always end up on to the wrong spot of the admiral.

The group of men finished their recon missions and went back to their central encampment before the sky turns dark, and just as they arrived, a fleet of wagon arrived at the entrance with them – it is a transport wagon with a rather strange out look, for it is not carrying any military necessities like weapons, food or minerals, instead it is carrying a full lot of barrels and parcels packed in a thick leather making people whether that if the Caesar has decided to import a whole fleet of alcohol stored in these wooden barrels for the victory celebration later.

Upon seeing the cargos being transported, Antonius brought in to a series of wild laughter as he personally took up one of the barrel and turned to all the bewildered men. "Look! My friends! This is the secret weapons that I have told you that shall guide us to break through all those wooden fortresses inside that valley!"

With no further explanations, Antonius borrowed a lit torch from one of the guard, attached what it seems to be a rope to the hole on the barrel, ran to a blank space a distance away, placed the barrel on the ground and lit up the rope with the torch. The Caesar ran back as fast as he can and covered his ears with an eerie smile on his face. Just before the surrounding people is about to ask what is going on, the barrel a distance away exploded creating a banging sound across half of the camp and a thick layer of smoke. Then did the people realise that the supposed 'secret weapon' is actually a bunch of wooden barrels filled up with black gun powder.

Along with the carts and wagons of barrels came a middle aged man who are attracted by the sudden explosion in the area. A middle aged man, fine chap from other's perspectives, and they soon found out that they knew this man, he is the son of that famed black smith of Thessaloniki who is devoted to serve the admiral and produce various kinds of gun barrels. He is Jacob, the son of Orban. It has been a while since people last saw him for a while, for the various workshops have been silent about new weapons and inventions when most of the funding went for the production side instead of research and development, the admiral surely wants a stable supply of big guns and ammunitions in these times of trouble.

The once young bright shiny teenager who accompanied his father in adventures through out half of the continent, visiting one after another courts and palaces knocking on the doors of their palaces promoting their artilleries have became old too, with now a full mouthful of beard, some wrinkles and white stands forming up. But what did not change is his iconic radiant, glowing smile that is forever on his face and the continuous passion towards exploring and innovating things that can be genuinely dangerous, like this one they are holding and looking at right  now.

Jacob took his breathe, showed his yellow teeth through the smile and greeted every one on the spot. "Pleasure to be here joining the line for the honourable reconquesta on Epirus, your majesty, lords and generals.. Hopefully I am not that late, as I am here with my relatively new master piece that I started making since last year that should be able to aid the progress of the battle strikingly."