-----------------------------
If we reach 10 comments. You have five hours from the time this chapter is posted. If we reach the goal, the next chapter will be posted in eight hours.(Valid comments must include information about what you like or dislike about the story, what you would like to see about the story, or any questions you may have about the story, as the devil is in the details.)
-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------
Anno Domini 826, December-28-January-7
"There are almost no ships in the harbors—only eight. Considering that the harbor can berth around a hundred ships, it indicates that most of them were out raiding, just as the emperor said," the fleet admiral reported, relaying what they had managed to observe while patrolling.
"Is there a chain? Or anything that makes you suspect there is one?" I asked while reviewing some of the reports we had.
"Yes. There are wooden barriers with chains… they're not very thick, but I wouldn't recommend an attack. After getting closer and taking some risk, we managed to get a look inside the harbor," the admiral replied.
"Good… if we can isolate the city without them warning their other forces, I think we'll be fine. That means we need to secure all the other unfortified ports in the area and try to keep scouts on every possible landing beach. Unless the pirates manage to organize and break the naval blockade, the only thing they can do is land and harass us," I said, studying the map of the Empire.
"So… what do we do now?" said the Byzantine general, who was eating olives, enjoying what he had bought and licking his fingers.
"I want us to form up and prepare for an assault," I said while looking over some plans of the city walls.
"I don't recommend that," he said, placing the olive pit on the table. "I know you're excited and want to finish this, but simply attacking isn't sensible," he added, somewhat concerned.
"It's not to attack. I want to know how many men the garrison has. If we make it look like we're going to assault the walls, everyone who's going to fight will be on the walls, and we'll be able to count them from the watchtowers—which I had built taller precisely for that reason, so our scouts could try to determine how many defenders there are. Depending on that, we'll decide what to do," I replied.
"Right… that is a good idea," the general answered, nodding.
"I want you to notify the tourmarches so that we have everyone formed up as soon as possible," I said thoughtfully… "the damn walls are different," I added when I noticed they had further reinforced the city, "and that moat won't make things easy," I concluded after comparing them with the Byzantine plans.
"I'll notify the tourmarches. You should do the same, as if you were about to assault the harbor," the general said as he left the tent together with the admiral.
"Yes, I'll prepare the sailors," said the admiral.
I went to notify the varangians, since I was the only one who could speak their language.
A night had passed since we arrived, and we had slept after setting up the siege camp.
I had literally brought everything from my home… I brought all my blacksmiths… all my carpenters… everything. I was investing everything here, since I couldn't rely on shipments from home; the danger posed by pirates was real, so if we had to do anything, we depended entirely on what we had brought with us.
The work of raising the furnaces would begin once we were secure, since I understood that there was a river running through the town of Knossos, not far from where the ships had docked.
With considerable difficulty, we managed to get the most undisciplined forces to form lines, although many were trembling with fear—they hadn't even had a single day of training and literally believed we were going to throw them into a meat grinder.
As we formed up and approached the city moat, the defenders finally appeared on the walls, and the scouts of the thema began counting.
We remained in position for a long time until the scouts finally brought me an estimated number: around three thousand defenders, based on what they were able to count on the walls and the harbor fortifications. There could be more or fewer.
But it was the number that most closely matched among those who climbed the towers and counted the density of the defense on the walls.
Additionally, the walls had been reinforced: they were thicker than the plans showed, clearly prepared for a siege, and also taller.
So the sarakenoi had already prepared for a siege…
If we followed the rule that we need ten times the number of defenders, we were in trouble, because I would need three times more men than I had to assault the fortress. I couldn't go in with ladders and expect to win.
So it would be a long siege, and since it was winter, they surely had their granaries full.
That meant that now that we knew for certain how many troops the defenders had, we could easily begin conducting operations across the island to seize control—mostly—of granaries and undefended villages.
So without wasting time, I left the 3,000 recruits training alongside my mercenaries in the central camp, which I personally controlled, and taking the varangians with me, we began moving through the area to see what could be done with the local population, since many of the Greeks who lived here had already been sold as slaves in eastern markets.
Our first stop was Knossos, since this was where I wanted to establish my forge: a river ran through the town, and we also found the enormous ruins of an ancient civilization.
We found only a handful of slaves and their sarakenoi owners, which quickly changed the situation, because upon our arrival, they were the ones wearing chains, while we freed the Greeks.
Since we were short on workers, we sent the sarakenoi to grab shovels and dig the trench to encircle Heraclion, and with absolute certainty we will use them to fill in the city's moat and serve as cannon fodder for the defenders' arrows.
Without wasting time, my blacksmiths arrived and began the arduous work of raising a forge from scratch, since it was vital to have repair capability and access to iron and steel for the siege, ready for any contingency.
Using the buildings that still stood, I let them work while supply carts arrived with materials and raw resources so they could begin immediately, and soon everything we had brought on the ships would be unloaded.
Meanwhile, more patrols left our siege camp, trying to keep around 7,000 men watching the gates so they would not attempt a sortie. In this way, we moved through all the villages, freeing Greek slaves and enslaving the sarakenoi who lived in the settlements of the region, sending them to the siege camp to assist with the hardest labor.
At the same time, by emptying the granaries and leaving only the bare minimum to the freed Greeks, we began recruitment across the island among all the liberated communities, since we needed greater numbers. Because we were obtaining large quantities of food through plunder, we could afford to do this. At the same time, we were resettling the Greek population.
The place where we obtained the greatest amount of food was Gortyna. Although it had Roman walls, they were abandoned—there was literally no garrison, only a couple of sarakenoi with their curved swords, who ended up losing their heads when their skulls burst into bone, flesh, and matter everywhere as my varangians entered the town and sacked it.
Here we found one of the largest sarakenoi communities.
Around two thousand sarakenoi lived there, since it was one of the most fertile plains on the island and had the highest concentration of Greek slaves. We freed more than twenty thousand from their chains—the very people who had worked the land to fill the abundant granaries in the town.
With this, we had supplies for half a year for the entire army, even considering that we left food so the Greeks would not starve, though not enough for them to live comfortably. Maintaining our own supplies was more important than showing excessive concern for the population.
As always, the supplies were sent back to the camp, along with the slaves.
When I returned in the afternoon of what was now officially our first day of the siege, I found nearly 4,000 sarakenoi I had captured working with shovels, digging the trench and preparing the ground for their next major task.
I reviewed the training of the new recruits and organized the Cretan recruits, since we added another thousand men to reinforce our numbers, reaching fourteen thousand in our camp, while the sailors maintained their strength.
"At the end of the day, what are we going to do with the sarakenoi once the trench is finished?" asked the admiral, who was observing the work.
"We're going to force them to fill in the city's moat… that way we'll have a path to move battering rams or ground to place scorpions or some kind of catapult… or we can try to raise a siege tower with rams to attempt to bring down the walls," I said.
"You do realize most of them are going to die, right?" the admiral said.
"That's the idea. I know I could go and sell them in a slave market and recover almost the entire investment I've made… but I'd rather the sarakenoi waste their arrows on them. I also think it helps break their morale. It's something we'll find across the whole island—we'll find many more of them. We need to have the entire island under our control, because if we deny them the cultivated areas, we'll starve them, considering the pirates will return in two months, and the naval blockade must be firm enough to force them to land everywhere."
"And that's where our task of controlling the island's arable zones comes in, so that the Greeks of the region produce food for our army."
The next day, I remained in the camp while the army general began taking several patrols of his own to secure the eastern part of the island, taking five thousand men and splitting up with his tourmarches, since that would be much faster than moving as a single large force.
So I was left overseeing the work as more sarakenoi arrived at the camp.
With all the additional labor we had, the trench was finished by midday, so we began threatening the sarakenoi to carry bundles of cloth filled with earth to fill the moat.
At first, the sheer number of people went forward and dumped earth repeatedly without issue—until arrows finally began to fall.
Screams and cries of pain began to echo as a large number of archers used their bows to prevent the moat from being filled.
It reached the point where the prisoners had to decide what they feared more: that we might execute them in some creative way, or trying their luck and seeing whether an arrow would strike them.
So it was a constant process of sending scattered waves of sarakenoi carrying earth, watching some of them fall dead or wounded while screaming.
Then threatening the sarakenoi with the sword if they did not return to their work posts, until dusk—when, in the middle of the night, the work of recovering the dead began across the entire area, building a large pyre and burning the bodies, since the last thing we wanted was an infestation in the camp.
This continued for a full week. Every day, new sarakenoi arrived from our campaign in the countryside, as we captured granaries, freed Greeks, and moved them into the zones we needed to control so that we could dominate the next harvest.
At the same time, waves of sarakenoi were sent to fill the moat, which progressed well as long as we continued to have large numbers of prisoners who obeyed despite the high mortality of the work—because sooner or later, if this continued, the defenders would run out of arrows.
We had already collected at least twenty barrels of arrows from the field, so they shouldn't have many left. At least, that was my hope.
In the short time the siege had lasted, with the entire eastern part of Crete under our control and some carpenters already working on creating a siege weapon to test the walls—the dreaded trebuchet—I knew it would take time. I understood the concept, since we had assembled one more than once to launch pumpkins and watch them explode, but assembling one when you have all the pieces is very different from recreating it from scratch.
Meanwhile, I managed to find some sarakenoi prisoners who spoke a bit of Greek, so I offered them a much safer job than running toward arrows: teaching me Arabic, since for the most part we had been relying on gestures to make ourselves understood with the prisoners.
-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------