"Then come Diognis, a comrade-in-arms who once stood side by side. Pen Fun Pavilion www.biquge.info "Tetisius rushed more than ten feet, and then he was as nimble as a white-haired old fox, and he seemed to have prepared for this decisive battle, deliberately inserting a Turkic bird's wing-like feather ornament on his iron helmet, and the saddle was covered with a crimson flagcloth, and he stepped on the pedal with both feet, and cunningly made the horse change direction.

Because he was separated from Theognes by a muddy swamp covered in snow, and flanked by uneven wheat ridges, Tetisius first induced his enemy to charge, and then swam himself to delay John's time, and the first two Oghuz horsemen were caught off guard and rushed into the mire and trapped their horses' feet. Tetisius deftly wrenched two long arrows from his quiver, drew his bow from his left side, and killed them one at a time.

"Go from both sides, you guys!" Theognes reined in his mount and shouted.

The following Oghuz rode bravely, quickly separated his wings, bypassed the swamp there, and wielded his shining scimitar in an attempt to outflank and kill Tetisius, who was riding alone.

Tetisius squinted in the setting sun, calmly judging the uneven speed of the enemies on both sides, and then galloped back and forth, shooting down four approaching enemies one after another.

Then he lowered his body, dodged the successive arrows, and walked in the direction of the avenue, shooting arrows at each other with his pursuers as he went, obviously delaying the struggle.

He was as skilful at archery as he was at the front, and this time he used the short arrows in his quiver, and fired them back in a row, like a shower, and shot down and wounded three cavalrymen.

"Aren't we warriors of the Oghuz Gold Family?" A chasing knight of Tarsus Oghuz roared at his companions, "How can a hunter be toyed with by this fox and applauded. ”

As soon as he finished speaking, three short arrows in succession ejected from Tetisius's strings and pierced his body, and the man fell from his mount in disarray, seriously injured.

"My arrows can sew the eyes of the sky!" Over there, Tetisius was intimidated in Turkic language.

In a flash, Tetisius saw that from the side, from the rotten swamp, a rider stepped directly on the mud, and came to himself, and looked at Diognis - the guard entangled Tetisius with his men, and he himself was taken by surprise and rushed directly from the swamp.

Diognis' armor was covered with splatters of dirt, and his left eye was smeared, leaving only one eye open to aim, and as he brushed shoulders with the bodies of his two men sunken in the mud, he drew the sword of one of his men, stuck it in the spear ring of his saddle, and then raised his horned bow and drew the string, tightening his fingers against his cheek.

"Haha!" Tetisius, who thought he was in an advantageous position, also quickly raised his bow and aimed it at the captor.

At the moment when his fingers were about to let go, he suddenly felt that the whole world was dazzling, with the sound of the wind galloping and whistling, and his eyes suddenly could not be opened, full of red and white—Theognes' bow was made of buffalo horns, which had only recently been introduced into Tarsus, and was faster and stronger than him, and the long arrows pierced into the center of Tetisius's eyebrows, and blood burst out—Tetisius's mouth and hollow nostrils were up, and his body was still standing on the saddle.

"It's over...... The ridiculous stupidity ended up like this. Before he died, he mocked himself.

Then he heard Theognes shouting in his ear, "The fox that turns around and barks at his cave will get scabies!" ”

This was to rebuke him for betraying the emperor Alexios, who trusted him.

In an instant, Theognes drew his saber and, with the great inertia of the horse's impulse, split Tetisius from head to belly, right and left.

The blade of the sword slashed straight through the gold coin pouch hanging from Tetisius' waist before stopping.

The corpse, with a lot of spilled gold coins, was planted upside down under Theognes' horse, and the catcher was panting for breath with a sword that was dripping blood in one hand and the mud from the corner of his eye with the other. Finally he spat at the miserable body of Tetisius, "You deserve it, let the hyenas feast on your flesh." ”

The sun was setting in the west, and Diognis and the cavalry circled the corpse of Tetisius, and Philippi was surrounded by the barking of vultures and wild dogs.

The captor felt a great sense of joy, and then there was silence, and then the only thing he cared about and felt guilty about was Gu Siyun and his wife.

John, who had succeeded in escaping to the Gulf of Thessalonica, was surprised and angry to find that he had been urging the garrison general of the place in the imperial capital to come to his aid, and had stamped a golden edict promising to give the general half of Thessaloniki's taxes as "Pronia", but Zezes had taken possession of the property unceremoniously, but he had taken two thousand men and had camped in the mountains only thirty centuries from the place of departure.

The reason is to wait for the arrival of the Imperial Sebasto Krat Isaac from Durazo, the empire. Komnenos.

"Neither of them is reliable." Axepocaus reminded.

John, who had become suspicious, did not dare to go any further, let alone reveal his identity, so he and his attachés left the avenue and went to the shore to hide.

On the next day, a merchant ship that had gone to the "Feast of St. Dimitri" (the patron saint of Thessaloniki, who held a great bazaar every year at the end of October, and which was also a thriving place for the whole of Corinth, Thessalonia, Macedonia, and the Aegean Sea) was returning to Crete, and the deck was full of individual visitors, and John was in sight.

It stands to reason that the Bazaar of St. Dimitri begins on October 20 and usually ends on the first week after the festival (St. Dimitri's Day is October 26), but the owner of this ship wanted to take advantage of the war to make a fortune, and it brought many panicked guests, including merchants, nobles and monks, to the relatively safe (or in the minds of the guests) Crete, so they stayed until after the feast of the Virgin's Entrance to the Temple, when the group heard that the army of Tarsus was about to capture the imperial capital and that the emperor had fled. They all boarded the ship with their belongings to escape.

John pretended to be a Plonian lord who had come from Thrace, pawned all the horses to the shipowner, and boarded the ship.

He did not dare to go to the camp of Cezes.

When the ship was offshore, the cavalry sent by Cezes, who heard the news, arrived just in time. All the soldiers were armed with swords and bows, and they were menacing, as if they had not come to greet the fallen emperor, as if they had come to hunt something.

Standing on the deck with a cloak, John looked at all this with complicated eyes, both painful and glad in his heart.

Although he hadn't read too many books, he could still remember that the ancient Emperor Heraclius once looked back at the lost land after the defeat of Muyak, and sighed, "Farewell Syria, my great rivers and mountains!" ”

Three days later, he landed in the port of Gandhia and calmly confessed to the local Venetians and the Imperial garrison, "Standing before you is I, the Emperor of the Empire, John. Komnenos. ”