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During this time, the Emperor had been secretly plotting against another lonely power, namely the Archduke Aptsomatus of Cyprus.

On the soft side, the emperor gave promises, official titles, status, and promised the other party many benefits, and then asked Apsomartus to withdraw from Gawain's "One Belt, One Road" circle, and Antioch and Tarsus to dissolve the "Medensburg Secret Alliance", and dispatched fleets and soldiers to threaten Gawain's soft underbelly in the southern sea (the emperor detected that Gawain's main army was in the middle of the plateau, and only a small number of civilian troops were garrisoned in coastal areas such as Tarsus and Seleucia), acting as the vanguard of the emperor's second counteroffensive.

On the hard side, the Emperor's envoys also inflicted endless intimidation on Apsomateus, saying, "I have a large and speedy fleet that has begun to assemble between Smyrna and Lespos, and its numbers and armaments are beyond your imagination, and if we continue to delay, we will be the first to attack from Cyprus." Will you wear a dog leash in the Colosseum, or will you continue to be sheltered and keep your honorable governorship? I don't have much time left for you to choose. ”

Now Bohemond is once again the focus of the tripartite game between Constantinople, Tarsus and Cyprus!

As early as after Bohemond was defeated and captured, he was "in the spotlight" of the emperor, and Alexios instructed the envoy to represent Potrufis and ask the Armenians to extradite to Constantinople, a criminal as notorious as Gawain. However, Marash had no access to the sea at all, and the land routes were closed off by Antioch, Tarsus, and Adana. Then Gawain stood up again and gave a large ransom, and Bohemond was released, nested in the Bay of Issus, as if waiting for some time, like a Khitan fire that could burst at any time, which made the emperor feel uneasy even from far away.

Therefore, another theme of the Emperor's non-stop negotiations with Cyprus was to ask Apsomartus to send a fleet to arrest Bohemond as soon as possible, or at least not to allow him to enter the Holy Sea freely.

In the sea between Cyprus and Cilicia, a large galleys sailed through the gray sea, leaving a trapezoidal white trail at the end, and in the sound of trumpets and waves, Richard and Lenold, who were originally noble counts and barons, wore cloaks to hide the splashing water, and their hair was wet and sat on the chair on the side of the ship, shaking the oars with great difficulty, and under the shining bronze statue of the sea beast on the bow of the ship, Bohemond himself squatted there with his sword in his hand, and kept cheering everyone up, "Go forward, until we stay in Seleucia, Then go straight to Rhodes and Crete by sea, and enter the Strait of Otranto, where we will be in the world. The vagaries of the weather, rain clouds, and Alexios' weak naval power will give me what I want. ”

At this point, a Norman knight on the port side shouted.

Suddenly a line of clippers with their sails swaddled appeared among the mountains and rocks of the gray island of Cyprus, forming a diagonal formation, approaching them more and more, "It's the fleet of the Greek bastard of Apsomatus, who is really coming to kill me, and he has become one of the emperor's dogs." Bohemond blew his beard and drew his sword in anger, and the Normans of the ship began to half-lower their sails, and shouted to the port side and lined up their irises in their hands, ready to fight to the death, even if they capsized to the bottom of the sea in an instant—they could see the bow of the Cypriot ships at the front, the Greek and Cretan soldiers standing on it like seabirds had begun to raise their bows and arrows, and the brass pipes of the "Roman candles" that could breathe flames were lit in the sun.

The trumpet sounded violently, and Bohemond turned his head in a shout: from the shores of Cilicia, suddenly a group of warships also appeared, four rectangular ships covered with iron ribs like fortresses in the center, and the rest of the Pavilian galleys on the two wings, "The flag of Tarsus, the flag of Tarsus!" They had a double fortress-like thing erected on the deck of their ship, and they could sail without oars. On Bohemond's ship, many Normans with their helmets off and hair flying pointed to the "sunfish warship" coming at them, shouting in surprise.

It was not easy to make the Normans, who had developed from the sea, feel like this.

On the top of the sunfish flagship on the far right, the dark-skinned deputy director of the Ship Division, Jalguba, wrapped in a red Saracen pirate turban, with a curved war knife hanging from his waist, holding his hands in each other's hands, strode on the deck, as if walking on the ground.

Then he raised his finger and shouted to the lookouts and officers next to him, "Raise the battle flag and attack at full speed!" ”

"Ahhhh The sailors, barefoot and howling like pirates, began to pull the ropes, and a large flag with a portrait of St. Nicholas flew up, and soon it was straight in the wind.

The sailors and sailors on the deck of the other three sunfish warships, with the accompanying light warships, all screamed and shouted, and the wheel pedals in the cabins staggered up and down violently, each like an arrow, and swooped down on the Bohemond oars still floating in their place, and swooped down on the Cypriot fleet.

"Bastards are damnable!" Bohemond soon felt the whole water tremble, and he did not stand still, and planted himself upside down on the deck of his ship with a roar: the bows of all the Tarsus warships, as they moved at high speed, scrambled to shoot into the mast-sails of the Cypriot ships with the flames of the bronze clams flying there, mixed with blue-gray smoke.

On the two Cypriot ships at the forefront, the sailors raised their heads in horror and shouted—the clusters of fiery arrows shot by the bronze clams, with triangular barbs, sparkled into their canvases, and were so riddled with holes that they could not smash the flaming arrows out with their axes and sticks, and soon the sails were burned everywhere with fire and black smoke. The rest of the ships on both sides began to fight each other around the two crippled ships, and the Cypriot ships were full of figures with hooks and ropes, and the brave sailors stretched out or threw them to try to hook the ferocious "sunfish warship" and climbed up to engage in broadside combat, and then the double-tiered towers on both sides and above made the group helpless.

On the flagship where Jalguba was located, in the firing holes of the two sides of the board with the cover turned up, the Maldedian sailors shouted, and at the moment of passing the enemy ship, they happily condescended to the heights, using firearms with forked arrows, crossbows, and two-sharpened wooden shuttle darts that were fired from the noose. On the Cypriot warships, wooden shuttle darts bounced in all directions, wantonly destroying human flesh and the decks of ships, and many sailors who were shot by arrows were implicated by their own ropes and fell into the sea one after another.

When the four sunfish warships were arrogant and crushed through the line of Cypriot ships, the light long ships of the Tarsus side attacked from the two wings. The enemy was defeated, sunk and captured several ships, while the rest burned smoke and fled in confusion towards the place of departure. (To be continued.) Mobile phone users, please browse and read, a better reading experience.