Ma Li had already stationed troops on the border and sharpened his sword, but Qin Dong did not give the order to attack for a long time, but Qin Dong was waiting for news from another partial division.

On the night of 22 July, a large fleet sailed on the Black Sea, which had been sailing from the port of Burgas early yesterday morning and heading southeast, until now two days and one night.

The whole fleet formed a huge black shadow floating on the sea and slowly moving forward, each boat has one hundred and fifty oarsmen operating the oars, this one hundred and fifty are divided into two shifts, one oars, one rest, each shift of oarsmen is distributed in the five layers of cabins, this kind of naval battleship is built in accordance with the design and shape of the Roman Imperial Navy warship, the name is the same as the Roman Empire warship, it is called the Raven Warship, almost no changes have been made, at this stage Qin Dong only wants to put up the navy shelf first, Don't think about relying on the navy to form combat effectiveness, only talk about it later, after all, the navy cannot be built in a day or two.

When Qin Dong saw this type of warship for the first time, he thought that the shipwrights had built it wrong, but he didn't expect that it was himself who was wrong, the shipboard device of this era was a transverse sail, that is, a square sail placed horizontally, which could only be used when the wind was downwind, even if it was the most technologically advanced naval warship of the Roman Empire, if it was not downwind, the transverse sail on the ship could not be used, and the power of the warship to sail on the sea basically came from human power, and this work was mainly done by slaves. However, Qin Dong's warships did not have slaves, and they were all free sailors.

One can imagine how big such a battleship can be, and the bigger the ship. The more power you need to sail, the more people will paddle. The more people who paddle, the more space is taken up on the boat. Therefore, the number of soldiers used in combat can only be reduced accordingly, which is a great contradiction, so it is not limited to technical problems, but also limited to this reason, the naval warships of the Roman Empire generally cannot be built very large, and they cannot be built if they want to be very large.

The bow of the Raven warship had ramming angles, and a kind of iron hook with a nose was installed in the bow of the battleship. The drawbridges with railings on both sides were used for soldiers to board ships and fight, because the shape of the drawbridge resembled a crow's beak. Hence the name "Raven Drawbridge". And the battleships equipped with such broadside drawbridges were called "raven warships" by the Roman navy. This design was mainly designed by the Roman military to deal with soldiers who were not good at naval warfare and were good at white-knuckle warfare, while Qin Dong's Hu army was basically not good at naval warfare and was good at white-knuckle warfare, and this design was just right for Qin Dong's Hu army.

The mast of the transverse square sail was erected in the middle of the battlefield. There were towers near the bow and stern third of the ship. This was for archers to suppress the enemy, and there were crossbow guns at the four corners of the deck, and these were all the weapons on the Raven Battleship.

At this time, all the soldiers of the Marine Cavalry Division on the ships were sitting on the plywood, some were chatting, some were already asleep, the war horses were all tied to the cabin under the plywood, each ship had five layers of oars, and the space in the cabin was large enough. Each ship can be equipped with a number of horses to make as much space as possible. The Marine Cavalry Division did not carry much grain and grass this time, only for three days, which could be used for four days, that is, within four days they had to reach the northern coast of Constantinople.

The originally clear night sky was suddenly covered by a dark cloud at this time, and the wind began to rise on the calm and normal sea at this time, and an Eastern Roman who followed Balhan saw the large dark clouds in the sky and the unprovoked sea breeze on the sea, and immediately said to Balhan: "General Balhan, the situation is a little bad, it seems that the storm is coming, and it will definitely be extremely bumpy, the battlefield is undulating, and the soldiers are easily swept into the sea, please immediately order the soldiers to enter the cabin, and enter as much as they can, If you can't fit it in the cabin, let them stay on the splint and just grab the cable and the side of the ship, or let them lie on the splint and grab something fixed, and never let the storm sweep into the sea, otherwise they will be hopeless! ”

If on land, Balhan was not afraid of anything, but now it was on the sea, and although he and his Marine Cavalry Division had undergone countless sailing and lobbying training during the course of the year, he and his soldiers were still in awe of the sea like gods, and in the midst of the approaching storm, he could only obey the advice of this Eastern Roman named Severus, and immediately ordered the soldiers to hide in the cabin, and the soldiers who could not get in all held to the fixed objects on the ship to avoid being swept away by the storm.

The storm came very quickly, and after the dark clouds completely obscured the starry sky, the torrential rain fell on the fleet like pouring beans, and the splints were all smashed.

The wind raged against the fleet, and the speed of the fleet's sailing suddenly increased, and Severus immediately noticed that the storm was blowing a tailwind, and he hurriedly shouted to Balhan: "General, it is a tailwind, we can sail faster and farther with the help of the wind, until the wind direction changes, and we will use manpower to reach the coastline of the Eastern Empire much earlier!" ”

Balhan thought about it, and this was really the case, and immediately gave an order for the crew to raise the horizontal square sails on the mast, and after the horn to convey the order was heard, the huge horizontal sails on each warship slowly rose, and the entire fleet was pushed forward by an invisible huge force this time.

The storm was so great that soldiers kept reporting to Barhan that the ship had been overturned by the storm and that all the crew and men on board had fallen overboard. In 256 BC, Rome sent a powerful fleet of 330 warships, 40,000 infantry and 100,000 oarsmen on an expedition to the Carthaginian lands of North Africa. Defeated the Carthaginian navy again at the Battle of Cape Eknos. In the same year, the Roman expeditionary force landed in Africa and besieged the city of Carthage. But it was not captured. In 255 B.C., the Roman army was caught in a rare storm on its way back to the mainland, and 280 warships, 25,000 soldiers, and 70,000 oarsmen were wiped out.

The storm lasted until the next morning, when the wind changed and Balhan had to order the oarsmen to fight the wind with manpower, and they barely managed to stay on course under the guidance of an Eastern Roman crew member on each ship, who had been extorted from the Eastern Empire by Qin Dong more than a year earlier, and at the same time it was not only these crews but also a large number of shipbuilders and technicians.

In the morning, after the sun had risen above the sea level, Barhan asked the ships to report the damage, and it was only through Guò that four warships capsized in the storm and sank to the bottom of the sea with their crews and soldiers, a situation that saddened Balhan and the other officers and all the soldiers, and that the fleet had lost more than 800 men before it had docked and had not started fighting, which was really unacceptable, almost half of these 800 men were war fighters, and the other half were crew oarsmen.

At noon, when the fleet entered the offshore waters, the Eastern Roman Severstone Guò on board determined the position of the fleet by observing the position of the sun and the direction of the fleet and the currents, and asked Balhan: "General, I have found that the fleet is heading in the direction of Calabron, where is the general going to land?" ”

Balhan looked at Severus in amazement, he didn't expect this Eastern Roman to be so powerful, he could guess that he was going to land in Calabron, and asked, "How do you know?" ”

Severus hurriedly said: "General, don't care how I know, I don't think you chose the right place to land!" ”

"Why? After the landing in Calabron, the army can go down to the southeast, and it will not take half a day to reach the city of Constantinople, why do you say that the general chose the wrong place to land? ”

This is a sentence inserted by Charlie Cao next to him: "General, what he said is right, we are alone this time, so we must reserve a way to retreat, if we land in Calabron, the fleet deployed by the Eastern Empire in the Black Sea will come to attack our fleet, the general and your soldiers are ashore, who will guard the safety of the fleet?" At that time, the fleet will definitely be wiped out by the fleet of the Eastern Empire, and our back road will be cut off, so the first thing we need to do is not to land, but to kill the naval port of the Eastern Empire in Boiraz first, only by destroying all the naval warships here, our fleet will be safe, and we don't have to worry about being attacked, it is now noon, when it gets dark, the naval fleet deployed by the Eastern Empire in the Black Sea will return to the port, and it is the time when we will be wiped out! ”

Barhan was overjoyed when he heard this: "The Taoist is really clever, then follow what the Taoist said!" Then he asked Severus, "How long does it take to sail from here to Port Boiraz?" ”

Severus said, "General, it will take about five hours!" ”

Balhan thought for a while and said: "If we go directly to Boiraz now, it will just arrive when it gets dark, but it is very likely that it will be discovered by the fleet of the Eastern Empire during the day, so it is better for us to stop here for the time being, and wait until after dark to go to Boiraz, we should be able to arrive in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the night is when people are most tired, we suddenly appear in the port, we can kill them and achieve the goal of destroying the port of Boiraz in one fell swoop!" ”

Charlie Cao and Severus said together: "The general is wise! ”

Charlie Cao added: "General, after destroying the port of Poiraz, the general will cross the Bosphorus Strait and arrange floating obstacles on the sea surface to prevent the Eastern Empire's fleet in the Sea of Marmara from crossing the strait to attack our fleet!" After the obstacles are arranged, the general can let the fleet dock, and the commander of the army will go ashore and kill directly into the city of Constantinople, and no one in the Rendong Empire would have thought that we would suddenly attack the city from the shore of the strait."

"Hahaha......" (To be continued......