Obligation is the most beautiful word in our language.

- Plautus (the most important comedy writer of ancient Rome)

However, whether it was cutting down trees for the craftsmen or finding suitable shells for the catapults, it only took a soldier of the legion to do it; The Ninth Legion under Ganeus did these things, Nero had the Tenth Legion here, and Tiberius had the Sixth Legion doing these things.

The rest of the army is naturally always on the lookout for an army that can be killed at any time in the city of Tulbo; Just as Pylos in the city of Tulbo was always on guard against a sudden attack by the Roman army outside the city, the army of the Brutus family outside the city was naturally full of vigilance against the defenders inside the city.

War is like this, no matter what the two sides are doing in the first moment, the next second can become a time of endless fighting between the enemy and the enemy; One side in the war, always maintaining enough vigilance for the other side is also the most important rule of the rules of battlefield survival.

However, the goddess of fate is the most just being; In the last Battle of Tulbo, she did not favor the Brutus because of their ambitions. Similarly, in this battle of Tulbo, she did not favor the Epirus Kingdom because it was the invaded side; She always stands at the crossroads of fate and lets mortals choose for themselves.

The day passed quickly, and before the warring parties could feel the passage of time, the day quietly departed; When night falls, both warring sides know that tomorrow will be the real life-and-death bloody battle. The preparations for war of the Roman army outside the city were ready, and Pylos naturally did not fail to see it; At this point, he just desperately hoped that Pyrrhus would return to Turbo as soon as possible.

And in the army of the Brutus family outside the city, tonight will also be a sleepless night for countless people; Tomorrow will be the time of life and death again, and who lives and who dies is sometimes just a matter of thought. If there is any army in and around the city that is now fearless and bent on going to war; Needless to say, it must have been the 14,000 soldiers who had been captured.

In a sense, they're all already people who have died once; In the last Battle of Tulbo, they were almost killed in battle like their robes. Even if they survive, they are just living a life that is worse than death; Those who have not experienced the life of slaves will never understand their hatred of the kingdom of Epirus, which is a real hatred!

Those who can survive the Battle of Tulbo can basically be regarded as veterans with good combat effectiveness; After that, they survived the cruel torture of the kingdom of Epirus, which says a lot. In other words, these 14,000 people can only go through a month or two of adjustment; They will be the most powerful army of the Brutus family!

In fact, Tiberius was willing to give these soldiers this kind of treatment; However, they refused such preferential treatment. They chose to take revenge on the people of the Kingdom of Epirus with their own hands, and while avenging themselves, they also avenged their robes who were killed, tired, starved, and beaten to death!

Together, the First Army of Ganeus and the Ninth Army under his command could not have enough spare weapons and equipment for fourteen thousand men; With Tiberius' support, Gnaeus reluctantly equipped each of the 14,000 men with a short sword. As for the rest of the equipment, it would be nice to have four thousand men in leather armor; There is no heavy equipment in the spare armament.

At Rex's strong request, tomorrow the army of Gnaeus attacked the northern walls of Tulbo; As soon as the ballista and catapult attacks were over, Rex himself would lead a 4,000-strong assault force voluntarily assembled by the captured soldiers to launch the first assault on the walls of Tulbo. Tonight, Gnaeus personally invited Rex to drink and polish his sword in the military tent in the hope that the great battle would come!

The night always passed quickly, and when the first rays of fish belly appeared in the sky, a trumpet sounded at the same time in the barracks of the three Brutus families; The sound of the trumpets not only woke up the soldiers of the Brutus family who were still asleep in the barracks, but also woke the defenders of the city of Tulbo from their sleep.

Five minutes after the trumpet sounded, preparations began in the barracks of the three Brutus families; The soldiers of the equipment brigade shouted the trumpet and pushed the crossbow and stone catapult out of the barracks, while the soldiers of the regiment also lined up in a neat queue under the leadership of their respective centurions and began to adjust their deployment according to the order of the brigade.

The men in the barracks also began to prepare for breakfast, because a big war was about to break out today, and today's breakfast was also extraordinarily rich; In addition to the usual bread, there was also beef that Tiberius had ordered the various military gangmen to prepare. Of course, these beefs were given by the nobles of the Epirus Kingdom who had defected to the Brutus family, and they didn't have to spend a single gold coin on the Brutus family.

Compared to the busyness of the three Roman barracks outside the city and the mobilization of the whole army, the walls of Turbo were much quieter; The soldiers of the Kingdom of Epirus, who had been awakened by the Roman army, had already put on their weapons and equipment and came to the city wall. The three thousand defenders on each wall were too small compared to the dense sea of people outside the city; So small that Pylos felt a hint of fear.

When breakfast was ready, the soldiers of the Brutus family began to eat breakfast in batches; In the barracks of Ganeus, the first to eat breakfast were the soldiers of the Ninth Legion and the soldiers of the two armoured brigades, while the soldiers of the First Legion and the two thousand archers were responsible for continuing to keep watch and wait for the first soldiers to finish eating before they went to eat.

When the breakfast was over, it was already half past seven in the morning, and the army under the command of Gnaeus was in a neat formation five hundred meters beyond the walls north of Tulbo; The eleven brigades of the First Army were neatly arranged on the left, and the hundred-man teams of each brigade formed a standard three-column small phalanx, and the six-hundred-man team formed a standard formation of horizontal and vertical two.

The first column on the left is naturally a phalanx composed of four brigades of the First Army, which is a long strip-like formation with twelve horizontal and two vertical; Twenty meters further back, there was the same phalanx of the other four brigades of the First Legion; The last third such phalanx consisted of only three brigades, which was missing the first army of the First Army.

The Ninth Legion on the right also uses the same formation as the First Legion, and also lacks the First Brigade of the Ninth Legion; The first battalion of the two legions was concentrated at the front of the phalanx by Ganeus, and their mission was to climb the city wall with the 4,000 assault troops led by Rex, or storm the city to fight.

At this time, the four thousand soldiers led by Rex did not line up in such a formation, but waited for orders in a formation of 100 men in front of Ganeus's phalanx; In order to prevent the possibility of war elephants, the main phalanx of Ganeus and the assault force of Rex were preceded by two thousand archers who had already been prepared, and torches and arrows smeared with black oil had been placed beside them!

In front of Rex's assault force were the ballistae and stone catapults that Gnaeus had gathered to use; However, the range of the Catapult and the Ballista are not the same, so the two weapons are also used separately. The ballista, which had a relatively short range, were placed two hundred meters from the walls of Tulbo; The stone catapults, which had a relatively long range, were placed at a distance of 300 meters from Tulbo.

As the clock approached eight o'clock in the morning, Gnaeus ordered Rex's troops to advance two hundred meters from the walls, and told them to protect their armed forces while they were ready to attack the walls; And Ganeus also led his main army and advanced the phalanx to a distance of three hundred meters from the city wall.

In addition to Gnaeus' northern attacking army, Tiberius' western attacking army and Nero's southern attacking army also used the same formation to prepare for the attack on Tulbo; It's just that Tiberius's main army is much stronger than the northern and southern armies in terms of equipment, after all, Tiberius has 48 more ballistae and 12 stone catapults!

When the time reached eight o'clock in the morning, the trumpets sounded again at the same time in the three barracks; Only this time it was a more passionate attack horn. At the sound of such a trumpet, the ninety-six ballistas in front of Ganeus began to fire at the defenders on the city walls at the same time; At this time, the twenty-four stone crossbows that were neatly arranged also smashed huge stones into the city wall of Turbo under the operation of the soldiers.

The whistling crossbow bolts were enough to nail four or five defenders to the walls; But the defenders, who had been prepared for it, would not have been so easily shot by these giant crossbow arrows. In fact, the first round of ninety-six giant crossbow arrows only hit a handful of unlucky men; The defenders, who had hidden under the battlements, did not receive a heavy blow.

However, dodging the attack of the giant bolt does not mean that they can dodge the attack of the catapult shell; Twenty-four stone crossbows threw a full twenty-four stones of about twenty kilograms at the city wall three hundred meters away in one salvo. Although most of the stones hit the walls, the few stones that happened to hit the walls were enough to kill and wound the defenders on the walls.

You know, the stones that are shot at the walls by the catapults are not just smashed against the enemy; When these stones are smashed into the city wall, they will be smashed to pieces, and the splash damage caused by the small stones is truly fatal. Just these few stones that smashed into the city wall by chance caused at least a hundred or so defenders to be wounded; And at this time, the great war had just begun. (To be continued.) )