Unknown Knight

Immediately afterwards, groups of prisoners were escorted back by the pursuing soldiers. Some of them were escorting a dozen people, while others were escorting dozens or even hundreds of people. They returned to the town of Nico one after another.

The most outrageous thing was the Bedouin cavalry led by Jeb and Majid. They cooperated with the soldiers of the Redemption Regiment who were chasing behind, and chased the enemy soldiers guarding the lord of Humamu into a mess, and finally captured nearly 500 people.

Fortunately, the town of Nico is only five or six miles away from the city of Berbera. If the distance was several dozen miles, they would probably have captured more prisoners.

However, nearly two thousand people escaped back to Berbera, which made Aix regretful. Letting the tiger go back to the mountains would cause endless harm. He only hated that his troops were too weak. If he had five or six hundred cavalry and more than two thousand people, he might have been able to directly bite the defeated soldiers of the Lord of Humamu and then rush into Berbera to resolve the battle once and for all.

However, this is already the best result. This battle not only seized a large amount of supplies, but also captured more than 2,000 people. Although most of these people were farmers with little combat effectiveness, there were also 600 to 700 combat soldiers. Together with these prisoners and the enemy soldiers killed or burned in the battle, the strength of the Lord of Humamu City has been reduced by nearly half in this battle. Aix now has the strength to compete with him head-on.

In addition, a large number of camels, war horses, donkeys and mules were captured in this battle, including nearly 200 war horses, which nearly doubled the cavalry of Aix, greatly improving its strength.

A few days later, the third batch of reinforcements from Fort Standstill was also transported by sea, which brought the total strength of Aix to more than 2,000 people. Together with more than 2,000 prisoners, the total population of Nico Town now reached more than 5,000 people.

The reinforced and elevated town of Nico was now used to detain these prisoners. The entire town had become a large prison, holding more than 2,500 prisoners in total. This forced Aix to assign more than 200 soldiers and some townspeople to help guard them.

These captives, together with the townspeople and soldiers, as well as the war horses and livestock, represented a huge daily expense, and the existing food reserves could not last long. Aix had to try every possible means to raise military rations while stepping up the political review of the newly captured Berbera soldiers. From them, he selected nearly 400 people to form the Third Atonement Regiment and an auxiliary regiment of nearly 500 people, as a supplement to the current shortage of troops, so that he could launch an attack on the city of Berbera as soon as possible.

Most of the members of the Third Atonement Corps had a similar composition to that of the First Atonement Corps. In order to prevent these people from losing morale, Aix took half of the troops from each legion and exchanged them, and then intensified their training.

After a week of training and preparation, Aix assembled a team of about 3,000 people. In order not to give the lord of Humamu too much breathing time, he immediately led this team and attacked the city of Berbera in a mighty manner.

In addition to more than 2,000 regular troops, this team also has about 1,000 auxiliary troops, which are composed of the newly formed auxiliary regiment and temporarily recruited townspeople from Nico Town.

It was the first time for Aix to lead and command so many troops. Sitting on his horse, he looked at the troops with fluttering flags, which stretched out as far as the end. He felt as excited as if he were riding a horse across mountains and rivers.

But when he arrived at the city of Berbera, he couldn't help feeling powerless. He looked at the 20-meter-high city wall, which stood abruptly before his eyes like a cliff, exuding an insurmountable momentum.

Although he had ordered his people to build siege towers day and night these days, when he came to the towering city wall again, he felt that the siege tower he built was like a thin chopstick, which could hardly shake the tall and thick city wall.

The enemies on the city were also well prepared. The failure of the previous night attack made them like frightened birds. They were well prepared with batons, battering rams, noose, and crossbows. The entire city was armed like a hedgehog, just waiting for the army of Aix to attack.

Looking at the crowds on the city wall, Aix roughly estimated that there were no less than four to five thousand people defending the city. It seemed that the Lord of Humamu had sent all the people he could mobilize to the city wall, preparing for a final stand.

After some consideration, Aix decided to launch a tentative attack on the city wall. Six catapults were pushed out first to clear the city defense equipment on the city wall. Aix's catapult had a scale to look at the mountain, and the flaming oil tanks it threw were very accurate, and soon burned the battering rams, rackets and crossbows fixed on the city wall in front.

Seeing that the cleanup was almost complete, Aix waved his hand and pushed up five siege towers, preparing to climb the city.

However, due to limited time and space, the five siege towers were built in a hurry. Before they reached the city wall, Aix noticed a commotion on the top of Berbera City. Then the crowd on the city wall moved aside and seven or eight crossbows were pushed out from behind them. It turned out that the lord of Humamu also had movable crossbows on wheels.

Aix was shocked and hurriedly ordered the soldiers attacking the city to retreat, but it was too late. Crossbows as thick as arms were shot out with iron chains behind them, and they shot towards the siege tower from the side.

Two of the siege towers failed to cut off the crossbow spears in time and were soon pulled down by the soldiers on the top of the city wall with a noose. Dozens of soldiers on top were unable to retreat in time and were seriously injured.

Seeing this, Axe had to withdraw the remaining three siege towers. Fortunately, Nana was there, and the dozens of soldiers who were seriously injured and dying were fine after rescue.

However, the siege attempt ended in failure. It was obvious that the existing siege equipment could not get close to the top of the city. If they used simple ladders to attack the city, it would certainly result in heavy losses, not to mention whether they could capture the city. It was really a bad idea.

This put Aix in a dilemma for a moment, and he had to let the soldiers set up camp first, and then build a siege tower while thinking of a solution.

It was just that Berbera could not be captured in a short period of time. Aix was worried that something might happen in the long run, and a sense of uneasiness rose in his heart.

Berbera is not just an isolated city. More than 30 and 50 miles upstream of the Blackwater River, there are two cities with a population of over 10,000 people, called Memphis and Lipero, as well as more than a dozen villages and towns like Nico Town.

Although most of these strongholds are semi-independent, they are all affiliated forces of the city of Berbera. Some are even the fiefs of the direct relatives of the lord of Humamu. Now that the lord is in trouble, there is no guarantee that they will lead troops to come to the rescue.

Within a few days, small groups of enemies began to appear around Berbera. Their number ranged from nearly a hundred to three or four hundred. They patrolled and tested the area around Berbera, and some even tried to force their way into the city.

Fortunately, Aix had been prepared and deployed all of his more than 400 cavalrymen to patrol in shifts day and night to monitor the movements around the city of Berbera.

Those small groups of enemies who wanted to break into the city were discovered by patrolling cavalry, who then blocked them while notifying a large group of troops to come to support them. Before they got close to the city of Berbera, they were easily defeated.

The interrogation of the captured prisoners confirmed Aix's previous concerns that these enemies were reinforcements from the affiliated towns around Berbera.