As the lingering smoke over the Strait of Messina dissipated, the burnt wooden floating barrels also scattered under the waves. But there was still half a floating bridge squirming back and forth on the sea like a snake whose tail was caught.

The slave rebels on the other side no longer saw any movement, as if they had given up crossing the sea from here. John knew that they had given up building a floating bridge from here to across the sea, and completely gave up their plan to let the main force cross the Strait of Messina.

Because Feng Yu told him that after the slave riot broke out in Sicily, the Governor of Sicily immediately concentrated the ships of the island in the port of Palermo, the capital of the province. After that, as the fire of the slave uprising spread to the entire island, the entire Sicily began to lose control. The Governor was forced to concentrate the remaining troops on the port of Palermo. Then he wrote to the city of Rome that once the city was broken, all ships would be burned.

Based on this, even if the Governor of Sicily did not vow that the city was in its place and the city was destroyed and the people were destroyed. However, on the day of the city, he could still escape from the sea by boat and burn the ships he could not take away. Therefore, it is unlikely that the slave rebels on Sicily would own ships, at least not a large number of ships.

Just when John thought the Sicily rebels were really going to give up their plans to cross the sea, an emergency message was sent by a sentry ten miles away.

The soldiers who came to report the message said anxiously: "Report to the commander, unknown ships were found on the northwest sea! The soldiers on our posts fired flags, but the people on the ship never responded. It was obvious that they did not understand the Roman army's pass. At least they could be sure that they were not ships of our side and not friendly forces!"

John was shocked and thought to himself—Did the rebels on the island get the ships? He asked immediately: "How many of those ships are there in total?"

"There are not many, only less than ten, and they are all medium and small ships."

John then felt a little relieved. As long as there were not many ships, it was possible to prevent the rebels from crossing the strait. On the contrary, even if he had three heads and six arms, he could not stop the other party from crossing the sea. John had a brief calculation and ordered: "Send the order to remove all sentries, and all infantry gather here to set up defenses. The cavalry teams were all gathered, and I will call them.

John's reason for doing this is also very clear. Even if the other party has a ship, it is impossible to try to completely stop the soldiers from crossing the sea. Now we can only settle for the order and prevent their main force from crossing the sea.

It would take several months for tens of thousands of slave rebels to ferry back and forth on several small boats to cross the strait with an average width of more than twenty miles. So John decided that they would continue to build pontoon bridges in the narrowest part of the strait, but they would use ships to smuggle a small number of soldiers over here, trying to occupy the beach here to prevent the recurrence of the failure to build the pontoon bridge and burn half of it.

When John's nearly a thousand soldiers gathered together, according to his instructions and instructions, the infantry built a semi-ring defensive position on the beachhead corresponding to the pontoon bridge. A small position was built on a high ground not far away, guarding more than a hundred soldiers, and deploying his only ten longbowmen on it. The sniper range of these longbowmen covered the entire semi-ring beachhead position under the high ground.

John Lawrence was not wrong. The rebels were smuggling troops across the strait using a few ships. The locations of each landing were different. After these rebel soldiers landed, they immediately went deep into the inland to hide.

This way of landing in the land of mercury was naturally to avoid being discovered by the Roman military rangers and being raided by the gathered Roman military infantry.

They have agreed on the time and place for the final assembly. When this time comes, all the troops who cross the sea in batches will gather at a certain location, and then launch an attack on the beach opposite the pontoon bridge to occupy this place, so as to ensure that the pontoon bridge can be safely laid successfully.

Of course, the rebels did not know that the other side had removed the posts and the rangers. So in order to avoid the posts on the coastline, they chose to land at a very far distance from the pontoon bridge. This also means that the ships they used for smuggling had to detour a long distance each time they traveled, which took a considerable time.

Therefore, after a whole day, the rebels were ready until the afternoon of the next day. They boarded a small group of troops from different places on the Apennine Peninsula and gathered at two assembly points along different paths. These two assembly points were on the two coastal points on the beach corresponding to the pontoon bridge. When the two left and right soldiers, with more than a thousand men, were killed less than three or four miles away from John's preset position, they were discovered by Feng Yu's soldiers on the high ground positions.

The arrows with tail flames soared into the sky and issued a warning to the main force on the beach under the high ground. During this whole day, the soldiers of Feng Yu's army on the beach had already consolidated their positions and were waiting for the enemy to come with ease.

John Ben was still worried that things would not develop as expected, but he was delighted when he heard the whistle of an arrow.

John's men had already prepared targetedly. Moreover, although the enemy troops crossing the sea had twice as many troops than John, twice the troops were not considered an absolute advantage. So John had no doubt that he could defend his position at all.

As John expected, the enemy was in danger and casualties in front of his position. The dense arrows shot by the individual crossbows pierced a pair of shields. The longbow shot heavy arrows from the high ground and captured the lives of a rebel general.

But what surprised John was that the soldiers of these slave rebels had too strong fighting spirit. They shouted and charged forward without fear. Every time a person fell down in front of him, more people would fill it up.

Although John could not understand their accent shouting, he could also hear the tragic and passionate feeling. These slave rebels forced to use huge casualties to push the shield wall at the front of the general's formation to a place less than seven or eight feet away from the beach position.

At this time, most of the soldiers under John's hands shot out the crossbow guns in the single-soldier magazine. The enemy who was so close at hand made them have no time to install new crossbow guns. They had to throw away the single-soldier crossbow guns, draw out their short swords, and pick up the shield leaning against the low walls of the barriers to prepare for hand-to-hand combat.

The rebels suddenly threw a javelin like heavy rain. John was shocked. He had never expected that the other party would be so close that he suddenly started investing in a javelin. While holding up his big shield, John shouted with all his strength: "Rise the shield, defend!" Puff, a javelin pierced through his shield, and the blade of the gun was cut through his forearm, cutting a long hole...
Chapter completed!