"Venison?" Anagnostes's eyes glazed over at Bagrat's reply. As far as he knew, there were no deer in Erzurum except for a few Turkmen who liked to keep birds and beasts.
Faced with Bagrat's urging and the temptation of the meat's aroma, Anagnostes did not comply. Instead, he suppressed his hunger and began to ponder. After a while, having roughly figured something out, he looked up, sighed deeply, and abruptly recited a line from the Old Testament: "'They will be like hunted deer, like sheep without a shepherd, each returning to their own people, each fleeing to their own land.'① So, I'm sorry, Bagrat, I refuse."
At his teacher's words, Bagrat first froze, then silently lowered his head, saying no more.
After that, they maintained a subtle silence. If the rest of the day were to pass like this, the elderly Anagnostes would likely perish from malnutrition and exhaustion.
Fortunately, after this indescribable atmosphere lasted for nearly an hour, a team of armored Bosporus soldiers burst into the woodshed, breaking the deadlock.
"Holy Mother above, who are you people? And what is this, roasting meat?" The squad leader of these soldiers couldn't help but ask in confusion upon seeing the two Christian men before him. But he quickly calmed down: How could these two suspected slave Christians afford meat? They must have snatched it from the Turkmen while resisting them.
"Slave… This old man is a scholar. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he was sold here by the wicked Turks." Bagrat's eyes constantly darted away from Anagnostes.
"Is that so? And you?"
"I am nothing…"
"This child is my student." Anagnostes interrupted Bagrat and tried his best to force a fawning smile at the soldiers before them.
The soldiers were half-skeptical of their words, but due to orders from above, they couldn't do anything out of line. After a brief interrogation of the two, the Bosporus soldiers, who had plundered a great deal from the now-ownerless Turkmen residence, coaxed and dragged them out of the woodshed and onto a military carriage outside the residence.
During this process, Bagrat learned that the Armenian slaves who had previously stormed and caused a ruckus in the residence under his leadership were now completely submissive under the Bosporus Army's combination of persuasion and coercion, obediently following the soldiers' instructions. If there was any difference, it was that he felt his scalp tingle as he noticed that a few of these Armenians were missing, and there were several cloth-covered corpses on the ground.
Correspondingly, carriages laden with supplies soon arrived, distributing broken flatbread and clean water to these former slaves temporarily working for the army, ensuring they wouldn't collapse or faint from excessive nutritional intake during this period. Incidentally, this measure was implemented by their esteemed Caesar, based on knowledge from his previous life②.
While observing these things, Bagrat and his teacher had already boarded the carriage. Later, seeing his teacher eat in small bites, he vaguely realized that they had escaped their former miserable situation.
As these two, unaware that their fate was about to undergo a huge reversal, boarded this carriage, Manuel had personally led his troops to garrison the White Sheep Palace occupied by Bosporus. This palace would serve as Bosporus's temporary center in the area for a short period.
After sitting in a chair in the main room, Manuel looked out the window. "Even here, I can clearly hear all sorts of sounds from the city's populace and soldiers."
Faced with the sounds of cheers and vendettas he heard, he selectively ignored them. Because he knew that taking Erzurum was not the end of the war against the Aq Qoyunlu Dynasty. On the contrary, what came next was the most troublesome situation.
"Kara Yuluk Osman, the hero who transformed the White Sheep from a single tribe into a sizable, closely-knit tribal alliance dynasty. He also indirectly accelerated Bayezid's defeat in the Battle of Ankara—what a troublesome opponent. He's probably leading his main force towards Erzurum now." Manuel couldn't help but feel a little nervous about the true test coming from the White Sheep Sultan.
That night, while Bosporus intentionally or unintentionally condoned the anti-persecution of infidels, in the palace study in Edirne, the capital of the Ottoman Sultanate, Sultan Murad II finally received a briefing from Grand Vizier Nizamettin Pasha about the war between Bosporus and the White Sheep. Although this information arrived quite late.
"So, the meaning of this briefing is," Murad II, after listening to Nizamettin Pasha's report, gently swayed his body, "the newly emerging Bosphorus Despotate, due to a succession dispute with the Trabzon Megas Komnenos family, ventured to attack the Aq Qoyunlu Dynasty, and is even temporarily at an advantage?"
Before Nizamettin Pasha could reply, Murad clapped his hands and laughed heartily, "Hahaha, the Aq Qoyunlu Dynasty has been beaten again. Good, good! Let them defy the will of Allah and betray my grandfather back then." The White Sheep tribe led by Kara Osman's backstabbing of the Ottoman during the Battle of Ankara indirectly led to the collapse and civil war of the Ottoman Sultanate, at least in the eyes of Murad and his father. If the White Sheep hadn't betrayed them so quickly to Timur at that time, then the Ottoman wouldn't have lost so swiftly.
And after Murad's laughter subsided, Nizamettin Pasha finally raised his head and tentatively asked his Sultan: "So, Sultan, should we intervene in this war in Eastern Anatolia?"
"There's no need to intervene." Murad waved his hand, indicating his stance, "The Aq Qoyunlu Dynasty was previously attacked by the Mamluk and Black Sheep, and didn't they still emerge unscathed? The Turks are not that fragile; once the White Sheep main force is deployed, these Romans will likely only be able to retreat obediently back to the Pontic Mountains."
Murad's words also determined the Ottoman's attitude toward this. "Understood, Your Majesty." Nizamettin Pasha stroked his gray beard, bowing respectfully as he replied to his Sultan, "Your will is the will of Allah."
After Nizamettin Pasha left, Murad eagerly had his 8-year-old beloved son brought to him by the eunuch. In the candlelight, seeing Aladdin Ali's eager, intelligent black eyes, Murad couldn't help but pick him up and laugh, "Alright, Aladdin Ali, my good boy, today Father will tell you about the glorious deeds of our ancestors."
Just as he was about to take a family tree from a servant, one of his most trusted eunuchs suddenly whispered to him that Muhammad's mother usually taught the child stories mostly related to Greek legends.
Hearing this, Murad's expression didn't change at all, "Is that all?"
"Then, Prince Muhammad…"
"What does a child of about one year old understand? Isn't it enough for this child to have his birth mother with him?" Speaking of this, Murad emphasized: "He is the son of a Greek slave woman, born to be a foil for a favorite like Aladdin, who has pure Oghuz blood. Although he is also my child, that is all he is."