"Eat this, bastards!"
A triumphant cry split the air as an archer loosed his arrow. It sailed true, striking an enemy square in the neck. The soldier crumpled, choking on the very essence that had once kept him alive, blood pouring down his armor as the shaft jutted from his throat like a macabre flag planted onto fleshy ground.
The archer let out a harsh breath, satisfaction flashing across his face, brief, fleeting, and quickly swallowed by the next demand.
There were other to tends to...
"More arrows!" someone shouted, frantic and hoarse. The bundles were running low. A young boy darted between the fighters, dragging behind him a sack of shafts, too slow and too many stops to be helpful now. For the moment, the archers made do,hands trembling, jaws tight, they loosed what little they had left.
Each arrow that flew sang a death note. Bodies dropped. The wall, though battered, still held.
Below, the enemy crept ever closer.
Ladders emerged like the teeth of some great beast, raised high . Arrows rained down from the ramparts, hissing through the air, burying themselves in throats, eyes, bellies. Stones hurled from above cracked shields and skulls with equal cruelty.
A sudden, sickening thud broke the rhythm, one soldier caught a stone full to the temple. He dropped instantly, limbs limp, face tilted toward the sky with unblinking eyes. No scream. No farewell. Just silence.
He had come and gone like a gust of wind, no legacy, no name, his body collapsing in foreign soil far from any tears that might have mourned him.
But death meant little to the mass behind him. One fell, another took his place. The ladder was hoisted again, as if it had never fallen.
This pattern played out dozens of times, bodies falling, ladders rising, until finally the enemy reached the wall.
Dozens climbed, hands grasping rung after rung, desperate to plant their boots on the stone ramparts. But they were met not with mercy, nor even a fight, only slaughter.
Defenders lined the battlements like executioners at their post. Maces swung down like hammers from the heavens. Spears jutted over the edge, skewering those too eager to ascend.
The first to reach the top had no time to react, steel struck bone and flesh before they could even see their foe's face. Many never made it high enough to draw their swords or thrust their spears.
It was a killing ground. A narrow ledge between life and the other side. And the defenders held it with the fury of men who knew what would happen if they failed.
"Cease your throwing!" bellowed an officer from Alpheo's ranks, his voice slicing through like a whip crack onto a man's back. He pointed toward the ladders now crawling with enemies, recognising where the real danger was. "Forget the ones on the ground! Target those climbing the walls!"
The defenders adjusted at once. Stones, shattered timber, and chunks of debris were hurled downward. One by one, the ladders became killing fields.
The results were immediate, and brutal. Each impact sent bodies tumbling, limbs flailing as enemy soldiers were ripped from their ascent and dashed against the ground below, denying the enemy any type of advance they had made.
The sounds were sickening: the crunch of bones, the wet slap of flesh against stone, and the cries that rose for a moment and then vanished forever. They fell like ants crushed underfoot, one after another, with no pause in the rhythm of the slaughter.
There was no sanctuary for the attackers. The soldiers below pressed forward not of their own will but under the threat of their officers' blades at their backs. It was death ahead, death behind. Many weren't veterans, they were farmers, millers, men who had known tools more than weapons. Their fingers, once calloused by plough and sickle, now trembled around makeshift spears and battered shields as they tried to climb toward the enemy steel above.
But there was no reaching the top, only dying on the way.
The barrage was merciless. Projectiles rained down with the wrath of an angry god. One moment a man placed his boot on the next rung, the next, he was impaled mid-step, his corpse dragging others down in a writhing heap. Some were flattened by boulders hurled from above, crushed into the mud before they ever glimpsed the rampart, or, for as much as it mattered, even the stone.
Alpheo stood atop the wall, eyes sharp, heart steady. He watched the chaos unfold below like a conductor overseeing the final act of a symphony of his making. Arrows zipped past him, shrieking through the air and thudding into flesh , sometimes reaping victims other times just wounding.
Here and there, enemy shafts struck back, some shattered harmlessly against stone, others found unlucky souls within the city. But Alpheo took quiet pleasure in knowing most of the dying were not his own.
There was no remorse in his heart. Death, after all, was a tool like any other. And if it must be wielded, better it carve the invaders into the earth than take his men.
In the poetry of war, he had learned, the verses were always written in blood, and if he did not hold the pen he would become the ink....
His eyes then caught movement on the field, a wooden shape creeping forward , the battering ram.
It rolled slowly, sheltered beneath a sloped wooden roof, inching its way toward the gate like a predator. Alpheo's eyes narrowed.
He would have preferred the enemy to have a stick with an iron beak at the end; it would have been much easier to defend against.
"Aim for the men under the ram!" he ordered. Behind him, thirty archers responded with swiftness, loosing a volley that clattered across the ram's roof in a hail of splinters. A few arrows found gaps, sinking into soft flesh and drawing sharp screams from below.
It wasn't enough.
Alpheo grimaced.
The city's walls lacked even the most basic defensive sophistication. There were no murder holes beneath the ramparts, no low embrasures for flanking fire, nothing to give his archers a better angle on the ram crews.
In other cities, well-built fortresses had openings carved directly into the base of the walls, allowing defenders to strike directly at attackers beneath. Here, they had to rely on steep angles and luck. And luck was rarely enough.
Still, this was not a capital or a citadel. This was a border-town with old stones and limited means. A place never meant to endure a true siege.
But now, it had no choice
As the battering ram finally reached the gate, the men surrounding it endured a relentless barrage of arrows and heavy boulders raining down upon them, leaving behind a trail of broken bodies.
Still the ram in the end reached the gate and began to pound.
The officer leading the assault couldn't help but emit a twisted sense of satisfaction as the steel point of the ram relentlessly smash against the wooden frame of the gate, not caring about the trail of bodies behind him; those were levies after all. If one died, big trouble... they had an infinite pool of them for future campaigns.
Still, this did not mean that Alpheo had not prepared anything for them.
He turned to his men and issued his command. "Get hold of the pottery! Let's roast some meat, boys!"
The cheers that rose from his men echoed across the walls as they eagerly retrieved jars containing fat and oil, their eyes alight with anticipation.
"Throw them!" Alpheo's command rang out, and his men wasted no time in obeying. The jars shattered upon impact, spilling their contents onto the ground below. Confusion flickered across the faces of the enemy soldiers as they beheld the strange substance, their bewilderment cut short as flaming arrows from below ignited the spilled liquid.
In an instant, fire erupted from the mix of oil and pigs' or fishes' fat, amidst the ranks of the enemy, engulfing them in a searing blaze of agony and terror. Men screamed in agony as flames consumed their flesh,other screamed in fear of the same happening to them, panic spreading like fire on grain fields, as chaos seized hold of the assault.
The meticulously crafted formations of the enemy dissolved into disarray, their discipline crumbling in the face of the inferno unleashed upon them.The discipline that the officer built through their blades shattered as men ran everywhere.
With a triumphant smile curling his lips, Alpheo seized his horn and blew a single resounding note that pierced through the clamor of battle. At his signal, the massive gate of the city began to creak open, not completely, just a bit, revealing a small group of ten men waiting only to act .
In a swift and coordinated movement, the men dashed forward, their footsteps echoing across the courtyard as they raced towards the burning ram. No man was there to stop them, nor to to protect the ram.
They kept on their work unopposed.
They spread the jars of flammable oil and fat across the surface of the siege weapon , coating it ready and supple . Then, they threw the torches on it , the flames licking hungrily at the soaked wood.
As the intense heat radiated from the blazing ram, , the men swiftly retreated before the enemy could realise what was happening, and order a charge.
Behind them, the heavy gates of the city swung shut with a thunderous clang, sealing off the burning ram within the confines of the outer defenses.
The city would stand another day...