Chapter 781: All out assault(1)
As Alpheo’s counter to the diplomatic maneuvering of the southern princes took shape, it was accompanied by a renewed and merciless push to seize the city that had long held out under siege.
With the Habadian envoy finally leaving the camp, terms were laid out for a future peace conference that Alpheo had every intention of coming to at the very best.
What followed was a week steeped in smoke, steel, and blood.
“Go! Go! Go!” cried the lords, their voices raw as they led their retinues forward. Across the breadth of the siege line. Trenches were hastily filled with wood, rock, and bodies alike, anything to make the ground passable. Assaults came in waves from every angle, ladders raised like crooked spears, rams smashing against ancient oak gates, a furious storm trying to shatter stone with flesh and fire.
Men died by the dozens.
Casualties were dismissed, war had a devilry of tis own and Alpheo had pulled his mask down to the ultimate prize.
Archers on the ramparts poured down arrows like rain, and boiling earth mixed with water scalded those who dared climb and rams the gate. Screams filled the air as defenders hacked at limbs dangling over the walls, pushing back ladder after ladder. Battering rams, manned by the expendable, were set alight, their crews burned alive as they scrambled in panic, only to be cut down by stones flung from the towers along with arrows.
Yet amidst the chaos, groaning like some monstrous creature summoned from the deep, the true hope of the assault inched forward, a massive siege tower clad in wet hides, its wheels turning slowly over the blood-soaked earth.
This was no simple ruse, no disposable decoy.
Contrary to the words he’d once spoken to Jarza, Alpheo had not filled the tower with fodder or dregs of the host. Within its darkened belly stood the newest Legion of the White Army, freshly formed, tightly disciplined, their armor clean and eyes sharp. Not conscripts, but soldiers.
These were men who had yet to taste failure and they would be the tip of Alpheo’s spear.
Above them, war horns cried and the sky darkened with the smoke of siege fire, while all around, bodies fell, some with quiet disbelief etched on their faces, others in agony, calling for mothers or gods who could not hear them.
The storm had begun. The prince’s strategy was in motion. And the fields below the city would drink deep before the walls even thought to crack.
“Heads down! Shields up!” bellowed a sub-centurio of the Fourth, his voice firm above the grinding of the wheels beneath them. He led by example, his shield snapping over his head with practiced ease. Around him, his men mirrored the motion, a hundred shields forming a roof of steel and resolve.
Within the siege tower, the soldiers of the Fourth Legion were packed shoulder to shoulder. The interior was dim, lit only by slits in the wooden planks that formed the walls. The thick timbers and damp hides clinging to the tower’s flanks rendered them blind to the outside world, but safe, for now.
Arrows clattered harmlessly off the hide-wrapped exterior, some bursting into weak flames that quickly died, the soaked leather swallowing fire like a swamp swallows light. To those inside, the impact of those flaming shafts felt no more threatening than acorns falling on a cottage roof.
Still, blindness bred tension. With nothing to see but the inside of their own shields, the men had no choice but to listen.
And what they heard were the sounds of slaughter.
Screams drifted up from below like smoke, men crushed by stones, burned by oil, pierced by arrow or sword. The cries of dying soldiers and the relentless clash of steel echoed through the timbers. But the Fourth did not flinch. No one spoke. No one panicked. They merely waited, breath held and knuckles white, for the moment they would be unleashed.
The tower groaned as it reached the slope leading up to the city’s curtain wall, the wheels digging deep into the earth. Then came the sound they had waited for, a grinding snap, the great inner gears locking into place.
A moment later, the drawbridge dropped with a thunderous slam.
Beyond the yawning mouth of the tower lay the city wall, now level with their platform. Standing atop it was a row of defenders spears braced, and eyes wide as the legion charged.
“Forward! ”
The command was swallowed in the roar of boots striking wood. The Fourth charged across the drawbridge as one, shields locked and blade drawn. Their advance struck the enemy like a hammer to glass.
The defenders braced, but it was not enough. The momentum of the charge broke their line open like dry wood beneath an axe. Spears shattered. Men screamed. The first to meet the legionnaires were cut down, sent tumbling off the wall or eaten by thier steel.
Yet no battle was bloodless of any side.
As the bridge remained open behind them, the shielded flanks of the legion were suddenly exposed. From nearby towers, archers loosed hurried volleys, seeking to halt the breach. Arrows sang through the air, but most thudded harmlessly against steel or struck wood. A few, lucky or blessed with perfect aim, found flesh,piercing necks, slipping beneath shoulder plates, or punching through joints. Here and there, a soldier dropped, a red mist marking his fall.
But not enough as they reached the enemy lines.
Finally locked in proper close combat, the legionnaires of the Fourth revealed the true might that set them apart from common soldiery.
The initial storming had brought them from the wooden drawbridge of the siege tower to the stone ramparts of the city’s walls, with relative ease , but their struggle was far from over.
As soon as their boots struck the parapet, the nature of the fight changed drastically. What had begun as a frontal assault quickly became a brutal melee from all sides. The narrow ledge of stone turned into a killing ground, as defenders surged from both flanks, desperate to bottle the breach before it could widen.
The legionnaires were now fighting with their backs to the abyss, pressed in a vice between converging forces. Yet even surrounded, they held.
Better arms, better armor, and, above all, better training gave them the edge. Each man moved as part of a machine, covering his brothers, advancing in steps, striking with precision. Shields locked, lines reformed and pushes being held even as blood slicked the stones beneath them and screams rose like smoke into the sky.
Where a lesser force might have buckled, the Fourth adapted. Seeing the threat, their officers quickly restructured the forward wedge, splitting it in two and turning their flanks outward. Half the van held the left approach, the other half the right, forming twin braced fronts against the surging defenders.
It was not clean, and it was not easy.
The enemy lunged with spears, and screamed curses as they threw themselves at the line.
But the legionnaires did not bend. Step by bloodied step, they pushed outward, forcing the defenders back along the wall and widening their foothold. Every corpse left behind marked the slow, grinding progress of the White Army.
However, if the men of the Fourth Legion had dared to believe that this would be the day the walls of Turogontoli fell, their hopes were soon dashed.
For just as they fought with all their might to widen the breach atop the walls, the defenders made a change in tactics, or perhapse that had always been the original one.
They decided to dash any effort into plugging the hole, and instead decided to sever the root from which it grew.
Shouts echoed across the ramparts as soldiers bearing large urns rushed forward, the ceramic vessels sloshing with a thick, glistening substance. Fish oil, rancid, and above all flammable…
With frantic haste, they hurled the urns toward the wooden bridge that linked the siege tower to the captured segment of the wall. Some urns crashed uselessly against the ground and spilled harmlessly below, but many struck true, shattering across the timber planks and soaking the bridge in a glistening sheen of slick, deadly oil.
A few even exploded across the soldiers still traversing the causeway, splattering their armor and shields.
The acrid scent hit them like a slap.
“IT’S OIL! FALL BACK!” a soldier roared, voice cracking with panic as he turned on his heel. The orderly stream of reinforcements crossing the bridge instantly collapsed into chaos, the flow of men reversing like a current striking a wall. Legionnaires stumbled, shouted, and pushed their comrades in a frantic scramble back into the relative safety of the siege tower.
But it was already too late for many.
The vanguard, those who had been bravely carving a foothold into the defenders’ line, could not hear the shouts behind them amid the din of steel and screams. Nor could those at the far end of the bridge, nearly at the wall, react quickly enough. They were caught in between, stranded.
Then came the end.
A single flaming arrow, loosed from somewhere within the city, traced a faint arc through the smoke-filled sky. It hissed through the air, its orange glow briefly illuminating the bloodied faces turned upward in dread.
It struck the bridge.
The oil caught instantly.
With a loud whoosh, fire erupted across the span. Flames licked up the soaked planks, climbing like living things wanting to emblaze everything to their touch. The bridge turned into a blazing serpent of death, and the men atop it screamed as the heat engulfed them.
Some were unlucky enough to be doused in the oil themselves. Their bodies caught alight in seconds, and in their agony, they threw down their weapons, flailed madly, and then—with one last act of will, hurled themselves from the heights headfirst, choosing death over the living pyre consuming them.
Others who remained fighting on the wall turned just in time to see the path home disappear behind a curtain of smoke and fire. The flaming bridge collapsed inward with a groaning creak, severing them completely from their brothers.
They were now alone, cut off, outnumbered, and surrounded.
Behind them, the siege tower stood helpless and impotent, its purpose turned to ash in moments.
Those still on the wall, perhaps fifteen legionnaires at most, knew what fate awaited them, they were not fool. But they did not flinch.
In front of the black lady staring directly into their face, instead of falling into cowardice, they steeled their hearts and bit their cheeks, deciding that at the very least they could choose how they’d die.
They locked shields and roared in defiance, choosing that to be their last words to the world.
They had no illusions about what was to come.
Still, they would not give the enemy the pleasure of an easy kill. If this wall was to become their tomb, they would carve the names of their fallen into it.
They would die standing, with their brothers watching.
Behind the wall of fire, one of the men, young, maybe no older than twenty, gripped the edge of the siege tower and shouted with raw anguish as he saw his friend brace for the charge.
“MARS!” he roared, a primal cry more prayer than word, looking at the last stand of one of his friends.
And then, with tears lining his smoke-stained face, he hurled his pilum with all the fury and helpless love in his soul. The javelin arced over the flames and buried itself into the neck of one of the onrushing defenders.
Others followed. One by one, soldiers in the tower raised their javelins, shouting the name of the brave souls taking the van to the valley of death, not in hope of turning the tide, but in a final act of brotherhood.
If they could not save them, they would not let them be forgotten. They would mark their courage with iron.
The air filled with spears, flying salutes of sorrow and rage. Some found flesh, some broke against stone, but all carried the weight of grief and respect for those who vanguarded the valley of death.
And below, the defenders came in waves, dozens crashing against the tiny knot of legionnaires who held their ground like a reef in a storm. The clash of steel rang out, desperate and brutal. The last stand had begun.
From the tower, they watched.
Powerless a the sight of fifteen of their most courageous brothers making their shout known to the world.
But their story would live long before their breath.
For in the years that followed, the tale of their final stand, echoed by those who witnessed it beyond those flames, would live on.
Known simply as The Stand of the Fifteen.
The story would go on about how the last of the legionnaires held their ground atop that wall for nearly eight minutes, outnumbered and cut off, fighting like lions while flames roared behind them.
It is said that in the final moments, when only ten remained standing, one of the young lord’s son among the defenders had called out to them, demanding their surrender.
Their reply was soon to come not from a general, but a soldier whose name was not known, just that a simple footman , his shield cracked and his face bloodied, the last of five.
“Death may have our bloody bodies, the Gods may have our damned souls, but the sanctity of the Fourth is ours to keep and not to give.
So here we die!”
And so they did and said as reported posthumously.
All of them, with courage on their lips.
Their faces forgotten.
But their stand became immortal in the annals of history.