Herald of Steel

Chapter 696 The Siege of Thesalie (Part-3)

During the first week, Alexander had launched his attack with the greatest amount of force at his disposal, deploying close to fifteen thousand men as missile troops, intending to shock and awe the enemy.

But such high intensity fight was of course unsustainable over a long period of time.

So over the following weeks, that number was troops participating was almost cut to a third, to about six thousand men per day.

This was roughly about one legion worth of men, with five thousand of them being archers, while the other thousand manned the scorpion and catapults.

In this way, the men could rotate each day so that each man had to fight only once every eight to nine days.

This greatly improved morale and kept the army alert but never exhausted or tired.

Now, although this low intensity conflict was good for soldier survivability, such a small force attacking the walls would be nowhere enough to strain the defenders.

The Tibians were able to comfortably take the attacks by simply keeping their heads down and taking the occasional potshots to prevent any advance.

It was not the easiest job in the world but it was neither the most difficult.

The only real headway Alexander was able to make here was the destruction of the towers, which after a month of constant bombardment, finally had enough and its front section collapsed.

Now, the structure of the towers still stood, make no mistake, but the front part was completely destroyed, thus opening its inwards for all to see.

Which meant Alexander could freely target those inside who had no cover.

Hence, facing this predicament, the soldiers were ordered to evacuate, which they promptly did.

Though not before barring the door with heavy stones and all sorts of other heavy junk so that Alexander could not simply climb the now open, undefended tower and use its access route to infiltrate the castle.

And though the loss of the two towers was certainly a setback for Tibias it was nothing game changing.

They now simply lacked one of the directions through which they could attack.

But their main avenue of attack which was from the walls still remained intact and unobstructed.

"What are they planning?"

Thus Lord Ponticus found himself muttering as such to him.

For though te average Tibian was very happy facing this lackluster attack, their highest commander, Lord Lord Ponticus muttered this in an unsure voice.

To a veteran like him, the enemy's actions seemed to make no sense.

They were attacking but seemed not to be putting any real pressure.

Because if they were serious about taking the wall, they should have been trying to attack along multiple fronts of the wall in an attempt to scatter the defenders and make them defend all the places at once, during which a ladder rush could have been launched to try and exploit the temporarily thinned lines.

But this was not happening, as the enemy seemed content to just play this game of exchanging arrows and stones, causing some structural damages and claiming some lives, but nothing too serious.

Lord Ponticus had even noticed the number of enemy archers decrease drastically over the past weeks, meaning they were not even fully using their archers to try and clear the walls of defenders.

And Lord Ponticus said this because at the current rate the enemy was damaging his forces, it would take them literal years to whittle his men down to anything even remotely approaching a casualty number required to initiate a rout.

And Lord Ponticus was not speaking in hyperbolics, but in literal terms, judged after seeing the losses from this month's fighting.

With a full month of fighting behind him, Lord Ponticus found that he had suffered only forty-nine (49) dead and eighty-two (82) wounded.

So given that Thesalie had a garrison of thirty thousand (30,00) and assuming their breaking point was at 10% casualty, which was on the low side given they were defending, even then Lord Ponticus could hold out for two years, no problem.

There was also no fear of them starving because the enemy had not besieged the city from all sides, and transports via land and river continued unimpeded.

So given all these good news, one would think the commander of the city would be very pleased.

And Lord Ponticus would have if that all to this madness, simply handwaving the strange attacking patterns as being the enemy finally coming to the senses after finally realizing the challenges and deciding to try this low cost approach.

But that explanation hit against the reality on the battlefield.

And that was how the enemy seemed to be changing the battlefield in the preceding month, in a way that did not at all seem normal to the experienced military general.

Because Alexander in preparation for building his wall had been busy digging up the earth just behind the crossbowmen, to be used for the wall's foundation.

Seeing this Lord Ponticus at first thought Alexander was planning to build a tunnel underneath the wall and start sapping it, thus making the wall crumble under its own weight.

But Lord Ponticus was actually not worried about that possibility.

One was because their walls' foundation had been strengthened to prevent exactly that.

And two because it would take Alexander a very long time to complete such a long tunnel, so there was no immediate danger.

And given this entire thing was already revealed so long ago, this long time would give Lord Ponticus ample opportunities to try and locate any such sabotages and send his own soldiers down these tunnels to shut it down.

And though such tunnel fights in the dark meandering underground were always a bloody affair, Lord Ponticus was confident he could pull it off.

After all, this was not his first rodeo.

But although Lord Ponticus thought he understood the reason for digging the ditch, he was unable to fathom the huge amount of deforestation that was going on around him.

By now, nearly every tree he once was able to see from atop the wall had been chopped down, turning the once lush hill into an entirely barren land that seemed to be eliciting a mournful cry at this unjust act.

Or perhaps it was Lord Ponticus's own soul that was crying.

Beacaeu one of the favorite things for the middle aged lord to do when he was stressed was to pace about the stone ramparts while gazing at the surrounding greenery.

That sight helped to soothe his nerves.

But given Alexander's destruction of that foliage, that would certainly not be an option for quite some time, perhaps even decades.

So at this needless destruction of nature, the city lord felt quite vexed.

At first, he had thought Alexander was doing this due to necessity.

After all the nearly 100,000 people spent consumed timber at a prodigious rate, both in the use of firewood and as building material.

Furthermore each of the close to 15,000 animals belonging to both the army and camp followers required around 10 to 15 kg of pasture such as grass or green leaves.

So it was understandable to want to cut down some trees to cover one's daily needs and even stock some for a later time.

But though Lord Ponticus initially thought that, that thought quickly fled his mind.

Beucaeu Alexander clearly was not cutting the trees to do that.

The numbers were too high.

So Lord Ponticus, unable to think of any good reason, felt like Alexander had realized that he would not be able to city and was trying to exact some petty revenge on him by doing this.

Of course Alexander was not doing any of it out of spite.

He simply wanted to clear the hills of any tress to make troop movement along the slopes much easier, as well as to make space for his huge wall.

And to do so he employed both soldiers and civilians.

Alexander left about twenty thousand soldiers behind the crossbowmen to act as the rear guard in case Tibias decided to launch a sudden attack.

And left another two thousand in the camp as guards.

This left him with twenty thousand free men who could do any and all of his bidding.

Thus ten thousand (10,000) of them were asked to build the wall, while the other ten thousand (10,000) were handed an axe and told to cut down every tree in sight.

And it was not only the soldiers who were tasked with this act of deforestation.

Alexander also decided to use the camp followers in this endeavor, with his men half forcing, and half coercing twenty thousand (20,000) of them to either work making the walls or go cut down trees, them being offered a wage of 6 ropals a day.

So with twenty thousand men being dedicated to each project simultaneously, the results soon began to manifest themselves.

Because few could imagine what the combined effort of such a huge number of people could have.

But to give one an idea, an average man could cut 10 trees a day.

So with each acre of the hill being home to 500 trees, that came to 400 acres or about one and a half square kilometers (1.5 sq km) of land being cleared of trees each day!

Hence it was little wonder the lush hill was turned into the wet dream of a lumberjack.

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