Herald of Steel

Chapter 697 The Siege of Thesalie (Part-4)

The math Alexander did for the number of cut trees was of course done considering idealized conditions, whereas in reality the felled trees could not simply be cut down and left there on the ground.

They needed to be moved and processed. 

But even still, the thick woods that served as a rudimentary defense for Tibias were soon gone under Alexander's directive, making the thick lush green hill soon look like the head of a bald headed eagle.

And as with the speed the trees were cut, the speed of construction of the wall too took a similar pace, with the foundations for it being very quickly completed.

After all, a single man would dig several tons of dirt a day.

And when you multiply that figure by twenty thousand hard working men, all laboring from dawn to dusk, it very quickly ended up being a very big and wide ditch.

Then soon after that ditch began to get filled up with the thick logs obtained from the chopped trees, laying the first groundwork for Alexander's wall.

In this way, as the crossbowmen kept the walled defenders busy, the foundation of the walls began to be laid.

After that, Alexander began to quickly transfer copious amounts of bricks, stone, and cement already in his warehouse to the effort, trying to build the wall as soon as possible, so that the enemy would not have any time to retaliate

And the speed of the construction did work to catch Lord Ponticus off guard as he even before he could begin to understand what was going on, within a week, he was faced with a long stone wall reaching half a meter.

"Wha…What! What is that!" He had reportedly cried out flabbergasted the first time he looked at the huge structure being built in front of him.

To him it seemed the thing had apparated out of nowhere.

And as he looked at that sturdy thing being built, he even wondered if the enemy knew magic.

Because other than that, he could not think of any way anyone who could build such a huge structure so quickly.

At least not one which was so sturdy.

A fact he found out when he had ordered his catapults to concentrate fire on the still being built wall.

"Fire. Shoot it with stones! Do not let the enemy finish making it!" He had given the order in a slightly, pitched anxious voice.

Lord Ponticus did not know why, but somehow his years of experience told him that letting the enemy complete this wall would be a very bad thing.

But though he took the correct course of action, the wall made from the combination of wood, stone, and concrete simply proved too strong an adversary for the relatively small stones to overcome when shot with such low speed.

They pinged right off the currently one meter high wall, and so the work continued unimpeded, the occasional barrages simply shrugged off.

Furthermore when Tibians had their catapults directed at somewhere else, Alexander's own catapults were free to fire without any fear of retaliation.

And as anyone could guess, they started targeting the positions they roughly suspected of housing Tibias's siege weapons, trying to land a lucky strike.

So soon many of the Tibian catapults had to be redirected to counter Alexander's return fire.

And so it was amidst this lobbing of sticks and stones at each other that the construction continued as scheduled, and as the second month of the siege came to a close, the huge wall was finally completed!

And the finished product was truly a beauty to behold,

Spanning the entire length of the opposing city's walls, it was five meters wide, with passageways at the back to allow access to the top.

The wall was able to hold thousands of active bowmen at the same time and was even wide enough to deploy the catapults.

The first part of Alexander's siege plan was done!

And it had gone surprisingly smoothly concerning everything.

Tibias had tried to knock it down by using their artillery but were suppressed by Alexander's own archers and artillery, the men doing their job flawlessly.

Also the Tibians simply lacked the firepower to harm the wall, though it could be argued that it was not fair to blame them for that, for if they had faced anyone else, they could have indeed knocked down the wall even facing the counter fire.

After all others would not have had a binding agent like cement at their disposal, which would have meant that they could have only made the wall out of wood and not stone.

That would have made it vulnerable to even those small projectiles.

It was also because of this limitation that no one else had thought of using this technique.

Because it would not have worked.

Now it was worth pointing out that Tibias had not simply resigned itself to shooting at the walls and praying it crumbled.

No, some of Lord Ponticus's more energetic officers had wanted to charge out of the city and manually destroy the walls as it was being built.

"Lord Commander, the enemy is busy building his walls. He is distracted playing house! Give us the order and we will be able to smash everything he has built to bits with just one strike!" One of the more eager ones claimed, wanting to catch Alexander off guard.

"Yes! Lord Lord Ponticus. With 30,000 of us here, our mighty phalanx will be able to chase the enemy away with ease." While another buttressed him, drawing acknowledging nods from many in the group closely at these gathered men, they would find nearly all of them to be of the younger generations.

And in Lord Ponticus's eyes, they seemed to simply lack the patience required to win a siege.

'These young brats!' He tsked in his heart.

Though he could also understand where they were coming from.

The two mouths of constant fighting seemed to be making some of them restless.

So recognizing that Lord Ponticus did not scold or chide them, but instead in a deep, authoritative voice replied, 

"The enemy constructing that wall might certainly seem impressive. But it serves no prupose."

"He cannot surround the city from all sides. The Diannu rive is too wide to blockade"

"And if he tried to do even then, we will not let him."

"So there is no need to panic just now."

"We can have this talk if he continues to build those walls."

Lord Ponticus's diplomatic approach to keeping the option to preemptively strike open placated many of the officers who were nervous about their prospects on the inside but refused to show it on the surface.

While his reasonable assessment of the situation also brought their focus back to reality.

'The commander is right. While it is true the wall is certainly impressive, it cannot do anything to us.'

They said to themselves feeling relieved.

Many of the officers were at first scared by the sheer scale and speed of the constructed wall.

But that just by itself seemed to pose too little of a threat.

Hence they quickly started to calm down. 

And seeing this Lapitus too joined the converting interjecting on behalf of Lord Ponticus and further saying, 

"Lord Ponticus is right. Our ancestors always told us we should never go out to meet Adhania in an open field but to use these walls to repel the,"

"So if we go on the offensive it would be us betraying their advice."

"We mustn't do that!" He urged and then finished by saying, 

"Furthermore I would like to remind everyone that although we have 30,000 men, most of these are untrained and ill equipped."

"Using them to attack would not be wise."

"Our best chance of victory is to stay within the city and kill as many of the enemy as possible."

Facing this reasoning and encountering the strong opposition of both the city lord and his lieutenant, the belligerent officers all quickly cooled down and went back to concentrating on their own tasks, which keeping a watchful eye over the walls and making sure the enemy could not pull off any cheeky tactics.

But what they did not realize was that the enemy did not need to pull off any cheeky tactic.

Their cheeky tactic was right in front of them, in the form of the huge wall.

And though Lord Ponticus said this could do no harm to them, Alexander was about to prove all of them oh so wrong.

Beauce soon the horrors of the walls began to manifest themselves, as casualties on Tibian's side began to shoot through the roof

This happened because as the wall finally reached its maximum height of 10 meters, the thousands of crossbowmen finally got to play on an even playing field.

Meaning they no longer had to play the uphill battle to having to aim up toward the walls.

Instead now they could shoot straight forward or even down below if they were targeting those on the first wall.

It was a game changer and Alexander's men rejoiced at the increased range, accuracy and convenience it bought them while Lord Ponticus's men shuddered at the new threat.

And the immediate effect of such a change in the power dynamic was soon felt, as Tibias's casualties skyrocketed to almost triple the times.

And the bad news did not stop there.

No, soon another horror emerged, which were the catapults, a weapon that had suddenly turned very, very different, and much, much more 'fiery'!