Herald of Steel

Chapter 698 The Siege of Thesalie (Part-5)

As the construction of the wall finished, and the second phase of Alexander's siege began, he transferred all his soldiers and artillery onto the wall to give them a better advantage.

This helped the crossbowmen and the ones manning the scorpions as now their shots did not need to fight gravity to reach their target.

Meaning many of the bolts that previously would have lost all kinetic energy by the time they had reached their target and simply fell from the sky, pinging off the defender's armor could now have enough force in them to penetrate and wound or kill them.

Along with these, Alexander also employed his catapults, which he actually saw to be the main star of the show, for he had invented quite the nefarious ammo to be used with this missile delivery mechanism.

A taste of which the Tibians got late one night, when Lord Ponticus, staying late in his office suddenly noticed through his window what to him seemed like fiery stars streaking across the sky and crashing into his city!

It was a paralyzing moment for him, as he noticed volley after volley of such infernal balls land inside the walled perimeter.

And though most of these glowing stars extinguished themselves harmlessly after a few minutes, a few lucky ones did manage to catch hold of one or two unlucky houses, thus setting them on fire.

The blaze from these flames appeared not insignificant either, as Lord Ponticus feared if these fires were not quickly taken care of but given the time to grow, the entire city ran the risk of being turned to ash. 

"Quick! Go get Lapitus quick! Have him douch those flames immediately," Hence the ruler of the city exclaimed such in terror, commanding the leader of his bodyguard to get the message out.

Something the man bolted out to perform, as he too knew perfectly well what all of this meant. 

"Dammit! What is going on! How is the enemy throwing so big fires!" And as he ran, the military man repeatedly asked himself this and only this. 

And indeed!

What could it be?

To know that one had to turn their gaze to Alexander's side, where this flammable ammunition was being prepared.

And as luck would have it, Alexander was actually giving some of his nobles and military officers a tour of the process right at this moment. 

Alexander said, 

"The flaming stars that the Tibians have seen heezing past them are actually just finely crushed coal mixed with sawdust," as he showed his entourage how the soldiers were preparing the mixture, first crushing the coal with a mortal and pestle with smooth dust and then adding a proportional amount of sawdust to it.

Following this Alexander pointed to the next process, 

"This combustible mixture is then put inside a linen cloth bag."

"This linen bag is also special because it actually coated with a mixture of tar and animal fat."

"This is done to make sure the whole thing is even more flammable."

"And lastly, a few lumps of stones are added to give the whole thing a bit of mass and weight."

"Or else it would not be able to travel smoothly over the air."

As Alexander said, he then moved on to the last part of the process, which he described as, 

"Once all this is ready, the soldiers then take this ten to twenty kilogram load and place it on the catapults, before lighting it on fire using a torch moments before it was released."

*Twank*

And as soon as Alexander finished saying so, the taut catapult was let go and 

*Shooo!*

The burning mass could be seen shooting across the dark night sky like a meteor, burning brightly as if it were an instrument of the gods carrying out their vengeance, as it went past the walls and disappeared into the background.

And as the small crowd watched with an enraptured awe at the sight of multiple such shots being fired from all the available catapults, over and over again, they were left speechless.

While Alexander provided the following commentary, 

"I used the tar and animal fat as the coating to make sure the fire was much more resilient. This way each of the shots will burn throughout its flight and not simply extinguish itself mid way due to strong winds."

"This way most of the fired shots will still be burning even as they land."

"And if a few lucky ones manage to find a thacked straw roof to make its abode….hehehe, well we will be in luck!"

It certainly sounded very morbid but it seemed Alexander was quite happy to burn the entire city down as long as it meant he could conquer it.

Though to be fair Alexander had no intention of actually seeing that happen.

After all, then he would have to pay for all of its reconstitution.

And it would also result in the death of thousands if not tens of thousands.

Meaning he would lose that many able bodied working men.

There was no way he wanted to see that happen.

So his actual purpose in shooting these fireballs was to exhaust the defenders by making them work day and night.

While the sun was up, Alexander would make the Tibians defend against his volleys of arrows, sometimes mixed with small scale ladder lushes just to keep them on the edge.

While as soon as night fell, the true terror would begin, as people would be forced to live with one eye open in fear that it could be their house which might catch fire this time.

Of course the chances of that happening were actually miniscule. 

Most of Alexander's shots would get unlucky and land on wood or even worse stone.

Also, not even every thacked roof landing resulted in a fire.

Sometimes the fire simply failed to spread and died out.

But not all.

There were some that did manage to get lucky.

So once in a while, that flammable mass would manage to find itself landing around a suitable environment, and as the outer linen clothes were burnt away to spill the high quality coal and sawdust, 

*Flash!* 

Soon a roaring inferno would birth itself, initially using the mixture inside it to get going, and then once grown sufficiently big enough, being able to start devouring the surrounding, be it hay or wood.

The occurrence of such a disaster would necessitate men to be deployed to mitigate it, meaning manpower had to be expended to have a group of men on stand by at all times, alert and ready to respond to such emergencies.

So it was surely something that would eat away at the city's endurance, especially as people would be unable to get a good night's sleep.

And though it might have been able to be shrugged off if it was only a few days, the repeated and continuous pressure from Alexander's side soon began to take its toll, which was why the end of the month, many of the defenders looked more like zombies and actual humans, with sluggish paces, their words being occasionally jumbled and their eyes ringed with ink.

So what Alexander was doing and what he was using was clearly working.

The ammunition was of course the brainchild of Alexander, who invented it while trying to think of a way to make life as miserable as possible for the Tibians.

And he came up with the idea of using fire as his mind suddenly drifted to remembering how Hollywood loves to use it in fights.

"My lord, you truly are a genius! We could have never thought of anything like this!" Talukder (Viscount) Prantik exclaimed as the tour came to an end.

And was quickly joined by another noble, 

"Yes, yes! Previously he used fire arrows. But most of those burned out even before they landed. This is much better!"

Then a third noble added, 

"My lord, I would also advise adding a bit of palm oil to the mixture. That thing is sticky and is very difficult to put out by water."

"Our fireballs will be much more difficult to put out that way."

And lastly, Jamider (Earl) Tikba proposed to Alexander, 

"Also we should try to attack the city from different parts. That will keep the enemy guessing, and if lucky, we could even start multiple fires all throughout the city."

"That will give us a much better chance of succeeding." 

It could be clearly seen that though these noblemen might not be the most creative inventors, but when presented with a new thing, they were very quickly able to figure out new uses of them.

Alexander was frankly impressed by this.

"Haha, then let us try all these and see how well they work," So he decided to experiment on all of them, which yielded varying degrees of result.

The palm oil idea was a bust, but targeting the city from different sides proved very popular.

Although the absence of the walls on the other two sides meant Alexander had to move his catapults very close and put them at risk of counter artillery fire, he still felt the trade off was worth it.

And so as the month went on, Tibias was made to deal with almost constant fires, sometimes multiples at a single night straining both their manpower and logistical resources.

While in the morning they had to try and stop Alexander's soldiers, camp followers, and even the people recruited from nearby villages from filling up the ditch surrounding the city and building a ramp towards it.