Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters-Chapter 838 - 86 Defending the City_3
Chapter 838: Chapter 86 Defending the City_3 Chapter 838: Chapter 86 Defending the City_3 Most of the grapeshot was blocked by the shield carts, with a small fraction passing through the gap between two of them.
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Terdun men screamed in pain, releasing their grip on the push handles, only to have another pair of hands immediately take over.
“By the Gods above!” the commander of the shield carts, Hong Lingyu of Tahai, roared, “The two-legged people are out of thunder! Hurry up!”
The militiamen behind the city walls heard the barbarians let out a unified shout of “Wooka ha,” and suddenly, the advance of the shield carts quickened as they rushed towards the city walls.
Suddenly, a militiaman screamed in agony, clutching his eyes. He stumbled backward, fell off the scaffolding, an arrow shaft wedged between his fingers.
The stretcher team hurried over to lift the arrow-struck militiaman, but he had already breathed his last.
With several twangs of bowstrings, the armored soldiers atop the shield carts shot with deadly accuracy, mercilessly killing any Revodan militiamen who poked their heads out in a daze.
...
“Damn it! Fools!” The tall, silent Captain Ivan suddenly exploded. He cursed out loud and backhanded the dazed militiaman beside him with a slap, “What the hell are you doing? Waiting to be slaughtered? Fire!”
There was no time for new recruits to get used to the bloody scene, and those who came to their senses began to return fire one after another.
A moment ago, the militiamen were laughing at the jokes of Mason Commissioner, hiding inside the bunkers and listening to bomb blasts, many of them thinking “war was no more than this”;
The next moment, when the militiamen felt they had grown used to warfare, they truly saw the violent nature of war for the first time, and many had already died.
Arrows and lead shot danced in the air, gunshots and wails rose and fell, but the siege battle was far from reaching its most brutal point.
“What are you doing standing here?!” Mason charged up to the arrow tower, commanding the gunners who were reloading, “Take the cannon and go! Fire from the flanks!”
Two teams of gunners awkwardly shifted the wooden cannons to both sides of the arrow tower, while the shield carts had already reached the edge of the ditch.
The distance between the two sides was less than six meters, separated only by a trench, close enough that they could even see each other’s trembling beard tips.
The powerful bows and heavy arrows of the Terdun soldiers were eerily accurate at this distance; some Revodan militiamen were pierced by an arrow the very moment they exposed just half of their bow-holding hand at the battlement notch.
Seeing the militiamen on the arrow tower being suppressed, Mason pushed and kicked the militiamen who were hiding behind the city wall, too scared to raise their heads, “Stand up! Get to the gunners’ station! Go to the flanks! Move!”
With the cover of shield carts and archers, the Terdun people continuously dumped dirt and firewood into the trench using small carts.
And there were Terdun people with pickaxes silently descending to the bottom of the trench using ropes.
“The barbarians are pulling out the stakes!” a sentry from the side of the triangular fortress cried hoarsely, “They’re digging at the wall!”
“Greek fire!” Mason bellowed, “Ongs!”
Hearing the signal of the drums to mount the wall, Demon Ongs hurried from the workshop back to the arrow tower and immediately had men lift out boxes of pottery jars from the bunker.
The Terdun centurion at the front line, Tahai, only saw dark objects being thrown from behind the city wall in succession, shattering upon landing—like pottery.
An armored soldier with remarkable archery skills hit a pottery jar mid-air, spilling liquid from within.
Realizing what the enemy was up to, an aghast Tahai, his face twisted in terror, dashed out of the shield cart, desperately crying, “Climb up!”
It was already too late. Several torches were thrown into the trench, spreading a layer of blue flame at its bottom.
Bundles of dry straw were then thrown into the trench, burning even more fiercely than ordinary straw, instantly transforming the moat into a sea of fire.
Richard Mason grabbed the gunpowder-wrapped dry straw and flung bundle after bundle out of the city until thick smoke billowed and the stench of burning filled the air.
The inhuman screams of the dying quickly faded, the Terdun offensive temporarily stalled by the flames, but they did not retreat as the defenders had hoped.
The Terdun people pinned at the edge of the trench, with heavy-armored archers suppressing the city wall’s militiamen to the point they dared not raise their heads, refusing to retreat.
The thick smoke obscured the view, and as Mason moved to the side of the arrow tower, he finally saw what the Terdun people were doing—using the smoke and shield carts as cover, they were actually digging trenches beside the protective ditch.
At the same time, a beacon of smoke rose into the sky from the Old Town district on the northern shore.
