Volume 5: The Hegemon of Southern Italy, Chapter 113: Attack and Defense of the Fortress (Part 2)

80 meters... 70 meters... 60 meters... The closer they got to the wooden wall, the fiercer the attacks became. Fewer and fewer slaves remained, most already lying on the grass as stepping stones.

Fear of death drove several slaves to suddenly drop their sacks and sprint forward with all their might. Sharpened stakes, flesh hooks... tore their legs bloody and raw. They screamed in agony but refused to stop their stumbling steps: "Ah!... Ah!... I... I am a Greek!... I am a Greek!!..."

The heartrending cries stunned the soldiers on the wall. They all looked pleadingly at Tsipet.

Seeing this, Tsipet also hesitated for a moment.

Just then, over a dozen Bruttian warriors, at their leader's command, charged out from the formation, stepped on the sacks on the ground, and hurled javelins at the slaves who were blocked by the abatis and unable to advance.

The dying screams of the Greek slaves hardened Tsipet's resolve. He roared fiercely, "Keep firing arrows!"

Countless arrows, carrying grief and rage, fell continuously... sweeping away almost all the remaining few slaves and Bruttians within range.

Although these slaves were nearly naked and unarmored, two thousand men falling dead or wounded in the trap zone within such a short time, without even reaching the ditch before the wooden wall, made the Bruttian leaders draw in cold breaths.

"Great Chief Piallen, look..." Bogam hesitated, glancing at Piallen.

"Send other tribal warriors forward to continue filling the traps. We are almost at the city wall!" Piallen's tone was cold and resolute, his face grim. Having come this far, he was determined to test the enemy's strength and would not retreat easily.

Several thousand Bruttian warriors advanced toward the wall in pairs, each holding a shield in one hand and a sack in the other, in a very loose formation.

Tsipet wished the enemy would move slower, giving his soldiers' sore arms more time to recover.

"Release arrows!" He swung his arm down again.

The Bruttian warriors were clearly more battle-experienced than the slaves. Seeing the arrows darkening the sky, they immediately halted, crouched down, curled up, and covered themselves entirely with their shields. The arrows rained down densely, and amid the thumping and piercing sounds, the soldiers' screams were noticeably fewer. But when they advanced to about thirty meters from the wall, the abatis obstacles set there trapped them in place. On the wooden wall, not only archers but also javelin throwers joined the fight. Suddenly, javelins and arrows poured down, causing heavy casualties among the Bruttian warriors, who eventually broke and fled.

"Great Chief!" Even Petalus could no longer hold back.

"Attack once more!" Piallen ordered sternly. "Elder Petalus, lead 4,000 warriors to assault the northern wall! Elder Bogam, attack the southern side! Elder Nikurus, take your men down the central road! Everyone, don't be hasty. Execute according to the plan: clear the obstacles first, fill the ditch, then begin the assault..."

The soldiers on the wooden wall cheered at the Bruttians' retreat, but soon the enemy attacked again. This time, they formed into small groups of several dozen men, packed tightly together, with several large wooden shields like door panels at the front.

The road extending from the city gate was the only one without traps—it was the reserved passage for the Third Army Corps. Now, Bruttian warriors were also pushing a wooden cart laden with sacks full of earth toward the city gate.

The experienced Tsipet knew that when the enemy was heavily shielded, blindly firing arrows would only waste arrows and exhaust strength with little effect. So he forbade his soldiers from wasting shots, waiting for the enemy to leave the cover of the large wooden shields before firing.

But the wooden cart on the central road remained the main target of the Daonia light infantry. Over a hundred meters, the Bruttian warriors pushing the cart lay dead along the path. Yet Nikurus's furious roar drove the terrified Bruttian warriors to press forward wave after wave, finally reaching the ditch with great difficulty, preparing to dump the sacks piled like a small mountain on the cart into the ditch.

"Oil jars!" Tsipet called out calmly. A dozen slingers picked up olive oil jars temporarily collected from Besidia and, as if flinging stones, hurled them accurately toward the wooden cart in front of the ditch. The earthenware jars shattered, oil splattered everywhere, quickly turning the cart into an oil cart.

"Fire arrows!" Tsipet ordered, personally shooting a fire arrow.

Five or six fire arrows struck the cart, setting it ablaze rapidly, also engulfing several Bruttian warriors pushing it. They caught fire and rolled on the ground in panic.

"Idiots! Quick! Push it down! Push the cart down!!" Seeing the emergency, Nikurus roared, threw aside his shield, risked being hit, shoved aside the hesitant warriors in front, strode forward, and ignoring the blazing flames, grabbed the cart handles with both hands and pushed with all his strength.

Inspired by him, other Bruttian warriors also rushed to his side.

The wooden cart burned. Javelins and arrows concentrated on it.

Led by Nikurus, the Bruttian warriors pushed desperately. With a loud crash, the entire cart tipped over into the ditch, and the sacks half-filled the three-meter-deep, three-meter-wide ditch, crushing the crisscrossing sharpened stakes at the bottom. The Bruttian warriors could now step on the sacks in the ditch and cross to the other side in a single large stride.

As the warriors celebrated their success, Nikurus, struck by two javelins, lay fallen in a pool of blood...

Nikurus was dead! Hearing this news, Piallen felt a surge of sorrow. Though his relationship with Nikurus was only average, when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold...

By then, after paying a considerable price, the Bruttian warriors had reached the edge of the ditch and began tossing sacks into it.

Piallen finally gave the order: "Full assault on the city!"

Ten thousand warriors, split into two waves, carrying long ladders and battering rams, advanced toward the wall.

Just as the Bruttians blew their war horns, the Daonians also sounded their bugles. The soldiers of the First and Second Battalions began to take their positions on the wall.

Seizing the moment of the Daonian soldiers' rotation on the wall, the Bruttian warriors, stepping on the corpses of their comrades, had already pushed to the ditch's edge. The Third Army Corps soldiers immediately unleashed a dense volley of javelins. Bruttian warriors struck fell directly into the ditch...

Those Bruttian warriors who reached the base of the wooden wall looked up and groaned inwardly. The Daonians had built the wall with countless sharpened stakes protruding outward below the crenellations, making it impossible for the ladders to lean directly against the battlements. Even if warriors climbed to the top of the ladder, there was still a gap to the wall, significantly increasing the difficulty of the assault.

As this Bruttian warrior's attention wavered, a stone fell vertically, striking him square on the head.

"Good hit!" Kerelu shouted, patting the Besidian warrior who had scored the kill. "Fellow tribesmen, kill them hard! Don't let a single Cosentian return alive!"

The battle raged fiercely. Daonian soldiers and Besidian warriors used javelins, stones, spears, forked poles, and short swords to fend off the Bruttian assault with all their might.

Besides using ladders to swarm the walls like ants, the Bruttians also used battering rams to break through. Groups of a dozen warriors, carrying huge logs and covered by Bruttian javelin throwers, rammed not only the gate but also the wooden wall itself. Piallen and his men believed that although the Daonians had built the wooden wall in such a short time, it could not be very sturdy.

And indeed, this was true. The Daonian soldiers had constructed the wall with double-layered wooden palisades filled with earth dug from the ditch, then topped with wooden planks to form a walkway. But due to the tight schedule, the earth in the middle had not been fully compacted, nor had the palisades been carefully reinforced.

Realizing the enemy's intention, Drakos had to divert some troops to concentrate on attacking these poorly protected "suicide" warriors.

However, Piallen did not rely on just these two methods of assault.

"Battalion commander, look, fire!" a soldier shouted loudly, alerting Adrianx. He quickly looked down and saw flames already rising at the base of a section of the wooden wall. Nearby, several Bruttian warriors were pouring oil from an earthenware jar onto the wall, and the fire grew fiercer.

"Quick, shoot that man!" Adrianx directed his soldiers to throw javelins while shouting anxiously, "Hurry, pour down sand and earth! Pour it down!..."

Due to the haste and lack of supplies, the wooden wall had not been fireproofed, such as by painting. Fortunately, Drakos had considered this when discussing with the battalion commanders how to defend the fort, placing cloth bags filled with earth on the wall walkways.

The fire was eventually extinguished, but Adrianx's expression remained stern. He warned each officer and soldier to watch carefully for any enemy carrying earthenware jars or oil bags below the wall and to do everything possible to prevent them from approaching the wall.

...

The siege was bloody and brutal. Every time a ladder was pushed over and warriors fell from the wall top, it pained Piallen deeply. But as the commander of the entire army, he had to constantly monitor the battle's progress. Time and again, he moved forward to get a clearer view, eventually reaching the edge of the trap zone.

Perhaps the corpses strewn on the ground unsettled his warhorse; it snorted and pawed the earth with its front hooves.

Piallen had indeed not expected the Daonians to establish a relatively complete defensive fortification system in just three days, nor that their soldiers would show such experience and strength in defending the wall.

Seeing the Bruttian warriors struggling and groaning at the base of the wall, Piallen's confidence gradually waned.

Compared to the tightly defended, well-coordinated, and disciplined northern section of the wooden wall, the southern section, defended by the Besidian warriors, suffered from disjointed command, weaker combat effectiveness, and low morale. After an hour of defense, some Bruttian warriors began to climb over the wall top.