Herald of Steel



Perseus's assistant received the order immediately with a salute and proceeded to quickly carry it out.

The result of which he presented to his king a few days later.

But alas!

For though Perseus had hoped for some groundbreaking answer, one which he hoped to use to solve his predicament, the news he got was far more pessimistic and worrying than he could have ever guessed.

"My lord, at first when we questioned the captured men with regards to the new archers, none of the men were able to give us any answers."

"Even after we roughed them up, and asked quite a few of them, they still gave the same reply, that they had no idea of any new archer regiment being hired."

"And after a while, he began to believe them. Because it was clearly impossible for so many men to be lying."

"And I was about to report that to you," Here the adjutant, who was giving the summary of the report in front of Perseus's war council paused a bit to take a breath, before continuing,

"But it seems the gods are with us."

"For one of the soldiers after taking quite a bit of beating suddenly understood what were asking about and at last spoke the truth.

"He said that their lord had invented a new kind of bow called the crossbow that allows even peasants to shoot like expert marksmen. And that is how the enemy is able to have so many archers on the walls."

The adjutant sounded pretty pleased that he was able to extract this information.

While the same information worked to make Perseus quite distressed.

"What! Are you telling me there is a way to turn peasants into expert archers? Were we being shot that for the past few days by simple peasants? I can't believe it!" This was not shouted out by Perseus, but by a high-ranking noble next to him, one of the few lucky ones to survive Laukash's charge.

And very evidently, contrary to the adjutant's cheerful demeanor at having accomplished his task, the portly man's mood was quite sour.

With the mood being shared by Perseus too, who nodded and reasoned, "Hmmm, it is indeed hard to believe such a weapon exists. I thought that the enemy was putting its best troops at the front to try and hold the line."

"And my wish was to grind them down first, break their will to fight and and then break through them after in one way."

"But if what the prisoner said was true…if Zanzan can turn all its peasants into expert marksmen….well." Perseus's thoughts trailed off as he did not want to think about that inevitable consequence.

Then he suddenly turned to his assistant, and with narrowed eyes pointedly asked, "It is true, right? What the prisoner said….you did confirm it? He did not lie…right!"

Perseus's last word was more an order than a question.

As Perseus finished his speech, the adjutant felt all the eyes in the room fall on him and facing such piercing gaze from such high-level men, the poor man suddenly began to question the validity of his own report.

Because if these powerful men one day all together proclaimed the sky was purple, the adjutant would have probably joined them.

And so, given the top leaders seemed to not like the answer, the man started to sweat bullets.

He knew many, many people were offed for delivering far less unsavory news, which were sometimes true, sometimes false.

He did not want to become like one of them.

But fortunately, the adjutant did not become the assistant to the nation's most powerful man without any wits or merits.

Hence facing this situation, instead of bullheadedly trying to insist his report was the truth and make many of the men displeased, he quickly said this, "My lords, in my excitement, I made the report hastily after asking only one soldier. Let me go out and ask a few other prisoners. Then we will surely know."

And this request he was granted by Perseus himself with a quick nod, and in this way the man managed to extricate himself from the situation.

And then, after observing the situation around Perseus and his war council for the next few days, and after being relieved that the high command really wanted the truth and not just a sugar-coated lie, he presented his second report, which was far more detailed.

"Your Grace, my lords, over the past few days I have talked to a lot of captured soldiers about this 'crossbow'. And what the first prisoner said is indeed true. It has been confirmed by many others." The man said confidently, before unscrolling a piece of papyrus sheet and pointing to a drawing on it,

"Here, one of them even drew a picture of how it looks. Though none of them knew during it actually worked."

It seemed the trigger mechanism of the weapon was still a mystery to many of the soldiers.

The adjutant's report left no doubt in the mind of the Tibian high command that the crossbow was indeed a real thing, and the threat it posed was very great.

In fact some seemed to think it was unsurmountable.

Because in the days preceding the two reports, the siege had not stopped, and up until that point the results were not looking very optimistic for Tibias.

For the hail of arrow fire from the enemy worked to make almost any attack on the wall impossible.

Even those famed catapults that the Kaiser family had promised to be able to 'break the very gates of heaven' were proving less than effective.

With the single biggest reason being the presence of the crossbowmen and their range.

Forcing Perseus to not only operate his machines at the edge of their range, limiting their effectiveness but also forcing him to disperse them all along the huge one-kilometer-long frontline in fear of concentrated arrow volleys, thus limiting their lethality, as instead of focusing fire, the weapons now dispersed their damage all along the wall.

But Perseus seemed to ultimately have no option to effectively deal with the crossbows available on his hands.

Hence the siege continued just like that for the next three weeks, with the first week seeing the highest peak of the fighting, as every day at the crack of dawn Perseus would send wave after wave of his archers to engage the walled defenders, while his catapults tried to damage the walls as best as they could.

Casualties on both sides in those seven days were significant, most dying from arrow fire, with a few unlucky ones even being claimed by once in a blue-moon lucky catapult shot.

But that period of high zeal and frenzy only lasted a little while, as war fatigue began to quickly settle in.

While Perseus could see this was in no way going anywhere.

Hence he decreased the intensity of the fight over the next two weeks until near the end it was perhaps only one of two hundred men launching what could be said as being essentially harassing attacks against the enemy, just to keep them on their toes and deny them rest or comfort.

On those days, the fighting would last perhaps for about half an hour to at most one, where there would maybe be some sporadic exchanges of only a few arrow fires and the occasional one or two catapult shots that seemed more ceremonial than functional as if the operators were actually testing if the catapults still worked rather than trying to destroy the wall.

A half-hearted effort that the defenders were able to ward off even in their sleep.

And speaking of sleep, the siege devolved into such a boring affair that the wall defenders found themselves yawning and dozing off most of the time, as they saw that the attackers seemed content to just sit on their doorsteps, blockading their city and doing nothing else.

But honestly, most sieges were like that.

A whole lot of waiting and not a lot of fighting.

While simply hoping the enemy gave up before you did.

Especially if you did not have the proper siege machines.

That was why sieges were usually universally detested by any attacking sides, as starving an entire city was actually quite hard.

And to top it all off, the weather itself did not work to make the situation any better.

Because as December arrived, the Icy Queen of Winter seemed to have announced herself in her full fury this year, as the skies became eternally downcast, and the weather began to drastically turn for the worse, with frequent blizzards and constant hails, turning the entire place into one cold hellscape.

Neither side wanted to leave the fireside, much less fight in this condition.

And in this situation, the city dwellers certainly had it better in this situation, as most had solid structures to take refuge inside to fight against this biting chill.

Even the defenders up on the walls had portable stoves set up all along the perimeter, burning coal to keep themselves warm and awake in their watch.

Not to mention the defenders were rotated every night to keep them fresh.

While the attacking side fared much worse, being forced to hole themselves inside their tents, which though thick and strong, could never be an equal substitute for stone and wood.

Hence most of the Tibian soldiers just sat inside their tent or around a large campfire wrapping themselves in as many blankets as they could.

And did nothing else.

It was a very boring siege indeed.