The first wave of probing enemy troops consisted of about thirty people, carrying three crude ladders about thirty feet long. Judging from the weapons and clothing of the siege enemy soldiers, the first wave of exploratory attacks mainly consisted of a small number of infantrymen leading about twenty peasant soldiers equipped with simple weapons. Their main role was to test the "height" of the Talburg wall with their lives.
Odo, standing directly above the fort gate, had never independently commanded and dispatched such a formation. He seemed quite nervous. When the enemy was still a hundred and seventy steps away from the fort gate, he had already ordered the archers on the wall to start shooting. When seven When the eight arrows flew lightly in front of the enemy, it indeed caused fear to the otherwise honest farmers. However, when they saw all the arrows falling more than ten steps in front of them, most of the panic in their hearts disappeared~
Odo turned his head awkwardly and glanced at the inner castle tower behind him. Art, who was standing on the top of the building, just nodded in encouragement.
After a moment, the enemy troops rushed forward eighty steps, which was the killing range of a rifle bow. However, as expected, the several light arrows that followed were all missed. Only one enemy soldier's shoulder was scratched by a light arrow.
"The archers waited for the enemy troops to land on the city and fired straight from both wings!" Odo saw that the temporary crossbowman's accuracy was not very high, so he stopped shooting in time to avoid wasting arrows.
On the enemy side of the siege, when about thirty peasants and soldiers who were responsible for the first round of attack arrived under the outer wall of Tal Fort, a dozen archers behind them followed closely and stood at the spot where the light arrows shot from the wall had fallen. They all drew their bowstrings and fired a volley at the outer wall of Tal Fort.
The archery skills of the enemy archers were obviously much better than those of the crossbowmen in the arrow towers on the outer wall. Almost all of the dozen or so light arrows fell against the parapet. These dozen or so flying light arrows caused a lot of chaos to the soldiers defending the city. The soldiers who were hit by the light arrows on the wall raised their wooden shields to block, and there was a sudden "bang bang bang" sound on the wooden shields.
As soon as Odo put down his shield, a wooden ladder came up against the crenellation of the outer wall on the left.
"Fork pole!!!" Odo quickly ordered the soldiers behind the crenel to use the fork pole to push down the wooden ladder that was approaching.
"Take the fork and hit the pole! Overthrow these bastards!!" The roars of Kazak and Tuba rang out.
Several soldiers behind the crenel picked up the fork poles placed on the fighting positions in the corridor, aimed at the wooden ladder sticking out of the wall, and pushed it outward. However, the enemy soldiers at the bottom of the wooden ladder held the bottom of the wooden ladder tightly, and the guards on the wall were unable to push the wooden ladder away for a while; and the enemy soldiers on the three wooden ladders had already begun to climb up one after another.
"Throw a stone!! The bow and arrow shoot straight at both wings!!" Seeing that the situation was unfavorable, Odo ignored the sporadic arrows shot from outside the city, threw down his shield, raised a stone the size of a clay pot, and threw it towards the bottom of the wooden ladder under the outer wall. After hearing Odo's order, the soldiers beside Odo also quickly picked up the stone and threw it at the bottom of the wooden ladder.
On the left and right sides of the outer wall, Kazak and Touba stood near their soldiers. While instructing the soldiers to throw stones down, they took off the rifle bows on their backs and drew out light arrows and threw them in the direction of the enemy archers. They had practiced bows and arrows under Art's personal instruction. Although their archery skills were not good, they were still slightly better than the temporary crossbowmen. When the soldiers threw down the stones, the two of them had already shot four light arrows with flat heads in succession. They stood on a high place and shot another arrow. With the protection of the parapet, it had certain advantages. The seven or eight arrows fired still hit two enemy archers. However, the light arrows had lost their power at such a long distance. Unless they hit the vital points, they would only be able to pierce a layer of skin on the enemy soldiers. However, the arrows flying from high places still had an impact on the enemy archers. After enduring several rounds of arrow attacks, the enemy archers retreated one after another.
Under the outer wall of Tal Fort, rocks falling from the sky smashed the heads of the soldiers who tried to climb the city. Except for a small number of infantrymen equipped with skinned round shields, most of the peasant soldiers did not have shields and armor. After a stone pounding, one person was killed and three were injured on the spot. After the peasants and soldiers holding the wooden ladder at the bottom dispersed, the wooden ladder lost its support and was directly overthrown by the defenders on the wall. Several enemy soldiers who had not had time to come down fell heavily to the ground following the overturned wooden ladder. There was no sound for a long time.
should drag the corpses, lift up the wounded soldiers and retreat hurriedly.
On the outer wall of Tal Fort, a fork-shooting soldier who was hit in the cheek by a stray arrow and a rock-throwing soldier who was hit by an arrow in his left forearm were carried up and taken down for treatment by the working farmers who had been hiding in a safe place.
In the wooden house under the inner wall of the outer wall, the baggage officer Spencer is not only responsible for making food for everyone in Tarburg, but now he also has to act as a "temporary healer".
· Spencer pressed the wounded soldier on the thatched grass with his face covered with blood and kept shouting. He turned to the prisoner of war laborer who was making food for the defenders under the low eaves outside the house and shouted: "Lazy idiot!! Are you blind? What else can you do to cook? Come here and help me!"
This guy called a slacker was a mountain bandit captured by the patrol when they recaptured Alsburg. He participated in the construction of roads at the wooden castle in the valley, and because of his good performance, he was selected by Lawrence to join the army as a labor force to participate in the war. Although this guy was called a slacker, he worked very honestly and hard, and he also learned some simple wound treatment skills. He was "valued" by the baggage officer Spencer, who always used this guy to do all the big and small jobs. However, in the past few months with Spencer, this thin prisoner of war laborer had eaten well and had begun to gain weight.
"Travel officer, Lord Odo has asked us to provide hot meals to the brothers on the wall on time. I am too busy." The lazy man ran into the wooden house sweating profusely with an iron ladle, and said to Spencer with a helpless face.
"Are you a pig? Are you the only one who can cook? Aren't you going to find two bastards who are hiding under the eaves to watch the fun? You are a pig, no wonder the caravan didn't choose you as an attaché!" Busy...
On the outer wall, Odo, who had just commanded the first round of defense, was still busy. With the cooperation of Kazak and Tuba, he adjusted the position of the defenders on the front of the outer wall, strengthened the defensive force in several places where wooden ladders were easily put up, and asked the defenders to work in pairs: one person held a shield to resist the arrows fired by the enemy soldiers before they ascended the city, and the other operated the fork stick or threw stones.
Having just finished arranging the defense on the fort wall, he ran under the wall to organize the idle laborers and serfs to transport stones to the stations on the outer wall walkway or collect arrows shot by the enemy into the fort.
On the tower of the inner fort of Tarburg, Art was folding his arms and carefully observing the enemy camp outside the fort.
The first wave of attacks was obviously just a pawn used by the enemy to test the strength of Talburg's defense. After the attack stopped, the enemy troops at the bottom of the hillside really started to get busy. Some of them were tying two wooden ladders together to increase the length of the wooden ladder to climb the city, so that the defenders' rocks could not hurt the soldiers holding the bottom of the wooden ladder. At the same time, it also made it more difficult for the defenders' fork poles to push down the wooden ladder; The scattered parts were assembled into two huge wooden shields. When attacking the city, the soldiers under the wooden shields worked together to carry the shields and move forward. They could not only block the arrows flying from the city, but also carry the falling stones. Some people cut wood to build military tents a little further away and built a camp with fences.
The enemy did not make siege engines and battering rams. Obviously they already knew the terrain of Talburg. The heavy siege engines and battering rams could not be pushed up the slope smoothly under the attack of the enemy, and the tall siege engines could easily topple over on the slopes.
A group of enemy soldiers left the rear formation and moved towards the hillside on the right side of Talburg.
The enemy obviously noticed the waiting platform on the hillside. Although no arrows were fired from the waiting platform in the first round of attack, and no defenders stationed in the waiting platform were found from the enemy's point of view, Jeffrey, who knew a little about military affairs, still guessed the role of the waiting platform and sent soldiers to climb the hillside to try to find out.
In the waiting platform on the hillside, Bass, the first team leader in charge of the garrison, was sitting against the wooden wall of the arrow tower of the waiting platform, looking through the small gap in the wooden wall at the five enemy soldiers approaching cautiously down the hillside.
According to the prior plan, unless three short horns sounded in the Tal Fort, the waiting platform would not easily fire an arrow at the attacking enemy.
There is only a very narrow and steep path leading to the hillside waiting platform. This path can only accommodate two people walking side by side. No matter how many enemy soldiers there are, they cannot rush up at once. Moreover, the entire path is full of traps laid in advance. If you want to capture the waiting platform, the enemy must pay greater casualties.
Sure enough, an enemy soldier who was leading the way to the waiting platform on the hillside stepped into a trap hole as soon as he climbed halfway up the hillside. He screamed several times and died of exhaustion. The four soldiers following behind climbed to the edge of the deep pit trap to check. The unlucky guy who fell into the trap had been pierced into a meat sieve by the sharp wooden stakes in the pit.
"What on earth do these bastards do! Such insidious tricks can be used, devil! Bastard!!" The enemy soldiers were completely angry. Since entering the mountainous area a few days ago, they have constantly encountered such well-camouflaged traps and pits. If someone accidentally falls into a pit, his intestines will be punctured and nailed to pulp. Several soldiers have been killed by this trap.
After cursing, the four enemy soldiers no longer dared to be careless and climbed towards the top of the slope step by step. After walking less than ten steps, several people actually discovered a large piece of fluffy soil in front of them. They thought it must be a trap. They poked it with the short spears in their hands, and sure enough, a large piece collapsed. This hole was much bigger than the previous one, and everyone could not jump over it, so they all discussed to go around the ridge next to it.
But as soon as a brave guy jumped off the ridge, he immediately felt a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. If he looked carefully, the dead branches and leaves under the ridge were full of small spikes stuck in the ground and smeared with human and animal excrement, making it impossible for him to step down. The remaining enemy soldiers refused to move forward any more, so they had no choice but to lift up the enemy soldiers with their left feet pierced and retreat into the camp.
"Come, come all, there are many traps waiting for you here." Bass, who was sitting under the wooden wall of the waiting platform, smiled and took a bite of the bacon in his hand. Several soldiers watching the fun from the gaps also laughed...
as the sun has set in the west, the enemy who had eaten a hot meal and was more prepared began the second round of attack with a long trumpet sound.
The enemy troops attacking this time were no longer as simple and hasty as a few infantrymen and peasant soldiers.
The attacking enemy troops are roughly divided into three waves. The first are soldiers carrying two giant wooden shields. Under each wooden shield are twenty elite soldiers wearing chain mail and iron helmets. They will be the main force of the second wave of siege. Behind the wooden shields are four extended wooden ladders, each of which The wooden ladder is carried by five peasant soldiers carrying shields. They will set up wooden ladders on the left and right sides of the giant wooden shield, so that the soldiers under the giant shield can quickly climb up the wooden ladder; behind the wooden ladder for climbing the city are a dozen archers, who will perform several rounds of upward shots before the soldiers climb the wall to provide cover for the soldiers climbing the city.
Talburg faces a real battle...