39 fortifying our position R18
Chapter R18 warning in this chapter lothar appears, i think that says it all but
use of civilians as meat shields during a siege
execution of civilians
divine justice: yes
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lothar's devotion has touched my heart, so 15 comments in THIS paragraph you will get an extra chapter or 5 reviews no matter the ratings.
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The monster must be stopped
-council of lys and tyrosh knowing myr's fate
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Lothar von Ruppin POV
The life of a faithful servant of god is not easy, I always have to complicate my life about what I must do to honor god and this mission against Myr became a mission against tyrosh because now they control the area of operations where I must fulfill my duties as a mercenary.
Besides, I must capture an area and delimit where the supplies that will arrive from the fatherland will reach me, taking full possession of a port city is a necessity, but if the rumors are true, the cities change sides just to avoid the fate of being plundered.
During our journey to the coastal area of the sea of Myr we found more villages that were not yet sacked, and I took the opportunity to do my good deed for the day, to take their supplies and take advantage of using the prisoners as practice for my soldiers.
Many now look more tanned and no longer show that face that only have the rookies who think that war is a knightly activity and now know the cruelties of war, as I am constantly testing them to execute prisoners and I have even forced them to fight against them to learn to fight against someone who wants to kill you.
Luckily, my men have followed my orders to the letter it would have been a shame to have to apply punishments against my men, but the trainers managed to gather the best of the best men with good physical condition and faithful followers of orders.
After another week of marching I was finally in sight of a walled city, I prayed with all my strength that the city would decide to resist, so I could besiege it and take control of it and thus have control of a port city, since I doubt that Lys would want to rule a city where all the civilians are dead.
With a small guard, I approached the walls waiting for them to send a retinue to negotiate.
I waited for 20 minutes until I saw the city walls open, and a retinue came out to negotiate with me.
''I greet you mercenary, I wish to discuss the surrender of the city'' said the envoy of the city.
A shame they are going to surrender
''It is good that you decided to make the right decision to surrender, from now on, you pay tribute to the free city of Lys'' I said without much emotion.
''we accept your terms from now on we will pay our taxes to the city of lys mercenary, here is a sign of good faith to you for helping us with the tyrosh invaders'' said the envoy leaving a small chest on the ground as he retreated to the city.
As I approached the chest I started to open it very carefully, Aleksanteri always warns that these things if not opened can hide some poisonous vermin, to my surprise there were only gold coins some of which are gold, but many iron coins I don't know how much they are worth, but iron can be melted to make nails to crucify people, so it is not as bad as I thought.
Since the mission had changed, I decided to march west instead of east because I wanted to look for a port city where I could receive my supplies the closer to the heart of a city's power, the more likely they will try to resist the siege, and we have everything we need to siege a city
for three days we marched looting everything in our path, but we found no resistance, the few walled cities we found along the way surrendered without a fight giving us the same tribute, only the closer we marched to tyrosh the tribute was more generous and the towns we looted had more supplies, so it is likely that these areas have never seen war or very little, since all the time many people thought that everything could be solved by throwing coins at me.
How wrong they were I don't care about the gold i just do my orders plus if i kill them anyway i can take the gold, so it doesn't affect my war chests much the decision i made.
I was already bored of having to talk surrender with cities, but here I was waiting for an envoy to come out to talk with the third city that we arrived in the ten days of march.
I was already getting angry, how long are these heathens going to keep me waiting, 30 minutes have passed and still no one is coming out.
Another 10 minutes passed, and a delegation began to leave the city.
''at last it seems that these heathens still don't understand who they are dealing with'' I said to one of my knights.
When at last the envoys arrived within speaking distance to my luck, god heard my pleas
''we are not going to surrender mercenary our proud city, it has never changed sides during the last 20 years of the long war, and we are not going to dirty our name for your swords, I recommend you to retire with your tail between your legs like the filthy mercenary you are, since Tyrosh's army is aware of your activities and will soon be here to expel you, but if you want to try we will have you in the slave market when the week is over'' said the envoy while he was returning to his city.
''wow it got interesting, tell the men to start rounding up the local population, we will have to use a lot of forced labor to take this city with minimal casualties for our side'' I said looking at my men
returning with my men, we began to set up camp and prepare the siege weapons, while another group of my men began to gather the local people in the area near our camp.
I already had an idea, the ditch that this town had must be filled, and I am not going to use valuable Prussian soldiers filling their ditch with dirt, for that, I could use their own civilians forcing them to do that dangerous job while we stay quietly harassing them with our scorpions and our crossbowmen.
After 2 hours we had already armed several catapults and scorpions that we were positioning in the range of the city, we were still complicated with the trebuchets, since we were building 5, but we are having problems in completing them quickly
on the other hand, prisoners were still arriving that we will use to fill the ditch, so we had them digging dirt to fill the ditch that the city had
making calculations with the shadow of the walls I could say that the walls should measure about 6 meters, not very high, and I must suppose that not so thick either, so the walls might fall between 3 or 6 days if we bombard them with enough force in only one sector and I could not afford to have many breaches because if what the envoy said is true the army of tyrosh is near and the walls will have to be repaired to make a permanent base of operations in the area.
I approached with one of the men in charge of the siege weapons.
''how many men do you think the city has'' I said, asking the engineer
''about 1000-2000 men, the walls are not as well manned as one would expect, it is likely that the decision was only made because there are reinforcements nearby'' said the engineer.
''Do you think we can take the walls today'', I asked the engineer.
''I doubt it very much we have very few trebuchets to bring the walls down fast plus we have to fill the trench that the city has I would say 5-7 days not including debris cleanup'' said the engineer
''mhh then I think we should change tactics, we should drive them away from the walls with an overwhelming amount of projectiles and try to take the walls by assault, stop building the trebuchets, build more scorpions we should take advantage that the defenders will do everything they can to prevent us from filling the ditch and place stairs'' I said to the engineer
''At your orders, my lord'' said the engineer.
The speed of this siege is essential, we don't know how many men we will face and if they were confident, they must be similar to us in number at least
when we finally gathered enough dirt we started to use the local peasants as our shields, as we threatened them that if they did not cooperate with us we would kill their families, we are going to kill them anyway, so we took advantage and used them in a way that would serve the divine interests of my king
sending almost 800 peasants with dirt to fill the ditch while our men harassed the defenders with our already deployed scorpions
I had also sent several companies of crossbowmen to help with the harassment of the defenders, they carried a makeshift pavise as they entered the firing range under the walls, they began to fight against the archers of the defenders
although we had the disadvantage of height, our crossbowmen were winning overwhelmingly, as the arrows bounced off our armor, but when a bolt hit one of them it meant almost instant death, unless they had good armor.
During the next 40 minutes the defenders did almost the impossible to stop us, but with our persistent attack, we had already succeeded in getting the prisoners to fill a part of the trench, but it still had to be filled with more dirt.
However, what had been achieved was that most of the defenders were no longer defending the filling of the ditch, they had lost too many men in the projectile combat.
On our side we have many wounded and no dead of the people that matter, as the prisoners had died around 500 during the whole process, many because they tried to flee; however, we quickly proved to them that they had no choice; however, my men had already arrived with more prisoners, so we still have a considerable amount of prisoners that we can use
for the next three hours, the prisoners continued to fill the trench with dirt and this time without any resistance the defenders had given up trying to prevent our tactic, and I was talking to my officers about how we will make the assault on the city.
''Then the vanguard will be composed by the Teutonic knights, they should concentrate on taking possession of the gates if possible to save the mechanism that opens it, so we can make entry in large groups'' I said looking at my men on an improvised map of the walls.
''Should we expect much resistance?'', asked a Teutonic knight.
''they are exhausted if they could still fight as they should, they would have continued to prevent us from filling the ditch, they made a mistake thinking that we would only leave because of the presence of an army in the area this city must fall today, I will make it clear here I do not want rape, I do not want a disease to spread because someone wanted female affection so anyone who is caught committing this act will be impaled, and I will put their balls as a necklace, I don't care about the rest, you can do whatever you want with the population except sell them into slavery, I will take the loot as I should, since we don't know yet how many supplies will arrive on the king's ships, so we have to be prepared to buy our supplies if we don't find places to loot'' I said looking at everyone.
I was about to end our meeting when a knight walked in.
My lord, the city is flying the white flag'' said the knight.
''What?, they surrendered so soon?'' I said incredulously.
I walk towards the city gates as fast as I can.
Furthermore, I crossed the field full of arrow pierced bodies of the peasants, many of them were still alive, but we are not going to waste medical equipment on them, the clear smell of piss and shit was already starting to spread through the battlefield mainly because of the huge amount of dead of our dear meat shields that kindly serve our just cause
by the time I reached the gates they began to open and the same delegation as before was coming out.
The only difference being that earlier the arrogant face of the envoy had changed to a slightly nervous one.
''Our city wishes to discuss our terms of surrender'' said the envoy.
''wow it hasn't even been 1 day, and you are already surrendering what happened that I would be a slave by the end of the week'' I said mocking the envoy
''the governor of the city has decided to change his mind from now on we will pay tribute to lys and give you a generous payment for helping us with the tyrosh invaders'' said the envoy.
''how much are we talking about this generous payment'' I said with a sarcastic tone.
''40000 gold coins enough for you to afford the best prostitutes in lys for all your soldiers'' said the envoy upset.
''I'm afraid I will refuse your offer, I have spent a lot of time and equipment to kill your defenders unless you offer more payment for killing your men, I'm afraid it's not profitable for me'' I said with a smile
the envoy's eyes burned with anger
''listen mercenary you are playing with fire the army of tyrosh is near, if you continue to play with your luck your head will end up on a pike so you better accept the payment and get out'' said the envoy angrily
''no'' I said smiling
the envoy sighed, looking me in the eyes
''I'll talk to the governor, but I doubt the terms will change'' said the envoy returning to the city.
I was returning to the camp when a knight spoke to me.
''Are we going to accept their surrender?'', asked the knight.
''No, I just did it, so they would think that the battle is over, and we want to negotiate, so we can prepare the attack'' I said smiling.
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