On the first day of the Ibasan Siege, they had been busy building their siege equipment right outside our range. Their ten thousand-strong army constructed a makeshift wooden observer tower at rapid speed. And despite being made of just wood, it still managed to reach just slightly above our walls, but was still dwarfed by our four main towers.
They built two massive trebuchets, as well as one giant cannon and several smaller, wooden automatic arrow launchers that worked like fireworks tipped with arrows and were capable of firing more than a hundred arrows in quick succession.
The second day, they continued their construction with giant crossbows mounted on a mobile siege platform that, as time passed, began to resemble a wooden tank more and more, with only the backside exposed.
On the final day, they added foldable ladders and massive, hungry falcon carts that resembled a trebuchet with claws used to destroy parapets by ramming their giant, iron-tipped hocks directly at them, rather than firing projectiles.
However, on the fourth day, they launched an attack.
But unlike most sieges that start out with probing your enemies, the Ibasans were so familiar with the Fort that they started out big from the very beginning. They began by sending a few hundred men with mobile shields and handheld, repetitive crossbows, moving them closer and closer up against our walls. They were accompanied by the aforementioned Hungry falcon carts as well as one of their rams and a hulkingly slow wooden tank that inched its way forward.
Their crossbows could barely reach over our walls and shot volley after volley. In the distance, I could see them loading their thirty-inch wide cannon. The lump of iron had been dragged here by twenty oxen and was over five meters long. However, unlike modern cannons, it wasn’t mounted on wheels; it was just a massive cannon barrel propped up and covered with a lot of dirt in one of their trenches. And soon I began to see why.
As their shielded forces inched forward under a barrage of arrows, stones, and bolts, and the occasional fire/water ball from my magic students. Careful not to expose their sides to enemy fire. The cannon fired. The sound was unimaginable. Nothing I have ever heard was this loud. I was behind the walls in my clinic when the first shot was fired, and for a moment, everyone went still, but not long before the cannonball hit our slightly angled outer wall.
It created a small indent before slipping to the side and rolling down the crater’s slope, crushing a mobile shield and its men in the process. The cannon itself, after just one shot, had almost buried itself in the dirt. Any kind of effort they could have made to mount such a weapon would just be ripped apart by the first shot. Instead, they would just cover it in dirt and counterweights so it wouldn’t kick back, and then dig it out after every shot.
The damage might not look like much, but if nothing were done, even our walls would cave in. But the cannon wasn’t the only thing firing. Under the guise of the cannon’s noise, hundreds of firework-like arrows began to be hurled towards the walls from their launchers.
But they never even reached the walls. They had overestimated their own range, and the arrows didn’t even get our men on the battlements; instead, they fired right into the back of their mobile shields and their sluggish tank. The arrows killed a few of their soldiers, and several shields collapsed. But the wooden tank hit it the worst. Several of the crew who were pushing it forward had died. It now began rolling backwards down the crater, crashing into the very arrow launcher that had killed its crew, crushing half of them and killing their crew in the process before coming to a halt by half-falling into one of their trenches. The Ibasans pulled back their forces shortly after.
That was how the first four days had gone, at least from what the men who had been brought into my clinic had told me. I’m not crazy enough to poke my head out. I know my limits. I will just stay in my cozy clinic while they outside can bash their heads in. As for casualties, aside from two unlucky guys who had gotten an arrow to their faces, everyone else was okay. And the few injured we did get were immediately propped up again by yours truly. The Ibasan casualties, on the other hand, must have been at least a hundred. Their dead bodies now lay between the Ibasan camp and our walls, already being picked on by crows who had been following the Ibasan army. They must have learned that whenever the Iberians marched against our walls, there would be a lot of food for them.
I asked my new patients if it was always like this, to which they only replied that this year’s cannon was a bit bigger and that the arrow launchers were new. But aside from that, it was all the same. When I asked them if we would win, they only laughed at me, telling me not to be silly. Unlike me, they had complete trust in their ability to defend the fortress.
After their initial failure on day four, they continued their attack again and again. Throwing soldier after soldier into the meat grinder. By the first week, they had already lost a thousand men, but their assault never entirely stopped, and they would yet have to deploy their main assault. Every hour, their cannon would fire, and a new assault would be launched. So far, there has been little progress. The cannon was so imprecise that they could never hit the same spot twice. Resulting in only minimal damage. The rest of their army, except for managing to kill eleven more of our men, only managed to feed the growing swarm of crows. Our trebuchets smashed their ladder towers and their Hungry falcon carts. Their commanders were sniped from a distance with mounted crossbows. Any attempt to cross over the mount and break through the gate was met with stones and boiling oil.
In other siege Battles, the defenders might have sallied out to surprise the enemy. But since we didn’t face any kind of desperation, there was no need to sally out, especially with most of our elite soldiers missing. For now, the best strategy was to just stay put and defend the walls.
All in all, we did pretty well considering that our most elite forces weren’t present. I must admit that, as surprising as it sounds, Jack could actually be reliable and do a good job.