"Stand ready!"
The Undead Army cavalrymen, waiting in full readiness, lowered the visors of their mail coifs and took up lances over three meters long. Their attendants then handed them secondary weapons such as maces, armor-piercing picks, and poleaxes, which they hung from their saddles.
The Franks occupying Damascus were renowned for their fine armor. The full plate armor and new-style visored helmets they produced were fashionable rarities among princes and nobles in Baghdad and Ctesiphon.
Traditional Saracen straight swords and Turkic sabers found it difficult to damage such armor, so the Undead Army had specifically increased the proportion of armor-piercing weapons throughout its ranks when facing the Franks.
The Undead Army of the Sasanian Dynasty had inherited the name of the ancient Persian Achaemenid Dynasty, but unlike its predecessor, it had changed from elite infantry into cavalry.
Their so-called "undying" nature came from their vast reserve force. As long as the main Undead Army suffered losses, replacements could be sent in immediately, much like the reserve soldiers of imperial armies.
That was why, despite suffering crushing defeats in Khwarazm, Persia, and Rahba in succession, Bahram had still been able to assign Ali a two-thousand-man Undead Army detachment.
But unlike the Sassanids' heavy cavalry, who could draw replacements from the prosperous urban population, the Undead Army was structured more like the Tatars' Kheshig Army. Its members were all sons of prominent nobles.
Thus, every large-scale loss suffered by this army shook the very foundations of the Sasanian Dynasty.
"Are the enemy sending someone to negotiate?"
That was Ali's first reaction.
It was not that he was stupid; he simply trusted the hunting falcons circling overhead too much.
With so many pairs of eyes watching from the sky, how could the Franks within the city possibly send hundreds or thousands of