James was shocked when he saw a stone smash into the spot where he had just been standing. "What's going on?
"Didn't they say the enemy's catapults couldn't shoot as far as ours?
"How did one nearly hit me?"
Before coming to find Capor, James had clearly observed the enemy troops' movements. Although their main force had already reached the foot of the walls, the siege engines marching behind them were still some distance away.
The catapults in particular moved very slowly. Perhaps because they lacked large draft animals, they were pulled by horses and pushed by men, and were still far from the walls.
According to the conclusions Solington and Master Craftsman Sagras had drawn from their earlier observations, they still had some distance to cover before reaching their estimated firing range.
Yet the stones launched by the Barbarians' catapults had clearly struck the walls. James worried that Solington and Sagras might have been wrong in their earlier estimates.
James hurried back to the edge of the wall and sheltered behind the parapet to observe the battlefield. Once he had taken a closer look, he breathed a sigh of relief.
It turned out that only four or five enemy catapults could fire. Most of the others were still inching forward.
Those catapults evidently had not yet reached a suitable firing distance, which meant only those four or five could shoot this far.
James studied those few catapults closely and discovered that they were clearly much taller and larger than the others he had seen before, with substantial changes to their construction.
Both their counterweights and the structure of their frames had been modified. Although James did not understand the exact principles involved, he could clearly tell that these catapults were far more powerful than the Barbarians' other machines.
Capor