As Shikele's order reached the front lines once again, all Barbarian forces began withdrawing and ceased their siege of the city, except for those Iron Bone Tribe officers determined to make a desperate gamble and the troops under their command. This included even the cannon-fodder units made up of herdsmen and slaves.
At this point, those desperate men were completely stranded. Quite a few of their troops were still trapped atop the city walls. Though only two or three hundred men were involved—a negligible number compared to the total—they were all elites.
But their allied forces had already begun halting the siege and organizing a retreat one after another. If they kept fighting, they simply could not hold out on their own.
The defenders on the walls noticed this as well. Seeing the Barbarians begin to withdraw, they knew that their plan to wear down the Barbarian forces was no longer effective.
Under Saster's command, the defenders simply intensified their encirclement and suppression of the Barbarian troops trapped on the walls.
Very soon, the Barbarian forces that had yet to withdraw discovered that they could no longer send reinforcements up the walls. Without the cooperation of allied troops, their siege forces were blanketed by the defenders' ranged fire during the climb, leaving them no chance to reach the top.
The troops on the walls also found that the defenders' pressure had grown stronger. The Pikemen and Heavy Crossbowmen surrounding them became more numerous, the rain of arrows flew ever more densely, and the Sword-and-Shield Soldiers re-formed their battle formations and began pressing forward, relentlessly squeezing their ranks.
In this way, they found it harder and harder to keep their footing on the walls. Barbarians at the edge were shoved off from time to time, and their screams threw the remaining