Karl passed one bastion after another. These deadly angles, which he had personally helped design and supervised the construction of, were like the fangs of some colossal beast thrust out into the night, silently pointing at the invading enemy.
He reached out and ran a hand over the cold, rough wall, yet an odd feeling inevitably rose in his heart—doubt.
He doubted whether Harald truly had the ability to push the flames of war beneath this main city wall. The outermost line of defense alone, combining trenches, earthen walls, bastions, and artillery batteries, had already exacted a grievous price from the Sauron, slowing their advance to a crawl.
That thick, five-meter-high earthen wall, built to follow the terrain and paired with dense Cannon fire and intersecting fields of fire, was enough in Karl's eyes to turn any infantry charge lacking effective heavy artillery and tight organization into suicide.
He came to a battlement facing due north and bent down to look below.
Beneath the city wall lay no direct stretch of ground, but another deep moat. Deepened and widened from the original terrain, it was over five meters deep and more than ten meters wide. Its bottom was likewise packed with sharpened wooden stakes and iron caltrops, while cold standing water glimmered faintly in the darkness.
Even if the Sauron miraculously broke through the earthen wall, how would they cross this chasm and set scaling ladders against the main city wall, which stood over ten meters high and was riddled with firing slits? And while crossing the moat and climbing the wall, how many volleys of Cannon fire, storms of arrows, and rolling logs and falling stones would they be exposed to?
Beyond the moat lay the outline of the first earthen wall. Even in the darkness, he could make