Militia

Giulio's voice came from nearby. "How does it feel?"

Vitus lifted his visor and replied with a smile. "Not bad. With this suit of plate armor protecting me, I don't have to worry about enemy bows and crossbows. Thank you for your generosity."

At eight in the morning, the battle officially began. More than five hundred archers and crossbowmen formed a loose line and marched to within a hundred meters of the city walls. Then they propped up shields the size of doors with wooden poles, took cover behind them, and fired at the defenders on the walls.

Things went just as Giulio had predicted. The militia were in high spirits, trading shots with the mercenaries using bows and crossbows. One man even grabbed a hand cannon. He gripped the wooden shaft at its rear with his left hand and held a slow match in his right, carefully using it to ignite the gunpowder.

Bang!

With a tremendous roar, orange-red flames burst from the muzzle. It made quite a racket, but the militiaman didn't hit the enemy. Instead, his captain chewed him out.

"Idiot! Don't use a hand cannon unless the enemy gets within ten paces!"

At this stage, hand cannons had no stock, trigger, or other such parts. Shooters couldn't brace them against their shoulders to aim, so their accuracy was abysmal. They were only suitable for shooting heavily armored knights at close range.

Memories of matchlocks flashed through Vitus's mind. He didn't offer any unnecessary advice, but continued to crouch behind the battlements, observing this midsized siege.

The fighting lasted half an hour. The besiegers had probably gotten a sense of the defenders' numbers and equipment, and one by one, they withdrew from the battle. For the rest of the day, the Noose Mercenary Group made no attack. They were busy felling trees and using the lumber to build siege equipment.

That evening, Giulio invited Vitus to dinner.

Vitus reckoned that over the next few days, the attackers would focus on making ladders and battering rams, then launch a probing assault. If they still couldn't take the city, the sappers would begin digging tunnels, while the carpenters built more time-consuming siege towers and counterweight trebuchets.

"Digging tunnels?" Giulio asked curiously, setting down his fork. "Have the Ottomans used that tactic?"

"Of course. The Ottomans used every method they could to breach Constantinople. During the siege, we buried pottery jars in key areas along the inside of the walls. If you put your ear to one, you could clearly hear picks striking the earth far underground, which let us figure out where the enemy tunnels were.

"Then we sent sappers to dig counter-tunnels, where they could kill enemy sappers in hand-to-hand combat. Or we'd flood the tunnels, burn sulfur..."

Hearing about that enormous battle, Giulio was shaken to the core. If Florence had faced a siege on that scale, it would probably have fallen long ago.

The next day.

Outside the city, noise and clamor filled the air. Most of the mercenaries were felling trees under the craftsmen's direction, while a few were allowed to leave. They split into more than a dozen squads and headed for nearby villages to search for food, livestock, and cloth.

European armies in this era lacked a supply system, and looting was commonplace. One after another, black columns of smoke rose in the distance. Vitus remained calm, while Giulio's furious roars echoed in his ears.

"My vineyard—I just bought it! A thousand florins, gone just like that! Damn mercenaries!"

Giulio wasn't the only one. Some of the militiamen were cursing up a storm too. Vitus could understand only a few Italian words, such as "olive tree," "fig tree," and "pasture."

Accompanied by the defenders' curses, they endured the second day in the howling cold wind.

At night, a faint red glow appeared in the distant sky. The Noose Mercenary Group's looting spree continued. For mercenaries, it was the activity they looked forward to most.

Vitus returned to his lodgings and sighed to himself. "That's war for you. In a brief moment, it can destroy years of hard work. Bandits comb a place like a comb; soldiers rake it like a sieve. The Noose Mercenary Group is half army, half bandits. This region probably won't recover for ten years."

On the morning of the third day, Vitus climbed the steps to the city wall. A column had appeared on the northern horizon once again. It boasted more than a thousand mercenaries, followed by three enormous bombards. Each bombard was hauled by eight heavy draft horses, crawling slowly along the road.

This was bad!

The cannons would save the mercenaries the time it would take to build trebuchets. Pistoia's walls were nothing special and couldn't withstand repeated bombardment by heavy siege guns. They probably wouldn't hold out for long.

Soon, Giulio found Vitus. "Sir, did the Ottomans use cannons when they besieged a city? How did you deal with them?"

"Constantinople had two sets of walls. The inner wall was tall and sturdy, so the enemy's cannons and trebuchets couldn't break through the defenses. But Pistoia's stone walls are different."

Vitus's expression grew grave. Constantinople's inner wall was about five meters thick, with enough room on top to mount Serpent Cannons. Here, the stone walls were only two meters thick, and their tops weren't suitable for mounting cannons. They could only take the enemy's blows.

While the two were talking, mercenaries outside the city began building gun emplacements with pickaxes, following their commander's orders. Giulio was so anxious that he unconsciously addressed Vitus as "Your Highness."

"Your Highness, is there really nothing we can do?"

Vitus breathed out a plume of cold air and stroked his chin, thinking it over. "Your Serpent Cannons are the same model as the ones the Venetians sold us. I'm familiar with their ballistic properties. Perhaps we can use 'bracketing fire' to destroy the enemy's siege guns."

"Good. I'll have the merchants in my caravan follow your orders. If this works, I'll reward you handsomely afterward."

Vitus didn't refuse the offer. Instead, he lowered his voice. "My identity is sensitive. To avoid unnecessary trouble, please call me Anthony Doukas."

Next, he raised his thumb toward the city outskirts and measured the distance between himself and the gun emplacements.

"Two hundred meters. Within range."

Then Vitus climbed to the top of a tower and surveyed the terrain inside the city from above. He took out his notebook and quickly sketched and revised his plans with a charcoal pencil he had made himself. At last, he found a suitable open space.

He closed his notebook and ran to Giulio's warehouse.

Eight Serpent Cannons stood there, their barrels cast from copper ingots, with the foundry workers' marks still stamped on the breeches. Vitus had the maids quickly make several small flags, then led the merchants in moving the cannons to the open space.

Using nearby landmarks as reference points, Vitus aimed the muzzles in specific directions and propped up each breech with five wooden wedges.

Then he turned to a clergyman who spoke Latin and asked him to translate word for word:

"I'll direct your fire from the tower on the city wall. Listen carefully. As soon as I wave a black flag..."

Vitus repeated the meanings of the various signals until his mouth went dry. Once he was sure everything was in order, he hefted his heavy suit of plate armor and trudged back to the tower on the city wall, panting.

Outside the city, the three siege cannons had reached their assigned positions. A large group of artillerymen were hauling stone shot and barrels of gunpowder, making all the necessary preparations.