The scene before them was both anticipated and terrifying for the sentries in Alubarna.
He looked forward to no longer being on edge and living in fear, but he was terrified that there were far more people on the other side than he had imagined.
The northern horizon was no longer flat; a dark, oppressive tide was surging in, spreading from the gravelly wasteland all the way to the eastern slopes of the sand dunes, its width outrageously wide.
The front row has already entered the theoretical range of the catapult, while the back row is still blending into the horizon and twilight.
The Rapier Sun Flag led the way, followed by the mercenaries' short spear flags, the Sand Ant Gang's double scorpion flags, and many more colorful flags he had never seen before, one after another, forming a surging sea of cloth in the dry evening breeze.
The torches had not yet been lit, but the metallic reflections already stretched across the twilight. Spear tips, blades, musket barrels, and the cast-iron hubs of siege cannons—countless tiny points of light densely covered the entire plain, like sparks flying across a red-hot iron plate.
The sentry leaned his spear against the wall and grabbed the binoculars from his chest.
His fingers trembled as he adjusted the focus; the image through the lens was clearer than the naked eye. Fresh leather strips were tied to the short spears of the mercenaries in the front row—a pre-battle preparation to prevent their hands from getting bloodied and slippery.
In the central formation, Charles's regular troops had changed into uniform gray-yellow desert robes, marching in neat steps and in silence, a stark contrast to the noisy militia on both sides.
Among the militiamen were men carrying siege ladders they had just seized from the armory; the iron hooks on the ladders were still swaying in the moonlight.
He put down his binoculars, his Adam's apple bobbing several times.
He opened his mouth, but the first sound didn't come out; his throat was choked with fear.
He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and roared six words towards the signal tower inside the city wall with all his might.
"They're here! They're here!"
The horns on the command towers sounded at the same instant, deep and long, one after another, from the north tower to the south tower, from the outer city to the inner city, from the city walls to the royal palace.
All the soldiers still eating dinner on the city wall simultaneously dropped their bowls and chopsticks, rushed to the battlements, and then froze, just like the sentry.
Some people drew the waves of the Sandora River on their chests to pray for the river god's protection; some gripped the butts of their rifles so tightly they creaked; some turned and ran wildly toward the steps inside the city wall, whether to defend or to escape, it was unclear.
The walls of Alubarna withstood countless attacks over the centuries; no army ever breached these sandstone walls.
But this city had never seen anything like it before.
Eighty thousand men, a full eighty thousand men. Alubarna's entire army only numbered a mere twenty thousand.
Wolof appeared on the main tower, the highest point of the city wall, when the horn sounded its third note.
He wasn't wearing royal robes, but rather an old Desert Combat Uniform with the Nefertari Royal Family's Sun Emblem pinned to his chest.
The sword at his waist was the same one he had used when defending against the sand bandits last time. There were three deep scratches on the scabbard, and the blade had been re-sharpened, gleaming coldly in the twilight.
He stood in front of the tower railing, his hands gripping the stone railing, looking down.
The old king did not speak, but his fingers clenched so tightly on the stone railing that his knuckles turned white. He turned around and gave his first order to the messenger behind him.
"Light the beacon fires! The entire city is placed on wartime alert! All reserve troops are to the city walls."
Beacon fires were lit one after another on the four corner towers of the Alubarna city walls, the orange flames soaring into the sky in the twilight, turning the entire city wall into a burning crown.
On the city streets, the sounds of horseshoes and military boots clattering over the cobblestones created a deafening roar.
The woman dragged the child out of bed and stuffed him into the cellar; the old man sealed the shop door shut piece by piece; the reserve soldiers hurriedly embraced their wives and children at the alley entrance, then grabbed their weapons leaning against the wall and ran wildly toward the city wall.
The palace guards' arquebusiers took their positions behind the battlements, and the gunners tightened the recoil ropes securing their cannons to the last lock.
The rebels sounded their first war drum as night fell completely.
Dozens of drums were struck simultaneously, the sound coming from different positions in the rebel ranks. The rhythms were not uniform, but the combined volume created a thunderous roar that shattered the night sky.
Before the drumbeats had even finished, the torches were lit.
Eighty thousand torches were lit on the same plain. Looking down from the city wall, the entire northern land seemed to have been suddenly turned upside down, revealing the scorching magma deep underground.
In the center of the inferno, the iron hooks of the siege ladder reflected countless flickering points of light, the cast-iron muzzles of the siege cannons slowly rose in the Kakkō, the gunners shouted commands as they pulled the traction ropes, and the wooden wheels of the cannon carriages crushed the gravel with a continuous cracking sound.
Charles stood at the forefront of the central army formation, riding an iron-grey sand horse with his command sword hanging from the saddle.
He drew his sword from its sheath, raised it high above his head, and the tip of the sword drew an arc in the torchlight, pointing towards the north gate of Alubarna.
His voice was hoarse, but without a trace of hesitation.
"Battle cannons, fire!"
The roar of siege cannons drowned out the war drums.
Dozens of cast-iron siege cannons fired simultaneously, their muzzles spewing orange-red fireballs that left more than a dozen blinding trajectories in the night sky.
The first volley of shells struck the middle section of the northern city wall of Alubarna, the roar of exploding rocks and the shockwave arriving simultaneously.
When the sandstone wall was hit, the entire structure shattered, and the broken stones rolled down the outer side of the city wall, crashing onto the dry moat below and kicking up dust several meters high.
After the third salvo, a section of the battlements that had been hit by a series of bullets collapsed completely, revealing a gap.
Several defenders on the city wall who were unable to dodge in time were knocked down by the falling stones, but the reserve troops behind them had already rushed up under artillery fire to pile sandbags into the breach.
The cannons on the city wall opened fire in return at the same time.
Alubarna's gunners, positioned on high ground, fired their first volley precisely at a point less than two kilometers in front of the rebel siege artillery position.
A shell struck an ammunition truck that was advancing from the flank, causing the entire truck to explode. The Kakkō briefly illuminated half the battlefield, and fragments of the siege gun's wheel hub and broken axle were thrown into the air by the shockwave.
Charles raised his sword again.
"Second echelon, advance using ladders!"
Militiamen carrying siege ladders charged out from both flanks.
Their formation was far less orderly than that of the central army, but they were numerous. At the forefront were the Sand Ant Gang, while Dorovich personally supervised the battle from a sand wagon behind them.
The iron hooks of the ladders slashed in the torchlight as the siege soldiers bent low, bracing themselves against arrows raining down from the city walls as they ran, their feet treading on stones shattered by artillery fire. For every one who fell, someone else would rise from behind to carry the other end of the ladder.
The first batch of ladders were placed on the crenellations of the city wall, and the iron hooks bit into the sandstone, making a sharp metallic scraping sound.
The rebel infantry began swarming up the city walls, scimitars in their mouths, their hands gripping the rungs of ladders as they climbed.
The soldiers guarding the city wall poured the prepared boiling oil down from the crenellations.
Boiling oil was poured onto the ladder and the people, and screams and the bubbling sound of the boiling oil rang out at the same time.
The rebel soldier on the first ladder was doused with boiling oil and fell backward from mid-air, landing on his comrades who were waiting in line to climb the ladder below.
Immediately afterward, a second pot of boiling oil was poured down. The wooden rungs of the ladder were soaked in the oil and ignited upon contact with the fire. The entire ladder burned into a vertical pillar of fire. The iron hooks scraped several deep marks on the sandstone before the ladder broke and crashed to the ground with its burning remains.
But more ladders came up from the wing supports.
Charles's tactics were clear: the central army would draw artillery fire from the front, while the militia on both flanks would use their numerical superiority to wear down the defenders' defenses on the city walls.
Once a few siege ladders establish a bridgehead on the city wall, the main mercenary force behind them can open up the situation.
The battle that unfolded on the city walls was far more brutal than any artillery duel.
The first rebel soldier to scale the city wall was simultaneously stabbed by three scimitars of the defending soldiers, and fell over the crenellations without even uttering a sound.
The second one to charge forward pierced the abdomen of a defender with a broken spear, then had half his head blown off by a nearby musketeer who pressed it against his temple.
The battle on the city wall had no formation, no commander; everyone was simply swinging their swords at the nearest enemy.
One of the garrison's Teuchi, having run out of ammunition and unable to reload, turned his rifle upside down and used it as a metal rod to strike the face of an oncoming rebel. The iron butt of the rifle cracked the man's jawbone. He himself was stabbed through the shoulder by another rebel from the side and, leaning against the crenellation, was still wildly slashing with his broken knife.
A rebel soldier was halfway up a ladder when he was hit in the face by a sandbag thrown from the city wall. He fell down with the sandbag, and the sandbag broke when it hit the ground. The sand mixed with blood splattered at the base of the city wall.
The artillery duel between the two sides turned into a war of attrition.
Charles's siege artillery fired several more salvos, blasting a wider breach in the middle of the north wall. Under cover of artillery fire, the rebel engineers rushed forward, attempting to widen the gap.
The defending artillery concentrated its fire on suppressing the rebel artillery positions. One gunner's arm was pierced by flying sawdust. He pulled the sawdust out of his flesh and threw it away, continuing to load the gun with one hand until he collapsed beside the gun carriage due to blood loss and was carried away by his comrades.
Ammunition supply soldiers ran up and down the city wall steps, and people fell every time they went back and forth. No one walked down; they were either carried down or kicked aside and forced to run back up.
The fighting lasted from night until dawn. More than a dozen siege ladders were burned at the foot of the city wall, and the corpses piled up at the base of the wall, forming a new slope.
The rebels in some areas dared not climb any higher, but Charles's detachment drove them back.
The defenders also suffered heavy casualties. Hours of continuous fighting left the gunners unable to lift their arms, the artillerymen's eyes red and swollen from the gunpowder smoke, and the reserves on the city wall were wiped out several times. Even the cooks and clerks were pulled up onto the city wall.
In the darkest hour before dawn, Charles finally deployed Fisher's mercenaries.
This group of men had been observing the battle from the rear, conserving their strength, and were now being deployed to the widest section of the breach in the city wall.
Mercenaries, armed with short spears and heavy shields, are far more effective in combat than militia.
As they charged through the breach, a newly reinforced reserve force was forced back by the dense spear thrusts, and for a moment the entire central section of the northern city wall teetered on the brink of collapse.
On the main tower, Wolof pulled out the last reserve force's command arrow and held it in his hand. He glanced at the battle situation below the city wall. If he didn't use this reserve force soon, the breach would be secured by the mercenaries, and once the city wall was breached, there would be almost no chance of winning the street fighting inside the city.