Section Sixty-Six: Distant Longing (Part One)

A deafening roar echoed through the air as more than ten heavy cannons thundered in rapid succession.

The Secans catapults were instantly blasted into splinters, though the remaining dozens stubbornly continued to hurl massive boulders toward the ramparts. Yet the formidable sturdiness of Banissa exceeded even the Yankees' expectations. Even when struck directly by boulders, the city walls showed no signs of collapsing. At most, the stones bounced off, awkwardly falling back to crush a few Landian soldiers who were leaning over the battlements to fire.

More than half of Secans' remaining catapults were obliterated by cannonballs. These projectiles typically ricocheted upon impact, bouncing erratically across the broad field before the city, posing a severe threat to both personnel and equipment. When cannonballs reached a certain density of offensive coverage, the resulting carnage was staggering.

Naturally, the assault would not halt for this reason. The catapults fought back desperately precisely to suppress the cannon fire from the ramparts and help the ground forces close the distance rapidly. Yet compared to the cannons, the catapults inflicted far less damage and posed a negligible threat to the structure of the walls. Their hurled stone projectiles left dents of varying depths upon the masonry, but failed to inflict fundamental structural damage. The occasional stone that bounced atop the ramparts might injure a few soldiers, but such desperate retaliation—even when managing to strike a cannon barrel—was merely a drop in the ocean compared to their own losses.

Nevertheless, massive waves of coalition soldiers seized the opportunity to rush past the artillery's effective range. While the gun carriages allowed for trajectory adjustments to control the impact points, once the troops advanced too close, no amount of adjustment could eliminate the dead zones beyond the cannons' field of fire. Yet undeniably, within the zone where the artillery could bear, when dozens of cannons roared simultaneously, the intersecting impact of the ricocheting iron balls created an absolute zone of death.

Soldiers who breached the artillery bombardment zone charged with battle cries toward the city walls and gates. Originally, a moat protected the base of the fortress walls, but during the fighting over the preceding few days, the coalition had first cut off its water source and then had their men haul dirt to fill it in completely. Now, the infantry could charge right up to the base of the walls to launch their demolition efforts.

This by no means implied that Banissa was about to fall immediately. On the contrary, perhaps all of this was merely beginning. For even with the moat filled, and even after breaking through the bombardment zone, there remained the muskets and bows waiting atop the ramparts.

It had to be said that shielded by the ramparts, the First Division of the Third Army doubled its lethality. The hail of lead pouring down from the walls inflicted catastrophic casualties upon the coalition troops. The defenders no longer needed any complex three-rank volley tactics; they merely needed to continuously reload, aim, and fire, watching bodies pile up endlessly at the base of the walls. It was precisely through this combination of muskets, cannons, and fortifications that the Third Army's First Division had managed to hold out for six consecutive days, repelling the coalition's assaults wave after wave.

Yet this particular attack was exceptionally ferocious compared to the ones before. With the moat filled, the coalition forces had decided to pull out all the stops.

The shield-bearer legions that had previously driven back Amango and his comrades during the battle outside the city now erected towering square shields, deflecting the bullets and arrows hailing from the ramparts. Other soldiers, clutching small round shields and longswords while wearing round helmets, darted through the gaps in the shield-wall formed by the frontliners, sprinting swiftly to the base of the walls to position scaling ladders and battering rams, beginning to climb or directly ram the gates.

Due to its geographical layout, Banissa featured two dam-gates connected to the river and two heavily fortified castle gates, all of which were exceptionally robust. Even without overhead attacks, the battering rams would require a considerable amount of time to breach them. Moreover, the fortress's perimeter was constructed by linking various older keeps with curtain walls, creating miniature regional defense centers. Each of these nodes was equipped with several cannons and garrisoned by a dedicated contingent of soldiers, forming an interlocking web of fire.

While the shield-bearers absorbed the brunt of the attacks directed at the coalition infantry, casualties spiked dramatically the moment the soldiers broke out of the shield formation and emerged at the foot of the wall. The battering rams were forced to halt after only a few strikes, as the deadly downpour of leaden rain and falling rocks made them suffer bitterly.

The Lott heavy cavalry and even the Secans dragon riders could only pant in frustration outside the artillery zone, watching the spectacle unfold. They were invincible lions in open-field warfare, but their utility in this siege was severely constrained. Only fifty Secans dragon riders had been deployed, out of a total of a mere one hundred; the remaining half stayed behind in Secans to guard against opportunistic moves by the elves. These were specialized cavalrymen mounted on domesticated land-drakes, serving as Secans' trump card and one of their greatest pillars of strength when confronting the elves and rivaling other northern nations.

Precisely because such a force existed, Landia's First Army never dared to launch a decisive battle to turn the tide, remaining restricted to continuous, harassing attacks on the periphery.

Yet for the allied nations, deterring Landia's First Army and preventing them from initiating a decisive showdown was nothing to be proud of, as the failure to capture Banissa thus far had driven the generals to fury. Their prior deployments had successfully achieved most strategic objectives—such as luring the First Division out of Banissa. They had foolishly assumed that seizing Banissa in the aftermath would be effortless, only to find themselves stalled at the foot of these very walls as the seventh day dawned.

"We can wait no longer. Either we stop holding back and commit our ultimate assets—letting those pampered mages appear directly on the battlefield, and petitioning the church priests to aid our soldiers—or we simply bypass Banissa, crush Taria first, and then strike straight at Valencia. Along the way, if that cowardly First Army dares to come out and block us, we will smash them to pieces!" suggested Buzureano, commander of the Cartian vanguard forces.

"Although Taria's defenses are somewhat inferior to Banissa's, their First Army is vastly superior to this Third Army, which is composed mostly of new recruits. We went to great lengths to separate the First Army from Banissa, and now there is only a single division and the local garrison left inside the city. Are you telling me we lack the confidence to swallow even this meager force? Have you not noticed that although their cannons are still firing, the intervals between bombardments are no longer as casual as they were at the beginning?" remarked General Zhukov of the Ross Empire.

Indeed, compared to the unsparing artillery barrage at the outset, the defenders inside the city were now much more prudent with their ammunition. However, it was by no means as Zhukov imagined—that the city had run so short of supplies. Rather, Preslovich had advised Sokaris that the expenditure during the first three days had been excessively wasteful and that preparations for a protracted war must be made. Starting immediately, supplies were to be rationed, and artillery strikes restricted to designated zones, unleashing massive, saturated firepower only when enemy troops entered those sectors to maximize casualties.

Sokaris had adopted this suggestion, ordering the city's armory to begin experimental casting of cannonballs alongside the supplementary production of bullets. Yet because Banissa remained blockaded, manufacturing munitions within the city merely consumed the dwindling inventory of raw materials. Once those reserved stocks were exhausted, ammunition replenishment would cease entirely. Therefore, the fundamental solution remained opening a secure corridor to the rear. However, owing to the coalition's numerical superiority, the First Army possessed no guarantee of victory in open combat; carving out a path to re-establish supply lines to Banissa proved exceedingly difficult.

Amango remained unaware of the respective dilemmas plaguing both sides. He simply and faithfully discharged a soldier's duty, working through wave after wave of gunfire to prevent the enemy from closing in on Banissa. In this bloody war of iron and fire, the young man slowly grew numb to the initial terror. If he had felt a lingering guilt when he first took a life, he no longer paused to ponder the question.

Yet this did not mean his psyche was robust enough to endure it all. In the lulls between combat, whenever the tempo of the assault slowed or temporarily ceased, all the negative emotions surged forth, battering Amango's nerves and making him yearn to scream at the top of his lungs or burst into tears. Why was human-on-human conflict sometimes crueler than wars between different races?

Fortunately, whenever such moments struck, whenever the grey shroud of death enveloped him and locked onto the Grim Reaper's gaze within his own reflection, he could not help but think of the small plush bear left behind in the city's residential quarters. It represented his hope; he needed to survive, he had to survive, for that was the only way he would ever see Cecily again. He could not die. How could he die when blessed by his beloved? How could he bear to disappoint her?

And so, time and time again, he survived.