The city of traitors II

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-third person pov fourth-sixth moon 286 AC

Although outside the city walls there was an army preparing for the siege, digging trenches and building palisades to completely isolate it from all land routes, inside the city walls there was a tense calm.

Maritime trade continued, so the day-to-day life of the city went on, although many of the jobs that were carried out outside the walls could no longer be performed due to the presence of their enemies.

The city guards were in a rather complicated situation. Although they had prepared to face a siege, they doubted that the walls, built several decades ago, could hold up. Even if they had been well maintained, they had never been tested against siege weapons.

Nevertheless, the whole city was preparing for a siege, gathering food in the granaries and preparing everything necessary to resist until the relief force arrived from one of the other free cities. Citizens prepared bandages, helped with the preparation of arrows, collaborated with the maintenance of the guards' armor and weapons, and gathered large quantities of rocks in case an assault on the walls occurred.

However, they were somewhat surprised that at no time had the siege weapons they feared so much been used, and the men outside the walls acted quite disorganized. Although their siege camp was very well built, ensuring total control of the city, the men guarding the area seemed like novices.

Constantly, shouts could be heard coming from the siege camp, where they had several of their soldiers tied to logs and their officers beat them with a steel rod.

It was common to see much of the siege force gather to conduct training. All this was observed by the guards in the high towers of the city, leaving them very intrigued by the actions of their besiegers.

Several days passed watching their besiegers train while they waited for help from another city. An attack from the city was ruled out, as if it went wrong, it could provoke their enemies to use their siege weapons.

There was one more attempt to end this siege with diplomacy, but the fate of the diplomat was the same as the first. When everyone was waiting for the response from the enemy commander, they saw how the trebuchet mechanism activated and launched the diplomat against the city like ammunition, turning him into a bloody pulp upon hitting the walls.

The governor felt secure since, with an army at the gates, as long as he could continue trading, he could obtain everything necessary to resist for several years if needed.

Terrible was the day when news arrived that a military fleet from the city of Tyrosh was approaching. This caused real alarm in the city, quickly provoking a massive attempt by the inhabitants to board some of the commercial ships in the port to flee the siege.

The merchants who owned the ships sold the cargo space as if it were accommodations worthy of kings, allowing only the wealthiest group in the city to escape before the Tyrosh fleet began the naval blockade.

Forty-five war galleys were the ships that had completely isolated them. The siege was sealed, and now every passing day favored the besiegers since no more resources or food would arrive by sea.

Any merchant approaching the area quickly found themselves surrounded, and their ship was seized by Tyrosh if it belonged to one of the other free cities in conflict. If it belonged to another city with which Tyrosh had no issues, they were diverted.

The city governor, after the naval blockade was established, anxiously counted the days, waiting for reinforcements to end the siege. But on one of the many days he counted as uneventful, hell broke loose in his city.

Suddenly, all the siege engines began launching barrels toward the city. These barrels contained a kind of liquid mixture that quickly began to spread through the city, as the Tyrosh trebuchets were launching them by the dozens every hour.

For the besieged, it was very obvious that the mixture was flammable, and they did everything possible to clean it up, but it was very thick, making their task difficult. They also had to avoid the planks flying in all directions when some of the barrels crashed into a structure.

While all the city's inhabitants helped with the cleanup, the trebuchets' ammunition changed, launching fire-wrapped projectiles. They didn't have to wait long for the incendiary ammunition to finally hit the target, igniting the mixture that had been thrown before and generating a chain reaction as the fire began to spread uncontrollably.

The city's inhabitants tried to extinguish the fire with water, but to their surprise, the water did nothing to control the uncontrollable fire spreading through the city. In some cases, it seemed that the water intensified the flames.

The besiegers, observing how the city was burning, continued bombarding with more barrels of Greek fire mixture. The fire completely consumed wooden structures in seconds, while stone structures turned into ovens, burning the inhabitants who sought protection from the fire.

Buildings collapsed, trapping people underneath, who then died suffocated by the smoke that covered the entire city.

Much of the city was burning, and the most affected area was the granaries and warehouses, as that was where most of the barrels had fallen.

Several hours later, the fire was finally dying down, and the survivors began to realize all the damage that had happened. In a matter of hours, the thriving city had turned into ruins covered in ash.

Finally, they could assess the damage, and most of the city had burned. Mainly, all the food in the granaries had been destroyed, leaving the defenders without the most important thing to withstand a siege.

Thousands had died because of the fire, either trapped or by the multiple buildings that collapsed, crushing hundreds of people.

While the besieged lamented everything that had happened, the besiegers simply returned to their routine. At no time did they take advantage of the distraction, as the Prussian commanders wanted to continue taking advantage of the situation to keep training their recruits.

The next day, the besieged continued cleaning the debris and trying to repair what could be done with the few usable materials left, only to receive the news that the enemy army was forming outside the city walls with ladders.

The captain of the garrison called everyone who could fight or help on the walls, filling them with guards, as well as city inhabitants and their children, to throw stones at anyone attempting to scale the walls.

For hours, the soldiers stood formed without moving at all, only to return to the camp without starting the assault. After this tense situation, the defenders would have liked to eat something, but food was scarce due to their reserves being destroyed.

This situation repeated for days, preventing the defenders from burning their dead, which began to generate a small plague in the city that slowly consumed them.

Two weeks passed without anything happening, no attempt by the besiegers to quickly end the siege, as they knew time favored them with a famine spreading, forcing the inhabitants to hunt rats and eat domestic animals while the plague silently killed.

This dark situation had everyone with low morale, but finally, there was good news: the city of Myr had sent help.

On the horizon, an army bearing the colors of the city of Myr could be seen advancing. There was great jubilation among the defenders, but the feeling of happiness was short-lived when they saw that the relief force was considerably outnumbered.

Since the news arrived that the city of Tyrosh was punishing the traitorous cities, many of the rebellious governors again recognized Tyrosh as their lord to avoid being the next. When the siege finally ended, the governors were quickly replaced by Prussian governors who began applying conscription in their cities, making the siege camp have almost sixty thousand men between recruits and the personal retinue of the dictator of Tyrosh, who had arrived days earlier to receive the Myr mercenaries.

Where there was much hope was at sea. Although the navy of Tyrosh had grown to sixty-five galleys, it faced more than a hundred galleys from Myr. For the defenders, it didn't matter if the victory was at sea or on land; any victory would allow them to escape.

Both battles began almost simultaneously. The army of Tyrosh formed, leaving several thousand maintaining the siege so that no assault from the defenders could occur.

On land, Tyrosh presented a wall of pikes against the mercenaries of Myr. The novice recruits were struggling to contain the mercenaries' onslaught, but the difficulty of penetrating the pike formations helped the recruits hold the line.

On the right flank, the cavalry was fighting, but the superiority of the Prussian knights with their plate armor practically destroyed the mercenary cavalry in the first clash, thanks to the advantage of their long hollow lances. At the same time, the Dothraki were flanking the mercenaries, using their bows with incredible precision.

At sea, both navies positioned themselves for combat. Five war galleys stood out from the rest for being longer, more robust, with more sailors, and steel-plated prows.

The Tyrosh navy took a crescent formation, leaving the five galleys in the center, while Myr spread out using their numbers to try to surround the Tyrosh navy in case they attempted to flee.

Besides the numerical difference, Tyrosh used free rowers, while Myr had only slave rowers in their war galleys.

When their rowers began to row, both fleets prepared to collide with each other. But before the rams could be used, the five galleys began to launch fire from their siphons, quickly turning the surrounding galleys into large funeral pyres.

The galleys of Myr broke formation to avoid coming within reach of the flamethrowers, but at the same time, they split in two, allowing the rest of the Tyrosh navy to begin encircling them, while the galleys with the siphons continued to set fire to everything that came within range.

The naval battle was quickly dominated by the Tyrosh navy, although one of the galleys with siphons caught fire due to a sudden change in the wind. However, the sailors managed to control the fire using sand and vinegar to extinguish it.

On land, the mercenary cavalry had been forced to retreat, leaving the mercenary infantry ready to receive the final blow. The recruits had been the anvil, and now the knights and Dothraki were the hammer, charging against the mercenaries who had been winning most of the time and pushing back the pikemen of Tyrosh.

Everything ended in a rout of the mercenaries, fleeing in all directions to avoid the Dothraki who pursued them. A group of mercenaries tried to flee to the city walls, hoping the defenders would open the gates for them.

However, the gates remained closed. Even with the mercenaries' shouts begging for them to be opened, they did not budge.

The city defenders watched as a hundred knights with distinctive Prussian gothic armor were led by someone wearing Valyrian steel armor. This giant, covered in the finest steel, began to massacre the mercenaries trying to escape, cutting several in half with a single cut or turning their enemies' skulls into pulp with a single punch.

Although the defenders threw rocks at him, he dodged them, and if they hit him, it seemed to have no effect.

All the mercenaries were massacred under the city walls, while the other soldiers looted the dead and their supply carts.

At sea, a significant part of Myr's fleet escaped, but others were not so lucky, being captured or set on fire.

In a single day, all the city's hopes had been destroyed.

The siege continued. The defenders watched as their enemies kept growing in number.

Days passed, and the food was gone. The plague only grew. The city guards launched an attack against the governor, delivering him in chains to their besiegers and opening the gates as a sign of surrender.

But their surrender was rejected, and they were forced to return to the city. Everyone still alive within the walls had lost the will to live.

The next day, the defenders woke up to the loud crash of their walls collapsing. The undermining done by the sappers was finished, causing several parts of the city walls to crumble.

Finally, the Prussian knights entered the city through the collapsed walls, completely ignoring that the gates were open. They captured all the survivors after hours of exhaustive searching and conducted a lottery to choose the five lucky ones who would live to tell the story.

After selecting the winners, the rest were massacred and set on fire, creating a great mountain of burning bodies.

The survivors were released to tell the story wherever they fled, and orders were given for all buildings to be demolished and the walls destroyed, leaving only rubble, as a message that this was the fate of traitors.

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Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.

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I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.

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