Chapter 15 Siege

"This city is not easy to besiege." Outside the eastern gate of Xilotepec City, after carefully observing the width, thickness, and material of the city walls, Xiulote spoke earnestly. Since his last heartfelt talk, Xiulote felt much lighter in his heart and seemed to have grown closer to Ahuizotl.

"Of course, if Xilotepec were easy to conquer and were so close to us, it would have been subjugated and eradicated decades ago; it wouldn't have lasted till today," Ahuizotl said with a smile.

He liked spending time with Xiulote who had no sense of danger. It allowed him to feel an unusual sense of relaxation. "After years of campaigning, all that's left in the north are stubborn rocks."

"Aweit, have you noticed the cross-section of the city walls?" Xiulote continued to study seriously, "Inside it's an amalgam of stone and clay. It doesn't crumble at all despite being eroded by rainwater."

"It should be a binder made of corn ash mortar mixed with lime," Ahuizotl got serious, "I remember seeing the craftsmen use it when I was supervising repairs on the pyramid; it's very expensive."

"If that's the case, then it's almost like glutinous rice mortar; it's much stronger than cob. It's impossible to undermine the foundations of the walls."

"What is glutinous rice? Undermining the foundation?" Ahuizotl asked with a laugh, "Xiulote, why do you have such interesting ideas? Are you planning to hew a city wall nearly ten steps wide with a stone axe?"

Xiulote was at a loss for words, realizing that the Aztecs neither had iron nor copper pickaxes at the moment and were only equipped with easily worn stone and wooden tools.

"So how do we usually besiege a city?" Xiulote asked the high-ranking officer beside him.

"If the city walls are not tall, warriors command conscripts to pile up earth below them and then directly charge over it. The small cities of the Mixtecs to the south are very easy to conquer," Ahuizotl recalled.

"But like now, with the walls being too high and thick, we usually don't attack directly. It's better to lay siege - cutting off water, food, and salt. After a few months, the city will surrender."

"Our army is ten times the size of those inside the city; we could directly scale the walls with ladders, swarming over them like ants."

"Using ladders for a direct assault causes too many casualties. Village militia are almost useless in a direct assault; their morale is too low to make it to the top. Using warriors would mean far too many dead and injured. In the face of stones or javelins thrown from the ramparts, even an Eagle Warrior is as vulnerable as a village soldier. Plus, the enemy's civilians can also help defend, serving almost as half a conscript."

"Don't we have an experienced group of fighters? Two thousand Jaguar warriors and six thousand veteran fighters swarm up the walls like ants; surely the militia on the ramparts won't be able to hold them off. At most, a thousand or so warriors might die before we break through the city."

Ahuizotl turned his head and looked at Xiulote with an incredulous expression, "Have you lost your mind? Using Jaguar and Eagle Warriors to siege the city? They are all military nobility, the core force in the suppression of states by the Alliance. This is not a nation war with Tlaxcala or Tarasco, it's a City-State subjugation. If hundreds of military nobility die in such a City-State war, the King would have to stop waging wars and prepare to return home to deal with rebellions instead."

Xiulote paused to think, weighing the analogy. If the Polish king lost five hundred Noble Knights in a battle against the Crimean Tatars... well, forget that thought.

Xiulote continued to observe the city walls. The warriors around him started to howl loudly, intimidating the enemies within the city. They beat their shields with their war clubs, producing a fierce pounding sound. The conscripted soldiers behind them also began to roar. The city walls, close by, went into a brief panic and then settled down under the firm control of the nobility and the priests.

In this Medieval battlefield devoid of cannons, counterweight trebuchets, stone-throwing machines, and even lacking skilled archers for long-range pressure, the attackers had to endure the unrestrained firepower from the city walls. Attacking a strong city became an extremely difficult task.

Relying on village warriors with low morale and insufficient training was impossible for a forceful attack on a large City-State defended by tens of thousands. And the elite City-State Warriors, the core strength of a City-State, could not be rashly wasted.

So, the most common strategy was still to lay siege.

"Do you have any other ideas?" Ahuizotl asked curiously.

"The soil here doesn't have much rock content, perhaps we can dig a tunnel and then directly breach the city from underneath."

"Digging tunnels? You mean to say to cut a path underground, passing beneath the city walls? It sounds feasible." Aweit played the scenario out in his mind. "How deep would we need to dig? How wide should the tunnel be? How do we determine our direction underground? How long could we dig with a stone shovel in one day? And how can we avoid being detected by the enemy?"

"Well..." Xiulote thought for a moment, certain he had never read a book with specific instructions on how to dig tunnels. "We can experiment with the details. We could also ask a miner for advice."

So, Aweit filed the suggestion away in his mind for later. He began to take things more seriously, "Is there any other way?"

"Perhaps we could design a simple catapult. As long as its range exceeds that of the archers on the city walls, and it can hurl stones weighing several pounds against the walls." Xiulote remembered the classic designs from countless games.

"I know about hurling stones, but what's a 'car'?"

"..." Xiulote found it somewhat hard to describe, "It's something with two or four wheels that can be pushed or pulled along."

"What are wheels?"

"..." Frustrated, Xiulote explained the shape and purpose of wheels with gestures and words.

Quickly, Aweit got it, "So, it's like the toys made by the Maya. I've seen them in the market at the capital city. They can be played with on the plaza under the Great Temple but once you leave the city, with all the mountains and trees, where can wheels be faster than people?"

"If we had enough metal tools, we could cut down the trees, then build stone paths between the mountains and forests. With the use of wheeled carts, the city-states could communicate quickly, and the effective governance of the Alliance could extend to Vastec, Mixtec, and even farther to the Zapotecs."

"That's a good idea. Roads do expand a nation's governing territory. But pushing carts on wheels, aside from being able to carry more things, surely wouldn't be faster than running."

Indeed, there were no beasts of burden in Central America at the moment. Perhaps we could go to North America and domesticate some bison, or bring llamas from South America to pull the carts? Xiulote's thoughts drifted wildly.

"So how should the catapult be designed?" Aweit, ever practical, steered the conversation back to siege warfare.

"Let me try to draw it." Xiulote picked up a stick and squatted on the damp earth to draw, with Aweit looking on. One draped in a Priest's robe of the Tengu and the other cloaked in a Commander's cloak of the Sun Stone, the two high nobility were engrossed in their research, undisturbed by the warriors who came and went.

"Complex trebuchets are definitely out of the question. The Romans seem to have had torsion catapults? Torsion, torsion... that sounds like it requires sinew or some sort of elastic rope, which we don't have and can't make."

"We need to think more primitively. Let's consider the primitive catapults Cao Cao had in the era of the Three Kingdoms—I remember seeing it in the old 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms'. It should have a central support, with a swiveling lever on top, the short end pulled with a rope by men, and the long end hurling stones."

After striving to remember for a while, Xiulote eventually sketched the simplest form of a manual catapult, unfortunately not having studied the construction of catapults in depth despite reading so many time-travel novels.

Aweit, observing the abstract drawings on the ground, pondered carefully, imagining it in his mind. "The short end drives the long end, which hurls the stones—it seems indeed feasible. This process is somewhat like a sling, which also spins to throw stones."

"Xiulote, using a sling takes years of training to ensure accuracy—how will this catapult ensure precision?"

"We should probably standardize the design, then use a fixed configuration"—Xiulote recollected the simplistic descriptions from novels. "But to know the exact details of how to do it, we'd still have to try. Maybe we should ask a carpenter?"

While the two were enthusiastically discussing, suddenly they saw the city gates in front of them open. A Priest, adorned with a feather crown and wearing a rare black-and-white cape, walked slowly towards the camp, commanding the attention of tens of thousands of City-State Warriors, holding high a scepter as he emerged from Xilotepec City.