My planet is infested with Goblins

Chapter 78: The Other Walls

The eastern assault did not stop completely after Grand Marshal Rakhar Veyr ordered the failed attacks through the shattered gate suspended.

Viridian soldiers still held both footholds on the battlements, and the broken entrance remained packed with shield-bearing goblins prepared to prevent any Caldris sortie from retaking the ground outside.

What changed was the pressure. No fourth assault company entered the killing ground beneath the gatehouse. The goblins already on the eastern wall stopped attempting large advances and instead maintained enough activity to keep the defenders in place.

To the humans inside Eastwatch, it appeared that the eastern offensive had finally reached its limit. They had lost the outer gate, but they still held the passage beyond it. They had failed to throw the goblins from the battlements, but they had contained both footholds.

For the first time since dawn, the eastern defenders were given a few moments in which they could have some retrieve and they may had survived the worst of the attack.

Rakhar intended to let them believe this fantasy.

He remained at the forward command position, studying Eastwatch while the messengers he had dispatched at the end of the previous assault disappeared toward the northern, southern, and western camps.

Those formations had participated only lightly in the battle so far. They had maintained the encirclement, guarded roads, and demonstrated enough strength to prevent the humans from ignoring them completely, but most of the siege equipment there remained behind the forward positions.

Their catapults had ammunition stacked beside them. Ballistas sat under coverings or faced the walls without firing continuously. Siege towers waited on prepared paths while assault companies remained rested.

Varek followed Rakhar’s gaze around the city. "You pulled us away from the one place where we could possibly make a breakthrough. "

"I stopped sending soldiers to their unproductive death."

"The defenders will think they stopped us and increases their morale."

Rakhar nodded. "Good, let them be complacentfor once."

Varek glanced toward the eastern wall, where Caldris troops were reforming around the gatehouse and central wall tower. "And when they start moving troops elsewhere?"

"They will not have enough time."

The first reply came from the north.

A Viridian horn sounded somewhere beyond Eastwatch’s northern wall, so distant from the eastern command position that the sound arrived thinly over the battlefield. Another answered it. Then a third sounded from the south.

A western horn joined them moments later.

The signal traveled around Eastwatch until the city seemed enclosed not merely bybsound.

Caldris defenders on the eastern wall began looking over their shoulders toward distant towers even though the city itself prevented them from seeing what was happening on the opposite sides.

Then the northern catapults fired.

The first volley appeared above the rooftops as dark shapes climbing into the sky before disappearing beyond Eastwatch’s walls. A heartbeat later, dull impacts rolled across the city.

More catapults released immediately afterward. Stones struck northern battlements, towers, and wooden defensive structures that had spent most of the morning untouched.

The northern defenders were not unprepared in the absolute sense. Eastwatch had known it was surrounded. Militia and soldiers had been assigned to every wall from the beginning of the siege.

The difference was that many of the professional troops who had originally strengthened those sectors were no longer there. They had been transferred east when Viridian siege towers reached the battlements, then more had been drawn toward the gate when the battering ram broke the doors and intensity of the fight increased.

Now the cost arrived.

Viridian ballistas opened fire behind the catapults. Heavy bolts struck wooden firing screens and forced Caldris defenders away from exposed positions. One bolt tore through the railing of a northern tower, scattering militia who had been rushing toward a defensive ballista.

Another struck the stone beside a group of crossbowmen, splintering against the wall but forcing them behind cover.

The southern batteries began firing before Eastwatch could properly react to the north.

More stones rose.

Another section of the city disappeared beneath dust and alarm.

Caldris horns began sounding from different directions at once. Signal flags appeared above towers. Runners moved along the battlements.

Men who had spent hours facing east suddenly received orders to descend and move through the city toward walls they had assumed would remain secondary.

"They’re trying to shift their soldiers positions. " Varek said.

Rakhar lifted his viewing tube toward the eastern battlement. Groups of Caldris soldiers were indeed beginning to leave. Some professional infantry withdrew from positions behind the central wall tower. Crossbowmen moved toward stairways. A reserve company near the gatehouse began reorganizing.

Rakhar lowered the tube. "First and second footholds. Increase your intensity to stop that."

The order reached the wall quickly.

The Viridian banner at the first foothold moved forward.

Goblin shield-bearers who had spent the pause reorganizing immediately pressed toward the fortified wall tower. Their attack was not large, but it forced the Caldris defenders there to halt their withdrawal and face them again.

Spearmen thrust between shields. Crossbowmen fired from the siege tower. The humans who had begun leaving were suddenly called back.

At the second foothold, the same thing happened. Fresh Viridian troops pushed several yards along the battlement, and Caldris soldiers who had been ordered elsewhere found themselves returning to prevent the smaller foothold from expanding.

Eastwatch could not move troops away from the east without compromising on the defense of the eastern sector.

Then the western attack began in earnest.

The first western siege tower emerged from behind Viridian infantry lines and started rolling toward the wall.

Another followed behind it.

From that side of Eastwatch, the defenders had spent most of the morning hearing distant battle rather than experiencing it directly.

Their wall had suffered occasional probing fire and harassment, but nothing resembling the eastern assault. Some defensive crews had even been reduced when orders demanded troops elsewhere.

Now they saw two massive wooden towers moving toward them under the cover of catapult and ballista fire.

Caldris horns screamed from the western wall.

Viridian infantry cheered.

Goblin ranged troops advanced behind mantlets while ballista crews targeted the most active human firing positions. The western defenders released arrows almost immediately, but the volume was noticeably weaker than what the first eastern towers had faced.

Rakhar could not see the western approach directly, but messengers carried reports from signal stations established around the encirclement.

"The first western tower is advancing with limited resistance," one runner reported. "Human ballista fire is present but lighter than expected."

Rakhar nodded. "Do not hurry. Same procedure as the east."

The messenger saluted.

Another arrived from the north.

"North assault companies are moving. First siege tower entering approach."

Varek looked toward Rakhar. "They really did strip the other walls."

"Not completely."

"But enough for us to have a breakthrough in the other directions."

Rakhar finally allowed himself a small smile. "Enough is usually all you need."

Inside Eastwatch, the defensive command was being forced into the problem he had spent the entire morning creating. Every alarm demanded men.

Northern commanders wanted professional infantry. Western officers requested crossbowmen and ballista crews. The south remained under bombardment and could not be stripped without inviting another assault. The east still contained two Viridian footholds and a broken gate.

The city possessed thousands of defenders.

It did not possess thousands of additional defenders.

Every man sent somewhere had to come from somewhere else.

The northern siege tower reached the closer range of the wall.

Arrows struck its treated coverings. A defensive ballista fired and buried a heavy bolt in the upper frame, but the tower continued moving. Viridian catapults shifted their fire toward nearby towers while ballistas struck exposed defenders attempting to concentrate against the advancing machine.

The human resistance remained fierce.

It simply lacked the depth of the eastern defense.

When a militia formation on the northern battlement took casualties, fewer professional soldiers stood behind them to fill the line. When one defensive ballista crew was forced from its platform, another crew was not immediately waiting to replace it.

Orders came for reinforcements, but those reinforcements had to cross a city already filled with refugees, military traffic, wounded soldiers, and messengers.

The tower kept advancing.

On the western side, the first siege tower moved even faster through the final portion of its approach. The defenders tried fire, but the Viridian water crews were already prepared after witnessing the tactics used in the east.

Flaming arrows landed against wet hides and failed to spread. A clay vessel broke along one side of the tower and created a burst of flame that was extinguished before it could reach the internal beams.

Rakhar received reports almost continuously now.

"Southern bombardment has forced defenders from two exposed platforms."

"Western tower within short approach."

"Northern tower nearly at the wall."

"Caldris reinforcements moving north from the eastern sector."

Rakhar reacted only to the last one.

"First foothold increases pressure."

Varek looked at him. "They are going to hate that wall tower before this ends."

"They already do."

The Viridian soldiers on the eastern battlement advanced again.

Caldris troops who had been descending toward the city were pulled back into the fight. The central wall tower remained in human hands, but keeping it required soldiers who could otherwise have strengthened the northern defenses.

The northern siege tower finally reached the battlement.

Its upper platform aligned with the wall.

Caldris infantry gathered opposite it, but the line was thinner than the one that had greeted the first eastern tower. Some were professional soldiers. Many were militia.

Inside the siege tower, the assault company prepared.

The bridge fell.

Goblin shield-bearers charged across.

The first rank took casualties immediately. A human spear struck one goblin in the chest while another was knocked sideways by a heavy shield. The defenders fought desperately to keep the Viridian troops on the bridge.

More goblins followed.

Then more.

The narrow human line bent.

A Viridian shield-bearer reached the battlement and forced his way inside the formation. Another came beside him. Spearmen attacked from behind.

The northern wall had its first goblins standing on it.

Viridian troops below erupted into cheers.

The sound was answered from the west, where the first siege tower had almost completed its own approach.

Within Eastwatch, signals multiplied.

One tower called for reinforcements.

Then another.

The eastern defenders demanded that no more soldiers be removed because the goblins had resumed advancing.

The western wall reported siege towers.

The north reported an active breach on the battlement.

The south remained under bombardment.

Varek stared across the city as the sounds of battle came from directions that had been quiet only a short time earlier. "Now they have to choose."

Rakhar shook his head.

"They had a choice when we attacked one side."

He looked toward the northern wall, where a Viridian banner had begun rising above the battlement. Then his gaze shifted toward the western side as another series of horns announced that the siege tower there had reached its final approach.

"Now they know there’s no choice to begin with."

Around Eastwatch, Viridian catapults continued releasing stones, ballistas hammered exposed defensive positions, and siege towers rolled toward walls whose strongest soldiers had been drawn eastward by hours of fighting.

The shattered eastern gate remained defended, and the original footholds still had not taken their wall, but those struggles no longer represented the entire battle.

Rakhar had stopped trying to force Eastwatch open at the point where Caldris was strongest.

Instead, he had turned every wall into a front, leaving the defenders rushing from one crisis to another while the numerical strength of Viridian finally began pressing against the whole city at once.

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