บท 69: Ready

The Ottoman side of battlefield sprung into action following the order given by their Sultan.

With the advancement of technology, more and more sophisticated weapons are being developed through the ages and being implemented on the battlefield, which further increased the amount of casualties of ordinary peasants and soldiers on battlefield.

Things have changed even for the nobles, the knights, the lords also nowadays. War and battles are no longer a romantic and charming scene written on poetries and songs by those bards and writers. In the good old days of high middle ages, wars are just like a trip for the nobles to show off their courage, strength and spirit. They march gracefully in beautiful, decorated armour with a shield portraying their house's coats of arms, peasants behind him carries their standard and flags with no armour and only a spear in hand. Even if they lost the war, its only the peasants who dies.

In the high middle ages, if let's say the knights and nobles, being unfortunate, got captured. Most likely they will be treated like valued guest, provided with luxurious hostel, treated with respect, rides together with the victor chatting and joking, enjoying a feast back in his castle, and free to leave whenever he wants after his subjects accumulate enough ransom for freedom.

But now, times have changed for the noblemen.

With increasingly advanced technology and brand new weapons coming up, the lives of noblemen no longer looks that secure anymore. Nowadays a bolt from crossbows can penetrate chain mails which is still widely used in Asia minor and cause a havoc to their internal organs, soldiers now has things like mace and axe, a single blow can cause a noble in helmet to lose their conscious. And with high technology the rate of production also comes up, thus the nobles soon realised one fact.

Their enemy's soldiers are all getting an armour that even has armour and helmets, equipped with lances and steel swords which used to be the noble's privilege. Furthermore, with the start of usage of gunpowder and trebuchets, the battlefield suddenly do not seem to be a desirable place for them.

Perhaps this is the reason why when the battle started, most Roman nobles who has lost the bravery of their ancestors, ran as far as they can shivering in their lavished estates.

But despite all of this, Constantine, the emperor, chose to stand with the defenders of his capital city until the last moment. He is now giving a speech on the walls to thousands of soldiers and brave citizens below him.

"Sons of Rome! My brothers! Most courageous soldiers and loyal honest Citizens! The time when we stand together has one has come! The enemy of our holy faith now wishes to take the last thing that we have with his force, like a snake ready to spew its venom, in a hurry to devour us like a savage lion! Devour everything we have in the city! Thus, as your Basileus, emperor, and autocrat, I am imploring you to fight like our ancestors, men with guts, against the enemy of our holy faith! I hand over to you my glorious, famed, most respected and elegant city, the glistering Queen of All Cities, and most importantly, our homeland."

"Take this in mind! My sons and brothers! We have four, four obligations in comon! That we must hold even if it will lead us to our eventual death!"

"First! Our faith and piety, our holy city, our churches and our iconographs!"

"Second! Our city, our homes, our properties and our eternity!"

"Third! I, Constantine XI Palaigolos, appointed by the God as the autocrat of the Romans! And fourth!"

"… Our relatives, our familia, our children, and our friends… Now repeat after me! … Ubi concordia, ibi victoria!"

"Ubi concordia, ibi victoria!"

"Ubi concordia, ibi victoria…."

…

The Ottoman camp became a bustling site for workers as Constantine makes his speech.

Hundreds of workers go around busily assembling new gigantic war machines such as trebuchets, Arab mathematicians in Mehmed's court goes around calculating and measuring the length and angle making sure the overall structural of the war machines are durable for use. Just after Constantine has finished his speech, the workers has finished assembling the trebuchets and pushed them to the frontline.

The Ottoman soldiers in charge of handling these war machines carried huge rocks and loaded it onto the slinger making sure it is intact, then waits for their instructions.

Mehmed stands a distance not far away as he signals the frontline commander to give a round of shot.

"Prepare the trebuchets!"

"Ready!"

Mehmed draws his kilij blade, raising it in the air and pointed it towards the Theodosian walls of Constantinople, then yelled with all his breathe.

"Fire!"

Two dozen large boulders each measuring more than a half meter in radius are sent flinging into the sky soaring through the air tearing through the friction caused by the atmosphere but get pulled back by the immense gravity pull of the ground, heading towards the Theodosian walls just as the mathematicians has calculated.

The boulders clashed violently with the walls of Constantinople with all the kinetic force it has accumulated causing the walls and the Earth to shake violently, multiple boulders hitting the walls make it looks like an earth quake as people behind the walls can hardly stand firmly on the ground.

Then, a tragic took place.

A miscalculated boulder flies through the walls landing right in the middle of the crowd listening to their emperor's speech, instantly causing three dead without even having the time to realise what is going on, then still with a little bit of energy the rock is send bouncing and rolling across a couple more people causing another four dead in the process, creating a so called 'lane of muddy meat' at where the rock has just passed.

The crowd who are waving their fists shouting out their mottos with Constantine just now are immediately sent weeping and scattering away for safely against the falling rocks.

But this is merely the start of an enduring siege.

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