Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

A week passed in fire and ruin.

By then, the outer wall was nothing more than a scar crowned with Romanus banners, its battlements reshaped into firing platforms for trebuchets that hurled stone and death without ceasing.

The ruins of the commoner district lay flattened into open approaches, and in their place rose Roman siege works.

Engines creaked forward across cleared lanes, ladders lined the base of the inner wall, and from the rooftops of half-demolished tenements, carpenters raised wooden dropbridges that spanned the gap from house to parapet, turning the cities own houses into siege towers from which to invade the inner wall.

It was as though the city itself had been turned against its own defenders.

At dawn, the assault began.

Trumpets blared, horns answering from the camps and the wall alike.

Cohorts surged into the lanes, shields lifted against arrows that blackened the sky.

The first ladders slammed against the stone, iron hooks biting deep, preventing the defenders from toppling them over without great effort.

Legionaries swarmed upward, climbing one after another, their scarred sandals slipping on blood-slick rungs.

The Francians met them with fury.

Rocks, logs, and boiling water cascaded down, smashing men from the ladders like toys.

Arrows hissed in such number that shields bristled like hedgehogs.

But the Romans climbed all the same.

On one rooftop, a bridge slammed down with a crash, spanning from shattered tiles to the parapet beyond.

The defenders shouted in disbelief as a cohort charged across, boots pounding on wood, shields up, pila leveled.

The Francians fought as if demons had seized them.

Swords and axes flashed, but so too did pitchforks, carpenters' hammers, and kitchen knives clutched in white-knuckled grips.

A butcher swung his cleaver into a legionary's cheek, splitting him to the teeth before being skewered through the chest by a thrusting gladius.

A woman shrieked as she swung a skillet at a Roman's helmet, only to be hurled screaming over the wall's edge.

Even fanatics with no armor hurled themselves into the fray, clawing, biting, stabbing with awls and fire irons.

Yet the legions did not break.

They could not fight in their beloved formations atop the cramped wall, but their discipline held in another form.

Each man fought as a machine honed by endless drill.

Shields smashed into faces, swords thrust into ribs, helmets battered skulls until bone gave way.

They advanced by inches, shoulder to shoulder, step by bloody step, until the parapets themselves seemed to buckle under the strain.

At the northern tower, a group of legionaries gained a foothold, their standard raised high though blood ran down its shaft.

The defenders swarmed to dislodge them, hacking and pushing with all their might.

Men locked in grapples tumbled over the battlements together, vanishing into the killing ground below with a sound like sacks of meat bursting.

Still, more Romans came.

Ladders were set and reset.

Bridges crashed down in a dozen places.

Everywhere, the crimson tide pressed forward, and everywhere the defenders shrieked and raged to push it back.

Sabellus himself led a push along one span, his sword hacking a path clear as his bodyguards shoved bodies into the abyss.

A Francian knight in dented plate met him, bellowing a challenge, axe raised high.

Their clash rang like anvils, iron against iron.

Sabellus staggered under the blow but twisted, plunging his blade into the man's armpit.

The knight gasped, blood gouting, before he toppled from the wall, smashing onto the cobbles far below.

His men cheered, rallying around him as the cohort secured another stretch of parapet.

Elsewhere, the defenders unleashed fire.

Barrels of pitch were rolled from the towers, shattering across the ladders and bridges.

Flames leapt high, consuming men and timber alike.

Screams rose as soldiers burned, flailing, trying to tear off their armor as it baked their flesh.

But Julius had ordered reserves ready for this.

Men with buckets dashed forward, dousing the flames with sand and piss, while fresh ladders slammed into place beside the charred remains.

The fight never paused.

By midday, the inner wall was a cauldron of slaughter.

Smoke rolled in choking clouds, arrows rattled like rain, and the din of steel on steel never ceased.

The defenders' cries of "For Joan! For the King!" rose again and again, met by the thunder of Roman voices shouting "Roma! Roma!" as they pressed higher and higher.

From his vantage on a captured tower of the outer wall, Julius watched in silence.

Around him, aides scribbled notes, couriers dashed with orders, horns signaled fresh waves to advance.

But the emperor's eyes never left the chaos.

He saw his men cut down, saw ladders collapse under weight and fire, saw whole cohorts repulsed in shrieking ruin.

He also saw them climb again.

Always again.

No terror, no setback, no storm of stone or flame could stop them.

The ends justify the means, these people are real flesh and blood but if Julius was to abandon the conquest at this point Francia would rise again with greater desire for revenge that would cause a tidal wave of blood to coat the continent, not to mention the other nations of the world would see Romanus as being a nation not willing to deliver the killing stroke, a weakness they could exploit.

By evening, gains had been made.

A half-dozen stretches of wall were in Roman hands, though each was bought in blood.

The defenders had fought like cornered beasts, but the legions' weight and discipline had ground them back.

Where once the parapet had been a seamless line of Francian steel, now it was fractured, red banners rising amid the white.

Still, the cost was great.

Thousands of Romans lay broken in the streets below, their bodies crushed by stone or burned alive.

And for each, it seemed ten Francians had died in return, the wall piled with their corpses until men fought ankle-deep in gore.

Night fell at last, mercifully cooling the stone, though not the fury.

Torches burned where men still grappled in the dark, shadows leaping like phantoms across the walls.

they had won in the daytime, but now they would need to hold their gains throughout the night when Francia was sure to launch nightraids to repulse the invaders and reclaim the advantage of the defensive wall.