Eerie heart-wrenching silence shrouded the entire town as everyone kept their eyes trained on the enemy's movement.
In an orderly fashion, the Arien soldiers circled just outside the range of the cannons mounted on the wall, with the artillery batteries divided into three groups of five and positioned at three different locations.
The first battery was placed aiming directly at the partially open gateway that had been blown open previously, while the other two were moved to a portion of the clearing on the right of the town's entrance a few dozen meters apart from seemingly aiming at the walls.
Seeing the positioning of the enemy's artillery Duke Farger's Brows wrinkled up in confusion. He had assumed the enemy would try to concentrate all its cannon fire at the gate to clear up any defences that might impede the entry of its forces.
The gate was obviously the weakest portion of the wall and should supposedly be the easiest way to access the town. But instead of concentrating all its cannons at the gates, the enemy moved a large portion of its forces to aim at the walls.
While the part of the wall that the cannons were currently aimed at is visibly the most damaged portion of the entire defensive structure, Duke Farger was sure that the enemy did not expect to bring down the wall with a measly battery of ten two-pounders.
Just as Duke Farger was starting to get confused by the enemy's decision on the positioning of its artillery batteries, he saw the enemy cavalry of twenty horsemen assemble in a charging formation.
The horsemen wore iron cuirasses underneath colourful robes. They wielded a meter long sabre in each hand and had suspicious-looking sacks strapped to their backs.
Charging forward the cavalrymen raced towards the damaged portion of the wall.
Duke Farger stared intently at the horsemen that had already raced into his cannons firing range but didn't order the men to fire at them, instead watched on with the intent of reading the enemy's motive.
It wasn't that he didn't or couldn't fire at the horsemen but that doing so would have simply been a pointless endeavour. Spread out apart from each other and moving too fast the riders would have made terrible targets.
The duke even began to suspect that this was a ploy by the enemy to get him to waste his first round of shots on 'useless' pawns only to open up a gap in his defences for a more sinister plot to come in to play.
With these thoughts in mind, Duke Farger looked on watching, anticipating the enemy's move
But then Duke Farger noticed something. The horsemen didn't seem to be bluffing but instead intent on reaching certain parts of the wall, the parts that the cannons were aiming at, the parts that had been damaged during the previous assaults.
Realising this he urgently ordered his men to attack.
"Fire!"
The artillery squads mounted on the wall and the archers peeping from the arrow loops fired at the horsemen that had already entered fifty meters from the wall.
*BOOM!*
*TWANG!*
*WHIZZ*
The sound of cannons blaring and arrows whizzing out of bows rang out across the top of the wall. three-fourths of the horsemen and their horses collapsed from either being struck by arrows or blasted to bits by cannons.
But alas it was too late, the rest succeeded in reaching the wall.
They hurriedly dismounted their steeds and tossed the sacks on their backs at the bottom of the wall.
"Stop them!!!"
Duke Farger screamed but the horsemen had already lit crude fuzes tied to the suspicious-looking sacks.
A few seconds later amidst the dying bodies of the Arien soldiers, the first fuze burnt out.
*BOOM!*
Although none of the horsemen managed to return alive, their tasks were complete
The sacks placed at the bottom of the walls exploded with a resounding bang followed by a thick rising column of black smog.
The sacks were filled with black powder and the intent of the horsemen wasn't to distract him but instead deliver those sacks to the base of the wall.
Several seconds later the smoke began to clear, although that portion of the wall was completely blown to smithereens a gaping hole about seven meters wide appeared in the wall at the site of the explosion.
Seeing the gaping hole Duke Fargar looked up at the cannon batteries just outside his cannons firing range, except they weren't outside his cannons firing range any longer but had moved deeper into the clearing inadvertently putting the town within their own range.
The cannon squad had obviously used the cover from the ruckus caused by the explosion at the wall to quickly creep closer towards the wall.
Duke Fargar's vision dimmed when he realized the enemy's plan. His eyes traced a straight line from the field cannons currently pointed at his wall, past the gaping hole the enemy blew in that wall a couple of seconds ago, all the way to the artillery squad he stationed at the gate entrance to defend against an attack on the gate.
At this point, the old duke felt as if his heart fell straight into the chilling waters of the netherworld.
He felt despair!