"Push hard! Push hard! Push hard..."
Accompanied by uniform slogans, the simple siege vehicle pushed hard by the servants slowly drove towards the village gate on the south wall of Verde Village.
The land that had become soft after the snow melted had become much harder in the past few days, but the handymen were still pushing very hard.
The heavy siege vehicle made a creaking sound. Every time the servants took a step, a small amount of their short boots would sink into the soil. However, one after another, they stepped on the dirt road a lot.
The top of the siege vehicle is in the shape of an inverted "V". In addition to using branches to build a frame, it is also covered with a row of bundled shields and a layer of leather to prevent the archers from Verde Village from firing arrows to kill the people pushing the vehicle. people.
"Archers, enter the battlefield!"
After Baron Quinil gave the order to the messenger next to him, the messenger shouted loudly towards the array of archers at the top of his lungs.
The agile archers quickly broke away from the marching team and ran towards the defensive shield left behind in the last battle.
Most of these archers were hunters and forest rangers from the baronage of Kunir. Most of them wore simple tunics and hoods. Some wealthy archers just wear an armor or a layer of homemade rough leather armor over their clothes.
Among the array of archers, an old man with gray hair and curly beard stood out.
I saw a chain-mail turban on his head, and a rusty scale armor on top of the old armor. In addition, he also wears a pair of sturdy splint arm guards.
Bill on the village wall noticed this old guy from a distance. He guessed that this guy should be an old fletcher from the baronage of Quinnier.
"Maybe we should capture him alive." Bill thought.
On the left side of Kunir's slowly advancing army, a nine-meter-high siege tower was slowly moving forward, driven by the servants.
However, unlike a siege engine, a siege tower could not protect the men on either side of it who were pushing it forward from arrows.
For this reason, Baron Quinnier specially sent a group of freemen soldiers holding shields to surround the handymen pushing the carts, trying to block the incoming arrows for them as much as possible.
After all, this siege tower was a hasty work of the Italian engineer. In many places, the bark was not even scraped, but was simply and roughly connected together with thick ropes and large rivets. There are two ladders fixed on the back, and the front is covered with animal skins and tied with shields to block arrows.
"keep going!"
This time, Baron Kunir did not have the rashness to let the serf soldiers without armor or shields rush to the front as if they were dying. Instead, he combined them with the free people soldiers, and let the serf soldiers with armor and shields rush to the front. Freedmen soldiers covered their advance.
Now, Baron Kunir has to reduce casualties, even for these farmers whom he regards as useless - he will also lead troops to support Count Loon after this battle. If too many soldiers are killed, not to mention the morale will not be good. It will collapse, and his own face will not look good.
Even the handymen carrying the ladders followed the siege vehicles and siege towers. They waited until the archers under the village wall reached the blind spot before setting up the ladders.
"Whizzing……"
Bill was the first to let go of his hand on the long bow, and the other archer who was selected to practice the long bow with Bill every day also let go of his hands. The two feathered arrows were like eagles freed from the restraints, shooting at the enemy who entered the battlefield. The hands flew away at high speed.
"Be careful, get out of the way!"
In the open space, an alert young archer raised his head and saw two small black dots crossing a perfect parabola in the sky in the distance, then quickly heading towards them. He couldn't help but loudly remind his companions around road.
But it's still a step too late.
"Pfft!"
"Ahhhhh!" With a dull sound of a sharp instrument entering flesh, a middle-aged archer with rotten teeth was hit in the abdomen, his body fell to the ground softly, and he screamed fiercely.
But fortunately for them, when they reacted, the other arrow was just stuck in the soil.
"Why can their bows and arrows shoot so far?"
Seeing someone hit by an arrow, the archers couldn't help but cheer up and be cautious. At the same time, there was murmuring in their hearts.
In their understanding, the hunting bows and recurve bows they usually see have a range of over a hundred meters, which is already the end of their power. Now, they are still close to 150 meters away from the village wall, but the enemy's bows and arrows can fly across such a long distance to attack them. I really don't know what's going on.
"Davidson, Davidson? Damn it!" The friend of the archer who was hit by the arrow quickly went over to help him check the injury.
Although it was a light arrow that hit the unfortunate guy, it still penetrated deeply into his belly. The bright red blood stained the dirty gray tunic on his body, making him even look scary.
The power of the Welsh longbow is no joke.
At the peak of manufacturing technology and the level of longbowmen two centuries later, it could penetrate leather and padded armor at a distance of two hundred meters to two hundred and sixty meters, and even penetrate chain mail of average quality. Within a distance of eighty meters, the longbow is almost indestructible, and it can even penetrate plate armor, which is evident from this.
"We really have to thank those damn Norman pirates for giving us the gift." Simon on the village gate looked at the archer in the distance who was as small as an ant and fell to the ground after being hit by an arrow, and was amazed.
"I have to find a way to get another batch of longbows. Even if I can't get them, I have to get a batch of yew wood to make my own longbows." Simon had a bold idea in his mind.
After the first unlucky guy was hit by an arrow, Bill found that those cunning archers were like slippery loaches, and it was difficult to shoot them again.
"Get ready, shoot the arrow!"
Seeing that the archers had entered a distance of more than eighty meters from the village wall, Bill turned his head and shouted loudly to the archers.
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh..."
After a while, the crisp sound of arrow strings and the sound of arrows flying through the air at high speed could be heard from the village wall.
The boys of the archery team are training basically every day, whether they are hunting or practicing target shooting at the newly built archery range. They estimated the wind force and parabola as well as the speed of the enemy's movement. After calculating the advance amount, they released their hands, and then drew the next arrow from the quiver.
At this time, the enemy archers in the open space who were about to reach the defensive shield fifty meters away from the village wall began to suffer casualties.
Some archers were shot in the thighs and fell to the ground, almost incapacitated; some archers were shot in the chest and abdomen. Soft armor and armed clothing could not protect them. All they could do was endure great pain. , and then die.
At this time, the power of the Welsh longbows of Bill and another archer came to the fore - one archer was shot in the shoulder. Although he was wearing leather armor, the arrow still penetrated deeply into his shoulder. The white feathers on the arrow tail almost stuck to his leather jacket, and were later stained red by the blood that kept pouring out.
"Son of a bitch, it's our turn now!"
Behind the oak shield with more than a dozen arrows stuck in it, the gray-haired old fletcher suppressed his anger and pulled out six arrows from the arrow pot on his back and stuck them into the soil.
He picked up an arrow, stepped back cautiously, and quickly locked his eyes on a young man on the village wall who was rapidly drawing an arrow and shooting with a bow.
Immediately afterwards, he skillfully pulled out the bow string, and with a "swish", the arrow with dirt flew out at high speed.
He hid behind the shield again, and sure enough, a short scream came from the village wall, and he knew he had succeeded.
"Damn it!"
Simon on the wall of the village heard the screams coming from the side. He was always paying attention to the movements of the enemy troops and couldn't help but turn his head and look - the poor young man's neck was penetrated by a bow and arrow, his body collapsed on the ground, and he kept vomiting from his mouth. There was blood and foam, and it looked like he would not survive.
Simon had no time to grieve. When he looked back, he saw that the enemy's army and siege engines had passed the stones he had piled up to mark the distance of two to five hundred meters. Simon then shouted to the soldier next to him: "Two hundred and fifty meters!"
"Two hundred and fifty meters!"
shouted the soldier in the direction of the trebuchet turret.
The launch angle and torque of the trebuchet were adjusted in advance. Ryan roughly estimated the direction and speed of the enemy's siege vehicle, budgeted the lead time, and then said to the worker next to him: "Let it go now!"
"Snapped!"
The torsion arm of the trebuchet was raised at high speed and hit the buffer pad on the stop rail hard, raising a large cloud of dust.
The large rocks flew rapidly in the direction of the siege vehicle. The soldiers gathered around the siege vehicle opened their eyes wide with fear and subconsciously raised their shields.
"boom!"
"puff!"
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Ryan's advance calculation was too small, and the stone did not hit the siege vehicle, but hit the queue of freedmen soldiers following closely behind the siege vehicle.
The most unlucky freeman soldier who was directly hit was known to everyone around him because he was an old gambler. He had won a lot of money playing dice games with others in the past few days, which was impressive.
God had given him good luck a few days ago, but now the good luck had disappeared without a trace.
The rapidly approaching boulder first hit the gambler's shield, and then knocked him to the ground without slowing down like a ball of plasticine.
Immediately afterwards, the stone that did not reduce its kinetic energy directly smashed the gambler soldier into pieces. Mixed with shield chips and torn clothes, the big rocks tore his upper body apart, pieces of flesh flying everywhere, and disgusting blood mist splattering everywhere.
When all the dust settled, the soldiers nearby saw the body of the unlucky gambler - the lower body was still intact, the gray intestines connected to the lower body on the dirt floor, and the broken internal organs were scattered everywhere.
The faces, bodies, hands, and weapons of many soldiers around him were splattered with the minced meat and blood of that gambler soldier.
The psychological impact this brought to them far exceeded the horror of simply watching a teammate being killed by the enemy with ordinary weapons - God bless, they witnessed a living teammate being torn apart in an instant in front of them. The blood and scraps of flesh he left behind were still stuck to his body.
The strong smell of blood filled the air, and many soldiers began to vomit. Even Youzi, a veteran who had been on several battlefields, felt a surge in his throat.
"Reload! The lead time is too small. We need to adjust the angle and direction." Ryan and the workers reported the results of the shooting with indifference in their words.
He knew that if the enemy really entered the village, someone would definitely end up worse than the soldier who was hit by the stone. At any rate, he lost consciousness and escaped from the sea of suffering in an instant.
