Chapter CXXXIV – It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

9th of Spring 5860
Karabush, League of the Three Cities State of Karabush

Mayor Azvaran was on his horse, wishing that he could gallop forth and see what the hell had just happened. He couldn’t – he knew that he’d be skewered by a volley of arrows if he rushed to the walls of Karabush by his lonesome, so he patiently had to trot along with his army. “For goodness’ sake, how did we miss a whole army marching to my city?”

“It’s a bit too late to think about that, sir” replied Habdank, who was tired of hearing the same question from his employer for the umpteenth time. “We’ll clear them out of Karabush in no time. We still have the same number of men as we did before.”

Azvaran continued grumpily grumbling for a while more, while Habdank did his best to keep his employer calm and satisfied. At this point he just wanted to get his payment and be done with this military campaign that had dragged on for far too long. He was half-asleep on his horse by the time the walls of Karabush had become visible in the distance. “O-oh, there we are” he groggily muttered while dragging his head up. “Should I get the men prepared for a siege, sir?”

“Let’s see whether they’ll surrender first.” Mayor Azvaran grabbed a white flag from an aide, and rode forward while holding the flag up. “We wish to parlay!”

An old man popped up from behind wall “We too, gentlemen, we’ve seen you coming from a mile away. Surrender, or turn back, if you wish to avoid great embarrassment and bloodshed.”

The mayor was taken aback. His line about surrender had just been stolen! “You’re the ones who are surrounded here. These walls won’t protect you for long.”

“That flat plain won’t protect you for long either.” Suddenly, an explosion appeared in the sky, way above the mayor’s troops. Ayomide had shot a warning shot with the canon. “We have a fully armed catgirl, and she is not in a good mood.”

“What does an explosion have to do with a catgirl…” asked Azvaran to himself, not loud enough for Brown to hear. He raised his voice once more “Then sir, we shall have to siege you down.” The mayor turned around and rode back to Habdank “Prepare for a siege. We’ll let them starve.”

“Sir, what about the payment for my men?” asked Habdank. “It’s the 9th. We should have been paid nine days ago for this season. My men don’t want to stand around with their pockets empty.”

“I’ll ask my steward to pay you with gold from… the… treasury?” Azvaran’s voice trailed off while he remembered that Azvaran’s treasury wasn’t accessible at the moment. “We’ll assault the city then, prepare the cannons for a breach!”

“Which cannons, sir? You had them sent back to Karabush since the siege of Casamonu never happened. All our siege engineers were on vacation in the city.”

“Just take them out of storage- oh.” Azvaran again remembered where he was sieging. “Oh.” He looked at the lines of men on the walls, some with what looked to be firearms, the rest with menacing pikes peeking up. “Oh…”

“I don’t think my men would agree to a suicidal charge up the wall even if I asked them. Especially since their pockets are empty.” Habdank and Azvaran started awkwardly at each other. Both knew very well what Habdank was implying.

“…”

“…?”

“…”

“…yeah.” Azvaran tilted his head down in defeat. “I can’t pay you.”

“Then me and my men shall take our leave to greener pastures. Good luck, sir.” Habdank gave one last salute, and then rode away from the mayor. Mercenaries weren’t famous for their loyalty, after all, and a broke mayor offered nothing to him but a suicidal battle.

Azvaran watched the mercenaries disappear into the horizon, then he turned back to the men on the walls. The walls. Those damned walls that he couldn’t even dream of breaking down, let along assaulting them successfully with all those men guarding it. He was a mayor without a city, except for Casamonu which had been left as a ghost town. “Oh.”

The mayor silently dispensed a few curse words at whatever misfortune had gotten him to this situation.

9th of Spring 5860
On top of the walls, Karabush

“They’re retreating? Boo.” Ayomide, sitting on top of her canon, was slightly disappointed at not getting another chance to shoot her shot.

Brown, who unlike Ayomide was happy to avoid bloodshed, mused “In war one shall be despoiled by his enemies, in peace one shall be despoiled by his mercenaries.”

“…the mercenaries abandoned him while we were at war though?”

Brown chuckled “You’re quite observative, young lady.” He continued patiently observing the mayor’s army down below. They were standing too far away to be hit by canon shot, standing in the open field. A few of the enemy men had begun preemptively cutting wood and setting up tents, but the rest of the enemy army seemed to be standing aimlessly.

Slowly, however, the enemy army moved. A cheer erupted from the walls “They’re retreating!” The mayor’s army was slowly moving away from the city, clearly having given up on scaling the walls. They had a formation that was as broken as their spirits, with the men coalescing to a scattered blob.

“So, we’re letting them go away?” asked Ayomide. She was really disappointed now. “They don’t seem to have many men left.”

“Young lady, the battle only starts now. Get your men ready for a sortie.”

Ayomide didn’t get how they could catch up to men who were at least a hundred meters away, but she obliged and got the 1st Regiment to gather up near a gate closest to where the mayor’s troops were. Through the gate, made of metal bars, she could barely see the retreating men. “Why are we even standing here…”

Before Ayomide could question her life choices further, her questions were answered by charging cavalrymen. A whole load of them. The Casamonu Host had been camping in the woods nearby, and they were eager to finally enter combat. “Open the gates!” she shouted, and soon the 1st Regiment was flooding out of the city. The mayor’s army had been forced to a stop to defend themselves against the cavalry. The 1st Regiment quickly caught up to the mayor’s forces, their pikes pushing against the mayor’s men as the cavalry continued to harass them. It was utter chaos in the battle line, the pikes slowly lost their formation as the men pushed forward, while the mayor’s men hadn’t been given any time to get in formation for anything.

In this mess of men, Mayor Azvaran was unceremoniously felled by a musket shot, while his men were completely broken by the counter-attack by the army of the Republic.