A Grunt's Duty.

Body next to body. Hand next to hand. Shields and spears held for aggression, making a gleaming wall meant for the blood of men. The fire of the bronze coated shields was said to blind the enemy with the brightness of the souls standing against the onslaught. It didn't help, nor did the Saint. The heavy stones hurled by the attackers crashed mercilessly in the steady ranks, crushing men and weapons with impunity. The discolored rags worn by the defenders took away from the splendour of their useless arms, while their blood, mixed with the dust and covering every surface it came to touch, looked almost black.

Still the ranks would not move for anything but to fill the empty places of the dead. For their purpose was to protect. To act as a shield for those who could deliver them from the enemy. Behind the formation standing to be massacred, there was an entire camp of war machines. Men with bolt throwers in their hands, others tending to bigger devices of the same kind, even a colossal engine that would plant ten stride long poles with steel heads in the giant beasts and crudely constructed stone throwers on the other side of the field. While the shield bearers to the front could only hear the carnage brought upon them from the sky, behind the line marking their position there was a different sound. The snapping clatter of hundreds of strings, sending their quarrels whistling forward, like some mechanical chorus.

Elated tacticians would later claim that the torsion springs used in the siege detachment's weapons had won the day. Out of a warband of five thousand spearmen, some ninety, counting the wounded and crippled, remained alive. But nobody mentioned that.