Chapter 1024: Demon Dragon Appears

Chapter 1024 -246: Demon Dragon Appears

When Rumi ascended to the city walls, despite having mentally prepared himself earlier, he was still startled by the surging crowd below.

His subjects driven by slaughter, like a great river, heedlessly poured into the narrow passage, tightly squeezing the river valley under the city of Hovezan.

Looking around, the once peaceful and harmonious villages had all been set ablaze, flames blazed into the sky, thick smoke billowed.

“Raise the drawbridge!”

Governor Rumi ordered without hesitation.

Refugees driven forward, losing this only path, began to plead desperately toward the city walls.

“Please lower the drawbridge, the Tatars are still far away!”

“Ali, let me in, for the sake of my father.”

The soldiers on the walls couldn’t help but shed tears. They knew that it was impossible to lower the drawbridge and open the gates to let these people in. Yet many refugees below were their relatives and neighbors. Who would want to stand by and watch them die, or even personally kill them?

Someone shouted, “Turn back and fight those demons who slaughtered you. Do not linger!”

But no one listened, as the refugees had already been terrified by the Tatars behind them. The ones in front stopped at the moat, but those behind kept pushing, causing living people to fall into the moat like dumplings.

A refugee suddenly aimed a bow toward Ali and shot a cold arrow, narrowly dodged by him.

This ghazi gritted his teeth and shouted, “Fire arrows, do not hold back any longer. Their fate is sealed and there are Tatars mixed among the refugees. We can’t let these people get near the walls anymore!”

The Tatars’ archery was too good. They used refugees as shields, recklessly firing cold arrows, forcing a decision to be made.

“I will bear all the guilt alone. Do not hesitate, retaliate immediately!”

His voice trembled.

Hovezan is a fortress city, agriculture is its lifeline, labor is its keystone, but now the wheat fields are trampled, villages burned, and his people are reduced to tools of the enemy, about to die by friendly hands.

Many villagers crying and pleading were familiar faces to him.

The Tatars’ fighting style was as consistent as ever, driving the people with blades, followed closely by the Contract Army.

In the Tatar military system, even the lowest-ranking Contract Army could be promoted to high positions through meritorious service, and they also enjoyed the distribution of spoils, the right to plunder after a city is breached.

This meant the Contract Army also had considerable fighting spirit.

Furthermore, each Hundred Households of the Contract Army had a Tatar Supervision Team, including high-ranking Contract Armies like Ivan’s unit, firmly gripping the entire army in Tatar hands.

This is why Jebe could command this army from different tribes, different races, different faiths, like a limb.

Seeing the refugees unable to be driven, the Tatars abandoned this wave of offense.

On the rugged mountain walls on both sides, several dozen Tatar Shooters suddenly appeared, guided by pathfinders, tracing the upstream tributaries of the Karun River, finding a narrow path only fit for single climbers, now suddenly appearing like divine forces.

“Fire arrows!”

The commanding Tatar Thousand Household ordered loudly, tying oil-soaked hemp to the arrowheads, igniting them with a swoosh, and shooting them down toward the city walls, soon setting the wooden defenses ablaze in a raging fire on the walls.

The defenders were momentarily forced to retreat and extinguish the fire, and the Contract Army below seized the moment to carry crude cloud ladders and began the siege.

Though the city walls of Hovezan were made of rammed earth, far less sturdy than the stone walls of Hamadan and Isfahan, it sat against the mountain and in a narrow river valley, making Tatar siege weapons difficult to deploy.

Instead, carrying ladders and attacking like ants became the only possible means.

Soon, more than a dozen Contract Armies, under cover by the shooters on the flanks, secured a foothold on the city walls.

However, the path was narrow; even with a landing point, subsequent troop deployment remained slow. By then, the defenders of Hovezan, having gradually extinguished the fire, also began to attack.

The shooters on the mountain walls quickly exhausted their fire arrows, the path was difficult, and their ammunition limited, without pack horses for transport, they could only pick up rocks on the mountain and use catapults to hurl them at the city walls.

Nomadic peoples mostly lacked iron tools, as was the case for the Tatars before conquering Western Xia and the Jin Kingdom.

Catapults, simple to acquire and convenient for hunting or driving cattle and sheep, were weapons almost every nomadic cavalryman knew.

“Hold on, we have no room to surrender. If defeated, these devils from the steppe will massacre us all. Surrender and die, fight and die, wait for death, is that how a country should end?”

“Behind us are our wives and children. We have no retreat, hold on, a new king is coming, reinforcements are coming!”

The shooters on the mountain walls quickly exhausted their fire arrows, the path was difficult, their ammunition limited, without pack horses for transport, they could only pick up rocks on the mountain and use catapults to hurl them at the city walls.

Nomadic peoples mostly lacked iron tools, as was the case for the Tatars before conquering Western Xia and the Jin Kingdom.

Catapults, simple to acquire and convenient for hunting or driving cattle and sheep, were weapons almost every nomadic cavalryman knew.

“Hold on, we have no room to surrender. If defeated, these devils from the steppe will massacre us all. Surrender and die, fight and die, wait for death, is that how a country should end?”

“Behind us are our wives and children. We have no retreat, hold on, a new king is coming, reinforcements are coming!”

The shooters on the mountain walls quickly exhausted their fire arrows, the path was difficult, their ammunition limited, without pack horses for transport, they could only pick up rocks on the mountain and use catapults to hurl them at the city walls.

Nomadic peoples mostly lacked iron tools, as was the case for the Tatars before conquering Western Xia and the Jin Kingdom.

Catapults, simple to acquire and convenient for hunting or driving cattle and sheep, were weapons almost every nomadic cavalryman knew.

“Hold on, we have no room to surrender. If defeated, these devils from the steppe will massacre us all. Surrender and die, fight and die, wait for death, is that how a country should end?”

“Behind us are our wives and children. We have no retreat, hold on, a new king is coming, reinforcements are coming!”

The shooters on the mountain walls quickly exhausted their fire arrows, the path was difficult, their ammunition limited, without pack horses for transport, they could only pick up rocks on the mountain and use catapults to hurl them at the city walls.

Nomadic peoples mostly lacked iron tools, as was the case for the Tatars before conquering Western Xia and the Jin Kingdom.

Catapults, simple to acquire and convenient for hunting or driving cattle and sheep, were weapons almost every nomadic cavalryman knew.

“Hold on, we have no room to surrender. If defeated, these devils from the steppe will massacre us all. Surrender and die, fight and die, wait for death, is that how a country should end?”

“Behind us are our wives and children. We have no retreat, hold on, a new king is coming, reinforcements are coming!”