"We are storming a city, do you understand?! A siege!!" Timasone roared. "If the heavy infantry can't get up, we'll never take these walls! What use is it if they survive but the city stands?! Push them forward! Go! Go!!"
He watched the messenger scramble across the moat and sprint toward the light infantry, then turned his eyes back to the killing ground below the walls. The earth was littered with bodies—mercenaries and Crimisan citizens alike—strewn in grotesque heaps, the air filled with the groans and shrieks of the dying.
Timasone had seen scenes like this too many times. Before coming to Magna Graecia, he had followed Tibron in a months-long assault on Larissa in Asia Minor. He knew the cruelty of sieges. Yet he had no other choice—brute force was his only tool, and time was the key to success.
