The Baron's trumpet blast was a physical thing, a wave of arrogant sound that washed over the walls of Castiglione. For a moment, Lord Orso's men flinched, the instinct of a lifetime of fear taking hold. But the Falcon Guard stood firm, their shields raised, their faces grim masks of discipline.
"Hold!" Alessandro's voice was a sharp, clear crack that cut through the noise and the fear. "Archers will fire first. Keep your heads down until the main force reaches the wall. Wait for the signal!"
As if on cue, the sky darkened. A volley of arrows from the Baron's longbowmen arced high, thudding into the wooden hoardings and stone battlements. Another followed, and another. The defenders huddled behind their shields and the parapets, the arrows a deadly rain meant to suppress them.
Through this storm, the Baron's men-at-arms surged forward, a great, roaring wave of steel. At their center, a team of a dozen soldiers, protected by a mobile wooden roof, pushed the heavy, iron-tipped battering ram toward the main gate. Other squads carrying tall siege ladders rushed toward the walls on either side.
They reached the base of the castle. The covering fire from the archers lessened as the attackers got too close. The heavy, rhythmic thud of the battering ram striking the outer gate began, a sound that shook the very stones. The first ladders scraped against the wall.
"Now!" Alessandro roared.
It was as if a dam had burst. From the newly constructed hoardings directly above the gate, the defenders unleashed their first weapon. Not rocks, not arrows, but pots of hot, fine sand. The sand rained down on the ram crew, finding its way through the gaps in their helmets and armor, causing instant, agonizing irritation and blinding them. The well-drilled ram team faltered, their rhythm broken by pained, confused cries.
"Oil!" came Alessandro's next command.
Great clay pots of the sticky, flammable mixture were heaved over the edge, smashing onto the ram's wooden housing and the packed soldiers around it. The dark liquid soaked the wood and the ground, turning the entire gatehouse front into a slick, deadly mess.
Before the Baron's men could comprehend this new threat, a single flaming torch was dropped from above.
The world erupted into a sheet of fire. The oil ignited with a great whoosh, engulfing the battering ram and the men around it in a hellish inferno. Their screams were high and terrible, a sound that momentarily silenced the entire battlefield. The great ram, the centerpiece of their assault, was now a funeral pyre.
Simultaneously, along the walls, the Falcon Guard met the ladder crews. As soon as a ladder was planted, great push-poles, prepared for this exact purpose, were used to shove it away from the wall, sending the climbing soldiers tumbling to their deaths. For those few who managed to get a foothold, Marco and his men were waiting, their shields locked, their spears thrusting from behind a wall of steel.
The first assault wave, which had begun with such arrogant confidence, broke completely. The survivors, some with their clothes still smoldering, scrambled back in a disorganized rout, trampling their own wounded in their haste to escape the wall that had turned into a vision of hell.
A massive, triumphant roar erupted from the defenders of Castiglione. They had faced a force five times their size and had not just held, but had utterly shattered them. Lord Orso's men looked at the Falcon Guard, and at the young lord moving calmly along the wall assessing the defenses, with a new and profound sense of awe.
Alessandro quickly tallied their own losses. Three men dead from arrows that had found their mark. A half-dozen more with wounds. They were painful losses, but for repelling such a force, they were miraculously light.
From his command post on a nearby hill, the Baron of Monte San Giovanni watched the humiliating failure, his face white with disbelief and rage. His simple, overwhelming assault had been broken and burned. The reports he had received of Alessandro's strange ingenuity were not just rumors. He was not fighting a boy. He was fighting a monster.
His fury settled into a cold, grim resolve. He would not waste more of his men on another foolish charge against this butcher's wall. He would crush this rebellion with the slow, inexorable weight of a proper siege.
New trumpet calls echoed across the field. They were not for another assault, but for a recall and a reformation. The Baron's army pulled back out of bowshot. Under the direction of their captains, they began to make camp, to dig trenches, to fell trees for fortifications.
Alessandro watched the activity, his own brief moment of triumph evaporating. He had won the first battle brilliantly. But his victory had just trapped him. The Baron was no longer trying to kick down the door. He was now settling in to starve them out. The real test of a siege—a test of food, water, and morale—had just begun.