Within the throat of the entrance, thousands of Tang footn stood shoulder-to-shoulder.
From his vantage point overlooking the defensive formation, Strategist Sun observed the shifting tides of the battlefield.
The Andalusian host, rather than breaking their mounts against the wall of iron points, had halted.
The Supre Emir had commanded his knights to dismount.
A harsh laugh erupted from the center of the Tang lines.
The tension of the prolonged siege was fracturing the discipline of the Emperor’s chosen.
"Hahaha! They’re dismounting!" a veteran spearman shouted.
He pointed the iron tip of his long spear toward the dust-covered Arab warriors who were currently handing the reins of their magnificent chargers to the rear guard.
To a foot soldier of the East, a knight abandoning his horse was a symbol of capitulation to the infantry’s dominance.
The laugh rippled through the front ranks, morphing rapidly into an aggressive, bloodthirsty murmur.
The Tang warriors, having endured weeks of starvation and the terror of the catapult bombardnt, were desperate to spill blood.
"Shouldn’t we attack and finish them off now?" another soldier demanded, lowering his pike slightly.
"Silence!" the warlord bellowed from the parapet.
The ruined gate was a killing ground that favored the defender. To abandon the narrow passage was to surrender their only advantage against an enemy that still vastly outnumbered them on the open plains.
"We must hold our ground!" Sun commanded.
"We’re in a position of strength! The iron wall does not move. Let them break themselves upon our points!"
A defiant shout rose from the rear of the spear formation. The warriors holding the second and third lines were unable to see the enemy clearly, and their fear of the endless bombardnt was far stronger than their fear of their commander.
"Huh? What strength?" the voice sneered. "There are catapults in front of us! We are trapped like rats waiting for the next rain of fire!"
The truth of the statent resonated through the packed ranks. The strength of a spear wall was irrelevant if the n holding the spears died of starvation or were immolated by liquid fire from above.
"Then we attack!" a chorus of voices joined in. They rattled their spear shafts against the stone walls, demanding the glory of a forward assault rather than the slow humiliation of a defensive death.
"Shut up, you fools!" the lead infantry captain roared, stepping in front of the n.
"Ha! We won’t be silent!" the rebellious faction countered.
"Even if you’re the commander, we won’t let you make us die right here! We will die with honor, advancing with our blades, not waiting for stones to crush our skulls!"
The warlord drew his own straight-edged Jian.
Silence...
"Can you repeat what you said?" the warlord asked.
"Do you need to remind you of your place?" the warlord continued, pacing slowly along the edge of the parapet, looking down upon the sea of iron helts.
"You kill when ordered, and you die when ordered."
The rebellion crumbled as quickly as it had risen. The n lowered their eyes.
"We will stand our ground," the warlord declared, sliding his Jian back into its scabbard. "And see what these Arabs will do. They have abandoned their beasts. Let us see if they possess the strength to fight as n."
While the Tang forces suppressed their internal rebellion through the threat of swift execution, a completely different spirit possessed the Andalusian vanguard outside the shattered gate.
"God is with us!" a knight shouted.
The sound was sharp, aggressive, and filled with undeniable courage.
The battle cry spread like wildfire through the dismounted ranks. Thousands of warriors raised their swords toward the heavens, their voices joining in a unified roar that shook the very foundations of the ruined Zaragoza gate.
The fear generated by the Tang’s long spears was entirely eclipsed by the certainty of divine favor and the promise of eternal glory.
"Let’s show them who owns this land!" Badr commanded, pointing the tip of his scimitar directly into the dark throat of the citadel’s entrance.
The tactical problem before them was obvious. The Tang had created a wall of iron points, a dense, overlapping forest of long spears designed to impale any man foolish enough to charge directly into it.
"The solution," Badr explained, "is for the dismounted horsen to use their thick shields as a sloping wall."
"Instead of directly engaging the spears, you will deflect and push them down or up using the corners and the angled faces of your shields," Badr continued.
The goal was not to chop the spears, but to slide past the lethal points, forcing the long, cumberso shafts out of alignnt.
"Once we get past the first line of spears, the Tang soldiers will find themselves too tightly packed. They will be entirely unable to drop their long spears and draw their short swords. They won’t have enough room for their backup weapons."
A spear is a weapon of distance. Once an armored knight closes the gap, stepping inside the reach of the spearhead, the long wooden shaft becos useless. The Tang infantry, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow bottleneck, would be incapable of swinging a sword or raising a shield.
They would be defenseless against the short hacking of the curved Andalusian scimitars.
"With our courage and honor, we will defeat these fools!"
They raised their shields, forming a protective, overlapping barrier of their own.
After securing their defensive line, the Arab knights parted slightly to allow the passage of specialized auxiliary troops. Several thousand Arab warriors stepped forward, taking up secure positions directly behind the protective wall of the dismounted foot soldiers.
These n did not carry lances, nor did they draw swords. They bore heavy, sealed clay vessels in their hands.
It was filled with a highly flammable mixture of pitch, naphtha, and ancient alchemical powders.
When ignited and shattered against a hard surface, it unleashed a torrent of liquid fla that adhered to wood, flesh, and iron with equal malice.
With their targets perfectly aligned and trapped within the bottleneck, the Arab fire-throwers ignited the slow-burning cloth fuses protruding from the clay vessels.
Following the deploynt of the fuses, the commanders of the Andalusian host shouted the order to release the payloads...
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