14 I think we Should have a Little Cha

The room was completely silent. All the guards in the room were not sure what to do in such an absurd situation, but Xu Da's face immediately turned into fright as soon as he saw the goose.

(XD) "Guards kill that goose immediately, and capture that person for interrogation." he yelled out half in anger and half in fright.

Baron's spy (BS) "Looks like you guys are busy I'll just take my leave." he said and immediately bolted out of the room.

A few of Xu Da's men gave chase, but as soon as Baron's spy got on the horse and left no one could catch up to him. How could they? This spy's horse was the fastest in Baron's army, a group of hastily assembled horses would be no match for its speed. As soon as he was sure he was safe the spy grabbed a messenger pigeon in a cage from his horse, tucked a little message onto its legs and let it fly off towards Baron.

As soon as Baron received the message he went to go plan up strategies again but right after he sat down to open the message, someone interrupted him.

(M) "Sir, the enemy has launched their offensive for today. It seems they are finally serious now, they have brought out 14 siege towers. Two each on the north and south walls, and 5 each on the east and west walls."

(BM) "Are they perhaps trying to bet everything on today?" Baron asked quite quite concerned. "Have there been any reports of Xu Da personally fighting?"

(M) "No, sir"

(BM) "What are they planning? I can't make heads nor tails of what they plan to achieve with a formation like this." Baron then proceeded to lead the fight on the west walls and have 1 of his officers on the north and south walls to transfer over to lead the men on the east walls. This way all of the walls reached a sort of equilibrium where neither side could push the other back.

(M) "Sir I have a report. The east walls have reported that three more siege towers have appeared and will latch onto the east walls in a matter of minutes."

(BM) "So that's what Xu Da had planned." Baron realized that when Xu Da had set up which wall the siege towers would go to, he knew that Baron would choose to lead the men in either the west or east walls, which had the highest chances of falling if he hadn't intervened. So all Xu Da had to do to gain the upper hand was to send more siege towers to the side that Baron didn't go to to defend. A very basic strategy but effective nonetheless since Baron couldn't go to both walls at the same time.

If Baron chose to stick to the west wall, then the east wall would undoubtedly fall. However, if he lead the defence in the east wall then the west wall would also fall sooner or later, not to mention the time he had to spend to get to the other side of the city where the east wall was. Such difficult decisions had to be thought out carefully but Baron did not have this luxury at this moment.

(BM) "Going by my calculations they would not have had enough time to soak all of them in water, at least not properly. So give the message to the other walls' officers to burn down the battle sieges. That should more or less solve a few of our problems. As for the others throw a couple of barrels of oil onto the siege towers and light that up."

(M) "Yes sir" The messenger immediately left to inform the others.

Baron had to attempt to finish off the matters of this west wall quickly before he could do anythingfor the east wall. As soon as he instructed the burning of the siege towers, of the original five that had been at the wall only two remained. Deeming this wall no longer under a threat of falling to the enemy, Baron quickly had the other officers to burn down the rest and to assist the north and south walls should they need assistance in burning down their siege towers. Baron figured out that in fact none of the siege towers were soaked in water so they could still burn them down, it just required a bit of tie. Although fire arrows could eventually burn down these towers it would take far too long and so he resorted to throwing anything extremely flammable he had onto the towers and lighting those up. It worked miraculously but the battle today was a fierce one and although they managed to push back Xu Da's forces, both sides had taken tremendous amounts of casualties.

At the end of the day, Xu Da's men had gained the upper hand and had 36,000 troops remaining while Baron had only 34,000. In terms of morale though, Baron's men fared better since their enemies had lost a vital part of their army, their siege towers, which were destroyed fairly easily, this improved their morale greatly. Xu Da did not send out any of the people to set out firecrackers tonight for fear of losing any more men and morale.

Finally, Baron could look at the messenger bird's message that his spy had sent to him hours earlier, he could read it now since there was no fight going on. The message proved Baron's guess, Xu Da was indeed deathly afraid of geese. Baron could see now how he could win this war with the leastamount of effort possible. He then sent a message to the cavalry to immediately scout the area around the city to find where the enemy camp was. After they found the camp they were to return to their previous location to await further instructions. With a force of close to ten thousand cavalry, they were able to quickly gather the info and report back without much hassle.

When they returned to their base of operations outside of the city they were surprised to see Baron there. After all no one expected the master strategist to leave the city that he was supposed to defend just like that. Officer Sol quickly greeted his superior.

Officer Sol (OS) "Sir, what is the meaning of this? Aren't you supposed to stay within the city and give instructions to us through messengers so that you can lead the others inside the city? Why are you here?"

(BM) "Don't worry the officers and the lieutenant have already received the battle plan for tomorrow, they should be able to last until we deal the decisive blow to Xu Da's army in a few hours. Get as much rest as you can we will set off in an hour or two.

(OS) "Yes, sir. Go on you heard the boss go get some rest." Sol relayed to his men.

Within an hour Xu Da's men had already had their breakfast and left their camp to once again lay siege to the city for the sixth day in a row. This was when Baron chose to attack the enemy camp. With the full force of 10,000 cavalry the 5,000 troops stationed there all had their guard down. Baron and his men made quick work of the 5,000 infantry and killed most of them while only taking a few hundred casualties on his side. This boosted their morale immensely and they set out again to the walled city. Before they left, Baron ordered two thousand out of his remaining troops to change into the enemy's armour.

Just before they reached the city they split up into two groups. One group that consisted of Baron and the two thousand cavalry that were dressed as the enemy. This group led by Baron would directly go to engage Xu Da and the temporary command centre that they had set up, this camp was located outside of the north wall. The second group was led by Officer Sol and the remaining troops were under his command. They were told to go to the south wall, directly opposite of Xu Da's command centre, and try to kill as many men as they could. Both parties would engage the enemy at roughly the same time so that even if Xu Da caught wind of what Officer Sol was doing, he would be too occupied with Baron to be able to do anything about it.

(BM) "Alright, you" He said pointing to one of his soldiers. "You will bring me to Xu Da's command tent and say that you caught me lurking around the camp. Everyone else you will standby here, unless there is a fight that breaks out between me and enemy general Xu Da will you come to fight. If that happens you will have to try to find me in the confusion and get me out."

"Yes sir" everyone shouted.

Baron and his soldier dressed as the enemy got off their horses and proceeded to walk straight into the heart of the enemy without showing any fear. Once they were granted access to the command tent they went in to have an audience with Xu Da. Baron was the first to speak when the two opposing generals made eye contact.

(BM) "I think we should have a little chat, Xu Da." Baron said confidently.