Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry

Chapter 268: Spears Before the Invasion

Supreme Emir Badr ibn Ayyash observed the sudden ignition of the defensive fire trenches from his elevated command position.

In the meticulously managed economy of his emirate, a trained heavy cavalryman and a selectively bred warhorse represented a massive investment of agricultural surplus, time, and specialized training facilities.

To see his vanguard suddenly halted and threatened by a massive wall of fire meant that his most expensive, highly valued military assets were being destroyed without yielding any tangible territorial or tactical advantage.

He realized instantly that Strategist Sun had successfully anticipated the charge and had manipulated the local terrain to entirely neutralize the Andalusian mobility advantage. The enemy strategist had turned the landscape itself into a defensive resource.

Following this stark realization, Badr issued immediate administrative orders to mitigate the economic and personnel damage. He commanded his fastest, lightest horsemen to detach from the main rear reserve and execute a rapid, highly organized rescue operation.

The light cavalry bypassed the heaviest concentrations of the burning pitch, riding swiftly into the chaotic, smoke-filled kill zone. Their specific logistical directive was to retrieve the dismounted and wounded knights who were trapped near the flames.

To maximize the efficiency of the extraction, each rescuing horseman was instructed to mount two wounded men onto his horse. They placed one incapacitated soldier in front of the saddle and one securely behind the rider.

While this rescue operation was happening, the command staff in the rear encampment actively tallied the logistical losses. The final casualty report revealed that the total number of wounded and incapacitated knights did not even reach a thousand men.

In a grand strategic sense, losing fewer than a thousand men from a total coalition force of more than twenty thousand was a highly acceptable mathematical outcome. The overall combat effectiveness and numerical superiority of the Andalusian army remained fundamentally intact.

However, the impact of the hidden trap severely altered the emotional state of the Arab leaders.

They became highly irrational and deeply angry at the loss of their elite troops.

Driven by this intense, collective anger, the Arab leaders drastically altered their siege timeline and their resource allocation. They ordered the siege engineer corps to immediately increase the rate of the catapult bombardment.

The commanders demanded that the heavy wooden trebuchets and torsion catapults be reloaded and fired at maximum speed, entirely disregarding the standard safety protocols and preventative maintenance schedules of the complex siege engines.

This angry directive pushed the logistical supply lines of the encampment to their absolute limits.

Thousands of laborers, conscripts, and supply officers frantically transported heavy stones, quarried rocks, and incendiary pots from the rear storage depots directly to the active firing lines to feed the accelerated bombardment.

During this period of intensified, highly aggressive bombardment, the structural integrity of the Zaragoza defenses began to rapidly degrade.

The primary, focused target of this concentrated anger was the main gate of the citadel. The heavy iron hinges and reinforced oak planks of the gate complex simply could not withstand the increased frequency and sheer weight of the impacts.

After several hours of accelerated bombardment, the structural load limit was reached.

The hinges buckled completely, the crossbeams splintered into jagged fragments, and the main gate was completely destroyed.

With the main gate completely eliminated from the defensive perimeter, the architectural layout of the siege changed. Because there was no other entrance large enough to accommodate a massive, coordinated assault, the entire conflict was now permanently localized to a single bottleneck.

This presented a unique tactical challenge for both the defending administrators and the attacking coalition.

Strategist Sun understood logically that the Andalusians would attempt to exploit the structural breach by funneling their massive numbers of heavy cavalry directly through the destroyed gate.

To counter this impending assault, he ordered the rapid deployment of his remaining infantry assets.

Thousands upon thousands of heavily armored Tang soldiers were mobilized from the inner civilian courtyards and directed to gather directly behind the ruined entrance.

The tactical arrangement of these Tang soldiers was highly specific, organized, and designed for maximum area denial. They were equipped primarily with long spears.

Strategist Sun knew from his extensive studies and military history that the best, most reliable weapon against a charging horseman is the long spear.

The length of the weapon allows the infantryman to strike the horse or rider before the cavalry’s shorter melee weapons can reach the defender.

By arranging his men in deep, densely packed ranks, Strategist Sun effectively created an static wall of iron points facing the breach.

The men in the front rows were ordered to kneel. They braced the wooden butts of their long spears securely against the cobblestones of the street.

This specific positioning was intended to transfer the immense kinetic impact of a charging horse directly into the ground, preventing the infantry line from collapsing under the weight of the assault.

The rows behind the kneeling men stood tall, leveling their own weapons over the shoulders of the men in front, creating multiple overlapping layers of lethal defense.

The Tang soldiers stood in absolute, disciplined silence, waiting patiently for the Arab horsemen to enter the city. They were highly trained, and their standing orders were incredibly simple: hold the defensive line and allow the enemy cavalry to impale themselves upon the dense spear wall.

If the Andalusian horses entered the narrow bottleneck of the ruined gate, their superior open-field mobility would be entirely negated by the surrounding stone buildings and the concentrated mass of the Tang infantry.

The cavalry would be trapped, unable to maneuver, and easily dispatched by the longer reach of the spears.

Outside the ruined gate, Supreme Emir Badr ibn Ayyash halted his advancing cavalry column. He took the time to carefully survey the new tactical situation through the massive breach in the wall.

He clearly saw the thousands of armored Tang soldiers gathered in the streets.

To secure victory and properly subjugate the city of Zaragoza, he needed to alter his unit composition and his tactical approach on the fly.

He recognized that a heavy cavalryman is essentially a heavily armored soldier who simply happens to be sitting on a horse. When deprived of their mounts, these elite knights effectively transition into highly skilled, heavily armored heavy infantry.

As heavy infantry, his knights could utilize their thick shields, their durable chainmail, and their sharp Damascus scimitars to systematically dismantle the Tang spear wall in a slow, grueling close-quarters melee.

By fighting on foot, the knights would present a much smaller target to the spearmen, and they could physically push past the spear points to engage the Tang soldiers at close range, entirely nullifying the defenders’ anti-cavalry advantage.

Therefore, possessing a clear understanding of the necessary tactical adjustments, the Arab leader decided to issue a new command.

"Get off your horses!" Badr ordered.