"Here in Alcidea, the most common form of fortification is that of the walled city. A massive wall, often many meters wide, would be erected all around a city. The topside of the wall was wide enough to station large numbers of troops on.

More elaborate constructions might trade off some absolute durability in exchange for room on the inside of the wall. These walls are usually heavily enchanted, and comes with murder holes and many slots from which people inside can strike at those outside.

Walls like these were always costly to assault, but should they be breached, or the gates opened, then the battle was pretty much over. The attackers would be able to enter at will, and the defenders on the walls would find themselves pincered from within and without, to be dismantled piecemeal." - Dean O'Malley, retired combat engineer, formerly of the Stone Shapers.

Reinhardt couldn't help but to nibble on his claws out of nervousness.

It has been three days and nights since Elfriede and a few others went into the walled city. All signs pointed out that they had made contact with the criminal elements and set up a plan, as per the message Nicole had conveyed.

In accordance with that plan, the dwarves had mounted a siege attempt since early that night, as they harried the defenders with bolts and quarrels from afar. Their combat engineers had worked together and created large catapult-shaped golems, a dozen on each of the three sides they assaulted, and lobbed huge boulders at the walls with them.

By now they had kept up the assault for six hours already. Hidden in the south side, with the darkness as their cover, were the dwarven heavy cavalry. Reinhardt and the Free Lances were also gathered there, as they waited nervously for the drawbridge to be lowered.

It neared the promised hour, and yet no sign of the drawbridge moving was visible. He couldn't help but feel nervous for his wife and comrades inside, a worry that only escalated as time passed and still no signs were visible.

Until finally, around half an hour past the promised time, there was movement. Even from afar he could hear the dismayed shouts of the defenders, as the drawbridge slowly but surely lowered itself. The rattle of heavy chains accompanied its descent, and it sounded like the best music in the world to Reinhardt's ears.

All at once, the dwarves suddenly intensified their barrage. Bolts and quarrels were fired from their heavy crossbows until they blanketed the skies and forced the defenders of the southern walls to hunker down beneath their shields. At the same time their combat engineers burned their mana prodigiously as the catapults lobbed stones at three times the usual pace.

As the drawbridge approached the ground on their side of the moat, the middle of the dwarven lines parted, and the heavy cavalry slowly brought their hefty rhinoceros mounts to an easy canter, before they transitioned to a trot, and then a full gallop. Reinhardt and his troops ran behind them as fast as their legs could carry them.

The drawbridge had not quite settled on the soil yet when the foremost cavalrymen reached it, but they had not cared. With a skilled heave of the reins, the drivers made their ponderous mounts leap over the half-meter gap and land atop the drawbridge with a rumble. Others followed them similarly, their combined weight helping the drawbridge settle on land faster.

Some panicked soldiers inside had tried to bring some wooden barricades over, logs tied together on cross-shaped stands of sharpened logs. Those barricades would have stopped regular cavalry, and slowed down infantry.

Against dwarven heavy cavalry however, they proved mostly useless. The two drivers of the frontmost pair of rhinos simply instructed their mounts to ram the barricade, horn-first. During their advance, their crossbowmen rained bolts at the defenders using their repeating crossbows.

Wood splintered and broke apart as the massive beasts struck them, as the dwarven cavalry just broke through the barricades like they were made of sticks. Halberdiers on the back of the rhinos raked the defenders with their long halberds as they passed, while their crossbowmen fired into the crowd with impunity.

By the time Reinhardt and his troops reached inside the city behind the heavy cavalry, all that greeted him were the sight of broken barricades, and many, many corpses strewn all over in the wake of the cavalry's rampage.

The cavalry themselves had mostly left through the main streets towards the other gates, other than two groups of ten each that blocked the nearest stairs, as they prevented those soldiers on the walls from coming down to help.

Reinhardt was barely affected by the carnage. Some of the dead were killed by crossbow bolts. Others sliced apart by the polearms wielded by the halberdiers. A few very unlucky ones were trampled to death by the rhinos, their corpses splattered like overripe fruits that had fallen on the ground.

He quickly commanded his troops to charge into the gatehouse building to support Elfriede inside. Mischa's detachment he left outside to guard the doors and prevent enemies from coming in behind them.

The city was not his worry. The dwarven infantrymen already followed close behind his men. They would handle securing the city.

Reinhardt quickly caught up with the first of his troops who made it inside. Resistance was sparse in the lower floors. On the stairwell leading to the second floor however, they found several dead men. It looked as it the guards had fought amongst themselves, judging from the wounds and the uniforms of the corpses.

The second floor itself was pretty sparsely defended, at least until they approached the stairwell to the top floor. There he found most of the building's remaining defenders gathered as they tried to fight their way upward.

He gave them no time to react to his troops' presence, and struck them from behind with brutal swiftness. Reinhardt himself led from the front, his heavy polemace crushing his poorly armored foes even as the guards panicked.

It took his troops less than five minutes to settle the crowd before the stairwell. A few had tried to escape towards the next floor, only to be skewered by very familiar thick, heavy arrows as soon as they rounded the bend.

Carefully, Reinhardt approached the bend and announced his presence loudly, swishing his tail to and fro from around the bend as a signal, before he moved around it, his weapon still in hand.

He was greeted by a rare smile on Salicia's face, as the one-eyed woman met him at the top of the stairwell. She and Grünhildr, along with nearly twenty local thugs, had held the stairwell until his arrival.