Over the last several weeks, Udo was busy moving Aksum infantry and supplies while watching the siege from a safe distance as the troops and supplies were unloaded. The trebuchets that he gave to the Aksum did an amazing job of knocking the parapets off the city's walls, knocking down towers, and significantly damaging gates. After seeing the utility of the trebuchets, the various nobles pointed out that the trebuchets were much more practical in the desert than ballista since they didn’t need wooden shafts for bolts, and any rock could be used for ammunition.

The siege took longer than it should have because they had difficulty getting enough ladders from Aksum to Muza, largely because the people back in Aksum were not in a hurry to build the needed ladders, which slowed everything down. Even when they were complete, the ladders were a logistical headache to bring across the Red Sea since they were all different sizes and so were awkward to bring aboard and store, but eventually they got the ladders to the army.

Except for the ladders, the siege went smoothly. So smoothly, the Aksum asked Muza to surrender many times, but they refused and decided to hold out for their army. This was unfortunate since the Aksum army was far too green to deal with a real well-trained army, so after the last refusal to surrender, the fifty thousand soldiers surrounding the city were split into a thousand different units, and each unit was given a ladder. They were told to wait until the horn sounded and then attack. The trebuchets would continue firing until the first units were on the wall. Udo went around and gave each unit crossbows.

Preparation finished, Aksum gave Muza one last chance to surrender. They refused, and Udo watched as fifty thousand soldiers ran at the city when the horn sounded. Udo was impressed when those soldiers continued running despite his trebuchets launching massive one-hundred-pound rocks flying over their heads and into the city.

As they ran to the city, Udo couldn’t help but think about the strategic reality. Normally you would send soldiers in waves at a city you wanted to siege, but this army was too green. It was best for Aksum to send them all. If they succeeded, then Aksum had a new city. If not, then Aksum got rid of fifty thousand desperate men. During the discussion of the wisdom of this manuver the nobles pointed out that since this army was raised, crime in Aksum had gone down thirty percent, so win or lose, Aksum was better off. But Paulsland needed them to win. If they failed to take Muza, then the Himyarites would have no reason not to send more soldiers to Paulsland.

Udo’s heart clenched as he watched the soldiers make their way to the walls. Muza was a city built on an oasis, and thus it had a lot of structures like dams, dikes, and canals to store and move water through a complex web to irrigate the fields surrounding the city. This meant that the soldiers couldn’t run straight to the city and instead had to zig-zag across paths to get to their goal. Albeit, this probably did more to preserve the soldiers' lives than if they ran straight at the city as the guards on the walls were firing arrows at them and using war machines to hurl stones. The strange paths meant that the soldiers were constantly moving out of the path of the various projectiles.

As the soldiers moved toward Muza, inside the city, horns, trumpets, and drums sounded. As the men heard the warnings, they ran to the walls to defend. As the women and children heard it, they ran to places they hoped would be safe. As the tops of the walls were being filled with defenders, the trebuchets began targeting them. Most of the stones that missed went into the city, causing more destruction, but the ones that hit devastated the defenders on the wall. One particular stone took out ten men; despite that, the men had to stay on the walls to repel the attackers.

When the Aksum soldiers neared the wall, they were pelted with stones and arrows as they put their ladders against the walls, but the few Aksum soldiers who had crossbows fought back and devastated the men on the walls. Some of the bolts managed to break through the brittle iron breastplates, others bypassed armor, and hit faces, arms, or legs killing and wounding guards desperately trying to keep the Aksum soldiers from the walls.

Despite the attacks, and counter attacks the green soldiers moved forward and planted their ladders against the walls. Then the soldiers began climbing up with their spears pointed at the defenders. The defenders desperately tried pushing the ladders off the wall and succeeded on hundreds of ladders, but there were hundreds more that they didn’t have the manpower to push back, and the Aksum soldiers began reaching the top. As they reached the top, both side’s spears crossed as they tried to impale each other, while the soldiers behind the attackers were pushing the attackers up the ladder. There was no retreat, win or die. It was a chaotic crush.

Udo felt like he was losing years of his life as he watched the battle. He needed these soldiers to win. Paulsland needed these soldiers to win. He wished he had coal oil to give to the soldiers. Throwing some of that on the defenders and a torch afterward would have cleared sections of the walls, but alas, they didn’t have any.

Udo watched from the distance as hundreds of men a minute were dying, trying to get on top of the wall from a thousand different ladders. It was pure chaos at first, but then one soldier made it on top of the wall, and the defenders had to shift to stop the foothold, which allowed soldiers from another ladder onto the wall. Then more soldiers made it, and the tide immediately began changing. Udo felt relief. Now that a foothold had been established, the battle was over.

The defenders didn’t know it yet. They moved to try to push the attackers off the wall, but that just opened up more spots for the Aksum soldiers to make it up the ladder, and once they had a section of the wall, the other soldiers poured in behind them, and they just began to overwhelm the defenders. The only way Udo could describe it was that it was like his soldiers were a wave that slowly overwhelmed the defenders.

Trumps sounded, drums beat, and horns howled as the defenders tried to reorganize their men, but all this did was make the civilian that joined the guards in defense recognize all hope was lost, and they ran from the battle, looking for a place to hide. And perhaps they would be successful; it was a big city, after all.

As they swept over the walls, more and more soldiers made it up the ladders. Each soldier was desperate to climb because the sooner they were over that wall, the sooner they could start looting and raping. They recognized the battle was over, and now they wanted to find enough coin, jewels, and loot to keep them in wine and prostitutes for a year and celebrate their victory with the finest female they could hold down.

If the defenders knew how green the army was and was a bit more disciplined, they might have been able to defend the inside of the city since there were mansions that were nearly fortifications inside the city and because this Aksum army was as green as could be, and very undisciplined. It would have been difficult but possible to destroy this Aksum army piecemeal, but with the walls taken, the defender's spirit was broken, and every man, woman, and child did their best to hide. Most failed in their effort.

Udo and Ousanas were annoyed with the soldiers as they had to wait two hours before they got around to opening the gates. But once they were finally open, Udo and the Aksum noble made their way to the city.

As they walked toward the city, Udo was greatly impressed by the dams and irrigation surrounding the city. Udo had heard rumors about it, but the rumors did not do it justice. Here he was in a very hot desert, and the land surrounding the city was green with crops because of a supremely clever design. Paulsland could take this idea and do great things with it. They would have to redesign parts of it for the wet season, but it could dramatically improve the nation during the dry season.

Udo was so impressed he asked Ousanas, “Would you mind giving me the people who built and maintained this irrigation network? Along with their families?”

Ousanas didn’t have to think about it, “Sure, no problem. The city didn’t surrender, so everyone will be made a slave. If you just want the people who worked on the irrigation, then you can have them and their families. Do you want anything else? You spent more money on this invasion than anyone else.”

“No, give my part of the spoil to the King of Aksum.”

Ousanas was surprised and asked, “Are you trying to become a noble?”

Udo wasn’t going to tell him that the reason he was giving the king of Aksum the spoil was because he wanted the Aksum king to be more invested in the city and thus willing to spend more money to defend it; instead, he said, “My reasons are my own.”

Ousanas shook his head and said, “If you make my King enough money, then he will make you a noble.”

“There could be some advantages to that. Let's go find my slaves.”

And so, they made their way into the city, and in the first courtyard, hundreds of men were sitting naked, surrounded by Aksum soldiers with spears and smiles. They were happy with the rape and loot and that they were going to earn some more coins when these men were sold. It was a good day for the ones who didn’t die.

Udo and Ousanas passed the soldiers and began walking through the naked men, asking them, “What is your trade?” Anyone who didn’t answer right away was hit with a rod to make the men compliant.

Ousanas was looking for anyone who worked in the perfume trade. The Himyarites had done a fantastic job of keeping their perfume a secret. Only a select few even knew what ingredients went into frankincense or myrrh, much less knew the recipe. When he couldn’t find the perfume makers, he asked questions about where the perfume was made, and the answers Ousanas received didn’t make him happy. The Himyarites kept the plants that were needed to make frankincense and myrrh inside fortified mansions in the city, and when the Aksum soldiers began the siege, the mansion owners burned all the plants inside the forts, and all the people that worked on the perfume fled the city.

As for Udo, it took him a while to find someone who knew how to work on the aqueducts. When he asked, “What is your trade?”

A man that had dead eyes said, “I maintain the aqueducts and canals surrounding the city.”

Udo smiled and said, “If you agree to come with me, I will save your family, but I need to know a few things.”

Udo watched as life returned to the man’s eyes, and he asked, “Including my grandchildren.”

“Of course.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I need you to lead me to whoever is responsible for designing and building your aqueduct and canal system that irrigates your crops.”

All hope fell from the man's face, and he asked, “Are you joking? The aqueducts and canals have been here for hundreds of years. We don’t even know what the city's name was when the irrigation system was built. It's been conquered by a different king at least four times since then.”

Udo was surprised and said, “You must have someone that oversees the enlargement of your dams, canals, and aqueducts when you need more water to irrigate.”

“No. We just maintain what our ancestors built.”

“What do you do when you need more food?”

“We trade for it. We have more people than our city can feed without trade, but the perfume market allows us to trade with Egypt for most of our food.”

“Do you at least have a basic understanding of how your irrigation system works?”

“Yes. We have to. Every now and then, we will hire some new kid who doesn’t, and we have to fix the system when he makes a stupid mistake.”

“How many people maintain it?”

The man thought hard. He was listing off names, and then after about a minute, he said, “Thirty.”

“Help me find those men, and we will take you, those men, and their families to Paulsland, where you can teach the people of Paulsland how your irrigation system works.”

“I don’t know how many of them survived the attack. Everyman was on the wall.”

“Let's go find any survivors quickly; then we can begin looking for your wives and children.”

“Thank you.”

The lowly maintenance worker began looking for the others with haste. The sooner he found them, the sooner they could begin looking for their wives, daughters, and children. It was early enough in the conquest that the small children were not yet executed for the crime of not being profitable to sell.

As for Udo, he had no pity for these people. The only reason why they were suffering was because their army did the same thing to his homeland. He would not tell these people that they were reaping what they sowed or that they had bad karma. Instead, he would remind them that their wives and daughter's destiny was to be prostitutes in this city as the Himyarites tried to retake the city. If they stayed, then they would die a whore, either from some disease, a violent customer, starvation from a long siege, or perhaps her own government would kill her for giving comfort to the enemy. Udo would remind them they should be grateful to Paulsland, and that’s even before King Paul inevitably set these people free when they landed on Paulsland. Maybe these people would be so grateful they would actually put forth their best effort in sharing the knowledge they had.

That said, their knowledge was a bonus. The real boon was now the Himyarite army would have to bring tens of thousands of men to siege this city, and the king of Aksum would defend his new profitable conquest. The Himyarites could not afford to send more men to Paulsland, and that was the real victory.