“People often think that small losses would not affect the overall course of a large battle. Such thoughts are but folly, for it is those small changes that often grow larger until they eventually alter the entire course of a battle in the end.” - Liang Shi-Zu, famed tactician from the Huan Confederation.

The tension was palpable throughout the battlefield on the next day.

While the combined forces of Anduille and Podovniy still held an edge in numbers at a total of around a hundred forty thousand men, not counting the injured, the arrival of the reinforcements put Levain up to far more even ground. While most of Levain’s soldiers were still poorly trained or only halfway through their training, there were eighty thousand of them within the walls of the city, and the fortifications gave them an advantage that more than evened out their lack of training and experience.

Meanwhile, the forces from Caroma as well as Levain’s elites who now based themselves on the fort taken from the Podovny forces the day before counted thirty-five thousand elites between them, trained soldiers who would match the best their enemies had to offer toe to toe. They were further reinforced by an auxiliary force seven thousand and five hundred strong, composed of the volunteers who had marched with the Free Lances in their delaying action.

The volunteers were mostly rangers and scouts, poorly trained for the rigors of open warfare, but they still served as an adequate force of archers, since the current situation of the battle had little need for scouts. As for the mercenaries themselves, their full force of nearly two thousand was also present, hidden in the depths of the jungle from where they could make surprise attacks towards the enemy lines when least expected.

Due to the position of the siege camps, the Anduilleans could mostly ignore the reinforcements, as they were on the other side of the city. Should the reinforcements attempt to circle around the city to strike at them, they would have ample warning, which made that course of action a foolhardy one. As such, the Anduillean invaders continued to focus on besieging the northern part of the city.

The Podovnians on the other hand were forced by the circumstances to split their forces. Fifty thousand soldiers – over half of their remaining forces – were arrayed facing the south, where the Levainian reinforcements and the Caroman elites were. The rest of their troops were spread thin between guarding their camp and continuing with the siege, which effectively made the Anduillean army the main force of the siege itself.

Given how the attackers were focused on the north and east side of the city, the reinforcements could have entered the city from the west, if they were inclined to do so, and there would be little that the besiegers could do to really stop them. However, the Caroman Marshals had convinced Estelle that it would be more beneficial to keep their forces outside the city, in order to force the enemy to split their forces and attention.

It was a rather risky choice, as if the Podovnians were to send out their entire force, the reinforcements would be hard-pressed to defend themselves. On the other hand, in such a case, the defenders inside the city could take that opportunity to sally out and strike the enemy from behind in a pincer maneuver, and the mercenaries would likely make an attempt to burn the Podovnian camp, to boot.

That knowledge forced the Podovnians to stay their hand, so to speak, as their own commanders were aware of such possibilities and how it would only lead to a disastrous result for them. Even if the besiegers were to combine their forces to force a decisive battle where they had the advantage, it was doubtful that they would walk out from such a fight without severe losses.

So it was that the next day’s siege continued as normal, albeit with fewer besiegers than the day before, despite the poor state the seventh wall was in. The effort that the besiegers put in so far had damaged many parts of the seventh wall, and some areas had completely lost the battlements at the top, which made it hard for defenders to station themselves there.

While the siege engines continued their grisly work, tens of thousands of people from both sides clashed around the walls, as besiegers attempted to climb up the walls under covering fire from their archers, while the defenders returned an equally intense rain of arrows while doing their damndest to push away the enemies that were climbing.

By that point of time, the siege engines in operation were not only the trebuchets and ballistas that were first spotted, but also a pair of siege towers that had finished their construction in the meantime. Each siege tower held a group of fifty archers at the platform on its top, who rained arrows down on the defenders of the wall with near impunity.

Of course, the defenders also shot back with their own arrows, with some wrapping their arrows in oil-soaked rags and lighting them on fire in an attempt to set the tower aflame. Unfortunately, the besiegers were prepared for that, and the outer walls of the siege tower were kept wet with water to prevent such an incident.

Meanwhile, the tense standoff on the south of the city went on unabated, the two armies screaming insults at each other, but no actual battle taking place. The volleys of arrows fired between then mostly went to waste, as the other side would see it coming and raise their shields. The situation remained the same throughout the day, until the fighting came to an end around sunset as usual.

Unbeknownst to the besiegers, however, flying messengers delivered messages from Miriel and Bernd within the city to the ones outside that night. Messages that were written in code that the besiegers wouldn’t have been able to decipher even if they somehow got their hands on them. Messages that stated that the plan was ready to execute.