Gilead and Frontier Fortress weren’t the only kingdoms faltering under heavy attacks. At Trader Town, men were rushing back and forth, reassembling the catapult in the center of the palace roof. They moved with purpose, even though they only had the dim light of a fire barrel to assist them. 

The moment darkness had fallen, King Haven ordered the war machine repositioned from the badly damaged Catapult Tower. The catapult crew had spent several strenuous hours moving the large instrument of war.

They had broken it down into three smaller wooden sections and hoisted them, using a pulley system, down to the courtyard. Next, they carried the pieces to the palace, and using the same pulley system, hoisted them up onto the rooftop. They were completing the reassembly, just as midnight approached.

The ballista was already in place on the palace roof. It had also been moved from its crumbling tower, but the process had been much quicker thanks to its lighter weight, so the ballista crew busied themselves by helping several warriors who were hoisting large rocks to the roof for the catapult.

With the arrival of midnight, King Haven looked towards the West Bridge. Lord Tagtor would be crossing at any time. He had been assigned some replacements and would be going out with nine men. The squad would be carrying flint and oil to burn the giant’s carts. That should buy them some time.

The king listened intently, not expecting to hear anything. The bridge crew would do their job very quietly, moving at a snail’s pace. First, they would slide it open, and then slide closed the heavily oiled bridge contraption, all in complete darkness. They were very good at what they did.

King Haven jolted awake, startled to find that he must have dozed off. It took him a second to realize something was amiss. He could hear sounds…………swords clashing near the West Bridge. Next, several large brush piles began to burn on the bank to the west.

The blaze rose quickly, lighting up the scene. Lord Tagtor’s squad had made it about half a field from the bridge when they were ambushed by a large horde of Bone Breakers, and two of his men already lay dead. An even larger horde of goblins were rushing the West Bridge, where some had already made it across.

The captain of the bridge crew was lying dead, while a handful of his men were engaged in a sword fight with the goblins who had already crossed. The men were quickly swallowed up by the sea of green that was entering the city.

“Close the bridge!” King Haven screamed, knowing in his gut it was already too late.

Just then, he heard the familiar “swoosh” of a catapult ball flying over his head. Lord Zobo, the Catapult Commander, had realized the situation and was attempting to smash the bridge! The first round went long, although it did kill four goblins. Rocks began to fly as fast as Lord Zobo’s men could load them.

Each one splattered green blood while they slowly zeroed in on their target. The king held his breath, willing them to hit the West Bridge before the entire Bone Breaker Tribe crossed into his city. Several hundred were already in Trader Town.

The men on the one remaining south tower, led by a petite captain named Fernhower, began engaging some goblin archers who had just crossed the bridge. Skirmishes began erupting all about the west side of the city.

The majority of the goblin force who was already across the bridge attacked the men behind the barricades on the west side of Trader Town. The fighting was intense, with the sounds of the dead and dying piercing the night.

A handful of archers had stayed on the leaning Catapult Tower. They began firing at Bone Breakers who had started to run across the fifty-yard distance to Barracks Two.

The five major wooden buildings on the west side of the city were two-story troop barracks, numbered one through five. Barracks One and Two housed warriors. Barracks Three housed the crossbowmen and Barracks Four was for the archers. That left Barracks Five for the guards who worked in the palace.

It didn’t take long before the sounds of battle could be heard coming from all five of those buildings. Still, the goblins were pouring across the open bridge, re-enforcing their attacking troops. A full-blown night battle had erupted!

King Haven caught one last sight of Lord Tagtor’s muscular silhouette, just as he and three of his men disappeared. They had made it to the far wood line, with twenty or thirty Bone Breakers chasing them. They wouldn’t last long because the woods were where the goblins were encamped.

A loud crash signaled that Lord Zobo and his catapult crew had finally found their mark. The first hit sent at least ten goblins and their yorg leader toppling into the rushing moat waters. They let out howls while they disappeared beneath the swirling steaming waters.

It took three more shots to bring down the West Bridge completely. With a thunderous splash, it also disappeared beneath the churning moat, dragging with it two or three goblins who had been clinging to it in desperation.

King Haven breathed a sigh of relief. But how many had made it across? At least a hundred had entered each of the five troop barracks. He looked towards the barricade to the south. About half of the men assigned there, maybe sixty, were fleeing in terror to the east side of town.

It didn’t look like anyone had escaped from the barricade to the west. That fight had been brutal, evident from the several hundred goblin and human corpses scattered about.

King Haven could see some goblins walking around, spearing the bodies of the men, to make sure they were dead. Every so often, one would scream. This brought about happy chitters from the enemy forces.

Haven looked away in anguish, his eyes refocusing on one of his men, a black fellow named Captain Borno. He was leading about thirty men away from Troop Barracks Five, the quarters for the castle guards.

They were not being chased while they moved in the early dawn light, making their way to the safety of the east side of town. They must have killed the goblins who had entered their barracks, King Haven surmised.

He could see goblins going in and out of Barracks One and Three. Any defenders that had been there were surely dead. Then a commotion caught his eye.

About fifteen of his archers had made it to the roof of Barracks Four. They were now engaged in a shoot-out with around fifty Bone Breaker archers who had the building surrounded. The battle lasted for several minutes.

After more than thirty of the goblins had been slain, the nine men who had not fallen, threw a rope down the east side of the barracks. They had cleared this side with their arrows.

One by one they climbed down the two-story building and made their way towards the east side of town. While the last man made his way down the rope, four goblin archers rounded the corner and shot the man off the middle of the rope.

That left only Barracks Two in the hands of men. Lords Hish and Hash were holed up with over a hundred warriors on the second floor. The first floor had been taken by a goblin horde that outnumbered the men above by two to one.

The two lords were brothers, identical in every way. They were twenty-years old, short, petite men, with curly red hair. They had been born triplets, but a year ago, their brother Hosh had never returned from his Quest into Timber Lake Mountains. Now the surviving two brothers were inseparable.

The Bone Breakers tried to force their way up the narrow stairway several times, but were pushed back on each attempt, although they did kill a few men each time.

Lords Hish and Hash thought it was better to try and make a break for it, rather than be slowly picked off man by man. They decided to attack the superior number of goblins on the first floor. The brothers led the headlong rush down the stairway, into the mass of green enemy.

At the bottom of the stairs, Lord Hash ran smack into a six-foot yorg who was bulging with green muscles. The yorg skewered the young lord with a wicked looking double-edged long sword.

“No!” Lord Hish screamed when he saw his brother fall and leapt onto the back of the big yorg, stabbing him several times between the shoulder blades until the beast fell dead. When he turned to face the remaining enemy, he took three goblin spears in the gut.

The fighting continued for another ten minutes after the brothers had died. A handful of men attempted to flee back up the stairs. Half of them died before they reached the second floor. The rest were quickly chased down by the thirty remaining goblins and slain. The battle for Barracks Two had ended.

Trader Town fell strangely silent after that. King Nalop of the Bone Breakers seemed content to secure the west side of the town for now. The goblins tended to their wounded and threw their dead, along with the bodies of men, into the swirling moat.

The rushing water had become a grizzly sight. It was demoralizing, so King Haven ordered his men to try and fish the bodies out when they passed by the eastside of the town. It didn’t take long for the funeral fires to begin.

The goblins made a couple of attempts to place ladders across the moat, in the areas that they controlled, but the magicked rushing waters frightened them. The yorgs threatened and bullied the underlings, but gave up after none would cross. The goblins settled in and waited for the giants.

The bombardment began at noon. It had been a wise decision to reposition the catapult and ballista. The giants targeted those highly damaged towers first, dropping them with their first volley of rocks.

During a short lull in the action, King Haven heard shouting coming from the South Bridge, and saw a man in purple standing next to the moat. To his amazement, it was the Auction Advisor, waving a large white flag and yelling at Gorg, the giant’s leader.

“We wish to surrender! We wish to surrender! I’m authorized to discuss terms!” the short round man yelled, as the king watched the sunlight reflecting off the fat man’s bald head.

“I’ll put an end to this,” said a lord in the palace guard, named Flint, who was standing nearby.

“Hold!” King Haven commanded when Lord Flint turned to leave. “I want everyone who has a mind to surrender to see this.”

Chieftain Gorg scratched his head and stared at the squat fat man in the purple robe. The giant walked over to the edge of the moat with a large rock in his right hand and said something to the fat man in a foreign tongue.

“We wish to discuss surrender,” the Auction Advisor repeated, this time in the elven tongue, and then again in dwarven.

It was important for him to know these languages, in order to run the auctions, because all three races usually attended. The Auction Advisor probably knew a few gorilla words as well, and possibly some other foreign tongues.

Chieftain Gorg looked at the two giants nearest him; the tall, bald, black one with the golden loop earrings and the one with scars on its face. Gorg shrugged his shoulders. They shrugged back.

Gorg scratched his head again and repeated the same foreign phrase that he had said before. The leader giant cocked his head to one side and stared at the fat man, as if waiting for a reply.

When the Auction Advisor failed to respond, the giant let out a large belch. Chieftain Gorg broke out into a big grin, exposing his jagged yellow teeth, along with several gaps, one of which had a human hand protruding from it.

The Auction Advisor thought that the grin was a good sign and returned the smile. A large rock smashed him into a pulp, leaving only a red and purple splat where he had been standing. Gorg’s right hand was now empty.

Chieftain Gorg pulled the huge gnarled handled spear from his back and roared at the men inside the city, shaking the broad black metal pointed head towards the palace roof. The scarred faced giant clapped his hands together while the one with the loop earrings high-fived Gorg.

“I say no surrender for you mens, only pains and deaths!” Chieftain Gorg spat out menacingly, speaking in the language of men.” You will roast in our fires and we will feast upon your meats until the delicious taste of mens fills our bellies.”

The giant had understood the Auction Advisor and had been toying with him. In response, a few arrows flew past Gorg’s head. The giants replied immediately with flying boulders, signaling that the bombardment was beginning anew.

The giants focused on the damaged tower near the South Bridge and the last one standing near the East Bridge. Both had already been struck several times during the previous days.

The two structures took a couple of direct hits before they came down, killing the men within. Now only one tower remained standing in Trader Town. It was the second South Bridge tower, which oddly enough, had not been struck even once.

This last tower was unique because it was the tallest of the Trader Town structures. All the destroyed towers had been thirty feet tall, and about thirty feet across. The final tower was fifty feet tall and stood about ten-feet higher than even the palace roof.

The giants spent the next few minutes slapping each other on their backs, congratulating themselves for their efforts. Finally, they grew tired of celebrating and Chieftain Gorg led them back across Commerce Field, until they disappeared from sight. King Haven was glad the attack was over.