The second attempt to enter the Gallows Woods was well underway. This time the Field Marshal in charge, Erwin Krueger, paid heed to the stories and began the long and arduous challenge of having his well-oiled military machine carve a path through the woods by felling a line of trees. This was met both with better and worse results than what was expected. Yes, the cleared path let the army move unhindered through the gap in the Gallows Woods, but they still had no godly idea where the ruined city of Necrograd was. Thus, rather than just carve a straight line through the forest, they made many branching paths and hoped one of them would find a trace of the derelict metropolitan.

The force that was sent was much larger than the one sent previously, numbering five armies of twenty formations each, which was certainly a step up from the three armies that were sent last time. As the cut path spread out like a tree through the woods, the branches kept getting thinner and thinner. The main trunk of the path continued to increase in length, but the divisions kept slimming down. This was the case until one of those paths hit pay dirt, so to speak. One of the offshoots managed to find the clearing where the city of Necrograd stood but were forced to withdraw and was unable to execute a full round of scouting when they spotted a formation of undead moving towards them.

When Erwin Krueger heard the news, he was through the roof with excitement. He would have the chance to do what only the Heroes of old had done, he would be the one to assault the Black City. The few details about the city that were in the report from the scouts were overlooked by the man who now focused everything he had at his disposal into the effort of diverting all of his forces towards the ruined city. There was just one problem, a problem he would have been able to begin to prepare for had he read the report and acted on reason rather than on impulse.

The problem was that the walls had been repaired… mostly.

The legends stated that the city ramparts had been breached in multiple places and were beyond repair, but one look at Necrograd’s defensive line proved that story to be false. Either that, or the walls had somehow been patched up. However, that didn’t matter to the Field Marshal who simply tasked his forces to build siege works from the wood that was available. A force as big as his would always have some siege weapons, but they were slow and took a while to move into position. As the city was supposed to be without walls, the siege weapons had been left back at the entrance to the Gallows Woods, and thus would take at least a week to be disassembled, moved and then reassembled to assist in the taking of the city.

Erwin Krueger didn’t have the patience for this, as he was more of a ‘Lighting War’ kind of man but had no choice but to endure. He hated sieges with every fiber of his being due to how slow and tedious they were, not to mention the fact that sieges had extremely high death tolls, and he figured he would hate this siege even more due to the undead unable to feel fear of having the need for food, water and sleep. He loved wars of maneuver and loved to flank his foes and watch them flee like the roaches they were before the mighty boots of his men. On the plus side there was no way that the mastermind behind the undead resurgence could flee now that the city was surrounded. Once the gates had ben opened and the walls scaled, he would have no trouble destroying the feeble undead within the settlement.

While impatient, he felt that time was on his side. All that was needed was to suck it up and wait until the siege towers had been completed and the catapults brought up and the battle to come would be a certain victory. He had no thoughts in his mind of the potential disaster scenarios that could happen, only the fantasies of a triumphant march home with thousands of crates nearly filled to bursting with loot. Defeat was something other nations suffered, always at the hands of the Teutonian Master Race. Failure was beyond impossible, and success was beyond assured. He would be given a Steel Cross for his victory, he just knew it!

…

A week later and the catapults were being reassembled at outside the city. The towers were still being built and four battering rams were scheduled to arrive from the Fatherland in only a few more days. Large wooden shields held up with a long stake were inching ever closer to the walls, allowing archers to move close enough to get a few good shots in at the Skeleton Archers that had manned the parapets. These shields were only large enough for an archer to pop out from both sides, and they were not covered in hide or metal, which turned out to be a blunder.

On the eleventh day of the siege, the Skeleton Archers started launching fire arrows at the shields, which slowly began to build up heat and finally start smoldering. The situation only got worse as during the night the gates opened and the undead stole the shields that were too close. Eventually, no archer could safely get in range of the walls to launch any kind of accurate fire.

If they were willing to put themselves in immediate range of the Skeleton Archers on the ramparts they could certainly have made more of an impact, but Erwin Krueger had instructed them to play it safe. After all, once the towers were built and docked on the walls and once the other siege weapons had made a few breaches they would be more than able to get atop the walls and rain down fire into the ruined city.

By the eighteenth day the towers were built, and the catapults had already begun to launch heavy stones at the fortifications that surrounded Necrograd. The catapults fired only during the day, but this was less to do with any specific military or theological doctrine and more to do with the fact that they couldn’t see what they were aiming at in the dark. This was another error, as whatever damage that the walls sustained the day before had seemingly been fully repaired by the break of dawn.

The four battering rams had also been unable to make a serious impact, as they had been unable to traverse the large potholes that had been made by the undead during the various nights. Even when they managed to get to their destination after much time and effort, they were set alight over the course of a day by the constant fire from Skeleton Archers and their fire arrows.

With the catapults useless and the battering rams reduced to charred wood, the only other way to get into the city was via the siege ladders and siege towers. Ten towers had been built and were stationed at various points along the line that encircled Necrograd. Only the elite Men at Arms would be able to assault the walls from the safety of the towers, which had been covered in wet hides. Once the gates were opened, the mounted Knights that the Teutonians were so proud of would ride in and outmaneuver the undead in the ruined city, spelling the end of the threat once and for all.

The rest of the infantry would have to scale the walls under arrow fire and therefore would suffer the highest casualties. What made the climb all the more perilous was the fact that the baseline infantry of the Teutonian Knightly Junta happened to be equipped with spears as melee weapons, which made the act of climbing a siege ladder a rather awkward process.

On the twentieth day of the siege, the large wooden towers slowly made their dangerous journey across no-man’s-land, with the pickelhaube-wearing spearmen holding their spears and shields in one hand and the large ladders with the other. Like a military procession the ladders forced them to march in a column, with the center row supporting the massive ladders on their shoulders.

The towers rolled on wheels that made deep marks in the ground, and the rhythmic thudding of the boots of spearmen sounded like a drummer’s beat. The Skeleton Archers opened fire upon the spearmen alone rather than the siege towers and made gaps in their lines which were filled by Skeleton Spearmen and Skeleton Warriors.

The Second Battle of Necrograd was underway, and Kain had a few surprises in store for the attacking Teutonians. He was preparing for a pincer attack that the arrogant racist assholes wouldn’t see coming. Even IF they won control of the walls, they would never be able to escape the city. In the cover of the wretched trees, an army waited for their master’s orders and below the soil in shallow graves yet more waited for their master’s signal.

The Teutonians had forgotten Rule Number Two of Fighting the Undead on Planet Mortis; Check your rear, the air and the ground beneath your feet.