Upon learning that eastern Moravia contained twenty-eight stone fortresses, Shrike made a rough calculation and realized that the remaining service life of their bronze cannon barrels would not be enough to reduce every one of them.
"We'll have to persuade some of the nobles to surrender. We can't afford to waste too much time on the northern front. Once we're finished here, we still have to head south to reinforce the Italian campaign."
At the same time, Basil received news from Slavonia.
He had never expected Vig to dare split his forces and send an army north.
The decision left him thoroughly baffled.
"Counting the militia, we have a hundred thousand men. Isn't he worried at all?"
After confirming that fewer than thirty thousand Vikings remained in Tuscany, Basil left twenty thousand of the weakest Italian militia in Rome for further training.
With the remaining eighty thousand troops, he marched north into Tuscany.
His first objective was Livorno on the western coast.
In addition to the army, Basil dispatched the fleet to blockade the sea.
With reinforcements from Naples, Venice, and elsewhere, the Eastern Romans now possessed two hundred vessels of various types.
Even if the Royal Navy tried to intervene, he was confident he could drive the Vikings back.
Yet the siege he had expected never materialized.
The Vikings had already withdrawn.
"They ran?"
Though delighted, Basil couldn't help feeling uneasy.
He suspected it was a trap intended to lure him deeper inland.
The following day, scouting parties returned with two pieces of good news.
They had retaken Pisa and Lucca to the northeast.
After confirming there were no hidden ambushes nearby, Basil sent troops east toward Florence.
This time the Vikings stood their ground.
They blocked the Arno River with heavy iron chains, preventing Eastern Roman ships from sailing upstream.
The battle unfolded across a hilly region.
The Vikings had constructed fortifications on high ground overlooking the river, making any assault extremely difficult.
Furthermore, a narrow mountain ridge running north to south prevented any large-scale flanking maneuver.
After suffering more than a thousand casualties, Basil abandoned the position.
Instead, he led the main army around the northern pass and attacked Pistoia, where several thousand Vikings were stationed.
The Greeks adopted tactics borrowed from the remaining Frankish forces, employing two methods simultaneously:
constructing heavy trebuchets and digging siege tunnels.
Tunnel warfare had originally been pioneered by the Vikings themselves.
The defenders responded with practiced efficiency, digging countermines from inside the city and intercepting Eastern Roman engineers underground.
For more than three weeks, soldiers battled beneath the earth.
Despite all their efforts, the Greek tunnels never reached beneath Pistoia's western wall.
Worse still, Tuscany's Mediterranean climate brought cold, rainy winters.
Tens of thousands of soldiers camped outdoors in damp conditions.
Disease spread rapidly through the army, slowing the siege even further.
At that point, Basil remembered the Viking medical system.
He immediately summoned prisoners for questioning.
Only then did he discover that every thousand-man formation included dozens of medical personnel.
Viking physicians underwent systematic professional training.
During peacetime they practiced medicine in towns and villages.
During war they were mobilized as army surgeons.
"Those barbarians are surprisingly inventive."
"Once this war is over, I'll establish a medical academy in Constantinople."
On January 15, 873, one hundred and fifty heavy trebuchets were finally completed outside the city.
The Greeks had felled the finest timber nearby, reinforcing key structural joints with iron bands.
Each enormous counterweight box was packed with more than two tons of stones and earth.
The time had come.
Basil ordered the assault.
At dawn, Greek soldiers slowly pushed the massive trebuchets forward.
According to their observations, Pistoia's walls were less than two meters thick.
The wall tops were too narrow to mount artillery.
When the trebuchets advanced to within roughly four hundred meters of the walls—
the western gate suddenly swung open.
Five bronze cannons rolled out.
"Fire!"
The fuses hissed as sparks disappeared into the touchholes.
A burst of blazing orange flame erupted from the muzzles.
The cannonballs screamed through the sky.
Boom!
One iron shot smashed into the upper framework of a trebuchet.
Splinters flew everywhere as its throwing arm swayed dangerously.
The remaining four cannons fired in succession.
Three shots missed.
One struck the counterweight box of another trebuchet on the right.
The wooden container exploded apart.
A torrent of earth and stone poured out like a waterfall.
The machine lost its balance, lurched drunkenly to one side, and collapsed into a heap.
The defenders erupted into thunderous cheers.
The Greek soldiers before the gate watched their morale plummet.
Still, they forced themselves to continue pushing the siege engines forward.
The closer they came, the more accurate the bronze cannons became.
At three hundred meters, the Greeks began hurling stones at the city gate.
But trebuchets fired along high, arcing trajectories.
Their accuracy was poor.
Moreover, their towering frames made them easy targets.
By nine o'clock, dozens of trebuchets before the western gate had been smashed to pieces.
Only a single bronze cannon had been hit in return.
The defenders cheered once more.
Basil showed no anger.
The trebuchets before the western gate had indeed been destroyed—
but many more continued bombarding the city's northwestern and southwestern walls.
If the defenders wished to destroy those remaining siege engines, they would have to push their cannons far outside the protection of the city.
At that point, the Eastern Roman infantry would launch a full-scale assault and seize the enemy's artillery.
Even if it costs several thousand casualties, Basil thought, I must capture at least one cannon.
Unexpectedly, the defenders refused to take the bait.
The gunners simply wheeled the cannons back inside the city and allowed the Greeks to continue pounding the walls.
Stone projectiles weighing dozens of kilograms repeatedly slammed into the masonry.
Each impact shook the walls ever so slightly.
After ten consecutive days of bombardment, the Greeks finally blasted three breaches into the defenses.
The assault horns sounded.
A mass of expendable infantry poured into the city.
The defenders ignited the stores of lamp oil and firewood they had prepared in advance.
The entire city went up in flames.
Shielded by the raging fire, more than three thousand Viking soldiers withdrew through the eastern gate and escaped toward Florence.
That afternoon, Eastern Roman cavalry captured several stragglers.
Basil questioned each of them personally.
"Where are your bronze cannons?"
One prisoner replied,
"The Emperor issued the highest-level order.
"No unit is permitted to abandon artillery.
"Even damaged cannons must be melted down into bronze ingots and transported to the rear.
"A week ago, once it became clear Pistoia couldn't be held, the commander evacuated the cannons in advance.
"I don't know where they were taken."
Basil continued,
"Do you know the formula for 'Viking Fire'?
"Tell me, and I'll make you a noble—the equivalent of a Frankish count."
The prisoner slowly shook his head.
"The gunpowder formula is kept under strict secrecy.
"Before battle, specialized craftsmen prepare the powder and package it in linen bags to make propellant charges.
"Even the artillery crews who operate the cannons don't know the exact formula."
Unable to uncover the secrets behind either the artillery or "Viking Fire," Basil felt a measure of disappointment.
Still, he remained convinced there was no magic involved.
It was simply a particularly remarkable alchemical invention.
Silently, he thought:
"Once Pistoia falls, we'll bypass the mountains and enter the Florence basin from the northwest."
"Hopefully, in the next battle, we'll capture one of the Viking craftsmen."
—------------------------------
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