The watchers' success rate when shooting down the goats was a hundred percent, a perfect rate despite the high tension, and even more impressive would be the fact that they were all downed before ever hitting the wall.
This might have been due to the few attacks from goats in general; across all the four hot spots since the attacks began, there had been a total of twenty- two goats killed.
A frequent question that had arose between the watchers when they conversed was what would happen, if the goats ever succeeded-
–
[Mechanical noises]
Behind the town of Urtum, atop the region of the third sector's wall, kilometres away from the centre towards the west.
It was the early morning, the sun was just rising and the watchers were still on duty, shots were being fired and cannons reloaded.
[Boom! Boom!! Boom!!!] A chain of loud explosions went off.
"We've been at it all night, it takes a lot just to down these things." A man clad in armour thought with a toothpick in his mouth, he was he leader of the unit.
He was the flag bearer directing their attack, like Lana did previously, his eyes were greens and his hair brown.
"They just keep charging at the wall mindlessly.
What would that accomplish…either way I don't want to know., and I want to keep it that way.
They just graze or walk around aimlessly, then when they finally set their eyes on us they charge.
Always one at a time thankfully." He thought as the goat fell from the cannons.
"Another one down!" A soldier said loudly.
"What?!" The unit leader asked for reaffirmation.
"Another one down sir!" The soldier screamed.
"How many does that make it now?" The unit leader asked.
"Four in total, the second since yesterday night." The soldier replied.
"And there is still one more in the distance…line up for the next shots!
We might be up for a new record." the unit leader ordered.
He set the angle of the flag to guide their attack and they followed. "FIRE!" He screamed.
A chain of shots followed his words.
"FIRE!" He screamed again and they shot by his command.
The goat began charging and its horns began glowing, its hooves dug up the ground as it pawed.
Multiple cannons exploded on impact with its body and legs, then it began running.
Another set of cannons hit it, and then another and another, it's body was injured with deep wounds from the last round, its spine was now revealed and the flesh around the top of its neck was gone as well.
"FIR-" his voice was loud, rupturing through the surroundings.
"Sir the cannons can't tilt any lower!
And even if we coul-" The soldier closest to him said.
"What?!" The unit leader's face stiffened up, a cold sweat ran down his face.
"But it's still running?!" He looked at the goat. "Normally those amounts of rounds should've killed it.
Look at its neck how is it still running?!"
The goat was, now in front of the wall, it raised its fore legs up a little.
[Baam!] Its head connected with the wall and the tension broke its neck bone as the back of its head and the beginning of its torso collided.
It died from its own attack.
The rest was left to the environment to tell, a loud rumble was heard in the vicinities, the wall shook for what felt like minutes, with those on top swept of their feets.
Thomas was finally able to get up, the first thing he did was look at the face of the wall, his eyes shook like he had just seen a ghost. "My lord"
The force from the goat had cracked the face of the wall deeply, but there wasn't even time for him to comprehend what had just happened.
He looked up and there was now another one in the distance. "I'm not going to let this thing anywhere near the wall." he mumbled.
He set the angle of the flag to guide their attack and they followed. "FIR-"
"Sir we have a problem…!" One of the soldiers screamed from a far end.
The unit leader turned his head to take a look, his eyes became filled with fear, this was the wrong time for this.
"We're out of ammo sir." The soldier said.
"What of the resupply group, what are they doing?!" The unit leader ran to the inner part of the wall to look below at the town, he opened in mouth slightly in disbelief with his toothpick falling from the wall to the ground.
"Nowhere to be found…" He squinted his eyes, still nothing; nothing but the town that now had people coming out and looking at the wall's direction."We might need to evacuate them."
He now looked on the wall's surface. "Little cracks" He raised his head up and scanned the wall with his eyes.
His face stiffened as liquid rolled down his cheeks, he touched it with his fingers then looked at it;
It was blood, his face became even stiffer, he now dragged his finger along his face tracing back the part of the blood.
It was from his ear. "I should've used some earplugs like the rest of them." he cleaned it off with his palm.
He sighed then clicked his tongue and faced his men once more, he had great displeasure on his face.
"How can you be out of ammo at the same time?!" He screamed.
"I have one left unit leader Thomas." One of the soldiers two cannons away said.
"That's nothing!" Thomas replied.
Thomas groaned and removed one of his gloves, he rushed over to a small wooden crate on the wall and knocked over it's lid.
"Sir! Its eyes are on us." The soldier that spoke to him first said with fear mixed in his voice.
His voice was silenced in the ears of Thomas who looked focused at his craft.
Pulling out some paper and ink, Thomas wrote something down very hurriedly then rolled up the paper.
From the same crate he picked a white ribbon and tied the paper, then he took a green ribbon and wrote the name of the town
"sir?!" The soldier waited for a response and got none.
Then putting two fingers into his mouth and pressing his tongue backwards he whistled.
Not long after a bird landed on his shoulder, he slipped one of its legs through the ropes, then before sending it off he took out a red ribbon and took it to the bird's eyes.
He tapped on it twice and without any further ado the bird set off, knowing exactly where to go.
Now Thomas finally faced his men. "Go down and evacuate the town." Thomas said.
"Sir? Isn't that too drastic a measure?." A female soldier came to him, she had short blue hair and looked young. "We can just request for ammo from the closest hot spot?"
-
Hot spot — these was the term used for the areas attacked by the goats, they had the most watchers positioned and as a result of that, were the only parts of the walls fortified with cannons.
-
"That won't help in any way, the closest to us are kilometres away, before we could get to one and make a return trip it would take ages.
Instead of doing that, everybody get down, we'll split up and evacuate the town, two people will come with me!
We can't let that goat's head touch that wall!." Thomas spoke very quickly, clearly in a rush.
"Two people? Where are you heated." she asked.
"Vera, I said we're evacuating the town, were else would I be heading." He replied then paused for a moment. "On second thoughts you should stay here with him."
He walked up to the soldier of whom had one round remaining. "Now that I think of it, if everyone ran out of rounds at similar moments that would mean the rounds got distributed evenly.
And it would imply that you failed to fire on one occasion Hughes?..." Thomas asked.
Hughes shook his head. "I think I got one extra sir." he said coyly.
Thomas's expression changed if only a little, he had a tense awkward smile. "You lucky boy, you might've saved us all."
"How?!..." Hughes got no reply as Thomas turned around.
"Off we go, get on the lifts now, now now!" he screamed.
The soldiers followed his orders without delay, he too got on the lift that led to the bottom, before leaving he grabbed a horn.
[Mechanical noises.]
—
They got to the bottom of the wall, now on the land of the town of Urtum, at the base of the wall were multiple horses.
"Evacuate the town, now!" Thomas screamed.
"Will the people listen?" The soldier asked.
"I'd rather it be a false alarm than take a bet with people's eyes, if they refuse tell them the next rumble they'll hear is that wall coming down.
Now go!" Thomas screamed he took the horn to his mouth and blew on it as hardly as possible.
The sound filled the entire town of Urtum reaching the ears of those there, all whom heard it couldn't ignore it, how could they; deeply rooted in the sound were the feelings of dread.
It was a sound that signalled danger.