Always the walls.

Khane had seen dozens of sieges, either in the seiging or defending army, and the one thing hat had always recalled from the few sacks he had seen, resultant of some deep inlaid grudge or another, the walls were always the only things that survived. Either by command of their superiors or when a siege lasted for months, even years with the soldiers watching friends and maybe even family fall to the defenses, anger would slowly build and once the walls were taken, it was as if the dammed hatred was released in a torrent of bloodshed and agony, tearing the city and it's inhabitants apart. But in as much damage as they could do, they would always leave the walls intact, for several reasons. Unlike the houses inside the walls, they usually had no treasure or loot of worth, no people inside, nothing of value. Secondly because, well it was difficult to tear a wall down. The walls were meant to endure, were made especially to withstand forces against, and other than any holes in the wall that they had to make, along with towers and the like where enemies could hide, the walls themselves were usually left intact unless the soldiers were expressly ordered to tear them down, and they had to do it stone by stone, a job taking weeks. Not something that soldiers that had just endued a long, exhausting siege would want to be subjected to.

Whoever had wrecked this city had put a lot of trouble into doing so, Khane completed the though as he looked over the city. There were buildings, ruined, with no scorch marks, but those would be washed away with rain and the elements. But the walls were gone. Sure, there were a handful of piled stones that had been pieces of the walls, apparently, but the walls were missing, something odd and foreboding for a city of this size. The mercenary gently nudged his gelding forward, looking around in awe. There were a few camps outside the city, as if people were superstitiously afraid of maintaining temporary residence within the dead city, but there were a few scholars stepping among the ruins, studying the stones, inscriptions and grounds, trying to determine just who the residents of the city were.

No riches in knowledge, Khane thought with a smirk, dismounting on the city limits and walking his horse from that point on. The ground inside might be treacherous, and it didn't make sense to risk injuring the mount just because he didn't want to walk. No, if there was anything of worth to be found it would be deep inside the metropolis, and he would find it.