The engines shot again — two dozen heavy missiles visible at the top of their parabolas before falling like the fists of an angry god on the terrified phalangites of the duty taxeis.
The archers got off the wall, and the phalanx, two thousand strong, went over the top. Perhaps it was a shambles on the ground, but from a height it appeared that every hoplite was animated by the same godlike hand, and the Rhodians crested the ‘bow’ and filed from the centre of their taxeis like the professional soldiers that the siege had made them. They filed down the ramps of the ‘bow’ that Jubal had designed, formed on the glacis at the foot of the ramps, men flowing into the rear ranks, and then they stepped off across the rubble, and not a single missile flew at them from the Antigonids.
Lysander’s knuckles were white on the tower railing.
A second line of hoplites appeared in the dead ground behind the ‘bow.’ They stood to, their spears wavering slightly in the last light, and the setting sun gilded their points and the iron and bronze points of the city hoplites and the oarsmen as they went up the third wall uncontested, over the top of the wall where Helios had died the day before, and down the ramps on the far side with perfect precision — they had, after all, practised for this moment fifty times. On the far side of the third wall they formed again — and gave a great cheer.
The arms of the engines were cranked all the way back. Satyrus felt his heart thudding against his chest. This was the part that he and Jubal had disagreed on — and Satyrus had conceded.
In the distance, two taxeis of Demetrios’ veterans had formed at the run and were now rolling forward. They had to hurry — the remaining sunlight could be counted in heartbeats. And Demetrios’ entire artillery train was about to be lost.
Stratokles ran to Plistias.
‘Stop!’ he called.
The Ionian looked at him curiously. The phalanx was formed — four thousand men.
‘You were the watch on the wall, you and your Herakleans,’ he said. Not accusingly — but very seriously.
‘I ordered them to run,’ Stratokles said. ‘The wall was mined — the wall and the engines. It is a trap.’
Plistias looked at his files as they moved forward. ‘What kind of trap can resist four thousand hoplites?’
Stratokles grabbed the Ionian commander. ‘Must I beg you? Listen to me! I have set a few traps in my time, and I know one when I see one. And this is a subtle man, Plistias. Satyrus is not some ignorant chieftain in a hill fort. He knows that you will counter-attack with overwhelming force.’
Plistias had heard enough. ‘Halt!’ he screamed in his quarter-deck-in-a-storm voice.
The lead files were pressed against the burning trenches as Stratokles and Lucius and Plistias of Cos and their officers tried to push the pikemen back.
It became easier as the first stones began to fall. They fell in silence — the pikemen were loud, and the roar of the fire close at hand was loud, and the first stone crushed three men and killed others with flying bone splinters and gravel, so great was its force. Then the front of the pike block heaved back.
Stratokles was still calling for them to get back when something hit his head, and he went-
‘You may return to your camp at any time,’ Satyrus said, rising to his feet.
The Rhodians had retaken the third wall and stopped — and the engines were now shooting over their heads, volleys of heavy stones whipped so hard that the slings cracked like lightning when the engines released — a low angle, and a new type of shooting. Satyrus hated it — he expected to see red ruin in the Rhodian ranks at every discharge — but Jubal was as good as his word.
Selected parties of pioneers and scouts — Sakje, Cretan and some from his marines — went forward into the inferno, to make sure that the enemy machines were afire.
There were screams — hideous screams — and shouts where the survivors of the baskets of rocks now attacked the third wall — outnumbered and with nothing but fire behind them.
It was slaughter. An entire taxeis was trapped between the fire and the Rhodian phalanx above them. No quarter was offered.
It should have made Satyrus smile. Unless he missed his guess, the siege was about to end.
Instead, it made him tired.
He watched another volley of heavy stones, and turned.
Lysander was holding himself steady, but his face was wet. ‘I hate sieges, my lord,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ said Satyrus. ‘And this is my first.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Take Demetrios my request that he find a way to end the siege. And my offer of a three-day truce. He’ll need it just to find his dead. Your dead.’
‘And you will erect another trophy,’ Lysander said.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘The trophy was a goad, sir. We’re beyond trophies, now.’
Satyrus felt curiously lonely as he wandered the celebration, having taken no part in the fighting, but Apollodorus would have none of it.
‘There was no fighting. Don’t be thick. Drink!’ He said, and pressed his horn cup into Satyrus’ hands.
Memnon embraced Jubal, and then embraced Satyrus. ‘Our agora will have statues to both of you,’ he said. ‘In the morning, we will see him slink away, his tail between his legs. By all the gods, Satyrus — that was a victory.’
Damophilus was cautious in his approach, wary that Satyrus would ridicule him, but Satyrus felt rancour towards none that night. He stepped into Damophilus’ cautious approach and embraced the man. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘We won.’
The democrat nodded. ‘We did. I didn’t trust you — should have trusted you.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Power corrupts.’
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the cost had been too dear, and that the slaughter of a taxeis might not settle the matter. He missed Helios every time he turned around. It saddened him that he had become a man who missed his hypaspist more than he missed his helmsman, or a man who had followed him for ten years, or his boyhood friends: Xenophon had died near him, and Dionysus had gone down in a storm, and he scarcely thought of them at all.
He drank more wine and walked along the lines of fires, dissatisfied, uninterested in company. He walked the walls, alone, surprising delighted sentries in the towers of the west wall, greeting tired mercenaries along the ‘bow’ and along the near-deserted sea wall.
The walk made him feel better. He came up the street that had been Poseidon’s Way, when there had been a Temple of Poseidon, and found a group of Sakje crouched on the tile floor of the temple platform, where the Rhodian admiralty had once met — a tile floor laid down in the likeness of the eastern Mediterranean, with the islands picked out in white against a dark blue sea, among which Rhodes was marked in gold with a rose. The Sakje had swept the floor and made a small camp there — twenty or so young warriors, men and women. He could smell the smoke from their leather smoke tent — a strong scent like burning pine needles, but more pungent.
‘Kineas’ son!’ shouted one of the young men, and in a moment he was surrounded. And he laughed with them, and drank smoke in the tent because they dared him, and stumbled away while they roared with laughter. He laughed too.
‘You are not done yet,’ Philokles said. His Spartan tutor was seated comfortably on a ruined foundation, and he had the lion skin of Herakles draped over a shoulder.
‘Master!’ Satyrus said, and flung his arms around the man. ‘You are dead!’ Satyrus babbled.
I represent something that is very difficult to kill, Philokles said with a chuckle.
There was no one there.
Satyrus walked across the tiles to where the altar of Poseidon had stood. The heavy marble plinth was carefully buried now, protected from the wanton destruction of the siege — but the gods were close, and Satyrus could feel them. He threw his arms wide.