Menedemos glanced at Panther, and Panther scratched his chin.
‘We’re ready enough,’ he said. ‘We have the ships ready. We’re a little short on oarsmen, to be honest — all our oarsmen are on the walls. But we can put to sea any night, now.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘Look, friends, I cannot guess what Demetrios will do — or even if I can, I can’t be right every time. We have to make him dance to our tune. Our best course of action remains to strike him — to break the boom and destroy his engine-ships.’
‘His men hold the mole!’ Carias the Lydian was a former metic who was one of the town’s richest men. ‘We can do little while they hold the mole.’
‘The engines on the mole can hit any point in the town,’ Menedemos said.
Satyrus nodded. ‘Demetrios wants us to try to storm the mole, my friends. And I predict he’ll have those engines drop rocks — perhaps even bundles of small rocks — on the agora, in an indiscriminate killing to goad us to assault the mole.’
Panther looked at him. ‘I think we must.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘No! Listen to me! We cannot afford to be bled like that. Retaking the mole — it might cost us five hundred men. We might lose that many and fail. His engines, however evil, will not kill so many.’
Panther shook his head vigorously. ‘Not today, perhaps,’ he said.
They argued half the morning. At last they decided to prepare the naval sortie and ignore the mole, and they appointed committees to organise the displaced citizens, another to begin recruiting slaves — the best of them — as citizens, and another to search for the traitor, if he existed.
Menedemos moved that the west-wall garrison be relocated to the north wall, and that the citizen hoplites, held on the north wall to avoid casualties among the richest citizens, be put on the west wall, at least temporarily.
The motion was carried unanimously, which showed Satyrus how seriously the men in the room took the threat of treason. The richest four hundred men were unlikely to betray their own town.
Satyrus shook hands with the other councillors and walked through the broken rock and clay of the streets. In every street, there were houses that had survived — some were shells, where a rock had dropped through the roof without touching the walls. Some stood because they had been overbuilt to start with, using heavy timber against earthquakes. Some were protected by the Moira. But there were few enough houses on the seaward end of the city, so that they looked like the teeth of an elderly man — more missing than remaining, and pitiful piles of rubble in between.
And there were bodies in the rubble — men and women, children, pigs and dogs and cats and rats, all rotting together, so that the east side of the town stank like an abattoir, or a temple the week after a great sacrifice. And that miasma would breed disease.
Satyrus walked through the rubble and headed south, to the great tower that the Rhodians had built to dominate the plain south of the town and the most vulnerable stretch of wall. Legs aching, he climbed the tower.
Jubal was already there. He laughed to see his king.
‘You’re up early, no joke, lord.’ Jubal smiled.
‘You fought well yesterday, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. He reached under his chlamys and produced a rather straggly wreath of olive, taken from the tree in the courtyard where Amyntas died. ‘Yours to wear.’
Jubal smiled. ‘Heh,’ he grunted, then shook his head. ‘Not for Jubal, lord. Di’n want to be a hero. Just stood my ground.’
‘That’s about all there is to being a hero, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. ‘How’re the engines?’ he asked, leaning out over the tower.
‘Had a try las’ night in the dark,’ Jubal said. One of his petty officers grinned like a death’s head. ‘Wen’ pretty well.’
‘Yes?’ Satyrus asked. Jubal and his men were a pleasure to be around. No big issues here — just the cat-and-mouse of siege engineering.
Jubal’s grin was that of the raven putting one over on the fox. ‘Reinforced the walls and floor, eh? And then we made the throwing arm longer, uh? And then we put yon heavier weight on the end. And then we shot her.’ Now his grin was triumphant. ‘Dropped a rock right over the west wall — don’t you worry, honey, no one was awake to see or hear.’
Satyrus had to grin. ‘You tested your range over our city?’
Jubal shrugged, and his gold tooth shone. ‘One rock more or less ain’t gonna do much harm.’ He looked around. ‘Made the whole tower move, though.’
Satyrus looked out from the great vantage point of the tower. He could see the new works built across the mole — four times the height of a man. And he could see that there were no defences on the flanks of the mole, because Demetrios had ships — a dozen warships — lashed all along it, full of men. And another four hundred men on the mole itself.
South, he saw that more ships were anchored out from Demetrios’ camp. Either he’d sent another force away, or another force had arrived. Satyrus wished he had spies — good spies. But only a fool deserted from a giant army of comfortable, well-fed besiegers to the desperate garrison of the city — and such fools were thin on the ground. There had been a few, but most knew so little, they had nothing to offer.
‘If we can just burn his engine-ships,’ Satyrus said, and scratched his chin.
‘Then he have to come at me,’ Jubal said. ‘I walk all round this fewkin’ city. An’ the only way in be right here.’
Satyrus was glad to hear Jubal say it, because he’d come to the same conclusion months ago, before the siege had even begun, and he knew that the Italian who had built the great tower had had the same view.
‘We should start work on a false wall here,’ Satyrus said.
‘Oh, aye,’ Jubal agreed dismissively. ‘But first, I wanna shoot the squirtin’ shit out of his landward engines. An’ then he’ll build more, an’ more, an’ finally he’ll knock down the whole fewkin’ tower, an’ then we’ll need a false wall.’ Jubal shrugged. ‘I’ve made the measurements, with Neiron. We done the maths.’ He grinned evilly. ‘I even know where the new tower’ll go, when this one falls.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Where’d you learn all this maths, Jubal?’
Jubal made a face. ‘Anaxagoras. An’ Neiron. An’ me dad. Great one for countin’ stars, me dad. Always fancied numbers.’
Satyrus grinned. ‘I think I’ll start a book of sayings: You never know a man until you stand a siege with him, is my first.’
Jubal raised an eyebrow. ‘Not bad, lord. An’ how ’bout Them what overbuilds the foundation course can always put engines on their towers. Heh?’
Satyrus hid a smile. ‘I’ll put it in the book, Jubal.’
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT
Satyrus woke to more aches and pains than even the day before — the siege was teaching him the rule of the second day, at least with bruises. He hurt.
He rose anyway, and Charmides brought him a cup of sage tea, and another of warm juice, which he drank down and felt better. And then Korus insisted that he exercise, and then he ate — more food than he felt he needed.
‘You still need weight, lord,’ Korus said. ‘You’re better than you were — you may be the only man in this town gaining weight.’
Miriam came up with a bowl of barley meal and coriander. The smell attracted him as much as the person carrying it, and he scraped the bowl clean before smiling at her. Then he went into his tent and emerged with another scraggly olive wreath.
‘From the marines,’ he said, and Apollodorus, just awake, came over and saluted her the way he would a man, an athlete or a hero.
Miriam blushed — a remarkable blush that started somewhere near the top of her head and seemed to run down to her navel — but she never lost her composure. ‘Some of us are delighted with the opportunities for weight loss, Korus. My hips will be the better for it. Indeed, every single woman needs a siege: men, good company, opportunities for heroism and exercise.’ She took the bowls, smiled at Satyrus and walked back to her own tent and the pair of cooking fires burning behind it.