Despite which, news of six grain ships was received with universal acclaim. Nicanor rose and proposed that all the grain be placed in the central store immediately.
Menedemos rose and argued that one-half of it be served out immediately as a donative, and to raise morale.
Satyrus let them wrangle. The hardest part for him — aside from his desire simply to take command and issue orders for their own good — was that each side had excellent arguments which were perfectly sensible and yet, most of the men on each side made these arguments with a cynical lack of conviction and a devotion to their own faction that lowered them daily in his estimation. Even Menedemos — the best of them, to Satyrus’ jaundiced eye — was so devoted to his democrats that he could lose track of what was best for the survival of the city. Damophilus was a great man with a spear in his hand, but in the council he spoke only for party interests. The only man who cared solely for his city was Panther. And he was dead.
Satyrus waited his turn to speak, and eventually he rose. ‘I neglected a point which may affect your deliberations,’ he said, and he did a poor job of hiding his contempt. ‘Daedelus and Leon will be back in two days, just after dawn, with a second load of grain and two hundred more soldiers. And they have landed a hundred more marines already.’
‘What time?’ Nicanor asked.
‘That will depend on wind and tide, I assume, Nicanor.’ Satyrus tried to sound pleasant.
Celebrations were short-lived. Fresh grain put heart into the lower classes, and the presence of a friendly fleet — a fleet which had some of Rhodes’ own ships in it — raised everyone’s expectations.
But two days later, they watched Daedelus’ squadron try and run a second convoy into the town, and get decisively beaten. Demetrios’ ships were waiting, manned, on the beach, and when the first trireme sail nicked the horizon, they launched, all together.
To avoid be overwhelmed by the in-sweeping flanks, Leon had to back water, and he lost four triremes and did no damage — and all six grain ships were lost, within sight of the port.
Morale plummeted.
And Demetrios, as remorseless as death, or time, moved his heavy engines forward across the hard ground south of the south wall. They began to move on the sixty-fourth day, and by the sixty-seventh day, they were almost in range.
Satyrus climbed the tower. The last light of day was shining on the besiegers, and their horde of slaves were dragging the final pair of heavy machines across the hard sand, raising a long column of dust.
‘Watch them,’ Jubal said.
At the front edge of the enemy machines was a full taxeis of pikemen, fully armed, their weapons throwing long shadows. They were just three stades away, neatly formed, standing to protect the machines. Even as they stood there, Satyrus wondered how they would react if he emptied his garrison at them in one mad dash to take the engines. When they started to throw their great rocks, the town was doomed.
Or at least, the suffering would begin again.
Jubal had filled the top of the tower with engines, and raised canvas and wood screens to hide them. The two captured on the mole had been strengthened, lengthened and now allowed the nautical mathematician four shots in his battery. He refused to commit more engines to the tower, which he said wouldn’t last the day.
‘My job is to kill as many of his engines as I can,’ Jubal said. ‘You watch.’ He pointed. ‘You see they? They’s his engineers. Look.’
Just beyond the engines themselves, the enemy engineers were examining something on the ground. It wasn’t a complex machine. It was a large rock, deeply embedded in the sandy soil, painted bright red.
‘They found your aiming rock,’ Satyrus said sadly.
Jubal smiled, and he bore a striking resemblance to a wolf. ‘They foun’ it,’ he said. ‘But they don’ know what she be.’
He did some calculations in the last light, based on the distance the enemy engines were parked from his rock.
Jubal opened fire when the Pleiades were high in the sky. His first cast was a rock coated in tar and set alight — using a major portion of the town’s spare tar. But it landed with a crash in the darkness and flames roared from the tar, and based on its position, Jubal began to issue orders, glancing from time to time at his wax tablet.
The canvas and hide sides dropped away from the tower.
His engines began to fire. The first four rocks elicited screams and crashes, and then the night was full of pandemonium and fire, and Satyrus released his sortie — just twenty men. They ran out of the postern, crept as close as they dared and began to shoot arrows at any man who was silhouetted against the flames.
After that, the tower engines fired as fast as they could, but they didn’t seem to add to the chaos in the dark.
Satyrus went down out of the tower to Anaxagoras and Apollodorus, waiting with blackened faces and armour on in the open ground behind the postern gate. All his elite marines were there, reinforced by the men brought by Daedelus — almost three hundred ready to rescue the archers if they got into trouble.
Idomeneus came back in through the postern, shouting the counter-sign.
‘The king?’ he asked.
‘Here,’ Satyrus answered.
Idomeneus was panting so hard he couldn’t speak. ‘They’ve run — abandoned the engines.’
Satyrus and the marines were out of the gate as soon as they had fire. He almost forgot to tell Jubal to cease fire.
Fifteen engines were destroyed by fire or by bombardment: two weeks’ work by every slave in Demetrios’ camp. The next day they saw the great man survey the carnage on horseback. He issued orders, and his men raised a deep cheer.
No hesitation in that camp.
Satyrus saw Amastris riding at his side. He spat.
Neiron raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure she’s not just doing what a monarch has to do?’ he asked.
Satyrus shook his head.
When Demetrios’ engines came out again, two weeks later, they rolled forward under cover of night. Jubal sprayed them with fire — he sent burning wads of straw and pitch, he sent rocks, he threw hails of stones. Men died.
But in the morning, sixteen engines stood where thirty had been. And as soon as they could see, their rocks began to hit the tower.
Jubal’s men were already out. He’d loaded and aimed all four engines, and he waited, alone, adjusting aim — he wouldn’t take a chance. Then, one by one, his four engines let loose, and each shot hit — one ploughed a red furrow through the slaves, one crushed a dozen veterans like a boy crushes ants, and two crushed engines.
And then he swung down on a rope and watched as the remaining enemy engines pounded his precious tower. It took them all day, and another day — and then with a rumble, the tower fell.
The people of Rhodes saw it as a defeat. Jubal just laughed.
For nine days the machines crushed the south wall under their rocks, and on the tenth day, when there wasn’t a house standing around the wall, the taxeis came forward.
The archers emerged from cover and bled them for a while, and then withdrew. The pikemen pressed forward, unopposed, but by now they knew what to expect, and they went up the breaches with their heads bowed and into the rubble of the town, and when they found the hidden wall just beyond the range of the engines, they simply fled. Many dropped their pikes.
Satyrus watched them run from some archers, and smiled. His smile wasn’t very different from Jubal’s.
The next day, the enemy machines pressed forward until their missiles could fall on the new wall.
Well behind the new wall, free men were already excavating the next wall. And the enemy machines were just forward of an old barn, a huge stone building that served as a cover for men wounded in the endless archery sniping.