"What's that?"
"I can't read nor write. Dionysios says his officers have to read and write, so they can read orders from the general when he's too far away to shout at them."
"I told you to come around for lessons. Now you'll have to do it, that's all."
"Ah me, 'tis less of a brave Celtic warrior that I am every day!"
Zopyros received his golden medal from Dionysios at the next engineers' banquet. A year earlier he would have panted with eagerness for the honor. Now he enjoyed it, but his enjoyment was mixed with the irony of maturity. He would have gladly traded it for that promised raise, if there were only some way of guaranteeing the latter. But there was not. He had the medal, while the raise was as yet merely words. In case of need, the gold would fetch a hundred drachmai, which would feed a man for most of a year.
During the next three months, Zopyros struggled with his catapults. He found the problems of producing an engine in quantity quite different from those of developing an experimental model. He learned to watch like a hawk for defective materials or careless workmanship. He learned to give each catapult intensive tests; two of the engines might look alike to the eye but perform quite differently.
In Maimakterion, the Syrakosia was launched, fitted out, and manned. Zopyros had a glimpse of Alexis standing on the quarterdeck of the new ship, screaming curses at the rowers because they would not row in time. The rowers were hardy professionals, horny-handed, huge-muscled, and well paid. But with their mighty backs went weakly minds. To learn to row a ship of a new type was to them an almost impossible task. Being used to triremes, they found the new ship, with oars in groups of five, cramped and awkward. They bumped each other's backs and fouled each other's oars.
Back and forth across the Great Harbor they went, until their rowing was no more ragged than in the usual trireme. Alexis staged a race before Dionysios, between the Syrakosia and a standard trireme. The fiver won, but only by the length of her ram. Nevertheless there were cheers and a medal for Alexis.
At the next engineers' banquet, Dionysios strolled among his guests, giving each a few gracious words. When he came to Zopyros, he asked:
"How is production coming?"
"Much better, sir. We're finishing at least one new catapult every ten-day."
"What took you so long to get started?"
"The problem of breaking in the workers and obtaining a steady stream of good materials. As a result of shortcomings in one thing or the other, several of our early catapults proved defective and had to be scrapped. By the way, O President, have you heard that I plan to marry?"
"Congratulations, O Zopyros."
"And double congratulations to you, sir."
Dionysios gave Zopyros a searching look and burst into one of his rare laughs. "The pains of principate, my boy! What I go through for my beloved Syracuse! If you were thinking to dun me for that promised raise, I hope to make it good within a month."
"That will be welcome, sir; but it's not what I was about to say."
"Which was?"
"I hear you plan to send the Syrakosia to Lokroi next month."
"Yes, to fetch my bride, Doris daughter of Xenetos."
"My betrothed lives in Messana, not far out of the way of this voyage ..." He explained about Xanthos' insistence on having the wedding on a lucky day.
The tyrannos scratched his shaggy beard. "That's an interesting idea. We could drop you off on the way to Lokroi and pick you up on the return voyage. Efficiency! Besides, you could not become so mazed with love as to forget to return at the end of your leave, as happened once before. But here is a complication."
"What, sir?"
"I mean to celebrate my weddings on the full moon of Gamelion. We cannot deliver you to Messana on that clay, yet fetch Doris back to Syracuse before that date ... Hold, I have it! The fourth of Gamelion is deemed as lucky for weddings as the fifteenth. If we dropped you off a day or two before the fourth and picked you up a day or two afterward, that would suit everybody, wouldn't it?" The tyrannos grinned, pleased with his own ingenuity.
"Thank you, sir! I'll write the father of my betrothed at once."
Thus it fell out that on the fourth of Gamelion, Zopyros stood beside Korinna at Xanthos' hearth in Messana. Each of them snipped off a lock of hair and burnt it on the family altar. They broke the honey cake and each ate half, while a crowd of Xanthos' friends sang wedding songs. In the early evening, after the feast, all went into the street and formed a torchlight procession. Glaukos drove the wedding chariot, with Zopyros and Korinna seated behind him. For the groom's dwelling, to which the procession led, Xanthos had persuaded one of his friends to lend a room in his house.
"It would look pretty silly," Xanthos explained, "to parade around the block and come right back here; and yet we must faithfully follow custom."
When Zopyros and Korinna had been showered with grain and olives at the entrance to the friend's house, had eaten the ritual quince, and had finally closed the door behind them, Korinna took off her veil. They gazed long at each other and then, for no particular reason, burst out laughing. In unison they said:
"Thank the gods that's over!"
"Shall we go to bed, darling?" said Zopyros.
"Why not? We've certainly waited long enough."
Nine – MOTYA
All through the winter and spring, Zopyros made catapults. The tempo of the Arsenal speeded up. The manufacture of arms grew to such vast dimensions that smithies and woodworking shops were set up in the market place of Syracuse. They were set up even in the temenoi of temples and in the mansions of the rich. Men tramped through the streets of the Achradina bearing bundles of arrows, javelins, and spears, and bags of sling bullets. The tyrannos was ever on the prowl, inspecting, checking, and exhorting, praising here and blaming there. Normal business in Syracuse slowed to a crawl as more and more of its people were sucked into this gigantic military effort. One goldsmith was kept busy making the medals, wreaths, and crowns for Dionysios to bestow upon his champion weaponmakers.
Zopyros had settled down with his wife and stepson in a small rented house in Syracuse. Archytas, at the tyrannos' insistence, moved to the island of Ortygia. Zopyros was spared this move because the apartment house that Dionysios had ordered for his married engineers was not yet completed. Dionysios, likewise, had settled down with his two new wives, who shared the women's quarters in Dionysios' austere palace.
"He seems to manage his women as efficiently as he does everything else," said Archytas over a cup of wine after a dinner at Zopyros' house. "They say he treats them well, and they're both devoted to him, in spite of their—ah—unusual status."
"How does he do it?" asked Zopyros. "Do they sleep three in a bed, or does he take turns?"
Archytas laughed, bouncing little Hieron on his knee. "The boss hasn't told me, and of course I almost never see the girls. What I tell you is mere backstairs gossip, with which Ortygia buzzes like a beehive. The latest is that there will be a general assembly of the Syracusans a few days hence."
"What for?"
"I don't know. I suppose the Dionysios will harangue them on their duty to pay taxes cheerfully and to gird their loins against an attack by the accursed Phoenicians."
"Or he'll announce some move of his own against them. Several times lately he has sent word to ask how my catapults were coming. I think he's growing impatient."
"That fits in with some things I've heard," said Archytas. "A lot of Syracusans—and not just members of the old oligarchy, either—long for the return of self-government. They're not taken in by Dionysios' talk of 'directed democracy.' Quite a few have been slipping away to Phoenician territory, in western Sicily. It's the one place where they needn't fear murder or kidnapping by his agents. It infuriates the big one to hear of their forming a party-in-exile with impunity. But how are your catapults coming?"