Zopyros said: "If I may suggest it, sir, a man can pile quite a load of stones or sand on a shield, and two men can carry it."
"Excellent! My brother made no mistake when he gave you the job of proposing ways and means. Good night."
Zopyros learnt that he was to share a tent near the headquarters tent with several other staff officers. He left his servant stowing his gear, turned his horse over to a groom, and set out on foot for the artillery park. Thirty-three catapults had started from Syracuse on their special wagons. Three had failed to make the journey. Two wagons had broken down; a third catapult had been damaged when its wagon upset. They were supposed to follow shortly, but Zopyros guessed that tire drivers would find excuses for delaying their arrival until after the battle.
"Where's Colonel Segovax?" he asked a soldier.
"That big tent, sir," said the soldier, pointing.
Zopyros found Segovax sitting on his bunk with a goblet of wine in his hands. The Celt looked up blearily.
"By the horns of Cernunnos, 'tis my old friend Zopyros! How's the brave Tarentine lad, and him so handsome and all in his new soldier suit?"
"I'm worn down to a stump," said Zopyros. "Could you—"
"Of course, of course, have yourself a drink! Here, let me pour. In the tent we don't observe the niceties of rank with our old friends."
Segovax hiccuped. "Here ye are. My lad, you are beholding the soldier's ruination, the which is sitting on his arse and doing nothing, day after day. No wonder we take to the drink."
"Here's to ruination!"
"Here's to indeed. But—I thought you were with his honor, ravaging the territories of the accursed Phoenicians. What brings you back to us?"
"I'm carrying messages to Leptines. The Dionysios arrives tomorrow."
"Did he take all them cities he was talking about?"
"No; he's raised the siege of Entella and is marching this way. He learnt that the suphete Himilko is bringing a fleet from Carthage to relieve Motya."
"Is that the fellow who attacked Syracuse? We've had all sorts of rumors, like he's captured the city and killed everybody in it."
"No; Himilko only raided the harbor of Syracuse. He sank many merchantmen but never even tried to land. He sailed back to Carthage to refit, and now he's headed here. How are the catapults?"
"The catapults are fine, but the men are not. It's the idleness. I'd like to give them a bit of target practice, but we can't shoot out into the bay for fear of using up our darts, and we can't shoot along the shore for fear of hitting our men. Did you bring any orders, like?"
"They were for Leptines, but I don't mind passing on the one that concerns you. The big boss wants the catapults set up along the shore, between the beached triremes, at the narrow entrance to the bay. He wants half of them on this side and half on the Aigithallos."
"Hm." Segovax stroked his mustache. "Did you by any chance bring me a written order?"
"No. It's all in my head."
"You mean to say I'm after spending hours and hours, when I could have been wooing fair lassies and drinking good wine, learning to make them little marks that look like fishhooks and pitchforks and bedbugs, so I could read an order—and now you're just saying it out of the mouth of you?"
"Don't give up, old boy; you'll find use for your reading and writing yet. I suggest you alert your men, but for Hera's sake don't move any catapults until you get the command from Leptines. Dionysios is fussy about who gives orders to whom. Working through official channels, he calls it."
The next morning, a southerly duster blew up, coating men and materials with African desert dust, cutting vision to less than a bowshot, and kicking up a powerful surf at the entrance to the bay. As a result, only a few triremes had been launched by late afternoon, when Dionysios' army marched up the coastal road to take its place in the vast encampment.
First came mounted scouts, lightly armed and unarmored, galloping hither and yon, yelling and making their horses curvet and caracole. Then came a thousand regular cavalry. At their head rode Dionysios astride a huge black steed, looking like a god in his polished iron armor and flowing crimson cloak. Since no ordinary horse could have borne all that weight, it was said that this stallion had been smuggled out of the Persian Empire, where such horses were bred for the mighty cavalry of the Immortals.
Following the horse came the foot. Here marched, to the tune of flutes, citizens of Syracuse and allies from many Siceliot cities. Here, too, came thousands of barbarian mercenaries: Sikelians, Lucanians, Campanians, and Samnites. There was even a battalion of trousered Celts from the valley of the Padus, in the extreme north of Italy, with sweeping mustaches, huge elliptical shields on their arms, bundles of javelins over their shoulders, and long swords at their sides.
Dionysios tried as far as possible to equip each troop of mercenaries with its national arms. He believed that the men would fight better with familiar weapons than with strange, if superior, Greek equipment. Behind the long lines of swinging kilts and gleaming crested helms of the foot, another thousand horsemen brought up the rear.
Waiting in the anteroom of the headquarters tent, Zopyros overheard Dionysios angrily demanding of his brother why more of the ships had not yet been launched. He heard Leptines' soothing replies. He ate with the other staff officers and turned in early. Although still bone-tired from the campaign, he could not sleep for a long time. Swirling round and round in his mind were ideas for improved catapults, homesickness for his family, and worry as to whether he was right in soldiering for Dionysios.
It seemed to Zopyros that he had hardly fallen asleep when the trumpets sounded the alarm. When he emerged from his tent, men were looking and pointing towards Mount Eryx, where glowed a red spark against the lightening sky. Dionysios—Zopyros remembered with the little knot in his stomach that always preceded a battle—had commanded a watch fire laid on the mountain to signal the appearance of Himilko's fleet.
During the next few hours, the staff officers rushed about in Dionysios' wake like hounds after a stag. Along with the others who attended the tyrannos, Zopyros ran errands and relayed orders down the chain of command. He gave advice about catapults when asked for it.
The catapults had been set up between the triremes along the beach. Later, at Dionysios' command, hundreds of Cretan archers and Balearic slingers climbed up to the decks of these ships and readied their missiles.
Men began pointing and shouting: "Here they come! See the polluted Punics!" The masts of Himilko's fleet formed a picket fence along the horizon—a fence whose palings bobbed and swayed with the motion of the ships' hulls. Soon the hulls themselves rose over the curve of the sea.
The oncoming ships drew slowly nearer. To the watchers on the shore, it looked as if each ship, seen bow on, had only three oars on each side, rising and falling in perfect rhythm. By counting the masts, Zopyros estimated that Himilko had about a hundred galleys—half the number that Dionysios commanded. Although Dionysios' soldiers and sailors, pulling on ropes to rhythmic chants, were launching galleys as fast as they could, most of the Greek ships still lay helpless on shore.
Closer and closer came the Carthaginians. Dionysios, with his staff trailing behind him, galloped around the northern end of the bay and out on the Aigithallos. The tyrannos cursed as the Carthaginian galleys broke formation to dash after a number of Greek merchant ships in the open sea. Some were under sail; others were anchored in the shallows. Running or standing, the enemy caught them all. Some were rammed and sunk; others were boarded and towed away, while Punic marines tossed overboard the bodies of the slaughtered crews. Hundreds of naked Greek sailors, who had dived from the doomed ships and swum for shore, staggered out of the surf along the peninsula.