"Yes, sir. I want leave to go fetch her. That wretched wall at Messana will never keep out the Carthaginians."
"You may not go."
"Wh-why not?"
"In the first place, it would do no good. Himilko has already reached Peloris, a day's march from Messana. He'll almost certainly get there before you. In the second place, I need you here. Let me see ..." Dionysios fumbled among the sheets of papyrus. "Here's a list of things for you to do. You're to study the city's fortifications and decide where to emplace our catapults. Report back by this time tomorrow, with a list of recommended sites."
"But, sir, I've got to get my wife out of that trap!"
"We have a few days to prepare for a siege as great as the siege by the Athenians," roared Dionysios, "and you distract me with your private problems? Who do you think you are? Zeus? Get to work on those catapults, and no more nonsense! You're a soldier now. If you leave town, you will incur my severe displeasure. Now get along with you!"
Clenching his fists, Zopyros held his temper. Although it went against his grain to dissemble, too much stood on the razor's edge to allow himself the luxury of saying what he thought. He muttered:
"Aye, aye, sir. I'll do my best."
As he left the palace, he considered appealing to Archytas again for advice. Then he thought better of it. If he antagonized the tyrannos, he did not wish to involve his friend in his own disgrace.
An hour later, he left Syracuse. When he explained that he was on his way to Megara Hyblaia, to examine the defenses there for the President, the sentries let him through the gate. The soldiers failed to notice how strange it was for a staff officer in full uniform to be driving a traveling cart.
The two horses, although no destriers, were good animals as hackneys went. Zopyros pushed them as fast and as far as he dared that night. He found a pasture where his horses could graze and slept in the cart. Before dawn he was on the road again, driving all day and staying his hunger by gnawing a loaf as he drove. From Catana to the ruins of Naxos—a Siceliot city razed by Dionysios seven years before— he had the vast mass of Aetna, smoking ominously, on his left.
About noon of the following day, he neared Messana. All morning he had passed groups of refugees, with fear on their faces and bundles on their backs. Several times he stopped to question them about the Carthaginians, but their answers were contradictory: "Oh, I'm sure they have taken the town ..." "... No, there was no sign of them when I left ..." "We decided to leave before the foe arrived; but some, relying on the oracle, stayed behind ..." "They're right behind us ..."
Zopyros drove on along the coastal road, skirting the feet of the Poscidonian Hills. The groups of refugees became thicker and thicker, slowing his progress. Between halts he lashed the horses to a gallop to try to make up time. Although he shouted himself hoarse, the refugees stood in stolid clumps in the middle of the road, staring blankly, until he was almost upon them.
At noon he came upon refugees running past him. Others were scrambling up the hillsides. They did not stop to answer his queries. Grimly, he drove on. He had, he thought, escaped from his would-be captors on the ship Sudech; why not again? He still had a chance.
Around the next bend in the road he spied a troop of horsemen galloping towards him. They were lean, dark men in kilts, with vermilion-dyed goatskin mantles and turbans of wildcat fur. Each had, slung across his back, a large quiver from which several light javelins protruded. As they sighted Zopyros and his cart, they spurred their mounts, bending low over their horses' necks.
Zopyros pulled up and tried to turn his cart around. But the road was narrow, with little room to spare between the hillside and the sea. The cart tipped wildly as the horses backed it off the road. Zopyros had nevertheless almost completed the turn when the dark horsemen came upon him.
They swarmed around, yelling and poising their javelins. One man grabbed the bridle of one horse; a second man, the other.
Zopyros leaped from the cart. A javelin whizzed through the empty space above him; another glanced from his helmet with a metallic sound. He had not brought a shield or a spear on this journey, since he had not meant to fight and planned to travel light. To engage the horsemen with sword alone would be suicidal. Instead, he rushed at the nearest horse, seized the rider's nigh leg in both hands, and pushed it upward.
The man toppled off his horse and fell into a bush. Zopyros gathered himself to vault to the horse's bare back, for the Numidians rode without even a saddle pad. But, as he placed his hands on the animal's back and sprang into the air, the horse bounded forward like a rabbit. Zopyros fell sprawling. Before he could recover, several of the men were on top of him.
They hauled him to his feet, punching, kicking, and whacking him with the shafts of their javelins. The blows were painful but not crippling. He wondered why they had not killed him outright, when he became aware of a Carthaginian officer on a horse, waving a battle-ax and shouting something in the Numidian tongue. From the man's gestures, Zopyros inferred that the order meant "Take him alive!"
With yelps of glee, the Numidians stripped off Zopyros' crested helmet, sword, dagger, purse, canvas cuirass, and boots. They divided up the loot. Two tied his wrists together, while others turned the cart horses around until the wheels were again in the ruts. They boosted him into the cart and started him for Messana.
The Carthaginian officer and three Numidians escorted the cart. Two Numidians led the horses along the road, while the third rode abreast of Zopyros, ready to spear him if he made a false move. The other Numidians galloped off to southward.
The officer leaned towards Zopyros and said in broken Greek: "You who?"
Zopyros opened his mouth but found himself unable to speak. He was a churning mass of fear, rage, dismay, and self-blame. He was, he told himself, the most useless, clumsy, stupid, incompetent ox—
"Who you?" said the Carthaginian again.
Zopyros swallowed, stammered, and finally said in Punic: "I hight Zopyros the Tarentine, O Captain."
The officer replied in the same tongue: "One of Dionysios' mercenaries, are you not?"
"Aye, sir."
"Then what in the name of Baal Hammon were you about, driving a cart into the midst of the Carthaginian army in broad daylight? A scout on horseback I could fathom, but this madness..."
"I had hoped to rescue my wife and son. They were in Messana."
"Ah, that I can understand."
"I needed the cart to bear them away in. I take it you saved me from being skewered by these barbarians?"
"What use is one more corpse? You will fetch a good price on the block, and I shall get a share of that price. You are lucky to get away with your life, considering how you lying, boy-loving Greeks murdered so many of our folk."
"Have you taken Messana?"
"Aye, Greek; it fell this morn. Some of its citizens fought, but with that paltry wall 'twas like mashing a gnat with a hammer."
Zopyros glanced about. The land had opened out. Soldiers swarmed the fields and groves: marching, drilling, setting up tents, loafing, and quarreling over loot. There were earringed Carthaginians in cuirasses of gilded scales. There were black-cloaked Iberians in purple shirts and tight knee breeches, with little round black bonnets on their heads and double-curved falchions at their sides. There were bronze-plated Greeks, ostrich-plumed Libyans, and veiled Garamantes. Huddled in blankets were companies of black spearmen from beyond the great desert, with shields of rhinoceros hide and woolly hair trimmed in fantastic shapes. Horsemen cantered by; a column of scythe-wheeled chariots rumbled past.