"Help! Rhodians! Murder! I'm beset!"
Up came the other two. They pulled themselves up over the turn of the drapery, blades first. Holding a bronze fold with one hand, I made a furious thrust at the leader's breast. He struck at my darting blade; his edge bit one of my fingers to the bone. My dagger spun out of my grasp. It struck the statue's skin with a clank and fell away into darkness.
I darted up the rungs that extended up the statue's left arm. I could not move so swiftly as before, between fatigue and the cuts on my right arm and hand. My breath came in great gasps, so that I had none to spare for shouting.
I pulled myself up on the broad curving surface of the shoulder. I had not been up on top of the statue since the mound had been carried away. A look downward showed a drop to appall even one with my head for heights. Moving carefully, I walked the length of the shoulder and grasped a handhold on the statue's left ear. My last hope was that my pursuers would fear the height more than I, and that I could use this fear.
If I had had a proper tackle of rope, I could have rigged a sling to the cleats on the head and swung myself around the head to the other shoulder, where they would have had a hard time coming at me. But I had no such gear.
The leading pursuer reached the shoulder. His breath, too, came in gasps. As he stood up, I saw that he was not more than half my age: a dark, powerful youth, probably Egyptian. He paused to catch his breath. Then, after a downward glance, he moved with exaggerated caution. But still he came towards me.
If, I thought, I could land one good solid kick, while holding the ear, he would have nothing to clutch ...
The man came closer, in a half-crouch, his short sword out. I launched my kick, but too soon. The man swayed backwards, so that I missed him. As my leg fell back, the assassin lunged.
On solid ground he would have spitted me, but caution slowed his movements. As his arm snaked forward, my own right hand came around in a snatch. I caught his wrist and deflected his thrust far enough to miss my midriff. His point struck the bronze behind me with a faint bell-like sound. With the same motion I carried his right arm up to my face and sank my teeth into his forearm.
Never have I bitten into anything with such earnest effort. I tasted blood and felt it running down my chin. The man's breath came in gasps in my ear. His left hand clutched at my face with gouging thumb and raking nails. I fended it off with my right hand and drove my right elbow into his face and midriff. I also tried to kick him in the crotch.
His left fist pounded at my left hand, trying to break my grip on the ear. It occurred to me that I had only to let go and we should both hurtle to our deaths. A short while before, the idea might have appealed to me. But now my blood was up. I thought of nothing but saving myself and killing this murderous lout. I silently cursed my smallness and the years that had sapped my strength.
Battered, bleeding, and gasping, I hung on. I beat, kicked, and clawed at the man while he assailed me in the same manner, all the time trying to wrench his arm free from my teeth.
There seemed to be an uproar from somewhere, but I supposed this to be merely the sound of blood in my ears. I did not even have time to wonder when the man's comrade would join the struggle.
The man suddenly screamed in my ear. I was dragged towards the swiftly steepening downward slope of the statue's chest. My assailant clutched me as if to keep from falling.
I rolled my eyes, which had been squinted almost shut against my enemy's clawing hand. Someone, on hands and knees, had a grip on the Egyptian's ankle and was trying to tear him loose from me.
I released my jaws from the man's arm, pivoted, and struck his face a backhanded blow. At the same time, the crouching person gave a heave. The Egyptian dropped his sword, made a wild clutch at the air, and toppled from the shoulder. A long diminishing shriek came up as he vanished into the darkness below. The scream was cut off by the smack of a body's striking the ground.
I straightened painfully up, gulping air. My rescuer now lay prone on the convex upper surface of the shoulder, pressing his flattened hands against the bronze as if to glue himself to it.
"Master Chares!" whimpered the apparition. "It is frightened to death that I am. I cannot move from this cursed spot!"
"Kavaros! Get up on your hands and knees. Don't look at the ground; look at the places where your hands and feet will go. Now back slowly towards the top of the ladder. That's it, old friend. Another step. Now feel with your toes for the topmost rung ..."
A quarter-hour of guidance brought Kavaros back to the ground. Here was a crowd of Rhodians, with several prisoners. Two bodies lay at the statue's feet.
The Kelt and I nearly collapsed when we stood on solid ground again. My shirt was half torn from me, and I could feel the blood trickling down from a score of cuts, bites, and scratches.
Kavaros gasped: "I found the watch—and fetched them— and here were all—these murtherers."
"You're the bravest man in Rhodes, for coming up to help me in spite of your fear of heights. What befell the second man who followed me up?"
"That is him, there. I caught the omadhaun by the leg and plucked him loose from the ladder, as easy as taking a little bird from the nest. But some of them got away, I am thinking."
"Here's one who didn't," said another voice. "Chares, do you know this fellow?"
I went over to where men with links bent over a third body. Though withered and wattled with age, it was unmistakably Tis.
"I quarreled with him once in Egypt," I explained. "How did he die?"
One of the watch spoke: "We ran to the square after Kavaros, thinking to stop you from slaying yourself, and these fellows drew steel against us. After we had knocked a couple down with our staves, the rest ran away. Of course we ran after. This one had reached the entrance to the alley when he clutched at his heart and fell down, as you see him now. Nobody touched him. The god must have struck him dead."
"He was too old to take such an active part in his murders," I said. "What will be done with these desperadoes?"
"If convicted, they'll be sold. Would you buy one?"
"Zeus forfend! They're cut out for a short but useful life in the mines."
A surprising event took place a few days after the death of Tis. After all, there was nothing surprising in Tis's raid when you think about it. The archthief was merely acting in character, fantastic though that character may seem.
It was much more astonishing that my old foe Lykon the sculptor, now a full citizen, should carry a bill in the Assembly to pay off the debts that I had incurred in completing the Colossus. These came, all told, to a little over nine talents. Thus the Colossus cost Rhodes altogether about three hundred talents.
When I learnt of this amazing act, I went, still bandaged, to Lykon's studio to thank him. He heard me out, looking me through with cold gray eyes. Then he said:
"Chares, I have never liked you and I still don't. If you will keep out of my way, I'll keep out of yours, and we can thus avoid a contact that must be as irksome to you as it is to me.
"As for this bill to indemnify you, I did that, not for your sake, but for my own honor and that of my city. Men would say: 'Shame on the Rhodians, who so niggardly used the man who showered fame on their city that he was almost driven to suicide by monetary worries!' While I could bear your departure without uncontrollable grief, I would not have the City of Roses thought hardhearted and ungrateful. Does that satisfy you?"
All I could think of to say was a quotation: "Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful than man!"
Two months later the remains of the mound and the scaffold had vanished. The Helios-Apollon towered proudly over the waterfront, shading his eyes against the rays of the rising sun. On a clear day he could be seen from elevated points on the Asiatic coast, and mariners a hundred furlongs at sea caught the golden blink of the sun on his gilded crown. I had slightly changed Lysippos' canon of proportion, enlarging the head a little to cancel the foreshortening effect of viewing so tall a statue from below.