"No, there won't," I said.
"What? Do not tell me that you would raise my commission!" He smiled, but in the way of a man who tries to make a joke of something that he does not think funny at all.
"No, sir. I mean that the money I've just given you is the last cut out of my fees that you can expect. I'm through."
"You mean you will not build the Antigonos?"
"Not at all. I mean I will keep all the money."
"Do not be absurd. I can cut you off from future contracts like that." He snapped his fingers.
"I'll take the chance. The Demetrios has turned out well; everybody praises it, even you. The Antigonos should be no worse, and if you try to get the Council to reject it, I'll take the whole story to them."
Kallias laughed unpleasantly. "The mouse would beard the lion! Silly boy, know you not that I hold the Council in the hollow of my hand? Guess whom they will believe, if it come to that."
"I have considered that. In fact, I've been around to your other contractors, comparing stories. Know that I shall have friends on my side if it comes to a fight."
Kallias jumped up, face flushed, fists clenched, and murder in his eyes. For an instant I thought he would attack me. As he took a step forward, grasping his heavy walking stick in both hands, I sprang to my workbench and snatched up my mason's mallet.
The sight of the mallet halted him. "Ungrateful young fool!" he spat. "Would you throw away a promising career for simple selfish unwillingness to share your good fortune? Why should I go out of my way to help you for nothing? Your contumacy may inconvenience me, but you cannot possibly improve your own prospects."
"What prospects?" I said. "After I've paid you off, there is nothing left over for me above the cost of materials and labor. I still have to sponge on my parents, and I'm tired of it."
Kallias put on a sympathetic smile, like an actor donning a comic mask. He glided close and patted my arm with a pudgy hand. "Well, if you are that badly pressed, I could adjust my commission."
"No. I'm through with commissions."
"I will ask only one-eighth." His voice changed again, from wheedling to threatening. "But that I must have or you shall do no more work for Rhodes."
"Go ahead and ask. I'll leave Rhodes before I will pay an obolos more. If you don't like the new arrangement, pay me back the money I just gave you."
"Pay you back—why, you insolent—"
"Then leave me alone, please. I have work to do." Kallias struck the earth with his stick. "People who cross me often have occasion to regret it. Forget it not. When you are in a more reasonable mood, I shall be willing to talk of these matters further." Then he was gone.
Although I tried to be even more careful of details, to furnish Kallias with no valid excuse for rejecting the finished statue, the Antigonos went faster than had the Demetrios, because I avoided many of my earlier blunders. As all young men must, I was learning the painful lesson that there is no substitute for experience.
Through the summer, rumors came to Rhodes of King Antigonos' expedition into Egypt. At the time of our embassy to Antigoneia the troops of Ptolemaios, the satrap of Egypt, held Cyprus under the command of Ptolemaios' brother Menelaos. Demetrios Antigonou landed and besieged Menelaos in Salamis. Demetrios also built the monstrous belfry whose design I had heard him discuss. When the tower attacked the city, however, the defenders burnt it.
Then the Ptolemaios himself led a vast fleet, of over three hundred ships, to his brother's relief. Demetrios, however, won an overwhelming victory in a great sea battle off Salamis.
When the Ptolemaios fled back to Egypt, the island surrendered. Demetrios, leaving his own garrisons in Cyprus, rejoined his father at Antigoneia. With a huge force the two self-proclaimed kings moved down the coasts of Syria and Palestine towards Egypt.
For a while Rhodes heard nothing but faint and contradictory rumors: that Antigonos had conquered Egypt and slain the Ptolemaios; that the Ptolemaios had killed both Antigonos and his son; that Antigonos and Ptolemaios had agreed to divide the world between them. The agitation in Rhodes died down. Genetor pressed my father to set a date for my wedding to Io, and my father in turn pressed me.
"To the crows with the lot!" I said. "Tell Genetor I lost my shirt gambling, if you like, and it will take a year to straighten out my finances."
"Now, Chares," said my father, "we all know that's not true. You must be doing better or you wouldn't be able to, help with the household expenses. When Genetor was made a full citizen, I feared he would back out; but no, he assures me his intentions are still firm."
"Well, I won't commit myself to any dates until this statue is done. Kallias has soured on me, and if he persuaded the Council to reject the Antigonos, you can see what a hole that would leave me in."
We got no solid news of the Antigonian invasion of Egypt until the end of Pyanepsion. Then Giskon invited me to another dinner of the Seven Strangers. Knowing that I was too inept to make many friends myself, while neither my father's small circle of cronies nor the Artists' Guild with its narrowly professional interests provided me with the range of human contacts I needed, he had taken pity on me.
Giskon's other guest was a Phoenician, Abibalos of Arados. When the clubmen learnt that Abibalos had just come from Antigoneia, they showered him with questions: Where was Antigonos? Where was Demetrios? What had befallen Egypt?
"As for the kings," said Abibalos, "I saw them a bare ten-day ago, in Antigoneia. Antigonos seemed weary, but his son was as full of health and high spirits as ever."
"What about the invasion?" cried Sarpedon.
"It failed."
"Was there a great battle?" asked Gobryas.
"Not so. The land forces had a difficult march through the wilderness separating Gaza from the mouths of the Nile—"
"That is the land of Sos," said Onas, "or Sinai, as the Judaeans call it. It is the shield of Egypt. For days one sees nought but baking, tumbled rocks to the south, a harborless sea to the north, and between them a strip of treacherous salt marsh and quicksand."
"Antigonos made careful preparations," continued Abibalos, "with great stocks of food and water carried on camels. But they suffered for all of that: Antigonos not least, for he is too old and unwieldly for desert marches. Meanwhile the fleet, under Demetrios, met blustering onshore winds, so that several ships were driven aground and lost.
"The army advanced to within sight of the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile and encamped. At this point I arrived with a cargo of Syrian wheat and wine for the soldiers. I saw the end of the campaign; I, Abibalos of Arados, saw it with my own eyes.
"While Antigonos made ready to force the crossing of the river, Ptolemaios came up with his army and occupied the far side, which he had already fortified. Then he sent men in small boats to row near the eastern shore and call out to Antigonos' men, offering them princely bribes to desert to him.
"As the army's pay was in arrears, many did desert in the manner suggested, until Antigonos drew up a line of trusted guards along the shore and drove off the boats with missiles. He also caught some deserters and had them put to death by horrible tortures. Oi! The screams, the blood, the smell of burning flesh! I still dream of them, though I am no newly hatched chick and know much of man's villainy to man. Antigonos Kyklops is an amusing old scoundrel, but when his blood is up, he becomes a monster of cruelty.
"However, neither threats nor tortures nor promises could halt the wane of the army's spirit. I knew this sooner than did the king; I, Abibalos of Arados, knew it. For when an army begins to crumble, the soldiers begin to plunder and abuse the merchants and sutlers—a thing the officers never allow when all goes well. When my fellow trader, Magon of Berytos, was foully tortured and slain by a file of cavalrymen, and none was punished for the deed, I knew what was toward.