Beside me on the wall, Berosos called off the ranges: "Fifteen plethra—fourteen and a half plethra—fourteen plethra—"
"Shoot!" I cried.
Onas struck his knob, and the game was on. We cranked and shot and trained the dart thrower right and left and shot again.
Demetrios had learnt from his last defeat. His men could not press their attack on the wall under cross-bombardment from the catapults on our merchantmen. His sea engines therefore moved towards these craft. Streaks of fire laced the air as fire arrows and fire darts flew towards our catapult ships. Soon the ships were covered with missiles, sticking in the planking with their balls of tow ablaze. Here and there a plume of blue smoke arose from a ship as the fire caught.
While the archers on the merchantmen crouched behind their screens, shooting fast at the attackers, the marines fought the fires. They wrenched out the missiles and threw them overboard; they beat at the flames and dashed water upon them.
The din rose and rose. Again the sea towers shouldered up to the breakwater. Jugs of incendiary compound flew from our stone throwers. Our counter-bombardment was weaker than it had been; Bias' battery, for example, was down to three catapults.
The troopships rowed shoreward. This time a man stood in the bow of each with a long pole. This he thrust into the water ahead of the ship to guard against hidden rocks. As the crews of our catapult ships were busy fighting fires, they could not shoot at the assaulting Antigonian infantry.
The first troopship pushed out its gangplank; the infantry swarmed ashore, its armor blazing in the sun.
"Train left!" I said. "All the way round!"
"The stars boded evil—" began Berosos.
I shook him. "Shut up and bear a hand!"
We sent a dart plunging into the first wave of attackers. Near us, two men appeared on the wall, leaning over the parapet. One was a scorpion man; the other, looking very martial in gold-chased armor, was Kallias.
The weapon that the scorpion man bore was unusual. Instead of a bow affixed to its muzzle, it had a frame, like that of a torsion catapult but smaller. This frame held a pair of torsion skeins and throwing arms. The whole contraption was so heavy and awkward that Kallias had to lend a hand to cock it and then to raise it so that it lay across the parapet. The scorpion man placed a bolt in the groove.
"O Chares!" said Kallias. "Move your men aside for an instant, to give me a clear shot."
The scorpion man raised the butt plate to his chest and squinted along his trough. As he depressed the muzzle to aim at the Antigonians, the bolt began to slide down the grove, faster and faster, until it fell off the end and dropped to the waterfront below.
"Baalim!" shouted Kallias. "How do you make these things stick in their groove?"
"There's several ways, sir, but this one isn't designed for shooting down."
"What can we do with this one, now?"
"I suppose a drop of pitch or honey, sir, or anything sticky—"
"Well, where is it? Where is it?"
"I haven't any, sir. I tried to tell you, but you hustled me here before—"
"Liar! Traitor!" screamed Kallias, hitting the man in the face.
"I am not!" the man shouted back. "If you would only listen—"
"Resume shooting, men," I said.
We sped more missiles into the thick of the Antigonians, leaving Kallias and his unfortunate arbalester to argue. A cry rang along the walclass="underline"
"The ships are coming out! The fleet is coming!"
From our post we could not yet see our ships putting out of the dockyard, because the roof of the armory blocked our vision. Three of our heaviest triremes, however, had already burst through the spiked boom. Now, around the end of the armory, our yellow-hulled ships appeared, the water foaming over their beaks.
The first to receive their attack was a light missile ship. A Rhodian trireme took her amidships. With a tremendous crackling and splintering the missile ship broke up. The trireme plowed on through the wreckage.
"Keep your minds on your shooting!" I said. For it was all we could do not to stand idly gauping at the sea fight that developed in the Great Harbor.
One of our triremes bore down upon the nearer of the sea towers. The tower was meant to be towed, not rowed, though it had a few oars for emergencies. The trireme that pushed it into place had withdrawn out into the harbor. Men on the sea tower rushed about, putting oars in the ports and trying to get the machine under way. But their oar power was so feeble, in proportion to the mass of the engine, that the thing had hardly moved when the ram of the Rhodian crunched through its side.
Farther out another trireme sank another missile ship.
The ship that had rammed the sea tower withdrew. A huge hole had opened in the port hull of the pair on which the tower stood. Water poured into the rent, so that the pierced hull settled lower in the water. As the other hull did not settle, the tower leaned more and more. The more it leaned, the more it pressed the damaged hull down into the water.
Men screamed, dashed about the engine in confusion, and jumped or fell over the side. A couple of unlucky archers fell from the top of the tower.
Then the structure gave way. With a terrible groaning, crashing, and splintering, the whole mass of timber and hide collapsed, hurling spouts of white water into the air. The pile of junk drifted out into the harbor while the survivors among its crew waved frantically for rescue.
Another Rhodian trireme, out in the harbor, dueled with an Antigonian trireme, each backing and filling to try to get her ram into the other's side. Two Antigonian triremes picked up lines from the remaining sea tower and began to tow it away, while the smaller craft—the missile ships and troopships— hastily rowed out to sea.
The third Rhodian trireme rowed towards the remaining tower. The engine, towed at a slow walk, was a helpless target. Although darts and arrows rained on the Rhodian, our ship held on until her beak plowed into one of the tower's hulls.
When the attacker withdrew, this tower, in turn, began to lean. Over it went, farther and faster, until the tower struck the water with a splendid splash. The engine floated on its side with one supporting hull under water and the other in the air.
Cheers arose from the Rhodians along the shore, and screams of rage from the Antigonians. For, without the protection of the towers, the men who had landed on the waterfront had little hope of scaling the harbor wall.
Now a trumpet blew retreat. The Antigonians hurried back to the troopship that had put them ashore. The landing party left its dead, its wounded, and its ladder littering the pavement. The ship pushed off and rowed for the open sea, following the other troopships.
The Rhodian triremes converged upon the remaining Antigonian sea engine, the one bearing the dart throwers. But three Antigonian ships had taken the engine in tow and were pulling it swiftly out of the harbor.
Meanwhile the larger Antigonian warships pushed in between the fugitives and entered the harbor. A confused contention arose, with ships ramming and backing and ramming again, while flights of arrows arched overhead and deck fighters thrust at one another with long pikes. We of the Lightning did not dare to shoot, because our ships were too closely entangled with those of the foe.
Presently two of our galleys backed out of the fight, low in the water and with many oars broken or unmanned. I could see cracks and rents in their sides where Antigonian rams and catapult balls had struck home, but by arduous efforts their rowers got them back to the dockyard before they settled. We groaned as we saw the Antigonians board the third yellow-hulled ship and sweep her decks, though most of her people leaped overboard and struck out for shore. A Rhodian who cannot swim is like an Athenian who cannot argue.