Said Bias: "No. Matter of fact, there's been only a few deaths in action since you left, though we've all gone hungry. But we have a.lot of new pieces, and a couple of our older officers dropped out from natural causes."
"If you're general of artillery, what has become of Kallias?"
Bias chuckled. "That's quite a story. Wait till we get to the South Wall. I'll show you."
As we crossed the marketplace, I saw that my statues of Antigonos and Demetrios still stood. "How is it that they haven't been melted down for arrowheads?" I asked.
"There was a motion before the Assembly to do just that. That fellow Lykon, your rival in the statue business, was all for scrapping them. But I stopped him."
"You?"
"Sure. I'm a full citizen now. When the rich bastards got wise to Kallias, they figured they needed a general of artillery who knew a skein shackle from a horse's arse. So they came to me. Not without citizenship, I said. I'm no mercenary soldier of fortune, I said. I'm a Rhodian, and I'm fed up with carrying out policies I don't have no hand in deciding. They had to bend the property qualification a little to squeeze me through, but they did it."
"But I thought you were for scrapping the statues! When we talked about it—"
"Sure, but I guess you kind of convinced me. Anyway, I know Lykon has a grudge against you, and I didn't like to see him put one over on you when you wasn't here. So I got up and told 'em what you had said to me: If we win, the statues will do credit to our generous spirit, while if we lose, the fact that they're still there might make the kings go easier on us."
As we neared the South Wall, I could see many changes. The animals that had pastured on the athletic field were gone; eaten, no doubt. Before the siege, a number of squatters' huts had cluttered the plaza between the wall and the city's houses. This space, thirty paces wide, was supposed to be clear of buildings, but our easygoing government had failed to keep it so. Now, however, the huts had vanished.
Behind the old wall Makar and his masons worked on a new wall, a lune parallel to the original one. They used material of all sorts: bricks, timbers, roofing tiles, broken catapult balls, and stones from the old theater and the temples. Some of these things were set in mortar, while others were only roughly fitted and piled up.
The original wall stood, but it was crazed with cracks. A line of sail-like squares of canvas had been erected on frames along the top of the wall to stop high-flying missiles from falling into the city.
Between the old wall and the new, east of the South Gate, rose two new structures: a pair of thick, squat, round towers, lower than the original wall but connected with it by a flight of steps. On each of these towers stood an enormous catapult. I recognized the three-talent stone throwers that Demetrios had erected on the South Mole, and which we had captured. One seemed complete, while men struggled to assemble the other under the direction of Polemon, the captured Athenian engineer.
"Come on up," said Bias. He led me up a stair to the top of one of the towers.
"All right," he said, "here's your command: this pair."
He indicated the two stone throwers. I gasped. These were probably the world's most advanced catapults—Apollo-nios' masterpieces. The dearest wish of any engineer would be to command one, let alone two.
"By the gods and goddesses!" I exclaimed. "Bias, what have I done to deserve this? I know that many people don't like me, yet you've put me in a most responsible position. Do you think I can measure up?"
Bias: "Well, I had to push to get you the commission. Like you say, some don't take to you. But this isn't a contest in popularity. I wouldn't lay any bets on you to win the title of the best-loved man in Rhodes; on the other hand, you've got your good points, too. You're smart, you learn fast, and you've got plenty of energy and initiative. And you've got courage. A fighter has to have courage like a boat has to float. Nothing else is any good without it."
I became absorbed in the technical details of the installation. The only major shortcoming of these colossal engines was that they were too heavy to train by ordinary means. But Bias had partly overcome even this difficulty. He had affixed posts to the corners of their frames, so spaced that men with long levers, applying them to these posts and to the crenelations of the round towers, could slowly rotate the catapults as if they were mounted on pivots.
"Don't you want a look at what the other team is up to?" said Bias.
We crossed over to the old wall. I looked across the leveled fields, where once had stood the suburbs of Rhodes. Now Protogenes' studio was almost the only structure still standing, in a cleared area four furlongs wide, measured parallel to the walls.
If I had gasped at the sight of the two supercatapults that comprised my battery, I almost stopped breathing altogether at the sight of Demetrios' engines lined up across the clearing, out of catapult range.
The sight that first caught my eye was the immense new belfry that Epimachos the Athenian had built for King Demetrios. This was the largest siege engine that the hand of mortal man had ever constructed. It was larger than the belfry that Epimachos had built for the attack on Cyprian Salamis, and larger even than the ill-fated sea tower, erected on six ships fastened together.
This belfry stood on a square base about forty cubits on a side and rose to a height of at least seventy cubits. From each corner of the base rose an immense squared timber, slanting inward towards the center, to the top of the belfry. Within the frame thus defined rose the tower. The belfry had nine stories, each smaller than that below it, so that the effect was a little like that of King Sosorthos' stepped pyramid at Memphis.
The front and sides of the tower were built of heavy timbers bolted together by broad iron plates, so that the engine appeared to be mailed in iron. On each story, in front, were ports for catapults. Before each port hung an enormous cushion of stuffed hide, with cords by which those inside the machine could raise the cushion to shoot the catapult and then lower the cushion again.
"Now you see why Kallias don't have his job no more," said Bias. "Remember that great sluing crane that was going to pick up siege engines? Well, he got a crane of sorts built over the gate tower. Then the Demetrios put up that thing yonder. I figured it must weigh something like five or six thousand talents. When the Council asked Kallias how he expected to lift thousands of talents with a crane that could lift thirty or forty talents at the outside, he admitted he was licked. So they dismissed the temple thief."
"Who is municipal architect now? You?"
"No, son, I'm no architect, just a carpenter. The Council tried to get Diognetos to take his old job back, but he's still sore."
"Enough of the oak! What good would that hidebound old reactionary do?"
"Use your wits. We all know Diognetos' faults, but the point is, he can think. For all his dislike of anything new, he's still smarter than any three other architects you could name. He could think our way out of this mess if any man could."
I looked across at the engines. On either side of the belfry stood five tortoises: long sheds on wheels. The two largest of these, flanking the belfry, carried enormous rams, over a hundred cubits long. On either side of these stood four smaller tortoises for the shelter of sappers, who would fill the ditch outside our wall and undermine the wall itself, shielded from Rhodian missiles.
Men, small in the distance, moved about the belfry and tortoises. To our ears came the sound of hammer and saw and the bark of commands. I asked:
"How did our wall get into such shape? I see no signs of heavy assault."
"Mining. Demetrios ran galleries under our walls."
"How has it taken him so long to get ready?"