Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  Aspasia surprised them all by nodding. ‘I agree. I support the empirical approach to medicine. Hippocrates says many of the same things — simple observation has to augment our science. Let’s face it — the people closest to the latrines have the worst fever except the oarsmen.’

  Satyrus rubbed his chin. ‘Fill the latrines? So people will have to walk to the port side to shit? That’s not going to make me popular.’

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘And it won’t — pardon my crude speech — be worth a shit unless you enforce it so that the wide-arse who tries to use the agora gets caught and punished.’

  Satyrus looked around. ‘Friends — this is the sort of thing that can destroy morale.’

  Apollodorus was insistent. ‘It works.’

  Jubal leaned in. ‘It do. Listen to he. Any sailor know it, too.’

  Memnon shrugged. ‘I don’t, and I’ve been at sea all my life.’

  Satyrus looked at Aspasia. ‘I trust Apollodorus with my life, but you are the priestess of Asclepius and the best doctor in Rhodes.’

  Damophilus nodded. ‘And people will see that we are doing something about the fever.’

  Satyrus glared at him. ‘Until it fails, and then comes the backlash. People are not fools, gentlemen. It’s a poor politician who makes bad laws merely to appear to take action.’

  Memnon smiled. ‘You don’t know very many politicians,’ he said.

  That got a laugh.

  Into the lightened atmosphere, Aspasia spoke up. ‘I say do it,’ she said. ‘I will take some auguries and cast another horoscope — I will ask some friends for help. And I think we would do well to propitiate Apollo and Asclepius publicly. And then move the latrines.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Who is now Priest of Apollo?’ he asked.

  Young Socrates stepped forward. ‘I am. And I would be delighted — devoted — to support Despoina Aspasia.’

  Satyrus rubbed his chin. ‘Make it so. We move the latrines tomorrow night — every citizen must participate. There will be no exceptions.’

  ‘Lot of work,’ Memnon said.

  ‘We should have a few days off,’ Satyrus said.

  That got a buzz of excitement. Satyrus shook his head. ‘No — I won’t say anything. But I want to see Aspasia and Miriam after this, and Jubal. Kleitos — all the sailors tonight, yes?’

  Kleitos grinned.

  Jubal grinned.

  Damophilus stepped forward. ‘You must tell us, polemarch. People need to have hope. These men are grinning. Why?’

  Satyrus kept his face impassive. ‘Damophilus, I value you and I hope that we are friends. But yesterday, I sacrificed men — good men. My friends. They are dead so that I could keep a certain secret, and by all the gods, that secret will be kept.’

  Damophilus was angry. ‘We are the town council! What’s left of the boule!’

  Satyrus shook his head.

  ‘Are you a tyrant?’ Damophilus said in sudden heat.

  Memnon grabbed his arm. ‘Come, lad. Uncalled for.’

  Satyrus crossed his arms. ‘You may remove me from command,’ he said. ‘That’s harder with a tyrant. But in this, I will not be moved.’

  Damophilus submitted with an ill grace.

  Satyrus looked around. ‘I’m sorry for my tone. But I will not speak of this. However, I have other military matters to discuss. I need all the armour in the town gathered. I’d like every taxeis to collect its own, paint a number inside the harness and on every other item and lay them out here in the olive groves — the cleanest air, in case the miasma is in the armour. I need this to be done immediately.’

  Damophilus’ blood was up. ‘Armour is a man’s private property,’ he said.

  ‘So were the slaves. The rules are different, now.’ Satyrus looked around. No one else demurred. ‘I need that armour, as soon as can be.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Damophilus said, belligerently.

  Satyrus stared him down, waited for him to walk away and collected the women and Jubal, and they walked with Korus and Kleitos to the far end of the sacred precinct.

  ‘It is tonight?’ Kleitos asked.

  Jubal nodded. ‘He is moving engines right now,’ he said.

  ‘Why are we here?’ Miriam asked. ‘Is it about the fever?’

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said. ‘I need every woman — at least, the biggest five hundred — to put on armour. Late this afternoon. And to stand in it all night — and to ask no questions.’

  Jubal grinned. ‘I get it. You one sub-tile bastard.’

  Satyrus punched the black man in the arm. ‘This, from you?’

  Jubal thrust out his chin and laughed. ‘Take one to know one, eh?’

  The shadows were long on the agora when the alarm sounded. Men moved with purpose — alarms were part of every day, and most citizens no longer even felt a rush of the daemon of war when they heard the trumpets.

  Satyrus was in armour already. He’d had to lie down on the floor of the tent to get into his cuirass unaided, but he didn’t have a new hypaspist yet, and wasn’t sure where to find one in the middle of a siege.

  He got to his feet, drank a cup of water which tasted fairly bad, and walked out with his shield on his shoulder and a spear in his hand.

  Apollodorus was waiting, with the prisoner by his side. Lysander looked like a tough man, a veteran, in late middle age with grey at his temples and a major scar at the top of his left shoulder that ran in under his chiton.

  He bowed to Satyrus. ‘My lord? I gather I have you to thank for my capture.’

  Satyrus took his hand and clasped it. ‘I took you, yes.’

  The man met him, eye to eye. ‘May I ask if I am to be ransomed? Or treated as a slave?’

  Satyrus nodded to Apollodorus, who saluted and headed off towards the alarm.

  ‘You had a pleasant day?’ Satyrus asked.

  Lysander made a face. ‘I was allowed to wander about. This scares me, lord. I do not wish to be a spy — or to be killed.’ He spread his hands. ‘I see that you have the fever here — not as bad as our camp, but bad enough. I offer this as proof that I am no spy. I cannot hide what I saw.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Come with me, Lysander. You are a Spartan, I think?’

  Lysander nodded. ‘No true Spartan, sir. My father was a Spartiate and my mother a well-born Theban lady — but they were never married. I was refused entry to a mess, and I have served abroad ever since.’

  Satyrus stopped at the base of the ladder to his tower. ‘You may know a man I loved well — Philokles of Tanais?’

  ‘If he was Philokles of Molyvos,’ Lysander said with a smile, ‘I knew him for a while. We fought together — Zeus Sator, back when Archippos was archon of Athens. I was a great deal younger then.’ He laughed.

  ‘He was my tutor,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I know,’ Lysander said. He shrugged. ‘I know who you are, lord. But it ill suits a man who must beg for his life to claim acquaintance.’

  ‘You really are a Spartan,’ Satyrus said. ‘Come.’

  ‘Why?’ Lysander said.

  ‘Because I wish to show you why Demetrios has no hope of taking this city,’ Satyrus said. ‘Come. I will release you in the morning. Alive. To tell what you have seen.’

  Satyrus led the way up the ladder.

  The shadows were long — indeed, the sun had dropped to the rim of the world, and the handful of standing trees visible from the towers threw shadows many times their own height.

  ‘Demetrios has almost completed moving his engines forward,’ Satyrus said. ‘Thirty-one engines, by my count.’

  Lysander turned to him. ‘You cannot expect me to confirm that, lord.’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘Worth a try. How’s your eyesight?’

  Lysander raised an eyebrow. ‘Not what it was when I was twenty.’

  ‘Take a look, anyway.’

  Lysander looked out into the edge of night. At his feet lay the fourth south wall — what the Rhodians called the ‘bow’. It ran in a broad curve from the rui
ns of the great sea tower back almost to the edge of the agora, and then out like the arm of a bow to the original corner with the west wall, where a heavy, squat tower full of ballistae had never fallen to Demetrios. The new wall was the tallest of all of Jubal’s rubble walls, and the most complicated, and most of the town had dug for a month and laid weirs made from every house timber in the town to build the cradles to hold the rubble to make the wall.

  Beyond the ‘bow’ ran the shallower curve of the third wall, with a loose cordon of pickets on it — most of them archers and crossbow snipers in covered positions. Their posts were obvious to a child from the height of the tower.

  ‘By the gods — that’s how you killed our snipers!’ Lysander said.

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m showing you all of our secrets.’

  ‘Whatever for, lord?’ the Spartan asked. His accent made Satyrus pine for Philokles.

  ‘Because Demetrios needs to offer us terms we can accept, or we will defeat him and his empire will be at an end. You know this as well as I do, Lysander. You are a professional soldier. How long did you expect us to hold?’

  Lysander nodded. ‘Ten days.’

  ‘So we are on the two-hundredth day — or so.’ Satyrus pointed at Demetrios’ camp. ‘Will this army ever fight again?’

  Lysander shrugged. ‘I take your point.’

  ‘Good.’ Satyrus looked over the edge of his platform where he could see, half a stade away, a lone man standing at the south-east limit of the ‘bow,’ in the earthworks built from the rubble of the sea tower. He raised his shield and flashed it — once, twice, a third time.

  Jubal flashed his shield back.

  Satyrus turned back to the Spartan officer. ‘Kiss your engines goodbye,’ he said.

  Stratokles stood on the rampart of the third wall at sunset, safe behind one of the basketwork embrasures that the Rhodians had constructed. Lucius was looking it over.

  ‘Innovative bastards. Have to give them that. Of course a basket of rocks is a wall. Fuck me.’ Lucius cut a twist of the heavy basket loose.

  Stratokles was watching the enemy respond to an alarm. ‘What’s got them excited?’ he asked. He watched carefully, sniffing the air.

  Lucius shook his head.

  ‘Do you smell smoke?’ the Athenian asked.

  ‘I do,’ Lucius said.

  Stratokles was looking behind the wall, at the ground that had been no-man’s land the day before. Thin curls of smoke were rising in two places.

  ‘Off the wall,’ Stratokles said. He ran down the wall to where two hundred of Nestor’s crack guards rested in open formation. ‘Off the wall. Now! Back! Back off the wall!’

  He turned and grabbed Lucius. ‘They’ve mined the third wall. We were meant to take it — Ares, I can see it. Run, Lucius — all the way to Plistias. Get to Demetrios if you can. Tell him I’m getting the men out.’

  ‘He’ll spit you.’ Lucius was dumping his armour as he spoke.

  ‘Fuck him. These are good men — too good to die for nothing. Now run!’

  Lucius dropped his breastplate with a crash of bronze, and ran.

  Stratokles ran among the Heraklean marines. ‘On me. Now! Don’t bother forming by files — off the fucking wall, you wide-arses! Follow me!’

  Crossbow-sniper teams could hear him, and they began to rise to their feet.

  ‘Ares, it’s their whole garrison,’ said a man. Stratokles grabbed him, slammed a hand against the fool’s helmeted head. ‘Run!’ he yelled.

  Finally, the Herakleans were moving. So were the crossbowmen.

  Stratokles ran across the former no-man’s land, behind almost the last of his men. The ground felt hot under his feet. ‘Athena protect,’ he panted.

  Men were slowing as they entered the battery where the king’s machines had been parked by sweating slaves, many of whom were still heaving against the tackles or digging, or grading the ground smooth. Smoke rose here, too. The smell was in the air. And Stratokles suddenly noticed that right at the edge of the artillery park was an enormous stone, painted red.

  ‘Athena save us!’ he said. Then, to the phylarch nearest him, he said, ‘Run! All the way — right through the engines!’

  The man looked at him as though he were mad. Perhaps he was. He was urging the entire garrison of the new salient to abandon it to the enemy.

  Just to the right, on recently cleared ground, stood the reserve taxeis, two thousand men with pikes, waiting to face any attack thrown at the newly taken third wall — meant to support the men on the wall. Stratokles’ men.

  ‘What in the name of Tartarus and all the Titans are you doing, you Athenian coward?’ bellowed the Macedonian strategos.

  ‘Mines. Pre-registered engines. Massive attack. Run or die.’ Stratokles panted.

  ‘Your wits have deserted you,’ Cleitas said. He drew his sword.

  ‘Stupid fool,’ Stratokles panted. Now the man was between him and escape. ‘Feel the ground. Look at the smoke. Look at the enemy. Are you a child?’ he bellowed.

  The Macedonian was more interested in his own sense of honour. ‘Child?’ he roared, and cut at Stratokles with his sword.

  Stratokles took the blow on his shield rim and stepped past the man. ‘Arse-cunt!’ he said, and ran.

  The mathematics of a siege is inexorable. There is mathematics in every form of war, but the limitations of a siege bring them to the fore. Ranges, for instance, are immutable. An engine of war has a maximum range, no matter how it is built. On a battlefield, a new weapon might surprise an enemy — but give that enemy two hundred days, and they will know the range of the weapon to the hand’s breadth.

  And the mathematics of destruction are equally inexorable. It will take so many engines with so much of a throw-weight just so long to knock down a given length of wall. And if you have engines to employ, you will set them in certain very predictable positions — predictable because they have a certain range and a certain throw-weight, and because the enemy has a certain wall with a certain construction and height.

  These things proceed as if divinely ordained. Perhaps they are. But because of them, when the third wall fell, there were only so many positions — at the right range, free of rubble and half-collapsed walls, covered — in which Demetrios, Plistias and their officers could crowd their thirty-one engines to batter the new wall. The new, tougher wall. In fact, by the new, inevitable physics of siege warfare, there were only two places. Large, red-painted stones marked both of them.

  Satyrus drummed his fingers on the deck of the tower.

  On the right and left arms of the ‘bow’, great swathes of painted linen were pulled down.

  ‘Ares!’ Lysander said. ‘Oh, gods.’

  In orderly rows, like the toys of a well-mannered child, sat twenty-four engines — new engines. Jubal had not used an engine against Demetrios and his forces since the fall of the great tower.

  Every engine was fully loaded, the throwing arms cranked right back against the frames, the slings hanging limply to the ground.

  When the cloths were ripped away, Jubal raised a torch. It showed clearly in the twilight air. He lit the payload of the engine closest to him. A dozen more were lit afire. And then they began to shoot.

  Most of them volleyed together. A few were late — at least one failed to function altogether. But a dozen flaming missiles and another dozen heavy rocks flew, carving streaks on the clear evening air.

  ‘Ares!’ Lysander said again. It was a sob.

  The shots were exactly on target. It was unlikely any would miss — a month ago, when the Rhodians had owned the ground, they had ranged them in. A few fell short — ropes can change torsion in a month, even when loosened off — but most struck their targets within a few arm’s lengths of a bull’s eye, and fire blossomed.

  The alarms started, trumpets blaring in all directions.

  The Rhodian garrison stood to in a sudden movement, two thousand spears coming erect as the hoplites stood up from concealment behind the ‘bow’.<
br />
  ‘I have no shortage of soldiers,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Ares!’ Lysander said. His face was as white as a suit of Athenian armour.

  The second volley left the engines — no fire now, but just stones. Some engines threw baskets of loose stones, and some threw sacks that opened in the air, and some threw heavy rocks — one-mina and even ten-mina rocks, carefully hewn to shape by stone-cutters.

  The storm of death fell all across the wall.

  The whole corps of the town’s archers — all the Sakje and the Cretans — stood to on the ‘bow’. They lofted a volley onto the enemy wall — the third wall, captured just a day before — and then they lofted a second volley and a third and a fourth, a reckless display of a deep supply of arrows, and a fifth.

  As the heavy arms of the engines cranked back for the third round, there was a low rumble from the earth near the second wall: the ruins of the second wall, well behind the enemy engines. Columns of dust and smoke rose into the air — some springing from the ground like a desert storm, and some rising lazily like smoke from a campfire when herdsmen kill a sheep and eat it on a feast night on the mountains.

  ‘That was our mine,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘But they are. . far from-’

  ‘Now your relief columns cannot reach the third wall. Not for a long time.’ The flames from the burning mines rose like the sacrifices of a pious army, or the huts of a defeated one — columns of thick, black smoke: every drop of olive oil in every warehouse in the richest city in the world.

  The engines shot again — two dozen heavy missiles visible at the top of their parabolas before falling like the fists of an angry god on the terrified phalangites of the duty taxeis.

  The archers got off the wall, and the phalanx, two thousand strong, went over the top. Perhaps it was a shambles on the ground, but from a height it appeared that every hoplite was animated by the same godlike hand, and the Rhodians crested the ‘bow’ and filed from the centre of their taxeis like the professional soldiers that the siege had made them. They filed down the ramps of the ‘bow’ that Jubal had designed, formed on the glacis at the foot of the ramps, men flowing into the rear ranks, and then they stepped off across the rubble, and not a single missile flew at them from the Antigonids.