The Bronze God of Rhodes
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1963
- Язык: английский
- Год: Bantam Books
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Bronze God of Rhodes». Краткое содержание книги:
From the sea in thousands of ships they came, the brutal legions of Antigonos, a giant lusting for the power of Alexander the Great. For endless weeks and months they battered at the tiny island city, smashing it with monstrous weapons, crushing it with the terrible weight of their numbers.
Among the handful of grim defenders was one man who fought for a dream, a vision of a great statue that would stand above the highest towers as a monument to his city's grandeur.
He was Chares, soldier, adventurer, a man tormented by passion, a wanderer in strange, deadly lands—an artist who lived to see his incredible dream become one of the seven wonders of the world.
"That's the point," said Bias. "We're going to retake the South Mole. The gods have given us this chance, and we'd be fools not to use it. While this storm lasts, they can't put fresh troops oh the mole, but we can attack them in relays and wear them down, see? Hurry up; I want a continuous barrage."
Thus we spent two hours dragging Lightning along the wall to a point near the base of the mole. We faced the engine along the axis of the mole to rake the hostile positions. Other catapults were crowded up against ours on the wall or were set up on the waterfront.
"Begin shooting!" commanded Bias.
We wound up and let fly. So did the others; so did the engines on the catapult ships.
Although the wind threw our aim awry, we loaded and shot again and again. Then infantry marched out the gate and massed at the base of the mole. A standard-bearer raised the golden sun disk on a pole, the trumpet spoke, and the men charged.
The Antigonians massed to repel them. Arrows sang; ladders were placed against the foe's defensive wall, thrown down, and replaced. The din of sword and spear on shield and cuirass arose. Back and forth over the wall the fighting surged, while the catapults dropped darts and stones all over the mole.
The struggle went on until darkness made it impossible to tell whither our shots were going. That, however, did not end the attack. As fast as one battalion of infantry tired, it was pulled back and another was sent in, while small boats with archers in the bows prowled up and down the mole, shooting at close range.
Towards dawn a light ship succeeded in putting a Rhodian platoon ashore on the tip of the mole before they were discovered. These men held the end of the mole while reinforcements poured in. When day came, the Antigonians found themselves attacked from both ends of the mole. A rush from the base of the mole carried the defensive wall and swept the Antigonians back from around the penthouses. Staggering with weariness—for they had fought all night, against troops that were ever fresh—the survivors of the four hundred Antigonians surrendered.
We manned the Lightning again that morning but had nothing more to do. The Antigonians, in good order but without their arms, marched in single file off the mole, to the internment center that we had set up in the old theater to wait until their ransom should be arranged. After the whole men, hobbled the wounded. Because of the excellence of their armor, the infantry had suffered only moderate losses, though many had minor wounds. The artillerymen, less well protected, had suffered worse from our missiles. The exact number of casualties was hard to tell, as the Antigonians, lacking means for honorable burial or cremation, had thrown the corpses into the sea.
By this victory we not only augmented our store of small arms and armor but also captured several of Demetrios' catapults. These included the two great three-talent stone throwers on the mole and the smaller stone throwers on the sea engine moored to the mole.
The god-sent wind continued brisk. During the night it had swung around and now came from the northeast.
After dark a squadron of ships appeared from the direction of Asia Minor. They grew larger and turned into a group of merchant sailing craft. These stood into our harbor and made signals of recognition. A pair of Demetrios' battleships rowed out to intercept them, but too late; the ships were safe behind the South Mole before the Antigonians cleared their own harbors.
The newcomers furled their sails and pulled up to the breakwater by means of their sweeps. A hundred and fifty little dark light-armed soldiers scrambled ashore; their officers embraced ours, gabbling in the Cretan dialect.
These were men of Knossos. We had a treaty with the Knossians, by which they promised to abstain from piracy and to help us suppress the piracy of the other city-states of Crete. The Knossians did not like to give up piracy themselves; in fact, many of their young men went elsewhere to enlist in piratical crews. However, they loved an excuse to meddle in the other cities' affairs; for, next to robbery on the high seas, cutting their neighbors' throats is the greatest joy of the Cretans. Now they reinforced us in our hour of need.
The next day another group of ships appeared. After some anxious moments of speculation, we made out the scarlet lion of Ptolemaios on their sails. Some were merchantmen and some triremes, but the latter had their oar ports blocked and moved under sail alone in the brisk breeze.
The Egyptian ships filed into the harbor. They brought five hundred men from the forces of the satrap of Egypt, bedight in richly decorated armor, that of the officers glittering with gold inlay. As the soldiers marched ashore, cries of recognition went up from the watching Rhodians, for among these soldiers were many men of Rhodes who had gone to Egypt to seek service as mercenaries. The Ptolemaios had shrewdly chosen these as the soldiers most willing to go to Rhodes and most likely to put up a stout fight when they got there.
The heat of high summer declined. As days passed without further attacks from the sea, spies brought word that Demetrios was preparing a huge assault by land. To this end he was gathering material wherewith to build unheard-of engines of war.
Again the sound of ax blows rang from the hills, and the remaining houses in the suburb, all but Protogenes' studio, were pulled down. Soon men began to pile timbers, three or four furlongs from the South Wall.
In Rhodes food grew so scarce that a well-padded paunch became a thing of reproach. Now and then a blockade runner, attracted by the bonuses offered for foodstuffs by our government, would slip into the Little Harbor at night. But still our food stores shrank and shrank.
Boys were sent around in bands to collect scrap metal for melting up to make weapons. A full citizen was brought to trial for trying to engross the supply of onions. When he was let off with a nominal fine, it was whispered that strings had been pulled by the other magnates, who were up to the same tricks and feared exposure in their turn.
Wild rumors circulated of the life, death, or dramatic moves of Antigonos and the other Successors of Alexander. A condemned criminal was sacrificed to Kronos inside the Great Gate. This was as near as we could get to the temple of Artemis Aristoboule, outside the South Wall, where such sacrifices were traditionally observed.
Under Bias' direction we moved the dart throwers of the Lightning class from the waterfront to the South Wall. The wall itself was strengthened by Makar and his masons. When they had used all the stone intended for the new theater, they dismantled the old one. One of their tasks was to erect a wall against the inner side of the South Gate. Any serious attack would probably try to batter down the gate, and the best counter to this was to wall it up in advance.
Bias was promoted to battalion commander, and Phaon was moved up to take Bias' place as battery commander.
On my way to the armory, one morning in Boedromion, I got a surprise. Our entire active fleet at Rhodes—all nine ships—was gone from the dockyards. Nothing was left but two ships under repair and two new ones a-building.
I hastened into the armory building and found Bias. "What has happened?" I cried.
Bias grinned. "They've gone off on a raid. We figured it wouldn't do no good to tell everybody ahead of time."
I was amused to note that, since his promotion, the carpenter had come around to referring to the high command as "we." Theretofore it had always been "they," usually with a scornful tone and a sneer.
Later I persuaded Bias to give me the details. "You see, son, as long as it looked like the boy wonder was going to attack us by sea, we needed the fleet to take care of his engines. But now he's committed to a land attack, we thought the ships would be put to best use by raiding Demetrios' bases. All his big warships are gathered here, which leaves his staging points as bare as a newborn baby. And who would expect us, shut up here, to attack his rear? We'll give him a prod in the arse he'll remember!"