Marcus shook his head. He folded the last tunic, set it down on top of the others, then picked the pile up. 'Just a fight.'
'But you were in a battle. You were enslaved after a battle.'
'Yes,' he agreed, meeting her eyes. 'I was in a battle. We lost.'
Philyra was silent a moment, thinking of the war to the north, and of the precariousness of the freedom of Syracuse. She shook her head, and Marcus took the gesture as dismissal. He gave a nod and set off upstairs with his pile of clean dry clothes.
It was dusk when Archimedes arrived at the sea gate. if the tarentine had indeed shared straton's shift, he'd taken himself elsewhere, and Straton was alone, leaning against the inside of the city wall, shield forced half over his chest, one leg resting on his slanted spear. He unfolded himself when he saw Archimedes and tipped his shield onto his back again. 'There you are!' he said with relief. 'When I asked around about your question, my captain got interested. He says they do need more engineers, for the army and the city both. He wants to talk to you. He's waiting for us at the Arethusa. That all right?'
Archimedes blinked and mentally thanked his mother for her fussing over the cloak. 'F-fine!' he stammered hastily. Straton's captain was presumably the man in charge of the garrison of Syracuse while the rest of the army was away. He could, if he wanted, ensure that Archimedes was offered a job.
The Arethusa proved to be an inn on the promontory of Ortygia, near the freshwater spring of that name. Archimedes was not familiar with it- he had rarely ventured onto the citadel- but he noticed as they approached that it was a good inn. The building was large, faced with stone, and had probably been converted from an upper- class mansion. Its sign, which had some artistic pretensions, depicted the nymph Arethusa, spirit of the spring and patroness of the city, reclining among the reeds with the citadel of Ortygia in the background. Archimedes eyed her shapely nudity, and decided that yes, the inn probably did rent female company as well as sell food. He fingered the coins in his purse resignedly. The evening was clearly not going to be cheap, and he knew that he would be paying. He could not complain: treating Straton's captain to an evening's entertainment would oblige the man to be helpful.
Straton clumped into the inn's main room, spear over his shoulder, and gave his name to an obsequious waiter. Archimedes glanced warily at the painting of carousing centaurs on the wall and the silver-chased hanging lamps, and added another three obols to the likely bill. The waiter smirked and bobbed and led them to one of the inn's small private dining rooms. A short wiry man in his early thirties was already seated on the single couch, nibbling at a dish of olives; he rose politely when Archimedes and Straton appeared. Straton saluted; Archimedes extended his hand.
The captain smiled and shook hands. 'You're the engineer?' he asked. 'I'm Dionysios son of Chairephon, captain of the garrison of the Ortygia. I've already ordered- I hope that's all right?'
Dionysios was not wearing armor, though a red officer's cloak hung over the back of his couch and a sheathed sword over the arm. When Straton hesitated awkwardly in the doorway, his superior grinned at him. 'We're both off duty, man,' he said. 'Make yourself comfortable.'
Straton gave a sigh of relief, set his spear and shield against the wall beside the door, then dropped onto the free end of the couch and began to unfasten his baldric. Dionysios grinned again, this time with knowing sympathy for long hours standing guard, for sore feet, a stiff back, and boredom.
Archimedes, feeling much the odd one out, took the least comfortable place, in the middle of the couch between the two soldiers. The obsequious waiter bobbed about taking orders, then retreated.
'Straton tells me you've just come back from Alexandria and are looking to be of service to the city in the war,' said Dionysios.
Archimedes nodded. 'But,' he added awkwardly, 'I've found that I can't go up to Messana to join the army. When I got home- That is, my father's dying. I can't leave Syracuse until- You understand what I mean. If there's something I can do here in the city…' He trailed off with an uncertainty he did not feel. He had left his father to endure illness alone: he would stay with him now, until the end.
'Ah,' said Dionysios. 'I am sorry.'
'Bad thing to come home to,' said Straton sympathetically. 'That, and the war.'
Archimedes made an inarticulate noise of agreement.
There was a decent silence, and then the captain asked about Alexandria.
They talked about the city through the first course of the mealthe Museum, the scholars, the temples; the beauty of the courtesans. Straton was silent at first, nervous in his commanding officer's presence, but Dionysios was cheerful and relaxed, there was plenty of wine, and before long they were all three talking freely. Dionysios swirled the fragrant red in his wide-bowled cup and praised Egypt. 'The House of Aphrodite,' he said. 'That's what they call Alexandria, isn't it? Everything that exists anywhere in the world is there, they say- everything anyone could desire. Money, power, tranquility, fame, learning, philosophy, temples, a good king, and women as beautiful as the goddesses who once came to Priam's son Paris to be judged. I'd love to go there!'
'It's the House of the Muses,' agreed Archimedes warmly. 'It draws the finest minds in the world as the Heraclean stone draws iron. I didn't want to leave it.'
'But you've come back to Syracuse, because of the war?'
He nodded. 'And because my father was ill.'
Again there was a moment's silence, and this time Archimedes realized that it was more because of the mention of the war than from tact over his father's illness. The war was a subject that weighed heavy on the minds of the two soldiers, but one they did not want to discuss. Twelve years before, the Roman Republic had defeated an alliance consisting of all the Greek cities of Italy, half a dozen rebellious Italian tribes, and the army of the kingdom of Epirus across the Adriatic. The forces had been commanded by the brilliant and adventurous Epirot king, Pyrrhus, who was said to have been the finest general of the age. How could Syracuse alone succeed where such an alliance had failed? Her only hope of victory lay in the alliance with Carthage- and Carthage had always longed for her destruction. How could anyone discuss this war? What was there to say about a conflict where one's enemies were preferable to one's allies?
The waiter returned with a dish of broiled eel in beetroot saucethe main course- then filled up the wine cups and departed again. Dionysios helped himself to some fish. 'Do you know anything about catapults?' he asked, finally getting down to the business that had brought them there.
Archimedes' earlier discomfort had melted: the company and talk had been almost easy enough to be Alexandrian, and the food was better. Sicilian cooking had always been famous as the finest in the Greek world. He scraped some fish onto his piece of bread, took a bite, and gave the answer that came most naturally to him. 'The really interesting thing about them,' he announced around his mouthful, 'is how you make them bigger. The critical feature is the diameter of the bore in the peritrete. To increase the power of the throw you have to increase the other dimensions in proportion to the increase in the diameter of the bore. So it's the Delian problem in another form!'
Captain and guardsman stared confounded, and he realized that the company wasn't very Alexandrian after all. 'The problem of how to construct a solid a given amount larger than a similar solid,' he explained apologetically. 'You, um, have to calculate the mean proportionals.'
'What's Delian about that?' asked Straton.
'People started trying to do it when the priests of Apollo on Delos wanted to double the size of an altar.'
'Don't you just double all the measurements?'
Archimedes gave him a look of astonishment. 'No, of course not! Say you have a cube measuring two by two by two; that gives a volume of eight. Doubling the measurements to four will give you a volume of sixty-four- eight times as big. What you need-'
'What I meant,' interrupted Dionysios pointedly, 'was, do you know how to build catapults?'
'What's the peritrete, anyway?' asked Straton.
Archimedes looked from one of them to the other. 'Do you know anything about catapults?' he asked.
'Not me!' declared Straton cheerfully.
'A little,' said Dionysios. 'The peritrete's the frame, Straton.'
'The part the arms stick into?'
Archimedes dipped his finger in his wine and traced on the table the peritrete of a torsion catapult: two parallel boards separated by struts. He added the two pairs of boreholes, one at each end of the frame, with a
