Kallippos made a noise through his teeth, half hiss and half whistle, and looked disbelieving. Hieron gently moved his engineer out of the way again and took over the windlasses himself. He sighted along the stock through the aperture, aimed the catapult at an empty field to the north of the road, then reached for the third windlass to elevate it.
'That doesn't work so well,' Archimedes told him, embarrassed again. 'I'm going to try something different on the next one.'
Hieron raised his eyebrows, then turned the windlass. It was very stiff, and Kallippos had to help him, but between them they tilted the great catapult slowly back to its maximum elevation. 'It works,' said Hieron. 'What were you going to do that was different?'
Archimedes explained an idea he'd had about a screw fixed to a wheel beneath the catapult. Kallippos made his hissing noise again and looked even more disbelieving. Screws had previously been used solely for holding things together.
Hieron's smile broadened. 'I'll look forward to seeing that,' he said. 'But we'd better see how this one shoots before you start building the next one. I have to see it work before you can be paid, isn't that the arrangement?' He nodded to the fort captain, who nodded to the soldiers. One-talent ammunition had been brought up that morning, and now a sixty-pound stone was rolled over, and the catapult string was winched back with its fearsome groan, so that the missile could be set in its place.
Archimedes blinked: that groan had differed from the one the machine had made in the workshop- lower, more dissonant. 'Wait!' he exclaimed. He went to one side of the catapult and struck the solid mass of twisted hair that formed its strings: they made a hollow sound. He ducked under the uptilted nose and struck the strings on the other side. Another hollow sound- but a deeper one.
'It's gone out of tune!' he cried in horrified disbelief. The strings had been fine that morning.
There was a displeased stir throughout the king's entourage. The catapult's drawstring was allowed to slip back so that the tension on the strings could be readjusted. Archimedes scrambled onto the stock, ran up the slide to the peritrete, and worked the bronze guard cap off the top of the set of strings which had produced the lower sound. Catapult strings were always twisted on a crosspiece which was then fixed into a bracket with wedges; the gear all looked fine, but when the two sets of strings were struck again, the difference in pitch was even more marked. Somebody handed up the heavy winding gear- windlass and crank- and Archimedes fitted it to the crosspiece without looking to see who. Hooking a leg around the frame to brace himself, he twisted the strings, secured them, then nodded to Elymos to strike the strings on the other side. Again, the deep note; he struck his own strings again- and they were still too low, and what was worse, the note slid downward as he listened to it: something was slipping. He frowned and checked the wedges: they were fine. He struck the strings again, and the note slipped even further.
He looked around for the king, and saw that Hieron was standing immediately beneath him: it had been he who had handed up the winding gear. Archimedes went red again. It was bad enough that his catapult should fail to work properly; worse that it should fail in front of the king; worst of all that the king should be a man who actually knew something about catapults. 'I'm sorry, lord,' he said miserably. 'I think something's gone wrong with the lower fixture. The tension's slipping. I–I'm going to have to take the strings off and look, and then restring it.'
Somebody sniggered. Archimedes glanced around, and realized that it had been Eudaimon.
Hieron merely looked commiserating. 'Very well,' he said. 'Do that.'
'I-it will t-take about an hour,' stammered Archimedes, utterly mortified.
'No matter,' said the king cheerfully. 'I was planning to stop for some lunch anyway. Restring it, and we'll have the trial after I've eaten.'
'Lord!' exclaimed Eudaimon, shocked and astonished. 'The catapult doesn't work. Surely you're not going to waste any more time on it?'
Hieron fixed him with a bright smile. 'Son of Kallikles, I'm not so ignorant of catapults as that!' he exclaimed. 'Any catapult can go out of tune. We don't know yet whether this one works or not. After all, it's not as though we'd fired it and seen it hurl crooked, is it? Which, of course, it would have done if it had been fired while it was out of tune. Isn't it lucky that young Archimedes here has such a good ear for pitch? Most people wouldn't have noticed that there was a problem until it was too late. That would have been doubly unfortunate here, because he would have been dismissed, wouldn't he? Oh, but perhaps that event would have pleased you.'
Eudaimon, for some reason Archimedes could not understand, went very pale. Elymos had gone pale as well. Archimedes himself was still red, too ashamed and embarrassed to worry about them. He began pulling out the wedges to get at the strings.
'I'll help,' Eudaimon offered suddenly.
'No,' said Hieron, still smiling. 'I think not. Kallippos, you stay and help: tell me if you find anything. Eudaimon, you come with me, and explain to me why we have so many arrow-shooters and so few stone-hurlers on the walls.' He snapped his fingers, and he and his entourage descended the stairs again, the fort captain hurrying ahead to arrange their meal.
Kallippos watched them go, rather grimly, then turned to Archimedes. 'Tell him if I find anything!' he exclaimed. 'What am I supposed to find?'
Archimedes was up to his elbows in catapult strings. 'Mmpff?' he said.
Kallippos looked at him, saw that it was pointless to say anything, and set to work helping to unstring the catapult.
When the mass of brown and black hair was drawn out of the bore, a piece of metal about as long as a hand tumbled from the strands and clinked against the floorboards. Kallippos picked it up: it was a razor.
'Zeus!' muttered the chief engineer. He checked through the tangle of tresses and found the place where the razor had nestled. Some of the strings must have been cut as soon as the razor was thrust in among them, but most had started to go when the drawn bowstring pulled them against the razor's edge. It had been a subtle trap, meant to be undetectable until it was too late.
Archimedes stared at the razor for a moment- then looked at Marcus with a mixture of disbelief and accusation. He could think of no one else who would want to disable a Syracusan catapult. But Marcus was staring at the razor too, in outrage.
The stunned silence was broken by a wail. Elymos flung himself at Archimedes' feet. 'Oh, sir!' he cried. 'He must have done it last night! He must have just come in and shoved it in quick, while I was sleeping. It wouldn't have made no noise, and I was so tired I wouldn't wake.'
Marcus' face suddenly darkened. 'Tired! You were drunk, sack-arse! You wouldn't have noticed if someone had taken a god-hated ax to the machine!'
Elymos whimpered. 'I was tired! We'd been working all day to get it set up, and there wasn't no crane. Please, sir'- turning back to Archimedes- 'you tell Epimeles I did what he said, I kept near it, I slept right under it all night- but you know how tired I was.'
'I don't understand,' said Archimedes helplessly. 'Are you saying Epimeles expected someone to sabotage my catapult?'
'I don't know anything!' cried Elymos frantically, realizing he'd said too much. If there was a judicial investigation of the incident, he could expect to be tortured- the law rarely trusted the testimony of slaves without torturing them first. 'I just did what Epimeles said, sir, that's all!'
Archimedes stared, stunned. He thought of what would have happened if the catapult had failed. The strings alone would have cost him thirty drachmae and the wood… Epirot oak, imported, three drachmae a yard… and then there was the bronze, and the iron. He imagined going home and having to tell his family not only that he was unemployed, but that all his savings had been wiped out, just when the city perhaps faced a siege. 'Delian Apollo!' he exclaimed, and sat down heavily on the catapult stock.
'I will show this to the king,' said Kallippos, hefting the razor. 'And you, fellow'- to Elymos- 'you come with me.'
Elymos gave another wail, and crawled forward to clutch Archimedes' knees in supplication. 'Please, sir!' he begged. 'Don't let them beat me!'
Archimedes recovered himself a little with a jump. 'Let him alone!' he said.
Kallippos glared at him. Archimedes blinked back, then took a deep breath and said, 'We still don't know if this catapult works, and if it doesn't, there's no point in worrying about the razor, is there? And if we're to test the catapult, I need this man's help to restring it.'
