and it is literally unbelievable how much damage a hundred angry former slaves can do to their master’s property.
Then we had ten of the strongest slaves, led by Neoptolymos, carry loads of flammables up to the tower, under the cover of twenty of us with aspides held over their heads.
The men in the tower understood immediately, of course.
We didn’t lose a man.
Heh.
Six trips to the tower, and back, across open ground.
Then Doola lit a torch — one of ours from the ship. He was going to throw it at the pile, but I ran it to the pile and placed it well under. Nothing hit me, because it is really very difficult to shoot straight down in the dark with a bow.
The pile caught. The tower caught.
The men inside died screaming. It should have been horrible, but instead, it was deeply satisfying. Make of that what you will.
Before dawn, the tower was like a lighthouse, a beacon, with flames ten times the height of a ship’s mainmast roaring into the sky. One of the slaves, a man named Herodikles, sacrificed a ram from the pens and threw the carcass into the fire. He was an Aeolian, from Lesbos, and he’d been a slave for fifteen years, taken while on a pilgrimage to Cyrene.
There were a hundred such stories.
Men told them, while their oppressors tried to scream the smoke out of their lungs and failed. They smelled like roast pork as they burned.
In the morning, when the fire burned less than a mast-height high, and the sun was over the rim of the world, we climbed down into the pit.
They were all there, waiting. They were even thinner, and they didn’t have darkness to hide the open sores, the flies, the ooze of pus. Despite which, they grinned from ear to ear. Gaius. Daud. Demetrios, who looked so bad I was afraid he would die before we could get food into him. I couldn’t even figure out how he could stand on those legs.
They had been slaves for just two months.
The Phoenicians were… I was going to say animals, but no animal except man treats another like that.
We rigged a sling, and lifted them out of the pit. Most of them were too weak to climb the ladder.
While that happened, I went and posted sentries. There was a new spirit among my men: the shepherds, the herdsmen, the fishermen’s sons, the slaves freed at Centrona. We’d been victorious again; we were doing something noble. They were inspired, just as men can be inspired by a great play, or by the noble words of a godlike man like Heraclitus, or by the gods themselves.
I knew as soon as I looked at them. They were ready to do something great.
For the moment, all we had to do was to be alert.
We watched the plains all day while the tower burned. Men looked at me, and I smiled. I kept my own council. There was food in the sheds, animals in the pens, and I prepared a feast on the coals of the tower and served it to the slaves, telling my own men that they should go from slave to slave as if they were slaves themselves.
They did so with good will. The slaves tore into the meat, complained about the lack of wine and bread — mock complaints, although there’s always some awkward sod who feels sorry for himself. But they ate and ate.
I saw no reason to leave so much as a goat alive, so as fast as they ate, we killed more.
And watched the plains.
About noon, we saw the dust cloud.
Seckla was my best rider. I gave him the mounted men, and clear orders. Up at the mine we had a view for fifty stades over the plain, so that I could point out his route — this stream, that copse of trees, that farmhouse.
They cantered away, and men cheered them.
The tower had just about burned out. So I asked the slaves to fetch water from the well, a bucket at a time, and pour it into the coals.
Steam rose to the heavens, carrying the scent of roast meat. Some of it was roast men, and the gods have never rejected such a sacrifice. I remember wondering at myself; I thought Tertikles a barbarian for sacrificing a man before we launched our ships, but I was secretly pleased to have sent twenty Phoenicians screaming to my gods.
Well.
It’s true; I can be a vicious bastard.
When the dust cloud on the plain reached a certain point, I took most of my armed men and marched. We had full bellies and full water bottles, and we moved fast, going downhill, despite the full heat of the summer sun. My friends wanted to come — Gaius demanded it, and muttered words about honour.
I pushed a chunk of goat into his greasy hands. ‘Honour this,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the killing. You do the eating.’
We went down the mountain, crossed the stream at its foot and went along the ridge through the high beech trees until we came to the site I’d chosen on the way. When you are a warrior, you think about these things all the time. That field would make a good place.
That piece of trail.
Ambushes come in as many different shapes as women. And men, too, if you wish. What would make one ambush perfect would be certain death in another.
I had very few missile weapons. So my ambush would be close in, a deadly, hand-to-hand thing. And since my men were on foot, we had to win. Because we were unlikely to outrun pursuit.
If we had had missile weapons — more bows, good javelins and throwing strings, heavy rocks — we might have chosen other sites.
Instead, we lay down among the trees, an arm’s-length from the road. I took my place with Doola, behind a big rock that slaves and oxen had shifted. You could tell, because it stood clear of the ground, where all the other big rocks were half buried. It allowed me to see the road in both directions.
If you ever have cause to lay an ambush, whether you do it with a handful of mud for your brothers, or with a sharp spear for your enemies, remember these simple rules.
Always have a clear line of retreat. Any other ambush is just an elaborate form of suicide.
Tailor your surprise to your arms and your enemy. If you have bows, you should wait at a good killing range, with an open field that won’t block your archery. If you have time, plan your ambush so that your first flight of arrows panics your foe into a worse position. Don’t drive him off a road and into an impregnable stronghold.
The moment anything goes wrong, including an hour before you sight the enemy — run. Men in ambush are absurdly vulnerable.
There, ladies. All my wisdom — wisdom I learned for myself, and not from Heraclitus. He was like a god, but I don’t think he knew much about ambushes.
At any rate…
We lay there. And lay there. An hour passed, and another, and the sun went down noticeably.
I had so much to worry about; a man commanding an ambush always does. Had they stopped and made camp? Taken another route, and even now they were storming the slave camp? They’d given up and gone home.. They’d slipped past us.
Another hour passed. Insects ate us, and men snuck away to piss and snuck back.
Men got the jitters.
And another hour.
And then we heard the sound. Hard to describe, but instantly identifiable. Men — a powerful number of them. Walking with a rattle and tinkle and clank. Talking.
They had two scouts. They were moving two hundred paces ahead of the column — walking on the road. When they came to the edge of our copse of woods, they stopped.
They talked with each other until the column had almost caught up.
