Volume 6: The Meeting of Two Heroes, Chapter 119: The Siege of Crotone (Part 2)

Those slaves stumbled almost up to the abatis when the soldiers on the wall began to loose arrows, and suddenly cries of agony echoed endlessly below the city...

Just as Kolebus and his men were nocking arrows and drawing javelins, the slaves below the wall shouted loudly: "Hold your arrows! I am Siphnos, son of Hippacus!"

"I am Pallarus, neighbor of Aschamas!"

...

The Croton soldiers froze: those below were not slaves, but their own countrymen captured after the previous battle was lost!

"Damned Syracusans! Dionysius belongs in the Underworld!" Ascamas slammed his fist against the battlement in fury, blood instantly staining his hand. He had never imagined Dionysius would defy Greek tradition and use Greek prisoners as expendable shields for the assault.

At that moment, Dionysius, who had already climbed the earth rampart with his archers, looked down at the scene below with a cold sneer. After the last battle, Syracuse had captured nearly ten thousand prisoners. Through terror, beatings, starvation, and other tortures, they had forced more than two thousand to agree to remove the abatis in front of the city and fill the moat, in exchange for a promise not to be tortured to death or sold into slavery. Among these two thousand were not only Crotonians but also a few men from Scylletium and Trina—but no Daonians. On one hand, very few Daonian soldiers had been captured, and over half of those had already been exchanged by Daonia. As for the remaining Bruttii prisoners, Dionysius had other plans for them, while the pure Greeks and Lucanians were mostly stubborn to the death...

Dionysius put aside that annoying little problem. He was now delighted with his clever stratagem and wanted to see how the Crotonians would respond. To that end, he ordered his archers not to shoot yet, to conserve strength and arrows, and wait until the general assault to clear the obstacles from the walls.

On the wall, the adjutant asked urgently, "General, what should we do?!"

Ascamas did not answer immediately. While letting his guards bandage his left hand, he gazed bitterly at the Croton prisoners below, forced by the Syracusans to walk to the moat, throw the sacks of earth they carried into the water, then turn back to destroy the carefully placed abatis.

Ascamas cursed those traitors inwardly, but he dared not order an attack on them. He recalled that the former chief general of Thurii, Kynogoratas, had ordered the city gates closed, saving the city but causing the deaths of some citizen soldiers. The populace would not let it go; they not only expelled Kynogoratas but also harmed his family. Now, if he ordered the killing of those Croton prisoners below, even if he repelled the enemy, the families of the thousands of dead would surely hate him in the future. His fate might be even worse than Kynogoratas's!

Ascamas was no mere battle-hardened general. Having been elected general multiple times in Croton, a powerful Greek state in Magna Graecia with tens of thousands of citizens, his political acumen was considerable. After quickly weighing the pros and cons, he told the adjutant, "Go immediately to the City Hall and inform the Council of this situation. Let them decide."

After the adjutant left, Ascamas saw that a short section of the moat had nearly been blocked off. He sighed and ordered his men, "Find some ropes quickly and lower them to the city base so they can climb up."

He dared not open the city gate, fearing the Syracusans would swarm in.

The soldiers hurriedly found ropes and lowered them, then shouted to their countrymen, "Come over here! Grab the ropes and climb!"

Some prisoners heard and staggered across the filled moat, but the Syracusan light infantry immediately shot arrows at them, easily felling these weak, starved men.

The soldiers on the wall retaliated furiously, but most of their shots failed to hit the Syracusans hiding behind arrow-proof carts, and instead wounded their own countrymen.

The prisoners dared not move again.

Seeing this, Ascamas reluctantly abandoned the attempt to rescue his countrymen.

The Croton Council was clearly unprepared for the Syracusans using prisoners to assault the city. The debate was fierce, but they could not reach a decision. This gave the Syracusans ample time to let the prisoners fill several long stretches of the moat and clear the abatis on both sides.

Ascamas watched this gloomily, but soon forced himself to rally. Since that was the case, let them fight face to face!

As if hearing Ascamas's inner shout, the prisoners were driven back and did not reappear.

Dionysius, seeing everything ready, gave the order from his elevated platform with confidence: "Attack!"

No sooner had he spoken than he felt his face grow wet. He touched it—water.

Rain? Dionysius looked up at the sky. The previously clear sky had grown somewhat overcast. Though it was only a light drizzle, Dionysius worried because the weight of the siege towers would soften the ground with rain, causing the wheels to sink into mud and become immobile.

"Speed up the attack!" he ordered again.

The bugle sounded long.

Above Croton, stones flew with constant whistling. Below the city, the enemy, a black mass, surged forward like a tide...

The mingled sounds of bugles, war drums, shouts, and footsteps pounded the ears of the defending soldiers, quickening their breath.

"It begins," Ascamas murmured, picking up his javelin and stepping to the battlement.

Just then, a black dot streaked across the sky behind and above his head, then another...

His eyes widened as he looked up, and beside him a soldier shouted excitedly, "Our ballistae! Our ballistae are finally showing their power!..."

Those were not Croton's ballistae... Ascamas thought, but seeing the soldiers' morale rise, he didn't mind. Instead, he felt relieved: Thank the gods Daonia stands with Croton!

The Croton soldiers were excited; the Syracusans grew anxious, especially Dionysius. He saw with his own eyes that almost all the stones flying from inside the city struck near the siege towers close to the earth rampart.

He had heard from Phasipesas that Daonia also had ballistae. Since he hadn't seen them used in the previous two days, he assumed Daonia hadn't lent these complex, costly, and powerful weapons to Croton, but had saved them for the defense of Asperustum. He never imagined Croton would hide them until now, unleashing them only when Syracuse committed to a full assault.

"Cunning Crotonians!" Dionysius cursed. He knew the enemy's ballistae were targeting the siege towers, but he could only fume, "Notify our ballista crews to fire at areas inside the city where the enemy might have placed their ballistae!"

Though he gave the order, Dionysius knew ballistae were not very accurate. Hitting without seeing the enemy's positions was near impossible. But with the assault force already closing on the walls and ballistae unable to target the walls without risking friendly fire, making some attempts to disrupt the Croton defenses was better than nothing.

Against the tide-like, massive assault force, a dozen ballistae could hardly make a big difference. The key was to seize the walls first! Dionysius quickly made his decision. On his signal, a hundred archers on the rampart began lofting arrows toward the front wall, suppressing the defenders' attacks on the soldiers below.

On the wall, Croton light infantry began pouring arrows onto the enemy approaching the moat.

Syracusans crossed the filled moat. Braving javelins thrown by the Crotonians, they raised scaling ladders against the wall. The Crotonian special ladders, refined through many siege experiences, had two curved iron hooks at the top to catch the battlements, preventing the ladders from being easily pushed off or toppled.

Unable to topple the ladders quickly, the Croton soldiers threw javelins and stones at the climbing enemy, poured boiling tung oil, and set the ladders on fire with torches...

Syracusan light infantry also emerged from behind the arrow-proof carts, rushed to the base of the wall, and shot arrows upward to reduce the defenders' attacks on the assault troops...

The Syracusan siege machines moved the slowest. The roofed wooden carts, pushed by men inside, finally reached the filled moat. Under the protection of the roofs, the men inside took up tools and began to re-compact the ground, fill the gaps with earth, and lay planks so the heavy siege towers could cross the moat.

The Daonian ballistae were concentrated not far behind the western wall, spaced widely apart, with buildings around them for relative safety. But because the ballistae were spread out, they could not adjust trajectories using the same data from a single target calculation; there were not enough ballista adjusters from the Mathematics Academy. So Cullorodus suggested: let all ten ballistae target the same area or target simultaneously to improve accuracy. After the ballista he personally commanded fired the first shot, the other operators could adjust their firing data based on the height and speed of the stone.

The ballista crew agreed. Their primary target now was the approaching siege tower directly ahead.

Cullorodus kept his eyes on the observer on the wall holding a colored flag. The observer's position indicated the siege tower's direction, and the numbers he traced with the flag gave the tower's distance from the wall. Then the observer pointed the flag to the left. After repeating that motion twice, the numbers he traced next showed the deviation in direction and distance of Cullorodus's previous stone.

The first two shots had missed. Cullorodus felt the pressure. He wiped the rain from his face to see more clearly. He knew he had to hit soon; if the rain continued, the spring assemblies of the ballistae would get damp, changing their tension, making accurate trajectory calculation even harder.