The old man rubbed his red, tired eyes. Despite a difficult day, he could not sleep. Ideas crowded his mind. He could see, as if they stood right before him, intricate constructions made of blocks, levers, twisted tendons, wheels, hooks, and cables. But all of them were unsuitable—too heavy, too unwieldy.
The old man sighed and took a sip of a warm herbal infusion, the only remedy that had recently helped him fall asleep. Again and again he tried to clear his mind, watching the lamp light and rolling smooth, polished coins in his hands—a habit he had acquired in those distant years when he worked in metal refining. An elegant clay lamp in the shape of a small ship gave off a faint light from its wicks at the bow and stern, reflecting off the coins. The reflections played across the table and walls, occasionally falling onto the lamp itself. The old man smirked.
A burning ship... A curious coincidence. Why did the servants place exactly this lamp today? he thought, gradually calming down and drifting into drowsiness. His fingers slowed their play with the coins, and the intricate dance of reflections gradually came to a halt—both reflected discs coming to rest as blurred spots on the side of the clay ship.
Like a lightning strike, as often happened with him, an idea flashed through the mind of the nearly asleep old man. He ran out of the house and, shaking one of the soldiers dozing at the entrance, sent him off on an errand. Returning to the couch by the pool, he fell asleep peacefully and without dreams, as always when he managed to solve yet another problem.
***
On a sunny morning, the bored soldiers of the siege fleet were roused by the curses of centurions. A small detachment of spearmen—only about three to four hundred men—was rapidly approaching the ships grounded near the shore. What they were hoping to accomplish was completely incomprehensible to the legionaries, but there was no time to ponder. Forming a line along the shore, the spearmen waited until the distance was right for a javelin throw. Suddenly, they stopped and covered themselves with the shields that had until then been slung across their backs. The legionaries barely had time to notice that the shields bore no paint, shining instead like polished mirrors... Blinded by the bright flashes of sunlight, the Romans could not see the slingers who ran out from behind the spearmen’s ranks and began to hurl clay spheres filled with incendiary mixture at the tarred triremes with complete impunity...
Viacheslav Sannikov "Almost True". Part I "Humans"
