Atlas Of Megaras

Camp Construction

I am not clever, but over confident. Building camps meant labour. And labour meant pain. And pain meant misery. And I already lead a miserable life. Early morning all of us were assembled with the plans. The sacrifice to the gods had been done last night itself. The plan was to build a defensive wall that would go around the entire camp in a very rough circle. Then we had to dig a ditch. Then another ditch. And guess what, a third ditch which was to be covered with hay and a light layer of mud to make it look like solid ground.

Then there was the thing where we had to build huts, because tents won't remain warm for a long while in the cold winter. All this construction activities were to be done by the soldiers and captains. The leaders and generals had to sit back and supervise. And like usual the heaven was frowning down on me. It was Prince Pyros who was overseeing us for the day.

I have no clue what I did to arouse such hatred in him. But he was very gleeful when he told us my men and I would have to climb the mountains to get timber for the pikes and firewood. After all we can't find dry firewood in the winter.

We set out with giant wagons, filled with axes and ropes to get the wood back. By no means this would be done in a day but then Prince Pyros wanted a 100 wagon loads today. So, we had to make four trips.

By the time the second trip came, my knees were burning. I could swear I had heard whispers in the wind. The sun was high up in the sky when we were done. I stumbled over to my tent after eating potato stew and bread. I really wanted to fall asleep with the way my bones were hurting. But I suddenly remembered. I still had my own shift to work. At least the supervisor would change this time.

Please be sharpening pikes, please be sharpening pikes. I walked in. "Ah, Atlas." No, good grief no. What the hell! Prince Pyros grinned at me from behind the table he was seated. "Come, come. Such a hard-working man." No please spare me! Please.

He ran his fingers on the clay tablets on which the work for the day had been etched. "How about, "He held out the tablet, "You and your men start digging the innermost trench!" Innermost trench!

"Innermost trench! But we already dragged enough wood from the mountains to build a 100 pikes and firewood for a month. "

"And is there a problem?" My father took the tablet and handed it to me. "Dig it fast!" he instructed before leaving. Prince Pyros burst into laughter. "Well, looks like your father is one heck of a nice man." He waved me off as if I were a 10-year-old child.

I stepped out to go find my men. I swear half of them were thinking of mutiny when I informed them we were assigned to dig the ditch. We were joined by the Lycians and the Normans. Surprisingly, Prince Isander and King Alexander joined us.

With great mumblings and discontentment from our side we started digging the ditch. After we dug horizontally to a depth of four paces we started digging out vertically. We kept running into rocks. At one point, I was trying to push one out and over the side of the trench but seriously, my arms were burning with the effort. King Alexander just walked by pushing it over without breaking a sweat. That too with one hand because he was holding another rock very casually under his other arm like you would hold a lamb under your arm. I really envy his strength. I wanted to be that strong so that I could toss people around who irritated me. And I already knew my first target.

Finally, the horn sounded for the day. With very thankful prayers to the gods we stepped out. The first thing we did was to wash our hands and faces. Dinner was vegetable and meat stew with bread. After eating the food, I was already dozing off on the shoulder of one of the Lycians. He was kind enough to not move to accommodate me and my useless tired self.

This went on for a week, before the ditches were done. We didn't have the strength to complete the walls though. Because we had already finished more than half of it, we could just continue with the inner most ditch around the camp and plant pikes.