MITHRADATES GOT HIS revenge for the disgrace he suffered at Xenophon's hands. We had hardly started off that day when he appeared again at our rear, this time accompanied by two hundred cavalry and four hundred light infantry. His herald bore a flag of truce, and although we did not halt our march to receive him, Xenophon and several junior officers held back and waited for him to approach, neglecting to call any supporting infantry for protection.

This was a mistake, for as soon as a sufficient gap had opened up between Xenophon's group and the army, Mithradates' cavalry whipped their horses along our flanks, seeking to drive a wedge between us and the main body of our troops and cut us down. We galloped frantically back to the safety of our troops, narrowly avoiding being encircled, but Mithradates' near approach nevertheless caught the army unprepared. Both the arrows from the Persian cavalry and the missiles from their well-trained slingers caused a number of casualties among our rearguard before we were finally able to drive them away by sheer force of numbers. We were accustomed to the powerful, body-length bows the Persians used in warfare, which although difficult to handle gave them a range beyond that of our own Cretan bowmen; but we had not counted on the deadly force of the Persian slingers, whose large stones, though not actually killing any of our men, kept them cowering under their shields and exposed to Persian cavalry charges.

Xenophon ordered pursuit, but without sufficient horsemen we could catch none of the Persian cavalry, and even our fleetest footmen could not gain ground against their slingers and bowmen with such a long head start. By the end of the day the army had covered no more than three miles, and the rearguard troops straggled in from all directions over a period of two hours or more, in complete disarray. Our first day on the march without senior officers had been disastrous, and Chirisophus and the older captains made it clear that there was no one to blame for the debacle but Xenophon. He had allowed himself to be drawn out by the Persians to an exposed position, and then risked his own neck to pursue their retreating troops.

He listened to their criticisms silently, a blank expression on his face, and acknowledged his blame, speaking only to humbly thank the gods that his first trial by fire had involved only a small Persian skirmishing force, rather than the full strength of Tissaphernes' army. As we were walking back to our tent, I could see that, rather than looking discouraged, he was busily puzzling something over in his mind.

"The Spartans disdain slingers," he said. "They call their weapons children's toys, unfit to be used by real men with swords and lances. But did you notice how the enemy slingers cowed our troops today, even the Spartans? The Persians were able to stand far beyond our own range, and yet kept us squatting under our shields like turtles. Do we have any slingers in the army to use in the same way?"

I thought for a moment. "The Rhodians are the most famous among the Greeks for their slinging," I answered. "But no, we have no company of slingers. Our Rhodians are distributed among the other companies according to their various skills-a few are hoplites, most are peltasts and bowmen. I know one-I'll ask him if there are any slingers here among his countrymen."

I sought out an acquaintance I had made during the march across the desert, a young scout named Nicolaus of Rhodes, and asked him whether any of his compatriots knew how to use a sling. Nicolaus was a dark, slightly built youth, with delicate, almost feminine features and short-cropped hair, as was the custom on his island. He seemed barely strong enough to draw a bowstring. Political events on his island had conspired to drive him and many others like him into exile at a very young age, but the Rhodians' reputation as effective mountain scouts and crack marksmen had enabled them to easily gain employment with mercenary armies around the Mediterranean. The Rhodians were known for their good cheer and relentless endurance under conditions of hardship. Nicolaus was delighted that I had taken the trouble to seek him out, and he smiled wryly at my question.

"Take me to Xenophon," he said, fishing out a long, tangled sling from deep within his pack, and seizing a walking stick, "and round up a half dozen sheep to be butchered tonight for the troops." As we trotted back, he whistled to several of his friends billeted in the units through which we passed, all as boyish-looking as himself, and shouted to them in his guttural Rhodian dialect to follow along and bring their slings and sticks.

Arriving at Xenophon's tent, I staked the sheep to the ground in the adjoining field, and while Xenophon and I watched, the Rhodians measured off a distance of one hundred paces from the sheep and stood waiting for us. We looked at the distance skeptically.

"You think you can hit a sheep from this distance?" Xenophon asked doubtfully.

Nicolaus smiled. "One hundred paces," he said, "is the distance from which Tissaphernes' Persian slingers can hit a sheep with those fist-sized rocks they use."

I was astounded. Rocks that size were big enough to knock a shield out of a hoplite's hand, and they could easily dent a man's bronze helmet into his skull. No wonder our men were being pounded by the Persian light infantry. The Rhodians stepped off another hundred paces, while we followed in even more doubt.

"Two hundred paces," said Nicolaus, "is the distance at which a Rhodian slinger can hit a sheep using a small river stone found on the ground."

I looked at Xenophon, who was beginning to think this show of bluster a waste of time. Nicolaus stepped off an additional hundred paces, a total of three hundred yards. By now the sheep were at a ludicrous distance, beyond the range even of our archers, and the Rhodians were laughing and elbowing each other as if this were a joke.

"And this is the distance from which I can hit a sheep using a lead bullet and my 'walking stick.'"

Nicolaus produced from a small bag around his waist a collection of what he called lead bullets, each perhaps the length of a man's thumb and twice the thickness, formed in the shape of an acorn, tapering to a point on one end and blunt on the other. He explained that they were called balanoi in his dialect and he kept them for hunting, a practice he had indulged in since boyhood, but he had very few such pellets left. I began to see now why the Spartans disdained such a weapon as these insignificant, soft metal pellets. At the same time, I recalled that it was Nicolaus who had bagged the army's only ostrich during our march across the Syrian desert months earlier. At the time I had not even wondered how; now I was beginning to become interested.

Xenophon shrugged in resignation. "Well," he said, "you've dragged us out this far. Show us your target practice." Nicolaus deftly slipped one knotted end of his sling into a notch on the tip of his walking stick, which he called a "sling-staff." He chose a bullet, placed it into the leather pocket of his four-foot sling, then looped the other end of the sling, which was considerably longer, around a small burr on the end of the staff and down the shaft to his hand. Whipping the entire contraption around his head two or three times, he let fly the bullet.

None of us could see it after it left his weapon, but we could hear the device humming evilly through the air for a moment like an angry bee. The sheep scarcely had time to look up in question at the odd sound before we saw the eye of one of them explode in a burst of blood and brains and the animal drop in its tracks without so much as a twitch. The remaining sheep stared dumbly at their fellow, but did not have long to wonder at his fate, for the other Rhodians had limbered up their slings and sticks and sent their own pellets whizzing, straight and true, at their heads. All the sheep dropped as if struck by lightning, in a small puff of blood and fleece, except one that had been hit on the upper neck rather than the head. That one struggled gamely back to its feet and began hopping and bucking about in pain like an untrained horse, as the blood from the deep hole spurted over its dirty white fleece. The Rhodian that had fired that pellet apologized for his clumsiness, calmly loaded another bullet and let fly again at the madly prancing animal, this time striking it square in the face, despite its frantic movements, and dropping it as dead as the others.