Daidalos worked through the night.
Forty jars of tar. Heated in the braziers that had held the oil cauldrons. Mixed with sand from the harbour — three parts tar, one part sand. The compound was thick, dark, and moved like something alive when it was hot. When it cooled, it hardened into a surface that gripped everything that touched it.
Lysander helped carry the jars. His arms ached. The cut on his bicep from the last assault had been stitched by Antiphus but still pulled with every movement. He did not care. The jars needed to reach the wall before dawn.
By the fourth hour, forty jars sat on the northern parapet. Daidalos tested the last batch — dipped a stick into the mixture, pulled it out, watched the tar stretch and hold.
"Ready," he said.
Lysander looked at the ground below the wall. Thirty paces of flat earth between the stone and the slope. He had measured it at dusk. The centre — fifteen paces wide — was where the platforms would come. The edges were secondary.
