Na, hast du was vor, nach der Schlacht meine ich
Nein und du
Tja wir könnten mal
Ja oder auch
Das wär aber geil
Toll

The wife once saw me playing a WWII computer game (Combat Mission). I explained the action: a small patrol of German Security troops (probably older, not very well armed, second line troops) patrolling towards a treeline that almost certainly contained partisans-- all this in winter '43, glacial cold and bitter wind.

Just send them home for a bowl of soup, my wife suggested. And so I did.

Make soup, not war.

Quote:


It all becomes clear: the slingers are the seven dwarfs, the romans daughter is sleeping beauty and the romans are the conjurings of the wicked witch !
And the soup is poisoned (apples were out of season)

Don't know how I didn't see it straight away.

I really enjoyed the Story, Your a great writer Thearos, Thank's for bringing this to the top and adding to It, Keep on Writing !    

Good read, Thearos.  As with the last one, I wish it was longer.  Thanks.

As always, the General was too hasty. The slinger and the Byzantine engineer quickly understood the matter-- in the pidgin Carthaginian, mingled with the Iberian, Celtic, Balearic, Sicilian Greek, and even Latin, which after so many years in Italy everyone spoke in the camp. The Byzantine-- who had worked as a goldsmith and a sculptor, before his exile for embezzlement and his conversion to siege engines-- made the moulds with his own hands in the night, and the first lead bullets-- cast, then cooled in vinegar-- were ready by mid-morning. The were silver-grey, ovoid, pefectly smooth, and with a sharp iron spike at either end-- ugly, large, enhanced versions of the lead bullets the Baleares sometimes used in sieges or in sniping skirmishes.

The old slinger tested the first batch. The shape and flight were perfect, but the weight was never right, and it was in vain the slinger aligned all his fast straight shots at the small Iberian shield hanging in the olive grove, three hundred paces away: the drop always missed by a foot. By mid-afternoon, it was clear that the bullets would have to be modified, but the size of the lead ovoids was already enormous-- almost as big as the fist-sized stones the Baleares usually threw with such crushing force. The solution was obvious, and even the General had to agree, in spite of his anger at the enormous cost involved.

The old slinger immediately understood, when he was asked into the General's tent at nightfall. Three of the big ovoid bullets, of exactly the same size and shape as the earlier batches, lay on the General's table, on a rough cloth; the only difference was that they had been painted black.

"Pick one up", the General ordered. The slinger grasped one of the black bullets, still slightly warm, and much heavier than a leaden one. "Do you know what these are ?" The slinger nodded. He had already calculated the worth of each of the bullets in terms of a year's wages.