However, from the jail he was able to secretly contact his followers to arrange to escape, meet his followers, and attack the king's palace at night. So the night before his scheduled execution, the general managed to escape from prison. He fled to a ziggurat several kilometers away, where his followers would meet him. However, the ziggurat was one of several in the area, and he wasn't sure if his cohorts would find the right ziggurat. By this time it was twilight, so he lit a small fire and sent smoke signals to indicate in which structure he was hiding.
However, the king's loyal soldiers saw the smoke coming from the ziggurat, and came to arrest him before he could meet his followers. He was executed later that day.
The moral of the story? WARNING: The Serbian general has determined that smoking ziggurats can be extremely hazardous to your stealth.
