Harry Turtledove: The Gryphon's Skull

Menedemos tasted the motion of the sea through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands on the steering oars. Here in the protected harbor, the water was almost glassy smooth. Even so, no one could ever mistake it for the staid solidity of dry land. “Almost like riding a woman, isn't it?” Menedemos said to Sostratos.

His cousin plucked at his beard. They weren't fashionable for young men these days—Menedemos and most of the sailors were clean-shaven—but Sostratos had never been one to care much for fashion. “Trust you to come up with that particular comparison,” he said at last.

“I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,” Menedemos replied with a chuckle.

Sostratos snorted. “It's plain you're no Persian, at any rate.”

“Persian? I should hope not,” Menedemos said. “What are you talking about, anyhow? You pull the strangest things out from under your hat.”

“Herodotos says Persians learn three things when they're growing up,” Sostratos said: “to ride, to shoot, and to tell the truth.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said. “Well, to the crows with you, O cousin of mine.” They both laughed. What Menedemos didn't tell Sostratos was that he was glad to be leaving Rhodes not because of what he had done this winter but because of what he hadn't—a sizable departure from his norm.

His cousin knew nothing of that. No one but Menedemos knew of the passion he'd conceived for his father's young second wife— unless Baukis herself had some inkling of it. But whatever he thought, whatever he felt, he hadn't done anything about it, and the strain of doing nothing had made living with his father even harder than it would have been otherwise.

He would have known blindfolded the instant when the Aphrodite glided out between the fortified moles that sheltered the great harbor and onto the open waters of the Aegean. The akatos' motion changed inside the space of a heartbeat. Real waves—not big ones, but waves nonetheless, driven by a brisk northerly breeze—slapped her bow and foamed over the three-finned bronze ram she carried there. She began to pitch, going up and down, up and down, under Menedemos' feet.

“Now we're really on the sea!” he said happily.

“So we are.” Sostratos sounded less delighted. The merchant galley's motion remained quite mild, but Menedemos' cousin had an uncertain stomach till he got back his sea legs at the start of each new sailing season. Menedemos thanked the gods that that affliction didn't trouble him.

The chop made the Aphrodite's timbers creak. Menedemos cocked his head and smiled at the familiar sound. The mortises and tenons and treenails that held plank to plank hadn't taken any strain since the akatos came back from Great Hellas the autumn before. Indeed, she'd been beached all winter, for all the world as if she were a warship, to let her dry out. She would be uncommonly fast for a while, till the pine got waterlogged again.

Fishing boats bobbed on the swells. Seeing the Aphrodite out-bound from the harbor at Rhodes, they knew the galley was no pirate ship. A couple of fishermen even waved at her. Menedemos lifted his right hand from the steering oar to wave back. He loved eating fish— what Hellene didn't?—but nothing could have made him catch them for a living. Endless labor, poor reward . . . He tossed his head: no, anything but that.

Diokles said, “Pity the wind's straight in our face. Otherwise, we could lower the sail from the yard and give the rowers a rest.”

“It usually blows out of the north at this season of the year,” Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster dipped his head in agreement. Menedemos went on, “But I will take half the men off the oars now. We'll make Kaunos by sundown without hurrying.”

“We'd better,” Diokles said. He left off clanging his mallet on bronze and called out, “Oop!” The rowers rested at their oars. The akatos eased to a halt. Diokles went on, “Starting from the bow, every other man take a rest.” The rowers coming off hauled in their long, dripping oars and stowed them atop medium-sized jars of crimson dye; small, round pots of ink; and oiled-leather sacks full of papyrus from Egypt. “Rhyppa pai!” the keleustes sang out. “Rhyppa pai!” The men left on the oars went back to work. The Aphrodite began to move again, not with the speed she'd shown before but still well enough to suit Menedemos.

“We'll practice tactics for a sea fight a good deal on this cruise,” he told the crew. “Never can tell when we'll need them. Except right around Rhodes, pirates are thick as flies round a dead goat.”

No one grumbled. Anybody who went to sea knew he told the truth. Sostratos said, “If anybody besides our polis cared about keeping those vultures off the water ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth.

“But no one does.” Menedemos called to one of the sailors who'd just stopped rowing: “Aristeidas! Go up to the foredeck and keep an eye on things. You're the best lookout we've got.”

“Right, captain,” the young sailor answered, and hurried forward. He'd proved on the Aphrodites last voyage how sharp his eyes were. Menedemos wanted a pair of good eyes looking out for pirates. The mountainous seaside district of Lykia lay just east of Kaunos, and, as far as he or any other Rhodian could tell, piracy was the Lykians' chief national industry. Any headland might shelter a long, lean, fifty-oared pentekonter or a hemiolia—shorter than a pentekonter because its oars were on two banks rather than one but even swifter, the pirate ship par excellence —lying in wait to rush out and capture a prize. Spotting a raider in good time might make the difference between staying free and going up on the auction block, naked and manacled, in some second-rate slave market.

Menedemos' eye went from the sea to the Karian coastline ahead. Mist and distance—Kaunos lay about two hundred fifty stadia north and slightly east of Rhodes—shrouded his view, but his mind's eye supplied the details he couldn't yet make out. As in Lykia, the mountains of Karia rose swiftly from the sea. The lower slopes would show the green and gold of ripening crops at this season of the year. Farther up grew cypress and juniper and even a few precious cedars. Woodcutters who went up into the mountains after the timber shipwrights had to have might face not only wolves and bears but lions as well.

When he thought of lions, he naturally thought of Homer, too, and murmured a few lines from the eighteenth book of the Iliad:

“ 'With them Peleus' son began endless lamentation,

Setting his murderous hands on his comrade's breast.

He groaned again and again, like a well-maned lion

From whom a man who hunts deer has taken its cubs

From the thick woods. It, coming later, is grieved.

It goes through many valleys, seeking the man by scent

If it might find him anywhere: for anger most piercing seizes it.' “

“Why are you going on about lions?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos explained. “Ah,” his cousin said. “Do you have a few lines from Homer that you trot out for everything under the sun?”

“Not for everything,” Menedemos admitted. “But for most things, if you know the Iliad and the Odyssey, you'll come up with some lines to help you figure out how it all goes together.”

“But that's something you should do for yourself,” Sostratos said. “You shouldn't need to find your answers in the words of an old blind poet.”

“Hellenes have been doing it ever since he sang,” Menedemos said.

“Tell me any of your precious philosophers and historians will last as well.” He was much more conventional—he thought of himself as much more practical—than Sostratos, and enjoyed twitting his cousin, “Why go to Athens to study, the way you did, when most of what you need is right there under your nose?”