Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

Sostratos sighed. “I suppose you're right, my dear. Too bad we have to worry about things like that.”

“I didn't say it wasn't,” Menedemos replied. “Now I'm going to finish eating and then go to sleep.”

He wondered if he would have to be blunter than that; Sostratos didn't always take a hint. But his cousin said, “All right,” and found his own place on the sand to lie down. Menedemos wrapped himself in his himation: the day's warmth was seeping out of the air faster than he'd expected. Next thing he knew, morning twilight brightened the eastern sky.

A brisk breeze from out of the northeast sent the Aphrodite bounding across the waves. Even before noon, Sostratos said, “I think we will make Naxos by nightfall.”

“If this wind holds, we will,” Menedemos agreed. The wind tousled his hair—and Sostratos’, too. It thrummed in the rigging and filled the sail. The rowers rested at their oars. A breeze like this pushed the merchant galley along as well as they could have.

Sostratos finally had his sea legs. The Aphrodite 's pitching and rolling had left him queasy at the start of the sailing season. Now he didn't even notice them till he realized he would have noticed them before. He wondered if that realization would bring back the queasiness, but it didn't. He was over it for another year.

Naxos crawled up over the western horizon, central mountain first and then the rest of the island. Its polis lay in the northwest, beyond the northernmost headland. The Aphrodite rounded the headland and dropped down toward the port with the sun at least an hour away from setting. Menedemos took his hands off the steering oars long enough to clap them together. “That's one of the nicest day's runs I've ever made,” he said.

“Euge, O best one,” Sostratos said agreeably. “And now here we are, in a place where all sorts of interesting things used to happen.”

His cousin raised a quizzical eyebrow. “ 'Used to happen?” he echoed.

“I suppose everyone knows this is where Theseus abandoned Ariadne,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. Sostratos went on, “This is also one of the places where the Hellenes first rebelled against the Persians. A generation later, the Naxians sent four ships to fight for Xerxes the Great King at Salamis—but they went over to the Hellenes instead. And a few years after that, the Athenians laid siege to Naxos and took it because it tried to secede from the Delian League. Nobody knew it then, but that was one of the first steps on the road that led to the Peloponnesian War.”

Menedemos only grunted. He was intent on getting the Aphrodite a berth in Naxos' little harbor. Diokles gave Sostratos a curious look. “You don't mind my asking, young sir,” he said, “but how do you know all that?”

With a shrug, Sostratos answered, “Well, you know about Theseus and Ariadne yourself, don't you?”

“I suppose I'd heard it,” the keleustes said, “but I can't say I remembered it. And as for the rest. . .”

“That's in the writings of Herodotos and Thoukydides,” Sostratos said. “I just put it all together, like a man making a table from the top and the legs.”

Diokles scratched his head. “With a carpenter, you can see the pieces beforehand. The way you go on, it's like you're grabbing them out of the air.”

“Sostratos collects funny facts the way a carpenter collects fancy pieces of wood,” Menedemos said. “And a carpenter can only use a piece of wood in one table or chair, but Sostratos gets to use his facts over and over again.” He grinned at Sostratos. It was a half mocking grin, or more than half, but the figure was so apt, Sostratos just grinned back.

If that disappointed Menedemos, he didn't show it. He went back to steering the merchant galley. A fishing boat that spotted the Aphrodite later than it should have lowered—all but dropped—its sail from the yard and did its best to get away from what it thought to be a pirate ship. Had the akatos really been a pentekonter, it would have run down the tubby little fishing boat inside a couple of stadia. Some of the rowers jeered at the fleeing fishermen.

“They're running now,” Teleutas said, “but when they tell about it in a tavern tonight, they'll all be heroes.” That made the Aphrodite's crewmen laugh and send more jokes after the fishing boat. Sostratos laughed, too, but he eyed Teleutas thoughtfully. He sounds like a man who knows what he's talking about, went through his mind.

No sooner had the merchant galley tied up at a Naxian quay than an officer came up and started asking questions. Naxos favored Antigonos; it belonged to the Island League he'd started in the Kyklades a few years before. “Out of Kos, eh?” the officer said suspiciously. “What were you doing there?”

“Buying silk,” Sostratos answered, doing his best to sound impatient rather than nervous. “We're bound for Athens. Always a good market for silk in Athens.”

Athens was as much a thing of Kassandros' as Naxos was of Antigonos'; still, the lie seemed far better than saying they were going to Euboia to get Antigonos' unloved and unloving nephew. And the officer didn't pursue it. He had other things on his mind: nervously licking his lips, he asked, “Is it true? Has Ptolemaios really come to Kos?”

Sostratos dipped his head. “It's true.” He made his voice deep and solemn.

“With a fleet? With a big fleet?”

“That's true, too.” This time, Menedemos beat Sostratos to the punch. He, by contrast, sounded amused. With a big fleet, Ptolemaios could sweep the Island League off the face of the earth. Menedemos knew it. Sostratos knew it. The officer talking with them knew it, too. He looked very unhappy.

“Do you know what his plans are?” he asked after a pause.

“Oh, of course.” Now Sostratos sounded sardonic. “Ptolemaios invited us to breakfast so we could talk things over.” Sometimes—often—the truth served up with irony made the most effective lie.

Antigonos' officer turned red. “All right. All right,” he said roughly. Sure enough, he didn't believe the truth, where doubtless he would have accepted any number of falsehoods. Sostratos wondered what Sokrates would have had to say had someone wondered about this while he was close by. Something worth hearing, the “Rhodian was sure. The officer went on, “Will you trade here tomorrow?”

Now Sostratos hesitated. Ptolemaios would want Polemaios back on Kos as soon as possible. But Naxos was a big enough polis that passing up a chance to do business here would make people like this fellow wonder why. While Sostratos weighed advantages and risks, Menedemos cut through them as Alexander was supposed to have cut through the Gordian knot, saying, “We'll spend the morning here, anyhow, best one, while we fill our water jugs. After that. . . Well, we want to get to Athens as fast as we can.”

As irony had, glibness satisfied the officer. He walked back down the pier, “Can we make Mykonos in half a day?” Sostratos asked.

“From here? I expect so,” Menedemos answered. “And who knows? Maybe we really will sell some silk in the agora tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” Sostratos didn't believe it, but he didn't argue. They'd already been surprised a couple of times this sailing season. He did point north and ask, “If we leave tomorrow a bit after noon, are you really sure we can get up to Mykonos by sunset?” Haze-purple in the distance, the other island heaved itself over the sea-smooth horizon, with tiny, holy Delos and the altogether mundane Rheneia off to its left.

“I told you once that I think so,” his cousin answered. With a grin, Menedemos went on, “Remember what a hard time we had last year convincing the people there that we weren't a pack of pirates?”