Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“Cast off!” Menedemos called. A couple of his sailors scrambled up onto the pier, undid the lines securing the merchant galley, and came back down again. They stowed the gangplank as they did so. Menedemos glanced up the length of the ship. Polemaios had done a good job of herding his men—and the one woman—well forward, I

as much out of the rowers' way as possible. Menedemos caught Diokles' eye and dipped his head.

“Back oars!” the oarmaster bellowed, beating out the stroke with mallet and bronze. “Back hard, you lazy bastards! It's like getting away from a pier on a river,”

It put Menedemos in mind of escaping the quay at Pompaia, on the Sarnos, the summer before. This was even more nerve-wracking, though, for the Euripos flowed harder than the river had—and because the channel between Euboia and the mainland had a couple of rocky islets right in the middle of it. Menedemos kept looking back over his shoulder as he handled the steering oars.

“Ready, boys?” Diokles called. The rowers' heads came up. To them, the world held nothing but their oars and the keleustes' voice. “Are you ready?” Diokles repeated. “Then . . . normal stroke!”

The men went from backing oars to pulling the Aphrodite forward as smoothly as if they'd been doing it for years. And, indeed, almost all of them had been doing it for years, aboard one ship or another. Menedemos pulled in on one steering oar and pushed out on the other, bringing the akatos' bow around so she aligned with the way the water was racing.

“Very neat,” Sostratos said. “A little lucky, to have the Euripos flowing in the direction we needed, but very neat.”

“The wind's with us, too,” Menedemos said. “In a little while, I'll have the men lower the sail from the yard. What with oars and wind and current, we'll be practically flying along.”

“We still won't get clear of Euboia by nightfall,” Sostratos said,

“Well, no,” Menedemos admitted, “but we might make it all the way down to Karystos, at the south end of the island. No one could hope to get from there to Khalkis and back by the time we're away the next morning—or from there to Athens and back, either.”

“ Karystos,” his cousin said musingly. “There's a marble quarry nearby, I know that. And there's something else about the place, too. Something ...” He snapped his fingers in annoyance, unable to come up with it.

“They've got that strange stone there, the stuff that won't burn,” Menedemos said. “They weave from It, and when the towels get dirty, they just toss 'em in the fire.”

“Asbestos! That's right,” Sostratos said. “Thank you. I was going to be worrying at that all day, like a dog with a bone. Now I don't have to. That stuff sells well, and it's not very bulky. We might do some business.”

“We might,” Menedemos said dubiously. “Nothing to make us late back to Kos, though, especially not in country Kassandros holds.”

Sostratos looked forward, to where Polemaios was pointing something on the Euboian coast out to one of his henchmen. In a low voice, Menedemos' cousin said, “If Ptolemaios decides he wants anything to do with that fellow once he gets a good look at him, I'm a trouser-wearing Persian.”

Menedemos knew he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with Polemaios. Nevertheless, he said, “My dear, that's not your worry, or mine either. Our job is to get him there and get paid for it, and that's what I intend to do.”

Menedemos kept a wary eye on the coast himself as the Aphrodite made her way south, especially when the merchant galley neared one of the many headlands or little offshore islands. Lots of those little islands speckled the channel between Euboia and the mainland. Sheep or cattle grazed on some of them; others seemed just as the gods had made them. A piratical pentekonter or hemiolia might have used any one of them for concealment before rushing out against a merchantman.

You're getting as nervous as that Athenian Sostratos was talking about, Menedemos thought. He wouldn't have fretted so much without such a valuable passenger aboard. Polemaios' bodyguards made the Aphrodite better able to fight off marauders than she would have been otherwise, but Menedemos didn't want to have to put that to the test.

As he had when Kissidas brought his kinsfolk aboard at Kaunos, he kept trying to get as many glimpses as he could of Polemaios' wife. He had little luck there; she stayed up on the foredeck, and the crowd of armored bodyguards did a good job of shielding her from his gaze. Even if he had got a clear look, it wouldn't have told him much, not when, like any respectable woman who had to leave her house, she kept on the veil that shielded her from the gaze of lustful men. He knew as much, but kept peering her way anyhow.

Presently, Polemaios came aft and ascended to the poop deck. Antigonos' nephew towered over Menedemos; he was one of the biggest men the Rhodian had ever seen. He wasn't lean and gawky like Sostratos, either, but massively built, broad in the shoulders and thick through the chest. He made a host in himself.

He was so massively made, in fact, that Menedemos lifted a hand from a steering-oar tiller, made a brushing motion with it, and said, “Excuse me, best one, but please step to one side or the other. I do need to be able to see straight ahead.”

“Oh. Right.” Polemaios didn't apologize. Menedemos would have been surprised if he'd ever apologized to anyone. But he did move, and had the sense to move to starboard rather than to port. If trouble suddenly boiled up, it was much more likely to come from Euboia, on Menedemos' left hand, than from the Attic mainland to his right. After a couple of minutes of silence, Antigonos' nephew asked, “How big a fleet did Ptolemaios bring to Kos?”

“Close to sixty ships,” Menedemos answered.

For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Polemaios smiled. Even smiling, he remained formidable. “Plenty to give my dear uncle a kick in the balls,” he said. “Not half what he deserves, either.”

You say that now, Menedemos thought. A couple of years ago, you were your dear uncle's right-hand man. I think he's not your dear uncle anymore because he's got new right-hand men in his two sons. He said none of that. Polemaios was not the sort of man who invited such opinions.

“Do you know who any of Ptolemaios' ship-captains are?” Antigonos' nephew asked.

Menedemos tossed his head. “Sorry, sir. I'm just a trader.”

“You're not just a trader, or Ptolemaios wouldn't have sent you after me.” Polemaios' gaze was as hard and bright and predatory as an eagle's. “Did you meet any of his commanders of marines?”

“Only one, and then only in a manner of speaking,” Menedemos answered. “He was the fellow whose five stopped us on the way into the harbor at Kos. He asked the sort of questions you'd expect an officer to ask strangers.”

“Ah.” Polemaios leaned forward with a now-we're-getting-somewhere expression on his face. “What was his name? Did you bribe him to let you go on? How much silver did it take to get him to look the other way?”

“I never found out what his name was,” Menedemos said in some exasperation. “And he never came aboard, so I couldn't very well bribe him.”

Antigonos' nephew looked as if he believed not a word of that. “How did you get him to let you pass, then? Ptolemaios' officers are paid to be suspicious, just like any others. They wouldn't be much use to him if they weren't.”

“How, O marvelous one?” Menedemos' patience began to slip. He didn't like being grilled like this aboard his own ship, especially when he saw no point to Polemaios' questions. “I showed him a tiger hide, that's how. After that, he let me alone and didn't bother me anymore,”