Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

Polemaios didn't take the hint. He did shift the aim of his questions: “Where did you get a tiger hide? Have you ever been to India? You couldn't have gone with Alexander—you're not old enough,”

Men who'd gone conquering with the great king of Macedonia were going to throw that in the younger generation's face as long as they lived. Menedemos had already heard it more often than he would have liked. He answered, “No, I haven't been to India. This hide came west. I bought it in the market square at Kaunos.”

“Oh.” Polemaios didn't bother hiding his disappointment. He turned away and went forward again. With a silent sigh of relief, Menedemos gave all his attention back to guiding the Aphrodite down the channel between Euboia and the mainland. Fishing boats fled back to Eiretria, the other prominent polls on the island, when they spotted the akatos and the armed and armored men aboard her. To Menedemos' relief, no war galleys came striding over the sea to investigate. They must figure we're just another pirate, and not worth bothering about. The thought saddened and angered him at the same time.

Dystos, south of Eiretria, lay inland, on the shore of a small, marshy lake. Its walls, shaped like some sort of polygon— Sostratos would know its name: he's the one who cares for such things, Menedemos thought—-had ten or twelve towers to help hold foes at bay. They might not have done their job any too well; though the walls hadn't been breached, Dystos seemed half—more than half— abandoned.

Presently, Sostratos came back to the poop deck. Menedemos greeted him with a smile. “By the dog of Egypt, I'm glad of your company,” he said.

“Are you?” His cousin raised an eyebrow. He set a hand on Menedemos' forehead, as if checking to see if he had a fever. “Do you feel well?”

Laughing, Menedemos said, “Better, anyhow.” He lowered his voice: “You and Polemaios both ask lots of questions, but you're friendly about it, and he's fierce.”

“What sort of questions was he giving you?” Sostratos said, also softly. “I did mean to ask you about that, as a matter of fact.” Menedemos explained. When he finished, Sostratos let out an unmusical whistle. “Isn't that interesting? Do you know what he's doing?”

“Being nosy to not much purpose,” Menedemos answered.

“Being nosy, yes, but I think he has a purpose.” Sostratos glanced forward to make sure Antigonos' nephew wasn't paying undue attention, “It sounds as though he's trying to find out whether Ptolemaios has any officers who can be corrupted.”

Menedemos' whistle was even more discordant than Sostratos'. “I think you've fit that together like a mortise joining a couple of ship's timbers. That's just what he was doing, Furies take me if it's not.”

He whistled again. “He's a piece of work, that one.”

“ 'Many are the marvels—' “ Sostratos began.

“ '—and none is more marvelous than man.' “ Menedemos finished the quotation from Sophokles for him. He clipped his head in agreement, too. “All the same, though, I've never seen anyone more eager to bite the hand that feeds him. You were clever to figure him out so fast.” He sent Sostratos a curious glance. His cousin wasn't usually so sharp a judge of people.

“He's like someone from Thoukydides come to life,” Sostratos said now: “a man who's practically nothing but plots and ambitions. An ordinary chap is much harder to make out, at least for me.”

That's because you're not an ordinary chap yourself, Menedemos thought. More often than not, he would have twitted Sostratos about it. Now, when Sostratos had solved a puzzle that baffled him, he kept quiet. His cousin had earned a respite. . . for a little while.

As the Aphrodite made her way south and east through the Kyklades toward Kos, Polemaios took to calling himself Alkimos of Epeiros. “He's a mercenary captain in my uncle's pay,” he explained to Sostratos and Menedemos, “and a big, big man himself.” He let more of his Macedonian accent come out; to an ordinary Hellene, it might well do for the speech of a man from another, equally barbarous, place.

He is shrewd, Sostratos thought reluctantly. Odds were, that ran in the family like height. Antigonos was outstandingly clever, and his sons, Demetrios and Philippos, also seemed able. And Polemaios had been one of Antigonos' leading officers till he chose to turn against his uncle. No one had ever said old One-Eye suffered fools gladly.

Whether a fool or not, though, Polemaios alarmed Sostratos. Ambition blazed from the man as light blazed from a bonfire. Would he be able to conceal it when he got to Kos? If he couldn't, how long would Ptolemaios take to notice it? The ruler of Egypt struck Sostratos as a very canny fellow.

Of course, Polemaios' soldiers would be following him to Kos. How many men did he have? Sostratos didn't know. How many did Ptolemaios have on the island? Sostratos didn't know that, either, though he could make a guess from the size of Ptolemaios' fleet. Would all of them stay loyal, or could Polemaios seduce them away from his near-namesake? An interesting question, sure enough.

To keep from drawing undue attention to the return, Menedemos chose a route different from the one he'd used going up to Khalkis. No one would be able to note how many days lay between his westbound and eastbound visits to a port and, as a result, make guesses about where he'd been. From Karystos, on the southern coast of Euboia, he took the Aphrodite due south across the rough strait and, aided by a brisk northerly breeze, made the island of Kythnos by nightfall.

Fig orchards and vines straggled across the sandy hills of Kythnos. Looking north and west, Sostratos could see Cape Sounion, the great rocky headland that marked Attica. He sighed. I should be showing (he gryphon's skull to Theophrastos, he thought, but instead I'm sailing away again. Where is the justice?

Polemaios and his wife and bodyguards slept aboard the merchant galley. Antigonos' nephew took it in stride; he'd doubtless found worse places to lay his head on campaign. But, from Sostratos' place on the poop deck, he could hear the woman's shrill complaints at the other end of the ship. Polemaios sounded much less imperious with her than he did speaking to mere Rhodians.

With a soft chuckle—very soft, to make sure Polemaios didn't hear—Sostratos murmured to Menedemos: “Every hero has his weakness.”

His cousin's snort of laughter seemed much too loud to him. “Agamemnon lord of men had his vanity, Akhilleus his anger—and his heel,” Menedemos agreed. “Great Aias went mad.” He reached out and tapped Sostratos on the shoulder. “But what of resourceful Odysseus? He was always right, or as near as makes no difference, and he came home safe where most of the others died.”

“And he paid the price for always being right, too,” Sostratos said after a little thought of his own. “He's a hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but the playwrights make him out to be a villain, too clever for his own good. Nobody likes a man who's right all the time.”

“You would know, wouldn't you?” Menedemos said.

Sostratos grunted. That arrow hit too close to the center of the target for comfort. He had learned most people didn't take kindly to being corrected, even when they were wrong—often especially when they were wrong. He didn't do such things nearly so often as he had when he was younger. And if I hadn't done them so often then, I might be happier now.

He shifted on the planks of the poop deck, trying not only to get comfortable but also to escape his own thoughts. Like the Furies, they pursued him whether he wanted them to or not. But he could escape them, unlike the Kindly Ones, by falling headlong into sleep, and he did.