Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

As Polemaios looked toward his uncle's stronghold, his great hands folded into fists. He growled something in Macedonian. Sostratos couldn't understand it, but didn't think it any sort of praise for Antigonos or his sons.

A couple of stadia outside the polis of Kos, a five flying banners with Ptolemaios' eagle on them came striding across the sea to challenge the Aphrodite . “What ship?” shouted an officer on the war galley's deck, cupping his hands in front of his mouth to make his voice carry farther.

“We're the Aphrodite , back from Khalkis on Euboia,” Sostratos yelled in return, hoping Ptolemaios' men had been told to expect the akatos.

“And I,” Polemaios cried in a great voice, “am Polemaios son of Polemaios, come to join in equal alliance against my polluted, accursed, gods-detested uncle with Ptolemaios son of Lagos.”

Back on Khalkis, Polemaios had remembered he wouldn't be an equal partner in an alliance. Here, he traveled in a small merchant galley with a double handful of bodyguards along for protection. Ptolemaios had his whole great fleet and the army that went with it in and around Kos. The war galley approaching the Aphrodite could have smashed her to kindling with its great three-finned ram. The archers and catapult aboard the five could have plied the akatos with darts till she looked like a hedgehog. The marines from Ptolemaios' ship could have boarded and slaughtered every man on the merchant galley. All that being so, Sostratos doubted whether, in Polemaios' place, he would have dared claim equality with the ruler of Egypt.

But, for the time being, Antigonos' renegade nephew got away with it. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome, O best and most brilliant of men!” Ptolemaios' officer exclaimed, as if he were greeting Alexander the Great or a veritable demigod like Herakles. The fellow went on, “We had not looked for you for another few days.” He waved to Sostratos, who'd spoken up first. “Congratulations on your fine sailing.”

Sostratos, in turned, waved back to Menedemos at the steering oars. “My cousin's the captain. I'm just toikharkhos.”

“Euge!” Ptolemaios' man called to Menedemos, who lifted a hand to acknowledge the praise. “Pass on into the harbor. Ptolemaios will be very pleased you've brought his ally to Kos.” He said nothing about Polemaios' being an equal ally. Sostratos noticed that. He wondered whether Polemaios did.

The officer strode across the war galley's deck toward the stern. He spoke to another man, one who wore a crimson-dyed cloak fastened around his neck: the captain of the five, Sostratos judged. That worthy called out an order; Sostratos could hear his voice, but couldn't make out the words. Figuring out what it was didn't take long, though. The five's oarmaster began beating out the stroke. The warship's big oars bit into the sea. Two of its the banks had two men on each oar; only the thalamite rowers on the lowest level pulled alone. With so much muscle power propelling her, the five quickly built up speed and slid away from the Aphrodite .

“You boys heard him,” Menedemos called to his own crew. “Let's take her on in to port. Keleustes, give us a lively stroke.”

“Right you are, skipper,” Diokles replied.

As it had been before, Kos harbor was packed as tight with ships as an amphora might be with olives. Masts reared skyward like a leafless forest. “There!” Sostratos exclaimed, pointing as he spotted an opening. Menedemos steered the akatos towards it. Sailors on ships already tied up to that quay shouted warnings and stood by with poles and sweeps, ready to fend her off. But Menedemos made her fit without scraping against the vessel to either side.

“Thanks for spying the space,” he told Sostratos.

“You're the one who got us into it,” Sostratos replied.

His cousin grinned. “Oh, I can always find a way to get it in,” Sostratos made a face at him. Menedemos laughed.

An officer came hurrying up the pier toward the Aphrodite : the same one, Sostratos saw, who'd interrogated them on their previous arrival. The officer recognized them, too, saying, “You're back. And have you got Antigonos' nephew with you?”

“Zeus of the aegis!” Polemaios boomed. “Who d'you think I am, little man? Go tell your master I'm here.”

“Yes, go tell him, by the gods,” Menedemos echoed. Looking Sostratos' way, he spoke in a lower voice: “Tell him he owes us forty minai.”

“Here's hoping he doesn't need reminding,” Sostratos said.

“That's right. Here's hoping.” Menedemos sounded worried. His next words explained why: “What can we do if he stiffs us now that we've delivered the goods?”

“To Ptolemaios himself? Nothing at all. We can't even go to law against him. As far as Egypt's concerned, he is the law.” Sostratos had been thinking about that all the way back from Khalkis. “But we can make his name a stench in the nostrils of every Rhodian merchant we know, and everybody our fathers know. I don't think he'd like that. He needs Rhodes friendly.”

Menedemos considered, then dipped his head. “Blackening a man's name isn't the worst weapon,”

“No, it isn't,” Sostratos agreed. “We go round and round about what Aristophanes did to Sokrates in the Clouds— and Sokrates didn't even deserve it.”

“That's what we go round and round about: whether he deserved it or not, I mean.” Menedemos held up a hand. “I don't want to start doing it now, thank you very much.”

Since Sostratos didn't feel like taking up the argument just then, either, he turned away from his cousin. Ptolemaios' officer still stood on the pier, but a fellow in a plain chiton was hurrying back onto solid ground and into the city. Ptolemaios himself would soon know the Aphrodite had returned.

“We'll get paid,” Sostratos murmured. “I really think we will. And then we can head back towards Athens and see what the philosophers there think of the gryphon's skull. We'll see what we get for it, too,” he added hastily, forestalling Menedemos.

“So we will,” Menedemos said. “And I'll be able to do some . .. other business in Athens, too.” His eyes flicked toward the officer. Only the slight pause showed he meant the smuggled emeralds, and only someone who already knew he had them would understand what it showed.

Polemaios' wife started complaining when she and her man weren't immediately taken off the akatos and brought before Ptolemaios—-or maybe she was complaining because Ptolemaios didn't come hotfooting down to the harbor to meet them. Antigonos' nephew did what he could to calm her down. Thinking, I doubt he's had much practice playing peacemaker, Sostratos hid a smile.

After half an hour, or perhaps a bit more, the officer's man returned in the company of a couple of dozen armed and armored hoplites. Sostratos and Menedemos exchanged a glance that said, Ptolemaios isn't going to take any chances with his new ally. The force—which looked like a guard of honor—was plenty to take care of Polemaios' bodyguards in case they proved troublesome. Now, Sostratos judged, they probably wouldn't.

The messenger said, “Ptolemaios is pleased to welcome another foe of the vicious tyrant, Antigonos, to Kos, and summons Polemaios son of Polemaios and his party to his residence. As a seeming afterthought, the fellow added, “Ptolemaios also summons the two Rho-dians who brought Polemaios here so very promptly.”

Oh, good, Sostratos thought. He is going to pay us. But that wasn't the only reason he was beaming. He would have paid a good deal to watch the meeting between the two Macedonians with similar names. Bribery, though, wouldn't have let him do it. Ptolemaios' generosity did. He and Menedemos went up the gangplank and onto the quay as Polemaios and his companions came back from the bow.