Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“I didn't know Phyllis was that fellow's wife,” Menedemos protested. “I thought she was just a serving girl.”

“The first time you did, yes,” Sostratos said. “But you went back for a second helping after you knew who she was. That's when you had to jump out the window.”

“I got away with it,” Menedemos said.

“And he set bully boys on you afterwards,” his cousin said. “It'll be a long time before you can go back to Taras, too. In how many more cities around the Inner Sea will you make yourself unwelcome?”

He wanted to make Menedemos feel guilty. Menedemos refused to give him the satisfaction of showing guilt. “Unwelcome? What are you talking bout? The women in both towns made me about as welcome as a man can be.”

“You can do business with women, sure enough,” Sostratos said, “but you can't make a profit from them.”

“You sound like my father,” Menedemos said, an edge to his voice. Sostratos, for a wonder, took the hint. That proved he wasn't Philodemos: the older man never would have.

Sostratos looked up at the early morning sky and clicked his tongue between his teeth. It was after sunrise, but only twilight leaked through the thick gray clouds, “Do we really want to set out in this?” he asked Menedemos. The air felt even wetter than it had a couple of days before.

“It hasn't rained yet,” his cousin answered. “Maybe it will hold off a while longer. Even if it doesn't, making Miletos is easy enough from here. And besides”—Menedemos lowered his voice—”paying the sailors for sitting idle eats into the money we make.”

That struck a chord with the thrifty Sostratos. An akatos was expensive to operate, no doubt about it. The sailors earned about two minai of silver every three days—and, as Menedemos had said, earned their pay whether the Aphrodite sailed the Aegean or sat in port.

“You think it's safe to go, then?” Sostratos asked once more.

“We should be all right,” Menedemos said. He turned to Diokles. “If you think I'm wrong, don't be shy.”

“I wouldn't be, skipper—it's my neck we're talking about, you know,” the oarmaster replied. “I expect we can make Miletos, too— and if the weather does turn really dirty, we can always swing around and run back here.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Menedemos said. He raised an eyebrow at Sostratos. “Satisfied?”

“Certainly,” Sostratos answered; he didn't want Menedemos reckoning him a wet blanket. “If we can do it, we should do it. And it puts us one day closer to Athens.”

Menedemos laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought that might be somewhere in the back of your mind.” He raised his voice to the sailors forward: “Cast off the mooring lines! Rowers to their places! No more swilling and screwing till the next port!”

The sailors had moved quicker. A good many of them had spent everything they'd made so far this season in their spree in the polis of Kos. Nobody was missing, though. Dioldes had a better nose than a Kastorian hunting hound for sniffing men out of harborside taverns and brothels. “Come on, you lugs,” the keleustes rasped now. “Time to sweat out the wine you've guzzled.”

A couple of groans answered him. He didn't laugh. He'd done his share of drinking, too. The thick ropes thudded down into the waist of the Aphrodite . Sailors who weren't rowing coiled them and got them out of the way.

“Back oars!” Diokles called, and struck the bronze square with the mallet. “Rhyppa pai! Rhyppa pai! ” Menedemos slid one steering-oar tiller in toward him, the other out, swinging the Aphrodite around till her bow pointed north. A round ship that had been lying at anchor a couple of plethra away from the pier sculled toward the spot the merchant galley had vacated. With Ptolemaios' fleet here, Kos' harbor remained badly overcrowded.

Just for a moment, the sun peeked through the dark clouds, highlighting the Karian headland north of Kos on which Halikarnassos and, farther west, the smaller town of Myndos lay. The yellow stubble of harvested grainfields and the grayish green leaves of olive groves seemed particularly bright against the gloomy background of the sky. Sostratos hoped that shaft of sunlight meant the weather would clear, but the clouds rolled in again, and color drained out of the landscape.

Menedemos took the Aphrodite up the channel between Myndos and the island of Kalymnos to the west. When the akatos came abreast of Myndos, Sostratos pointed toward the town and said, “Look! Antigonos has war galleys patrolling there, too.”

“So would I, in his place,” Menedemos answered. He blinked a couple of times, a comical expression.

“What's that about?” Sostratos asked.

“Raindrop just hit me in the eye,” Menedemos said. He rubbed his nose. “There's another one.”

A moment later, one hit Sostratos in the knee, another on the forearm, and a third gave him a wet kiss on the left ear. A couple of sailors exclaimed. “Here comes the storm, sure enough,” Sostratos said.

The Aphrodite 's sail was already up against the yard, for she was heading straight into the wind. After those first few scattered drops, the rain came down hard, far harder than it had in the Kyklades. “Very late in the year for one like this,” Menedemos said. Sostratos could hardly hear him; raindrops were drumming down on the planking of the poop deck and hissing into the sea.

“It is, isn't it?” Sostratos said. “I hope all the leather sacks are sound. Otherwise, we're liable to have some water-damaged silk.”

“You look water-damaged yourself,” Menedemos said. “It's dripping out of your beard.”

“How can you tell, the way it's coming down out of the sky?” Sostratos replied.

Instead of answering directly, Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: “Aristeidas, go forward!” The sailor waved and hurried up to the foredeck, “Polemaios can't complain about him this time,” Menedemos said.

“No,” Sostratos agreed, “but how much good will he do with the rain coming down like this? I can hardly see him up there, and he's only—what?—thirty or thirty-five cubits away.”

“He's the best set of eyes we've got,” Menedemos said. “I can't do any more than that.”

Sostratos dipped his head. “I wasn't arguing.” Pie pulled off his chiton and threw it down onto the deck. In the warm rain, going naked was more comfortable than wet wool squelching against his skin. He looked back toward the Aphrodite 's boat, which she towed by a line tied to the sternpost. “I wonder if you'll need to put a man with a pot in there to bail.”

“It is coming down, isn't it?” Menedemos said. An unspoken thought flashed between them: I wonder if we'll need to start bailing out the ship. Sostratos knew he hadn't expected weather this nasty, and his cousin couldn't have, either, or he wouldn't have set out from Kos. Menedemos quickly changed the subject; “Take the steering oars for a moment, would you? I want to get out of my tunic, too.”

“Of course, my dear.” Sostratos seized the steering-oar tillers with alacrity. Menedemos usually had charge of them all the way through the voyage. Sostratos didn't have to do any steering past holding the merchant galley on her course. Even so, the strength of the sea shot up his arms, informing his whole body. It's like holding a conversation with Poseidon himself, he thought.

Menedemos' soggy chiton splatted onto the planks of the deck beside his own. “That's better,” his cousin said. “Thanks. I'll get back where I belong now.”

“All right,” Sostratos said, though his tone suggested it was anything but.