Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

Kleiteles said, “Good thing somebody can keep all these generals straight. They say Antigonos sent his son Demetrios off to fight, uh, Seleukos. I bet he wishes he still had Polemaios on his side now.”

“I don't know,” Sostratos said. “You haven't met Polemaios, have you?” He waited for the proxenos to toss his head, then added, “I don't think he can be on anyone's side except his own.”

Menedemos said, “Sostratos and I find all sorts of things to argue about, but he's dead right here. If Polemaios thinks you're in his way, he'll give you the fastest, hardest knee in the nuts you'd ever get from anybody.”

“But Ptolemaios wanted him here, and wanted him here badly enough to send the two of you after him,” Kleiteles said. “And more of Polemaios' men keep coming in from Euboia: another two shiploads of them today, in fact. Ptolemaios usually knows what he's doing.”

“Usually,” Sostratos agreed. “If he's not keeping an eye on what his new ally's up to, though, he's not as smart as everybody says he is. He—”

He fell silent, for a couple of slaves came in to clear away the supper dishes and clean up the mess on the floor. You never could tell who paid slaves to listen. Their entrance also startled the jackdaw. The shield fell out of its beak and clanked against the ladder in the cage. “Chaka!” it cried, spreading its wings. “Chaka-chaka-chack!”

“It's all right, you stupid bird,” Kleiteles said. The jackdaw calmed when the slaves went away, but screeched again when they came back with wine, water, a mixing bowl, and cups.

Sostratos imagined Polemaios as a bird in a cage, too, only he wouldn't be a jackdaw. He'd be a hawk of some kind, all beak and talons and glaring eyes. If anyone tried to loose him, would he do anything but fly straight at the hawker's face?

Kleiteles dipped out a little neat wine for his guests. Sostratos poured a libation to Dionysos and drank almost absently. Once the mixed wine—not too strong—started going around, he did his best to bring his mind back to the andron. He couldn't know what was going on inside Ptolemaios' residence and whatever house Antigonos' nephew was using. He couldn't know, but wished he could.

He suddenly noticed the Rhodian proxenos eyeing him. “The last time we drank together, you talked about gryphons as though you'd seen one just the other day,” Kleiteles said. “What other strange things do you know?”

Menedemos snickered. “Now you've gone and done it,” he said.

“And to the crows with you, my dear cousin,” Sostratos said, which only made his dear cousin laugh out loud. He thought for a bit, then went on, “Herodotos says a Persian king sent some Phoenicians to sail all the way around Africa, He says they went so far south that, when they were sailing east around the bottom of it, they had the sun on their left hand.”

“That's impossible,” the proxenos exclaimed.

“I think so, too,” Menedemos said, taking a pull at his wine. He pointed an accusing finger at Sostratos. “I'll bet you believe it.”

“I don't know,” Sostratos said. “If it happened at all, it happened a long time ago. And we all know how sailors like to make up stories. But that's such an odd thing to make up, you do have to wonder.”

“Maybe you do,” Menedemos said.

“It's impossible,” Kleiteies repeated. “How could it be?”

“If the earth is a sphere, and not flat like most people say.. .” Sostratos tried to visualize it. He might have done better if he hadn't been drinking wine at the end of a long day. He shrugged and gave up. “I don't know.”

Menedemos emptied his cup, set it on the table in front of him, and yawned. “Maybe it's that meat we ate,” he said. “It can make you feel heavy.”

“I told my slave women to go to your bedrooms,” Kleiteles said. “If you're too sleepy to enjoy them, you can always send them back to the women's quarters.”

“My dear fellow!” Menedemos exclaimed. “I didn't say we were dead.” He turned to Sostratos. “Isn't that right?”

What Sostratos wanted to do was go to sleep. Admitting as much would make him look less virile than Menedemos. He didn't want Kleiteles thinking that of him. Even more to the point, he didn't want Menedemos thinking that of him. His cousin would never let him live it down. “I should hope it is!” he said, while he really hoped he sounded hearty enough to be convincing.

He must have, for the Rhodian proxenos chuckled indulgently and said, “Have fun, boys. When I was your age, I was that cockproud, too.” He sighed; he was feeling the wine, even if it was well watered. “Can't get it up as often as I used to, worse luck.”

“Onions,” Menedemos said. “Eggs.”

“Mussels and crab meat,” Sostratos added.

“I've tried 'em.” Kleiteles' shrug said the sovereign remedies had done no good.

“Pepper and nettle seed,” Sostratos suggested.

The proxenos looked thoughtful. “That might be worth a go. It'd be bound to heat up my mouth and my stomach, so why not my vein, too?” He used a common nickname for the prong, Kleiteles glanced toward Sostratos and Menedemos. “Nettle seed is easy enough to come by, but pepper's foreign. I don't suppose you've got any in your akatos, do you?”

“I wish we did,” Sostratos said. He looked at Menedemos. “Pepper, balsam—all sorts of interesting things come out of the east. We ought to think about that. Not this sailing season, of course,” he added hastily. “Next one.”

His cousin laughed. “You mean you don't want to sail off for Sidon and Byblos tomorrow morning? I can't imagine why.”

“We are going to Athens,” Sostratos said firmly. “If we ever find a carpenter, that is.” He got to his feet. “And I am going to bed.”

Kleiteles led Sostratos and Menedemos back to the guest rooms. “Good night,” he said. He doused one of the torches burning in the courtyard in the fountain and carried the other one upstairs. Darkness abruptly descended. Sostratos had to grope for the latch.

To his relief, a lamp was burning inside. The proxenos' slave woman lay on the bed waiting for him. “Hail,” she said, yawning. “You spent so long in the andron, I almost fell asleep.”

Sostratos didn't want to apologize to a slave, but he didn't want a quarrel, either. Trying to avoid both, he asked, “How are you tonight, Thestylis?”

“Sleepy, like I told you,” she answered. But she added, “It's nice that you remember my name,” and smiled at him. The smile was probably mercenary. Still, he preferred it to a scowl,

“I don't think I'll forget you,” he said. He remembered all the women he'd bedded. He remembered all sorts of things, but Thestylis didn't need to know that.

Her smile softened. “What a sweet thing to say,” she told him. “Nobody ever told me anything like that before. Most men, it's just, 'Take off your clothes and bend over,' and they never even find out what your name is, let alone remember it.” The light from the lamp suddenly sparkled off tears in her eyes.

“Don't cry,” Sostratos said.

“I didn't think somebody being kind could hurt so much,” she mumbled, and buried her face in the cloth covering the mattress. A muffled sob rose.

“Don't cry,” Sostratos repeated. He got down on the bed beside her and awkwardly patted her hair. Even as he did so, he wondered if her tears were a ploy to pry an extra obolos or two out of him. Anyone who dealt with slaves had to make such calculations. Slaves, he knew perfectly well, made calculations of their own about free men.

She sobbed again, and made as if to push him away. “Now see what you made me do,” she said, as if her tears were his fault. Maybe, in a way, they were.