Harry Turtledove: The Gryphon's Skull

“That's right,” Sostratos replied. “About the size of a big drinking cup of wine. But you can get your wine for a few oboloi. Crimson dye is dearer—shellfish aren't so easy to come by as grapes.”

“I know, I know.” The wool merchant sounded impatient. “Tell me what you want for a jar, I'll tell you what a gods-detested thief you are, and we'll go from there.”

Sostratos smiled. So did Menedemos; the Kaunian didn't believe in wasting time. “Just as you say, best one,” Sostratos told him. “Thirty drakhmai the jar seems a fair price.”

“Thirty?” the local howled. “You are a gods-detested thief! I expected you to say fifteen, and I'd've laughed at that. Ten would be too much, by Zeus Labraundeus.” He spoke Doric Greek not much different from Menedemos' or Sostratos', but the god by whom he swore was Karian.

“Nice of you to stop by,” Sostratos said pleasantly. The wool merchant made no motion to leave. The little crowd that had gathered leaned forward for the next move in the dicker. Sostratos merely waited. He was good at that, better than Menedemos, who was an impulsive plunger by temperament.

Looking like a man with a sour stomach, the Kaunian wool dealer said, “I suppose I might go up to twelve.” Sostratos hardly seemed to hear him. As if every word hurt, the local added, “Or even thirteen.”

“Well. . .” Sostratos plucked at his beard. Everyone waited. How much would he come down? Sometimes—often—Menedemos stuck his oar into the bargaining, too, but this didn't seem to be the moment. In tones of mild regret, Sostratos said, “I don't suppose my father would take a strap to me if I got twenty-eight drakhmai the jar.” He didn't sound sure about that, though.

He didn't drive the wool merchant away, either. The spectators smiled and nudged one another: this would be a loud, long, entertaining haggle. One man whispered to the fellow beside him, offering a bet on what price the dye would finally bring.

Plainly, the dicker would tie things up for a while. Menedemos walked away, judging he had time for a quick look around the agora. He ate a fig candied in honey. He had to work to keep from exclaiming at how good it was. “Maybe we should talk,” he told the man selling them. “I might try bringing a few of those to Rhodes, on the off chance some people would like them.”

“Don't wait too long, my friend,” the dealer answered. “They always go fast. I've already sold a lot.”

“Let me see what else I might be interested in,” Menedemos said. “This fellow next to you has . . . Are those really lion skins? And what's that one with the stripes?”

“That's from the Indian beast called a tiger,” the man at the next stall said. “If I were to stretch the skin out, you would see it's even bigger than the ones from the lions. They're local. They were killing sheep up in the hills till a whole mob of men took after 'em with spears.”

“Er—yes,” Menedemos said. No lions on Rhodes. There never had been, not so far as anyone's memory reached. Here on the Anatolian mainland, though, it was a different story. He recalled the verses he'd recited on the sea; Homer had known the beasts well. They didn't live in Hellas these days, though some were still supposed to lurk in the back woods of Macedonia.

Menedemos was about to ask a price for the hides. Hellenes didn't wear furs—that was the mark of Thracians and Skythians and other barbarians—but images of Zeus and Herakles could be decked in lion skins. . . and, he supposed, in a tiger skin as well. Or maybe that would do for Dionysos, who was also said to come from India.

Before he put the question to the merchant, though, he noticed another item by the man's sandaled foot. “What exactly is that, and where did it come from?” he asked.

“I can answer the second question easier than the first,” the fellow replied. “The fellow who sold it to me said he got it from a man who'd lived in Alexandria Eskhate.”

“The last Alexandria?” Menedemos echoed. “Alexander named towns for himself all over the east. Where's that one?”

“Way off near the edge of the world—in Sogdiana, on the Iaxartes River,” the merchant said. “The Hellene who lived there got it from the Sakai who roam the plains to the north and east. Where the nomads found it, the man who sold it to me couldn't say. I guess the fellow who sold it to him didn't know, either.”

“What is it?” Menedemos asked again. “What did it come from?” The merchant told him. His eyes widened. “You're joking.”

“Looks like one, doesn't it?” the Kaunian said.

“I don't know. I've never seen one before,” Menedemos answered. “I don't know anybody who has ... or maybe I do.” He glanced over toward Sostratos. His cousin looked to have just struck a bargain with the wool merchant. That meant he could come over and take a look. Menedemos whistled shrilly, then waved to draw his notice. “Oë, Sostratos!” he shouted. “Come here!”

Sostratos was more than a little pleased with himself. He'd got the Kaunian wool merchant up to twenty-two drakhmai a jar for six jars of crimson dye. Anything over eighteen drakhmai the jar was profit, so he'd done pretty well. Now that the wool merchant had gone off to get the silver— one mina, thirty-two drakhmai, said the calculating part of Sostratos' mind that rarely rested—he wanted a moment in which he could relax and be proud of himself.

He wanted one, but he didn't get it. From halfway across the agora, Menedemos started waving and whistling and generally acting the fool. “Oe, Sostratos!” he called. “Come here!”

“What is it?” Sostratos shouted back. He doubted whether anything in Kaunos' market square was worth getting excited about.

His cousin, though, evidently disagreed with him, “Come here,” his cousin repeated. “You've got to take a look at this.”

“Take a look at what?” Sostratos asked irritably. Menedemos didn't answer. He just waved and called again. Muttering under his breath, Sostratos went over to see what besides a pretty girl could get his cousin in such an uproar.

When he got to the flimsy stall by which his cousin was standing, Menedemos pointed dramatically and said, “There!”

Sostratos stared. Staring didn't tell him what he needed to know, so he asked the question he had to ask: “What is that thing?”

“A gryphon's skull,” Menedemos and the local merchant answered together. They might have come from the chorus in a revived tragedy of Euripides'.

“A gryphon's skull?” Sostratos echoed, as if he couldn't believe his ears. As a matter of fact, he couldn't, “But... I always thought— everyone always thought—gryphons weren't real. Herodotos puts them at the end of the world with the one-eyed Arimaspioi and other unlikelihoods.”

“This skull comes from the end of the world,” Menedemos said, and told Sostratos what the Kaunian had told him. Before Sostratos could say anything, his cousin added, “And if that's not a gryphon's skull, my dear, I'd like you to tell me what it is.”

“I . . don't know.” Sostratos squatted beside the extraordinary skull—it was definitely the skull of some sort of beast, whether gryphon or not—for a closer look. After a moment, Menedemos crouched down beside him. “What have you come across here?” Sostratos asked his cousin,

“I already told you,” Menedemos said. “You didn't want to believe me, that's all.”

“Do you blame me?” Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged.

The skull itself said nothing at all, of course. It only lay on the muddy ground in the middle of Kaunos' agora and stared back at Sostratos out of large, empty eye sockets. The skull itself was impressively large, too: perhaps two cubits long, and almost a cubit and a half wide at the broadest point, though it narrowed at the front to a curved beak almost like that of an eagle. Growing astonishment and awe prickled through Sostratos; gryphons were supposed to have just that sort of beak.