Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“Right you are, skipper.” The keleustes smote the bronze square more quickly still, shouting, “Come on, boys! Put your backs into it! Let's make that polluted vulture run for his nest!”

“I hope he will run,” Sostratos said quietly.

“So do I,” Menedemos answered. The hemiolia gave no sign of sheering off. Its rowers worked their oars at least as smoothly as those of the Aphrodite . The men whose benches had been taken up to give room to stow the mast and yard now stood by the gunwale, ready—or acting ready—to swarm aboard the merchant galley.

“Do you want me to take your bow, the way I did on the run up to Khalkis?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes, go ahead; duck under the tillers and do that,” Menedemos told him. “Then go forward. Use your own judgment about when to start shooting. Aim for their officers if you see the chance.”

“I understand.” His cousin got the bow and the quiver, then hurried up between the two rows of panting, sweating rowers toward the foredeck. The men who powered the Aphrodite couldn't see what was going on, which was true of the rowers in every sea fight since before the Trojan War. As far as the ship went, the rowers were just tools. Menedemos and Diokles had to get the best use from them.

On came the hemiolia. “Doesn't look like those whoresons want to quit at all, does it?” the oarmaster said.

“No,” Menedemos said unhappily. He was unhappy; he'd taken the Aphrodite closer to Andros than to Euboia because he'd worriedmore about pirates on the southern coast of the latter island. That meant this pirate ship hadn't had to go so far to close with the akatos. More unhappily still, Menedemos went on, “We couldn't very well have run away. A hemiolia will run down any other kind of ship on the sea.”

Diokles didn't argue. That was so obviously true, no one could argue. Most pirates, though, didn't reckon a fight with the large crew of another galley likely to be profitable. If this captain proved an exception . . .

Menedemos picked a spot not far aft of the hemiolia's bow where he hoped to drive home his ram. The other skipper, the man handling the pirate ship's steering oars, would be picking his target on the Aphrodite . “Go on,” Menedemos muttered. “Run for home, crows take you.”

Aristeidas sang out: “They're shooting!”

Sure enough, arrows arced through the air toward the Aphrodite . The first shots splashed into the sea well short of the ship. Archers always started shooting too soon. No, almost always—Sostratos stood calmly on the small foredeck, a shaft nocked but the bow not yet drawn. If anyone could wait till he had the chance to make his missiles count, Menedemos' cousin was the man.

A shaft thudded into the stempost, a couple of cubits from Sostratos' head. That seemed to spur him into action. He thrust the bow forward on a stiff left arm, drew the string back to his ear as the Persians had taught Hellenes to do, and let fly. No one aboard the onrushing hemiolia fell, so Menedemos supposed he missed. He pulled another arrow from the quiver and shot again.

This time, Menedemos heard the howl of pain across the narrowing gap. “Eugef he called. “Well shot!”

A moment later, one of the Aphrodites rowers let out a similar howl and clutched at his shoulder. He lost the stroke; his oar fouled that of the man behind him. The merchant galley tried to swerve. Menedemos worked the steering oars to keep it pointed at the pirate ship. “Clear that oar!” Diokles shouted. A couple of sailors who weren't rowing pulled it inboard.

More arrows struck the akatos' planking. The pirates had several archers, the Aphrodite only Sostratos. Several shafts whistled past him as they tried to bring him down. None bit. As coolly as if exercising at a gymnasion, he kept shooting back. Another pirate wailed. He fell into the sea with a splash.

“Oh, very well shot!” Menedemos exclaimed.

“They aren't pulling away,” Dioldes said.

“I see that,” Menedemos answered. “Let's see if we can take out their portside oars and cripple them.”

“Same trick we pulled on the trireme, eh?” After a moment's thought, the oarmaster dipped his head. “Worth a try. Safer than ramming, that's certain.”

Another sailor on the Aphrodite —not a man pulling an oar— screeched and crumpled, clutching his leg. The hemiolia was terrifyingly close now, her oars rising and falling, rising and falling in smooth unison. Seeing how well the pirates rowed worried Menedemos. With a crew like that and a fast, fast ship, their skipper could make plans of his own. If he swerved at the last instant. . .

“Portside oars— in!” Diokles bellowed. At the same time, the pirate ship's keleustes roared out an order of his own. And, at the same time as the Aphrodite's, portside rowers brought their oars inboard, so did the hemiolia's. Neither hull crushed the other ship's oars beneath it; neither set of rowers had arms broken and shoulders dislocated as oars flew out of control.

But the men who would have sat at the rear of the hemiolia's upper bank of oars had none to serve once the ship's mast was stowed. As the two ships passed close enough to spit from one to the other, several of them flung grappling hooks at the Aphrodite.

“Cut those lines! Cut them, by the gods!” Menedemos shouted.

Suddenly locked together in an embrace of anything but love, the two galleys pivoted around a common axis. The Aphrodite's sailors frantically hacked at the ropes attached to the grapples, while the pirates hauled on those lines and drew the ships closer together yet.

With wild cries that hardly sounded like Greek at all, the first pirates leaped across three or four cubits of open water and onto the merchant galley.

Sostratos shot one last arrow at the shouting men aboard the hemiolia, then set down Menedemos' bow, yanked his sword from the scabbard, and rushed to join the fight in the waist of the Aphrodite, “Dung-eating, temple-robbing whoresons!” he screamed, and swung the sword in an arc of iron at a pirate who was kicking a sailor in the face.

The blade bit between neck and shoulder. Blood spurted. It stank like hot iron. The pirate let out a horrible screech. He whirled toward Sostratos, who stabbed him in the belly. The fellow crumpled. Sostratos stepped on him to get at the next foe.

Madness in a very small space—that was how Sostratos remembered the fight afterwards. The Aphrodite 's crew by itself crowded the akatos. Having twice as many men aboard the ship meant, in essence, that no one had room for anything but seizing the closest foe and trying to kill him. Even telling who was friend and who foe wasn't easy; one of the Aphrodite 's sailors almost brained Sostratos with a belaying pin.

“Aphrodite!” he shouted over and over. “Aphro —oof!” A pirate who'd lost whatever weapon he carried punched him in the belly. He folded up, then made himself straighten, more by sheer force of will than anything else. If I go down, they'll trample me to death, he thought.

He grabbed at the nearest man to steady himself. It was another pirate: the fellow had a big gold hoop in each ear, wearing his wealth thus instead of in rings. Sostratos didn't have room to use his sword—hanging on to it was hard enough. But his left hand was free. He took hold of one of those rings and yanked with all his strength. The ring tore free. The pirate roared in pain. The earring remained on Sostratos' index finger.

Well, I just made a profit on the day, he thought: the first foolish thing that popped into his head. Now I have to see if I live long enough to enjoy it. That, unfortunately, made more sense.