Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

When the press cleared a little, he traded sword strokes with another pirate. It was nothing like practice in the gymnasion. The Aphrodite pitched and rolled underfoot as the waves and the surge of men, now here, now there, made her rock. Sailors and pirates ah1 around were pushing and shoving and shouting and cursing. Sostratos worried about a knife in the back almost as much as he did about the blade with which the fellow in front of him was trying to drink his life.

The pirate, who wore a crestless bronze helmet, a sword belt, and nothing else, had ferocity but no great skill. He beat Sostratos' sword aside when the Rhodian thrust at his chest. Sostratos' next blow, though, took him in the side of the head. That helm kept his skull unsplit, but he staggered even so. Sostratos sprang forward and pushed with all his strength. Arms flailing, the pirate went over the rail and fell into the Aegean.

Nimble as a mountain goat, another pirate leaped from the Aphrodite back to his own ship with a leather sack under his arm. He'd had all the fighting he wanted, but he'd managed to get away with some loot. Absurdly, that outraged Sostratos. “Come back here, you wide-arsed thief!” he yelled. The pirate paid no attention, and probably didn't even hear.

Then another pirate sprang back to the hemiolia, and another, and another, some with plunder, some without. “See, boys?” Menedemos roared in a great voice. “They can't lick us, and they cursed well know it. lo for the Aphrodite '.”

“Io! The Aphroditel ” Sostratos' heart leaped as he took up the cry. He hadn't seen his cousin in the press of fighting, and hearing his voice was a great relief. Seeing the pirates beginning to flee the merchant galley was an even greater one.

Now the pirates were the ones who hacked and chopped at the lines tethering their ship to the akatos. Now they were the ones who pushed the hemiolia away from the Aphrodite with poles and oars. A couple of them retrieved the bows they'd left behind and started shooting into the merchant galley as the rest rowed away from a quarry that had proved tougher than they expected.

Sostratos rushed up to the Aphrodite 's foredeck, which had seen almost no fighting. Menedemos' bow and the quiver of arrows lay there undisturbed. Sostratos snatched them up again and shot back at the pirates. He was rewarded when their oarmaster screamed and crumpled with an arrow in his thigh. The Rhodian aimed a couple of shafts at the man handling the hemiolia's steering oars, who he thought was the captain. They went wide, though, and the man stayed at his station.

The hemiolia limped off. Not all its oars were manned, not any more. Sostratos wondered if Menedemos would order a pursuit. But his cousin was otherwise occupied: he stooped over a fallen pirate in the waist of the Aphrodite . The pirate raised a hand for mercy. Slowly and deliberately, Menedemos drove his sword into the man's body. Blood glistened on the blade as he straightened up. “Throw this carrion into the sea,” he told the closest sailors, his voice cold as a Thracian winter.

That thrust hadn't killed the raider. He was still groaning and feebly writhing as the sailors lifted him and flung him over the side. Splash! The groans abruptly ceased.

Another pirate was already dead, his head smashed like a broken pot. The sailors threw his body out of the Aphrodite , too. Looking back toward the stern, Sostratos saw several men gathered around another body. One of them looked up and caught his eye. “It's Dorimakhos,” the fellow said, and tossed his head to add without words that the sailor wouldn't be getting up again. “Took a javelin through the throat, poor beggar.”

Menedemos made his way forward. Blood splashed his tunic and his hide, but he seemed hale. Looking down at himself, Sostratos found his own tunic similarly stained. He also found he had a cut on his calf he hadn't even noticed. Now that he knew it was there, it began to hurt.

“Hail,” Menedemos said. “You fought well.”

“We all did,” Sostratos answered. “Otherwise, we wouldn't have driven them off. Are you all right?”

His cousin shrugged. “Scratches, bruises. I'll be fine in a couple of days. This was the worst I got.” He held out his left hand, which bore a ragged, nasty wound.

“Is that a bite?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos dipped his head. “Pour wine on it,” Sostratos told him. “That's the best thing I know to keep wounds from festering, and bites are liable to. I'm no Hippokrates, but I know that much.”

“I wish we had Hippokrates aboard now, or any other physician we could get our hands on,” Menedemos said. “You probably know more than most of us—and the men will think you do even if you don't. Come help sew 'em up and bandage 'em. We've got plenty of wine to splash on our hurts, anyhow.”

Along with Menedemos and Diokles, Sostratos did what he could, suturing and bandaging arms and legs and scalps. He splashed on wine with a liberal hand. The sailors howled at the sting. The needle and thread he used were coarse ones made for sewing sailcloth, but they went through flesh well enough. “Hold still,” he told Teleutas, who had a gash just below his knee.

“You try holding still with somebody stabbing you,” Teleutas retorted.

“Do you want to keep bleeding?” Sostratos asked.

Teleutas tossed his head. “No, but I don't want to keep getting hurt, either.”

Impatiently, Sostratos said, “You don't have that choice. You can bleed, or you can let me sew up this wound and then bandage it. I won't take long, and you'll stop getting hurt any more as soon as I'm done.”

“All right. Go on,” Teleutas said, but he jerked and cursed every time Sostratos drove the needle through his flesh. And he complained more when Sostratos wrapped sailcloth around the wound and made it fast with a sloppy knot: “Call that a bandage? I've seen real physicians bind up wounds, by the gods. They make a bandage worth looking at, all nice and neat and fancy. This? Pheu!” He screwed up his face as he made the disgusted noise.

“I'm so sorry,” Sostratos said with icy irony. “If you like, I'll take it off, tear out the stitches, and start over.”

“You try and touch that leg again, and I'll make you sorry for it,” the sailor said. “I just want a proper job done.”

“It's the best I can do,” Sostratos told him. He knew Teleutas had a point. Real physicians made their bandages as neat and elaborate as they could, some to the point of showing off. He went on, “Just because it isn't neat doesn't mean it won't do the job.”

“That's what you say.” Teleutas pointed up to the yard. “If you were talking about the rigging, would you say the same thing? Not likely! You'd be screaming your head off to get all the lines shipshape.”

Sostratos' ears burned. So much for the men thinking I know more about doctoring than they do. Of course, Teleutas complained and malingered at any excuse or none. Even so, Sostratos would have wished for a little more gratitude.

Another sailor did thank him, very politely, when he bandaged a stab wound in the man's belly. He sniffed the wound as he applied the bandage. It wasn't very wide, and wasn't bleeding nearly so much

The Gryphon's Skull 281

as Teleutas', but he did get a faint whiff of dung. He said nothing to the sailor, and held his face steady till he'd finished the job. Then he went looking for Menedemos.

“Why so grim?” his cousin asked as he dealt with a wound much like Teleutas’. The sailor he was helping didn't snarl at him or criticize his inartistic bandages; the man just seemed glad to have the cut dealt with.