Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

But Sostratos, though he noticed that, had too much on his mind really to envy Menedemos' luck. He said, “I'm afraid Rhodippos is going to die,”

“Oimoi!” Menedemos exclaimed in dismay. “Why do you say so? He didn't seem that badly hurt. I saw him.”

“His gut's pierced,” Sostratos answered. “Such men almost always die of fever. Remember that sailor last summer, after the Roman archer shot him from their trireme as we went past?”

Menedemos drummed his fingers on his right thigh. His hands were bloody. Looking down, Sostratos saw his own were, too. Voice troubled, his cousin said, “Yes, I do. Well, here's hoping you're wrong, that's all.”

“Here's hoping indeed,” Sostratos said. “I'm not a physician—if you don't believe me, ask Teleutas. But I do remember what I've seen and what I've heard.”

“I know,” Menedemos said. “You remember everything, as far as I can tell.”

“I wish I did,” Sostratos said.

“If you don't, you come closer than anyone else I know,” Menedemos said. “I know we're lucky to have come off even as well as we did, but all the same, ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “We've got a lot of men hurt.”

“Most of them should get better,” Sostratos said.

“Gods grant it be so,” Menedemos said. “If it is so, I'll give As-klepios a sheep at his temple on Kos if we put in there on the way home, or back on Rhodes if we don't.” He glanced up toward the heavens, as if hoping to catch sight of the god of healing listening.

Sostratos wasn't sure a sacrifice would do any good, but he wasn't sure it wouldn't, either. Even Sokrales, when he was dying, remembered he owed Asklepios a cock, he thought.

“At least the whoresons didn't try to wreck our rigging, the way they would have if we were a round ship,” Menedemos said: maybe that glance heavenward had in fact been aimed at the yard.

“Not much point to it with a galley,” Sostratos said. “We can still row perfectly well, and we could even if the sail came down. Of course,” he added, “they might not have thought of that. One often doesn't think of everything in the middle of a fight.”

A sailor limped up to them with the broken shaft of an arrow sticking out of his calf. “Will you draw this polluted thing for me?” he said through clenched teeth. “I tried pulling it out, but it hurt too cursed much for me to do the job myself.”

“A good thing you stopped,” Sostratos said. “The point's barbed; you would have hurt yourself worse if you'd kept on.” He bent and felt the wound.

“Well, how will you get it out, then?” the man asked after a yelp of pain.

“We'll have to push it through,” Sostratos answered, “either that or cut down to the point. Where it is, I think pushing it through is a better bet—it's only a digit or two from coming out already.”

The sailor looked fearfully to Menedemos. The captain of the Aphrodite dipped his head. “My cousin's likely right, Alkiphron,” he said. “Here—sit down on a bench and stretch out your leg. He'll hold it and I'll push the arrow through and bandage it up. It'll be over before you know it.” To Sostratos, he added a quick, low-voiced aside: “Make sure you hang on tight.”

“I will,” Sostratos promised as Alkiphron eased himself down to a rower's bench. He bent beside the sailor and grasped his leg above and below the wound. “Try to keep as still as you can,” he told him.

“I'll do that,” Alkiphron said.

Menedemos took hold of the protruding shaft. Alkiphron gasped and tensed. Menedemos gave him a broad, friendly smile. “Are you ready?” he asked. Before the wounded man could answer—and before he could tense himself any more—Menedemos pushed the arrow through.

Alkiphron shrieked. He tried to jerk his leg away. Sostratos couldn't quite stop the motion, but kept it small. The blood-smeared bronze point burst through the sailor's skin. “There,” Sostratos said soothingly as Menedemos drew the shaft out after it. “Now it's over.”

“You took it like a hero,” Menedemos added, wrapping several thicknesses of sailcloth around the wound. He had a knack for saying things that made men feel better. It's probably the knack that makes him such a fine seducer, Sostratos thought. Whatever it was, he wished he had more of it himself.

He also noted that Menedemos' bandage was no neater than the ones he'd made himself. Alkiphron didn't seem inclined to be critical. He watched the bandage start to turn red. “That. . . hurt like fire,” he said. “But you're right—it's better now. Thank you both.”

“Glad to do it,” Menedemos said. “I hope it heals clean,”

“It should, too,” Sostratos told the sailor. “It's bleeding freely, and that helps,”

“Take a cup of wine, Alkiphron,” Menedemos said. “That will help build your blood up again.” Sostratos frowned. From what he remembered, Hippokrates and his fellows would have prescribed differently. But Alkiphron looked so pleased at Menedemos' suggestion, Sostratos held his peace. And Menedemos remarked, “I wouldn't mind a cup of wine myself.”

Sostratos thought it over, not that he needed long. “Good idea,” he said. “Splendid idea, in fact. If you put it to the Assembly, it would carry in a flash,”

Neither he nor Menedemos bothered watering the wine they dipped from an amphora, either. As Menedemos sipped, he said, “I don't do this every day”; he had to know they were being immoderate as well as Sostratos did.

Sostratos replied, “Well, my dear, we don't fight off a pirate ship every day, either.”

“No, we don't, and a good thing, too,” Menedemos said. “Most of those abandoned catamites have better sense than to tangle with a ship like ours. And I'm going to make sure our boys do plenty of wineshop bragging, too. Let the word get around: the Aphrodite 's a hedgehog, too prickly to quarrel with.”

“That's good. That's very good,” Sostratos said. After a couple of swigs of strong neat wine, it certainly seemed good.

Menedemos drained his cup and filled it again. Catching sight of Sostratos' expression, he grinned. “Don't worry—I still know where Attica lies.”

“You'd better,” Sostratos told him.

“What I wish I knew,” his cousin said, “is how to keep pirates from coming after merchants in the first place. It's not just that no one patrols the sea hard enough, though we Rhodians do what we can. But a pirate in a hemiolia can show his heels to any ship afloat; even a trireme can't always catch a hemiolia. Honest men ought to be able to beat the bastards at their own game.”

“You've said that before,” Sostratos remarked. “What's the answer? “

“To the crows with me if I know. If it were easy, somebody would have thought of it a long time ago, wouldn't you say? But there's got to be one somewhere.”

Sostratos started to ask him why there had to be one, but checked himself. He didn't want to argue, not now. All he wanted to do was take a moment to be glad he remained alive and free and unmaimed. A little wine sloshed out of his cup. He laughed in embarrassment. “I'm not pouring a libation. My hand is shaking.”

“That's a sign you need more wine,” Menedemos said, refilling the cup before Sostratos could protest. His cousin went on, “It's all right to shake a little now, when everything's over. I've done that myself—you start thinking about what might have been. But you did fine when you needed to.”

“I didn't have time to be afraid then.” Sostratos took a pull at the wine and decided not to complain about Menedemos' giving him more.

Menedemos' mind was already moving on to other things: “We'll have to put poor Dorimakhos' body in the boat. You know how the men reel about having a corpse on board ship. And when we do get in to Attica, we'll have to pay a priest to purify the boat—and the Aphrodite . ”