Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“I never dreamt he'd give me Ptolemaios' money,” Sostratos said. “He's as cocksure as an Athenian ought to be; he speaks good Attic Greek; I expected owls. This does make it all the more likely he's Ptolemaios' man.”

“Because he uses coins from Egypt? I should say so.”

“Well, that, too, but it isn't what I had in mind. I was thinking that he acts like a rich cheapskate, the way Ptolemaios did when we were haggling over the price for the tiger skin,” Sostratos said.

“A rich cheapskate.” Menedemos savored the paradox before dipping his head in agreement. “That's good. He can get anything he wants and pay anything he wants, and he knows it, but he still doesn't want to pay too much.”

Up at the bow, capstans creaked as sailors brought up the anchors. Rich cheapskate or not, Dionysios son of Herakleitos knew enough to stay out of their way. Sweat and olive oil sheened their naked bodies. Sostratos swiped a forearm across his brow. It came away wet. “I'm going to get a hat for myself, too,” he said. “I don't care to bake my brains today.”

His cousin wet a finger and tested the breeze—or would have, had there been any breeze to test. He sighed. “That's a good idea, however much I wish it weren't.”

Diokles said, “I'm only going to put half a dozen men on a side at the oars, and I'll change shifts more often than I usually do. Otherwise, we'll lose somebody from heatstroke, sure as sure.”

“As you think best,” Menedemos told the keleustes.

With shouted orders from the captain and the oarmaster, the Aphrodite left the little harbor of Sounion and started east across the Aegean toward Kos and then toward Rhodes and home. Sostratos kept looking back towards the north and west, towards Athens, toward what might have been. He cursed the pirate who'd stolen the gryphon's skull—and every other pirate who'd ever lived. Those curses felt weak, empty. The skull was gone, and he'd never see its like again. He wondered if the world would.

Rather than merely cursing pirates, Menedemos got ready to fend them off, serving out weapons to the crew as he had on the voyage towards Attica. Seeing that, the Aphrodite's passenger took a hoplite's shortsword from his bag and belted it on around his waist. He had the air of a man who knew what to do with it.

In a dead calm, the Aegean lay smooth as polished metal under that fierce, broiling sun. Sweat rivered off Menedemos as he stood at the steering oars. He guzzled heavily watered wine to keep some moisture in him. So did the rowers. They couldn't pull their best, not in heat like this. Diokles didn't chide them. The oarmaster knew they were giving what they could.

Halfway between Sounion and Keos, the Aphrodite slid past a becalmed round ship. Sailors on the tubby merchantman shouted in alarm when they spied the merchant galley. Had she been a pirate ship, they couldn't possibly have escaped. The sailors on the round ship shouted again, this time in relief, when the akatos didn't turn toward them.

Well before noon, Menedemos decided to put in at Keos. “We'll fill up our water jars and hope for wind tomorrow,” he told Sostratos. “I know we've only come about a hundred stadia, but even so. ...”

To his relief, his cousin didn't feel like arguing. “We wouldn't have made Kythnos by sundown, anyhow, and we need the fresh water.”

“That's right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “And the water here is better than the nasty stuff they have on Kythnos.”

Keos did look greener and more inviting than its southern neighbor, though the savage sun was baking it, too. As the Aphrodite came into the harbor at Koressia, one of the little island's four poleis, Sostratos remarked, “This was the place where, in the old days, they made people drink hemlock when they turned sixty—they didn't want any useless mouths to feed.”

Menedemos snapped his fingers. “I knew that was one of the Kyklades, but you could have given me to a Persian torturer and he wouldn't have squeezed which one out of me.”

Sostratos said, “I remember useless things—you know that. It's also where Simonides the poet came from.”

“ 'Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.' “ Menedemos quoted the epitaph for the men who'd died at Thermopylai.

“He wrote a lot of other verses besides that one,” Sostratos said.

“I know, but it's the one everybody recalls,” Menedemos said. “I'm not like you, my dear—I don't come up with the strange things at the drop of a hat.”

Sostratos took off his hat. Menedemos wondered if he would drop it, but he only fanned himself with it and put it back on. One of his eyebrows rose. He studied Menedemos the same way he'd examined the gryphon's skull—analyzing him, classifying him, finding a place for him in the bigger scheme of things. Menedemos didn't know that he cared for the place to which his cousin had assigned him. It would be higher on the scheme of things than the gryphon, surely, but how much higher?

Before Sostratos could give him the answer there—in greater detail than he would like, he guessed—Dionysios came back to the stern. “Considering the price I'm paying, I hoped to get closer to Kos my first day out than one miserable little hop,” the dapper man said.

“I hoped to get closer, too,” Menedemos answered, “but there was no wind, and I don't intend to kill my rowers. Maybe we'll do better tomorrow.”

“We'd better,” Dionysios said darkly.

With a smile even cooler and nastier than the one he'd just bestowed on Menedemos, Sostratos said, “Well, O marvelous one, if our pace doesn't suit you, I'll give you back all but five drakhmai of your fare, and you're welcome to find another eastbound ship here.”

The dull red Dionysios turned had nothing to do with the heat. The harbor at Koressia, into which the Elixos River ran, held no other ships besides the Aphrodite : only little fishing boats that never got out of sight of the island. How long would the traveler have to wait for another vessel bound for Kos? Menedemos had no idea, and neither, plainly, did Dionysios.

With twin splashes, the akatos' anchors went into the sea. Sailors wrestled water jars into the boat and went ashore with them. The men made for the Elixos to fill the jars. Menedemos said, “Shall we go into the market square with some perfume and a little silk and see if we can sell 'em?”

“Here?” Sostratos' glance was eloquent. “I don't think they've done anything here since they sent a couple of ships to fight the Persians at Salamis.”

Menedemos laughed. “You're probably right. Even so, though, they're bound to want their women to smell sweet and look pretty.”

“I suppose so,” his cousin admitted. “But can they pay for what they want?”

“Always a question,” Menedemos admitted. “I think it's worth finding out.”

Next to no one in Koressia was stirring as the two Rhodians made their way to the agora. Men stayed in wineshops or squatted like lizards in whatever shade the walls gave them. A couple of drunks lay snoring, empty cups or wine jars beside them. Sostratos raised an eyebrow. Menedemos only shrugged.

They nearly had the market square to themselves. A man hawked raisins, while a farm woman displayed eggs and cheeses. Neither had any customers or seemed to expect any—they were going through the motions of selling, no more. Menedemos had seen that before; it always made him scornful.

“Come on,” he told Sostratos. “Let's show these people not everybody sleeps all the time.”

His cousin yawned. “I'm sorry, best one. Did you say something?”

Snorting, Menedemos raised his voice till it filled the agora: “Perfume from Rhodes! Fine silk from Kos! Who wants to buy? We won't stay here long, so you'd better come quick. Who wants to buy?”