Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Sostratos would have taken oath he saw anger in the bird's beady black eyes. He said, "You don't have to watch the garden yourself, you know. You could set a slave woman to doing it."

"I tried that yesterday," Erinna said darkly. "She paid more attention to her mug of wine than to the peahens, and we'll go short of garlic for a while - either that or get some from people whose gardens just have snails or caterpillars, not these, these - goats with feathers, that's what they are."

Before Sostratos could answer, the peacock next door let out its blatting cry again. Dogs in the neighborhood started barking. They'd been yapping their heads off every since the peafowl came to Sostratos and Menedemos' houses. The birds probably smelled like a banquet to them, and the peacock especially made enough noise to remind them he was around even when the wind blew from the wrong quarter.

Another horrible noise came from next door, followed by some equally horrible curses. "Hades stuff you with olives and boil you in a saucepan!" Menedemos shouted. "Roast you over a low fire! May your peahens give you the bird clap, so you can't pee through your peacock cock!"

Erinna giggled. Sostratos felt more inclined to applaud. That wasn't Aristophanes, but it almost could have been. Then Menedemos shouted again, this time in pain. Sostratos didn't need to be able to see through the walls between them to be sure the peacock had had its revenge. He wondered whether it had kicked or pecked. Peafowl were formidable at both ends - and with their buffeting wings - as the luckless sailor who'd chased the peacock had discovered to his sorrow.

Erinna said, "You really should have kept Menedemos from buying these pestilential birds."

Sostratos tossed his head. "Once Menedemos sets his heart on doing something, the twelve Olympians couldn't stop him. He'll go far - you mark my words. Of course, he may have to go pretty fast, too, to stay in front of all the husbands he's outraged."

"Oh." Erinna had to flap her cloth at the peahen yet again. Sostratos hoped that would distract her, but it didn't. After forcing the bird to retreat, she said, "Is that really true? About Menedemos, I mean."

"Some of it is, anyhow," Sostratos answered.

His sister clicked her tongue between her teeth. "Respectable women have to make do with a leather sausage if their husbands don't please them. Men can have all the women they want. It hardly seems fair for them to go after wives when they could dip their wicks with slaves and whores."

"I suppose so." Sostratos thought of the redheaded Thracian slave girl. But Erinna hadn't been talking about him; she'd been talking about Menedemos. He said, "You know how our cousin is. For him, sometimes, half the reason for doing something is knowing he shouldn't."

"It could be." Erinna considered. "It probably is, in fact. But what would he say of you if he had the chance?"

"Of me?" Sostratos echoed in surprise. "Probably that I'm too boring to say anything much about." He yawned to emphasize the point.

"Xanthos is boring - or at least that's what everybody says," Erinna answered. "You just don't care to talk about fighting and drinking and women all the time, that's all."

Sostratos went over and gave her a brotherly hug. The peahen, seeing the protector of the herb garden distracted, darted forward. Sostratos and Erinna shooed it off again together. The trouble is, most people like to hear about fighting and drinking and women, Sostratos thought. He did himself, sometimes. And Menedemos could indeed go on most entertainingly about any or all of them.

I'd better give it up, Sostratos thought, or I'll convince myself that I am boring after all. He took a warning step toward the peahen. It backed away, looking as if it hated him.

Getting a ship ready to sail was always a tricky business. Menedemos was convinced he had a harder time with the Aphrodite than he would have had with a round ship, a sailing ship. The reason was simple: with forty oars to man, he needed far more sailors than the master of a sailing ship did.

"We're still a couple of men short," he said to Diokles, his keleustes.

The oarmaster dipped his head in agreement, but didn't seem particularly upset. "We'll hire harbor rats, that's all," he answered, "and if they drink up their wages the first good-sized port we come to, well, to the crows with 'em. Plenty more of that kind to be picked up in any harbor of the Inner Sea."

"I want as good a crew as I can get." Menedemos pointed toward the Aphrodite's bow. "That ram isn't there just for show. Crete breeds pirates the way a dog breeds fleas, and Italy's the same way. And the war between Syracuse and Carthage goes on and on, so the Punic navy's liable to be prowling around, too."

Diokles shrugged. He was about halfway between Menedemos and his father in age, burnt brown by the sun, with the massive shoulders and heavy arms of a man who'd spent a lot of years working an oar himself. "The way I look at it is like this," he said "if a Carthaginian galley with four or five men to a bank of oars comes after us, it won't matter whether a couple of our rowers aren't everything they might be, because we'll get sunk any which way."

Since he was probably - no, almost certainly - right, Menedemos didn't argue with him. Instead, he turned to Sostratos and asked, "How's the cargo shaping?"

His cousin held out a three-leafed wooden tablet faced with wax, on which he'd written the manifest with the sharp end of his bronze stylus. As items came aboard, he'd either erased them with the blunt end or drawn a line through them, depending on how harried he was at any given moment. "We've still got some papyrus to take on board," he answered, showing Menedemos the tablet, "and the peafowl, and their feed, and wine and water and oil and bread for the men."

"We don't need that much," Menedemos said, "for we'll be putting in to real ports most nights."

"I know, but we do need some, and we haven't got it yet," Sostratos replied. "There will be nights when we just haul the ship up onto the beach wherever we happen to end up, and there may be storms."

Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic. Diokles had on only a loincloth, so he couldn't turn aside the omen that way. But he wore a ring with the image of Herakles Alexikakos, the Averter of Evil. He rubbed it and muttered a charm under his breath.

"On land, I'm not particularly superstitious," Menedemos remarked. "When I'm about to go to sea . . . That's a different business."

"You'd best believe it," Diokles agreed. "You never can tell with the sea. You can't trust it." He stopped - and started. "What's that dreadful noise?"

"Oh, good." Menedemos spoke with considerable relief. "Here come the peafowl."

Slaves from his father and uncle's houses carried the caged birds down to the Aphrodite. They'd managed to attract a fair-sized crowd of curious onlookers; men didn't carry half a dozen big, raucous birds through the streets of Rhodes every day. And a good thing, too, Menedemos thought. The peacock wasn't the only one screaming its head off. The peahens were squawking, too, though less often and not quite so loud.

"Where are you going to want these miserable things stowed, sir?" one of the slaves asked Menedemos.

He looked to Sostratos. Menedemos was captain; his cousin didn't tell him how to command the akatos. As toikharkhos, Sostratos had charge of the cargo. Since Sostratos was good at what he did, Menedemos didn't want to joggle his elbow.

"We have to keep them as safe as we can," Sostratos said. "They're the most delicate cargo we've got, and the most valuable, too. I want them as far away from the water in the bilges as I can get them. We'd better put them up on the little stretch of foredeck we've got."

That made Menedemos frown, regardless of whether he wanted to joggle his cousin's elbow or not. "Can we stow them there and still have room for the lookout to get up to the bow and do his job?" he asked. "If he can't see rocks ahead or a pirate pentekonter, a whole shipload of peafowl won't do us any good. If you could stack the cages . . ."