Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"I don't want to do that," Sostratos said unhappily. "The birds above would befoul the ones below, and they could peck at one another, too."

"Will you make up your mind?" asked the slave at the head of the procession. "This stinking cage is heavy."

"Take them up and put them on the foredeck," Sostratos said, speaking with more decision than he usually showed. "We'll just have to find out whether there's room up there for them and the lookout, too."

Down the gangplank and into the Aphrodite trudged the slaves. The peafowl screamed bloody murder; they liked descending at an angle even less than they liked being carried on level ground. By the way the slaves let the cages thud to the pine timbers of the foredeck, they'd got very sick of the birds.

Menedemos came up behind them. "Put those cages in two rows, with a lane in the middle," he said. When the slaves were done, he surveyed the result and reluctantly dipped his head. "I suppose it will do," he called to Sostratos. "But we'll have to warn the lookouts to steer the middle path. If they come too close to the birds on either side, they'll get their legs pecked." He laughed. "We've got Skylle and Kharybdis right here aboard the Aphrodite."

"Homer never saw a peacock - I'm sure of that." Sostratos pointed. "Here comes the last of the papyrus . . . and here comes something else, too. What's in those jars, Menedemos? They aren't on my list here."

"Oh, I know about those," Menedemos answered. "They're crimson dye from Byblos. Father just got them yesterday, from a ship that just came in from Phoenicia."

"Crimson dye . . . from Byblos." Menedemos' cousin spoke with exaggerated patience: "How many jars did Uncle Philodemos get? Why didn't anyone bother to tell me about them till now?" He looked daggers at Menedemos.

"Sorry," Menedemos said, more contritely than he'd thought he would. "It's two hundred jars, by the way."

"Two hundred jars." Sostratos still sounded furious. "This had better not happen again. How am I supposed to do my job if nobody tells me what I'm supposed to be doing?" He pointed to the men who were loading oiled-leather sacks of papyrus beneath the rowers' benches. "Shift those farther astern. We've got to make room for the crimson dye."

Menedemos gave his attention back to Diokles. "Go get us those rowers. I want to be at sea before noon. We probably won't make Knidos even so. No help for it; we'll just have to beach ourselves on Syme."

"Right, skipper." The keleustes dipped his head. "I'll take care of it." He went up the gangplank to the quay at which the Aphrodite was tied up, and shouted for rowers in a great voice.

"Have we got all our cargo aboard?" Menedemos asked Sostratos.

"Unless there's more you haven't told me about, yes," his cousin answered tartly. Menedemos tossed his head, denying even the possibility. Sostratos didn't look appeased, but said, "In that case, everything's loaded." He peered down the quay, though he, unlike Menedemos, wasn't following Diokles with his eyes. "I was wondering if we'd get any passengers."

"I was hoping we would - they're pure profit," Menedemos said. "But it's still early in the sailing season, so some lubbers won't care to put to sea so soon. We'll probably get some in Hellas. There are always people who want to go across to Italy." He clapped his hands together. "Here comes Diokles. That was fast."

"I wonder what'll be wrong with the rowers," Sostratos said.

"We'll find out. At least they aren't falling-down drunk in the morning: a little something, anyhow," Menedemos said. "Get their names, tell 'em it's a drakhma a day, and it'll go up to a drakhma and a half when they show they're worth it. And then . . ." He clapped again, hard this time. "Then we're off."

He hurried past the mast and back to the raised poop deck at the stern of the Aphrodite, slapping rowers on the back as he went and also making sure the jars and sacks that held the cargo were securely stowed under their benches. He'd watched Sostratos attend to that, but he checked it anyhow. The Aphrodite was his ship; if anything went wrong, it was his fault.

He took the tiller bars to the new steering oars in his hands and tugged experimentally. He'd done the same thing every time he came aboard after the Aphrodite went into the sea: the steering oars pleased him that much. Khremes the carpenter had been right - a little old man could handle them all day and never get tired. He'd never felt a pair that pivoted so smoothly.

Diokles came up onto the poop beside Menedemos. Sostratos joined them a moment later, tying his tablet closed with a thin strip of leather. "Let's have a lookout forward," Menedemos called. He pointed to a sailor naked but for a knifebelt round his middle. "Aristeidas, take the first turn there. You've sailed with me before - I know you've got sharp eyes. Mind the peafowl, now."

"Right, captain." Aristeidas hurried up onto the foredeck. The peacock tried to peck him, but he darted past and took hold of the forepost. He waved back to Menedemos.

"Bring in the gangplank," Menedemos commanded. At his shouted order, a couple of longshoremen undid the lines that held the Aphrodite to the quay and tossed the coarse flax ropes into the akatos. With what was almost a bow to Diokles, Menedemos asked, "You have your mallet and your bronze square?"

"I'm not likely to be without 'em," the keleustes answered. "My voice'd give out if I had to call the stroke all day." He stooped and picked up the little mallet and the bronze square, which dangled from a chain so as to give the best tone when he struck it. The stern-facing rowers poised themselves at their oars. Diokles dipped his head to Menedemos. "When you're ready."

"I've been ready for months," Menedemos said. "Now the ship is, too. Let's go."

The keleustes smote the bronze with the mallet. The rowers took their first stroke. To leave the harbor, Menedemos had every oar manned - as much for show as for any other reason. The quay shifted. No: the Aphrodite began to move. Diokles used the mallet again. Another stroke. Again. "Rhyppapai!" the oarmaster called, using his voice to help give the men their rhythm.

"Rhyppapai!" the rowers echoed: the old chant of the Athenian navy, used these days by Hellenes in galleys all over the Inner Sea. "Rhyppapai!! Rhyppapai!"

"You can tell they haven't had oars in their hands for a while," Sostratos remarked.

"They're pretty ragged, aren't they?" Menedemos agreed. Even as he spoke, two rowers on the port side almost fouled each other, and one on the starboard dug the blade of his oar into the water as he brought it back for a new stroke. Menedemos shouted at him. "Nikasion, if you're going to catch a crab, make it the kind you can cook next time!"

"Sorry, skipper," the rower called back, dropping the chant for a moment.

Clang! Clang! After a while, Menedemos knew, he would hardly hear the keleustes' mallet striking the bronze square. At the beginning of every voyage, though, he had to get used to it all over again. A tern plunged into the water of Rhodes' Great Harbor less than a bowshot from the Aphrodite and came out with a fish in its beak. A screeching gull chased it, but the smaller bird got away with the prize.

A sailing ship was coming into the harbor as the akatos neared the narrow outlet between the two moles that protected it from bad weather. Menedemos tugged on the tillers to steer the Aphrodite a little to starboard and give the clumsy, beamy round ship a wider berth. Under the forward-pointing, goose-headed sternpost, the fellow at the sailing ship's steering oars lifted a hand to wave and thank him for the courtesy.

"Where are you from?" Menedemos called across a plethron of blue water.

"Paphos, in Cyprus," the other ship's officer answered. "I've got copper and olive oil and some shaped cedar boards. Where are you away to?"