Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"Are they eating all right?" Menedemos asked. On land, he did as he pleased, indulging his passions far more than Sostratos chose to do. Aboard ship, nothing escaped his notice. The peacock had Argos' eyes in its tail; Sostratos' cousin seemed to have them in his head.

Sostratos watched the birds pecking away like so many outsized chickens, then dipped his head. Menedemos waved again to show he'd seen the answer. No, nothing got past him.

A couple of the missing rowers returned by themselves, one hung over and the other so drunk he almost fell off the pier before he got to the Aphrodite. "Are you going to dock his pay?" Sostratos asked.

His cousin tossed his head. "No, he's here on time - and he's here all by himself, too." An evil smile spread over Menedemos' face. "I'll do something worse - I'll wait till he's really starting to hurt, and then I'll put him on the oars. If that doesn't cure him, gods only know what will."

"Not a bad notion," Sostratos said, admiring the rough justice of it. He paused thoughtfully. "The exercise may help ease the confusion in his humors and cure him quicker than sitting idle would."

"Maybe." Menedemos chuckled. "Even if it does, though, he won't be happy while it's going on." Sostratos could hardly disagree with that.

One of the rowers came running up the pier toward the Aphrodite. "Diokles says to tell you we've got three of them, captain," he called. "No sign of the other two."

"They came back on their own," Menedemos answered. "Diokles can bring in the rest of the lost sheep, and then we'll be off."

The sailors had to carry one of their comrades, who'd guzzled himself into a stupor. By the glint in Menedemos' eye, Sostratos knew what his cousin had in mind for that fellow once he revived. Fair enough, Sostratos thought. Drinking yourself blind is excessive. Diokles giving the beat, the Aphrodite left the harbor of Knidos and headed for Kos.

3

"Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!" Diokeles used the oarmaster's chant along with the rhythm of mallet on bronze. As Menedemos had thought it would, the wind blew straight out of the north, straight into his face, as the merchant galley he commanded made for Kos. A sailing ship bound for Kos from Knidos would have had to stay in port; it could have made no headway against the contrary breeze. He just left the sail brailed up tight, so that the akatos proceeded on oars alone.

Waves driven by the headwind splashed against the Aphrodite's ram and pointed cutwater. Striking the ship head-on, they gave her an unpleasant pitching motion. Menedemos, who stood on the raised poop deck handling the steering oars, didn't mind it so much, but he'd spent the night aboard ship. Some of the rowers who were rather the worse for wear leaned out over the gunwales and fed the fish of the Aegean.

"Keep an eye peeled," Menedemos called to the lookout at the bow. "The mainland of Asia belongs to Antigonos." He took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller to wave toward the misty mainland. "Kos, though, Kos is under Ptolemaios' thumb. And if the treaty the generals signed last summer is just a broken pot, the way it seems, they're liable to go at each other any time."

He kept a wary eye out for warships and pirate galleys himself. All he saw, though, were a few little fishing boats bobbing in the chop. A couple of them spread their sails and scooted away from him as fast as they could go. He laughed at that: the akatos looked too much like a piratical pentekonter for them to want to let it get close.

"You're the one who's been hearing most of the news lately, cousin," he said to Sostratos. "Do you have any idea what sort of fleet Ptolemaios has at Kos?"

But Sostratos tossed his head. "Sorry - haven't heard that. It had better be a good-sized one, though, because Antigonos has a lot of ports on the mainland and the islands farther north." He grimaced. "The same holds for Rhodes, you know."

"We have got a good-sized fleet, and a good thing, too," Menedemos said. "Antigonos knows better than to quarrel with us, the same as a dog knows better than to bite a hedgehog. Now, where have you got those perfumes stowed?"

"To port, a little aft of amidships," Sostratos answered. "Are you thinking of trading them for silk?"

"That's just what I'm thinking," Menedemos told him. "The Hellenes in Italy can make their own perfume. You can't get silk anywhere but Kos."

"If we can make a good bargain with the silk merchants, that's fine," Sostratos said. "If not . . ." He shrugged. "If not, we'd do better spending silver on silk and saving the perfumes for a market where they'll bring us more."

"You'll be the judge of that," Menedemos said. "That's why you're along."

"Nice to know you think I have some use," Sostratos said dryly.

"Some," Menedemos agreed, to make his cousin squirm. He pointed. "And you'd better keep an eye on that peahen, too, before she goes into the drink."

As one had done on the first day it was let out of its cage, a peahen had hopped up onto a vacant rower's bench and was peering over the side. Menedemos didn't know if the bird would try to fly off and fall into the sea, but he didn't want to find out the hard way, either. Sostratos was of like mind. He netted the bird before it could do anything the young men who'd bought it would regret.

The peahen pecked Sostratos through the mesh of the net. "Down to the house of Hades with you, you accursed, abominable thing!" he shouted, rubbing at his ribs through his chiton. He turned to Menedemos. "If it weren't for what we paid for them, I'd like to watch them drown."

"So would I," Menedemos said. "I'd hold them under myself, in fact."

"I never imagined sailing with a valuable cargo I hated," Sostratos said, releasing the peafowl by the socket that fixed the mast to the keel. He pointed a warning finger at the bird. "Stay down here where you belong, Furies take you!" To Menedemos, he added, "I don't much care for cargo that won't stay where I stow it, either."

"The birds would, if you left them in their cages," Menedemos said.

His cousin tossed his head. "We've been over that. I think they'll be better for getting out, though they may drive me mad by the time we make Italy."

Menedemos laughed. Sostratos rolled his eyes. That made Menedemos laugh more. But before he could twit his cousin any further, the watchman on the foredeck sang out: "Sail ho, off the starboard bow!" A moment later he amended that: "Sails ho! She's got a foresail, captain!"

"A big one," Menedemos muttered, peering in the direction the lookout's pointing finger gave. He had sharp eyes; he needed only a moment to spot the ship. When he did, he cursed. He'd hoped to see a big merchantman, bound perhaps for Rhodes and then Alexandria. No such luck: that low, lean shape could belong only to a war galley.

"He's seen us, too," the lookout called. "He's turning this way."

His voice held alarm. Menedemos didn't blame him. He was alarmed, too. "What do we do, skipper?" Diokles asked.

"Hold course," Menedemos answered. "Best thing we can do is put up a bold front. If we were in a pentekonter or a hemiolia, we might have hoped to turn and outrun him downwind, but we haven't got a prayer of that in this akatos - she's too beamy. We have every right to be here, and a proper warship won't give us any trouble, because nobody wants any trouble with Rhodes."

I hope. He'd spoken brashly to hearten his men - and to hearten himself, too. But brashness didn't come easy, not as the galley approached, now under sails and oars. "Eagles on the sails," the lookout called.

"He's one of Ptolemaios', then," Sostratos said.

Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "Patrolling out of Kos, I suppose."

"Too big and broad to be a trireme," his cousin observed. "A four or a five."

"A five," Menedemos answered. "Three banks of rowers, see? One man on each thalamite oar down low, two on each zygite, and two on each thranite oar on top. If it were a four, it'd be two-banked, with two men on each oar."