Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Diokles said, "Always seems a little odd, doesn't it, being out here all by our lonesome?"

"It makes me wish there were a better way to guide a ship over the open ocean than steering by the sun and by guess," Menedemos answered.

"I've sailed with some skippers who'd rather cross the open sea by night. They say they steer better by the stars than by the sun," Diokles said.

"I've heard others say the same thing," Menedemos replied. "One of these times, I may try it myself. Not today, though. After a while, I want to raise the sail to the yard, put everyone on the oars, and get in more practice at fighting the ship."

The keleustes rumbled approval, deep down in his throat. "That's a good notion, captain, no two ways about it. It's like most things: the more work we do, the better off we'll be."

"With a sunny day, we can twist and turn however we like and have no trouble picking up our course again later," Menedemos added. "When it's all foggy and overcast, you have a hang of a time figuring out which way's which - have to go by wind and wave, and they can change on you before you know it."

"That's true, by the gods. And in a storm . . ." Diokles rubbed his ring, as if speaking of a storm might make one blow up.

"In a storm, you worry about staying afloat first and everything else later." Remembering his cousin for the first time in a while, Menedemos raised his voice: "In a storm, we'll chuck the peafowl over the side to lighten ship."

"Suits me fine," Sostratos said, "as long as you're the one who explains to our fathers why we did it."

Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic, as if that were a more frightening prospect than a storm. After a little thought, he decided it was. A storm would either blow over or sink him, but Sostratos' father, and especially his own, could keep him miserable for years to come.

"Land ho!" Aristeidas called from the foredeck. Pointing, he went on, "Land off the port bow!"

Sostratos was on the foredeck, too, wrestling a peahen back into her cage. He closed the door behind the squawking bird, slipped the bronze hooks into their eyes, and got to his feet. Shading his eyes with his hand, he peered in the direction the lookout's finger showed. "Your sight is sharper than mine," he said. Not very much later, though, he pointed, too. "No, wait - now I see it there." He turned and called back to the stern: "What island is that?"

At the steering oars, Menedemos only shrugged. "We'll find out when we get a little closer. One of the Kyklades, anyway. I was aiming for Mykonos, but you don't always hit what you aim for when you get out of sight of land."

"If that is Mykonos, we'll see a couple of little islands off to the south and east," Aristeidas told Sostratos. "I mean little islands, not much more than rocks."

"Does anyone live on them?" Sostratos asked.

The lookout shrugged. "Probably - but they aren't places where you'd want to stop and find out, if you know what I mean."

In due course, the little islands did appear. Menedemos seemed as proud of them as if he'd invented them himself. "Is that navigating, or is that navigating?" he crowed when Sostratos came back to the poop deck.

"That's navigating, or else good fortune." Sostratos had been annoyed enough lately that he wanted to annoy his cousin in return.

But, to his own further annoyance, he couldn't. Menedemos just grinned at him and said, "You're right, of course. If you think I'll complain when the gods throw me a little good fortune, you're daft."

That didn't even leave Sostratos any room to quarrel. He said, "We ought to put in at the island and take on water. We're getting low."

"All right." Now Menedemos didn't look quite so happy. After a moment, though, he brightened. "I'll anchor offshore and let them bring it out in boats. That'll be easier and faster than beaching."

"More expensive, too," Sostratos pointed out.

"While we're going out to Italy, we spend money," Menedemos said airily. "When we get there, we make money." That was indeed how things were supposed to work. Menedemos took it for granted that they would work that way. Sostratos was the one who had to make them work that way.

He started to get annoyed all over again, but checked himself. I take it for granted that we'll get to Italy so I can work on seeing that the voyage turns a profit. Menedemos is that one who has to make things work that way.

The Aphrodite anchored off Panormos, on the northern coast of Mykonos. Her arrival at first produced more alarm in the little town than anything else. Only after a good deal of shouting could Menedemos convince the locals he wasn't commanding a pirate ship. "They think everything with oars is full of corsairs," he grumbled.

"Maybe they have reason to think so," Sostratos answered. "If they do, we need to be wary in these waters."

Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. "I suppose so. Well, it's not as if it's something we didn't already know." With obvious relief at changing the subject, he pointed to the town. "Here comes the first boat."

After that first boatman - a fellow who, though only a few years older than Sostratos and Menedemos, had lost most of his hair - delivered water to the Aphrodite and came back unscathed, more islanders came out to the akatos. After a while, Sostratos turned to Diokles. "You must have come here before," he said, and the oarmaster dipped his head. Sostratos went on, "Is it my imagination, or are there a lot of bald men on this island?"

"No, sir, it's not your imagination," Diokles answered. "Haven't you ever heard somebody say, 'bald as a Mykonian'?"

"I don't think so," Sostratos said. "Of course, now I'll probably hear it three times in the next two days. That's how those things seem to work."

"So it is," Diokles said with a chuckle. Sostratos started to say something more, but the keleustes held up a hand. "Hold on a bit, would you? I want to hear what that fellow in the boat is telling the skipper."

Sostratos outranked the oarmaster. Not only that, he was the son of one of the Aphrodite's owners. A lot of men, in such circumstances, would have gone right on talking. Menedemos probably would, Sostratos thought. But he fell silent, not least because he was also curious about what the local had to say.

"That's right," the fellow said to Menedemos. "A ship just about the size of yours. That's one of the reasons we all had the hair stand up on the backs of our necks when you sailed toward town." He had little hair save on the back of his neck - he was bald, too.

"Do you know where she's based?" Menedemos asked.

"Sure don't," the Mykonian answered, tossing his head. "Lots of beaches that'll hold a pirate ship. Plenty of little tiny islands here in the Kyklades, places where nobody lives, or else maybe a goatherd or two. A pirate crew could sail out of one of those and you'd never find it, except maybe by accident."

"You're probably right." Menedemos didn't sound happy about agreeing.

" 'Course I'm right," the bald man said with the sort of certainty only people who haven't traveled very far or done very much can have. He went on, "Plenty for the polluted son of a whore to feast on, too, what with all the ships bringing people to pray or to make offerings to Apollo on holy Delos."

"Ah, Delos. That's right," Menedemos said. Sostratos found himself dipping his head, too. Along with its larger but less important neighbor, Rheneia, Delos - famous for being the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister, Artemis - lay just west of Mykonos. Pirates could easily make a comfortable living preying on the ships that brought pious Hellenes there.

"Since you ain't pirates, you'd be smart to watch out for 'em," the Mykonian said. "Otherwise, you might end up on Delos your own selves - in the slave markets, I mean."