Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"What is it?" His cousin, understandably, sounded harried. "By the gods, it had better be something good, if you're bothering me at a time like this."

"I think so," Sostratos answered. "If you take a long look at that pirate ship, you'll see she's just a triakonter - she's got fifteen oars on a side, and that makes thirty altogether."

"What?" Menedemos sounded astonished. When he saw the pirate ship, all he'd tried to do was get away, as any skipper would have done. He hadn't bothered taking its measure. Now he did, and started cursing all over again. "We've got more men than he does." He pulled back on the tiller to one steering oar and forward on the other, so that the Aphrodite swung sharply toward the pirate ship. The shout he let out was in much harsher, broader Doric than he usually spoke: "Now let's git him!"

Even as the akatos turned toward the triakonter, Menedemos called more orders. Up went the sail, brailed tight against the yard. Aboard a war galley, the sail and the mast would have been stowed away so as not to interfere with the attack run, which always went in under oar power alone. Menedemos couldn't do that in the Aphrodite, but he did the next best thing.

Sostratos kept his eye on the pirate ship. How many times had potential prey turned on the robbers and killers and slavers that green-blue hull carried? Were they ready to fight? If they were, and if they wanted to do it ship against ship and not man against man, they had a chance, and probably a good one: that triakonter was both faster and more maneuverable than the Aphrodite.

Closer and closer the two galleys drew. Faint across the water, Sostratos heard shouts aboard the pirate ship. Several men stood on its little raised poop deck. By the way they waved their hands and shook their fists, they were arguing about what to do next.

When the ships were only a couple of stadia apart, the pirate suddenly broke off his own attack run, swinging away toward the southwest. Staying aggressive, Menedemos went right after him. But the smaller, leaner ship was now running straight before the wind, and she had a better turn of speed than the merchant galley. Little by little, she pulled away.

"Can I ease the men back, skipper?" Diokles asked. "We're not going to catch those bastards no matter how hard we pull."

"Go ahead," Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster slowed the rhythm of his mallet on bronze. The men sensed the relaxation at once. They let out a great cheer. Some of them took one hand off their oars to wave to Menedemos, and he took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller for a moment to wave back. "Thanks, boys," he called. "I guess those villains didn't know who they were messing with when they tried to mess with us, did they?"

The sailors cheered louder than ever. Menedemos grinned, basking in the praise. Sostratos wondered how he would respond if people cheered him like that. Then he wondered what he could do to make people cheer him like that. He was the one who'd noticed the pirate ship was only a triakonter. Nobody else had even thought to look.

But he'd just been accurate. Menedemos was the one who'd made the bold, unexpected move, the move anybody could see had saved the ship. He got the credit. He knew how to get the credit, and he knew what to do with it once he had it.

Me? Sostratos thought. I'm a good toikharkhos, is what I am. He might wish he were bold, but he wasn't. Well, the world needs reliable men, too. He'd told himself that a good many times. It was, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, true. It was also, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, small consolation.

"Did you see those polluted bastards run? Do you see those polluted bastards run?" Excitement still crackled in Menedemos' voice. He pointed ahead. Sure enough, the pirate ship seemed to shrink every moment.

"Many good-byes to them," Sostratos said as he mounted to the poop deck. "May they try to outrun a trireme next, or one of Ptolemaios' fives."

His cousin dipped his head. "That would be sweet. I wouldn't mind seeing every pirate in the Inner Sea sold to the mines, or else given over to the executioner." He reached up and slapped Sostratos on the shoulder. "That was clever of you, seeing he wasn't so big as he wanted us to think."

"Thanks," Sostratos said, and then, "Do we really have to visit Cape Tainaron? More pirates there than you'll find here in the middle of the Aegean. The only real difference between a pirate and a mercenary is that a mercenary's got someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him, while a pirate has to make his own living."

"There's one other difference," Menedemos said. "A mercenary who's looking for someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him will pay us to take him over to Italy. I like that difference. It makes us money."

"So it does," Sostratos said. "But it also makes us trouble, or it can. Those who run too hard after money often end up regretting it."

"And those who don't run hard enough after it often end up hungry," Menedemos replied. "We've been through this before. I'm not going to change my mind. I say the profit is worth the risk, and we're going on to Tainaron."

He was the captain. He had the right to make such choices. Sostratos asked a rather different question: "Suppose that pirate ship had been a pentekonter or a hemiolia, the way so many of them are. Would you still have turned toward it?"

"I don't know. I might have," Menedemos said. "Most pirates don't want a sea fight. What they want is an easy victim. Sometimes, if you show you're ready to give them a battle, you don't have to."

"Sometimes," Sostratos said. But his cousin had a point. Pirates were no more enamored of hard, dangerous work than anybody else. After a moment, another thought struck Sostratos. "Maybe we ought to paint our hull and dye our sail, too. If we look like a pirate ourselves, the other pirates won't bother us."

He'd meant it as a joke, and his cousin did laugh. A moment later, though, Menedemos said. "That's a long way from the worst idea I ever heard. The only thing wrong with it is, we'd never get an honest cargo again if we sailed into a harbor looking as if we didn't want anybody more than a plethron off to be able to see us."

"I suppose not," Sostratos said. "And then, instead of worrying about pirates all the time, we'd have to worry about real navies chasing us."

"True." Menedemos laughed again, but with little real mirth this time. "That might be a good bargain. By all the signs, there are more pirates running around loose than real warships chasing them."

Sostratos sighed. "We live in troubled times."

"Do you think they'll get better any time soon?" Menedemos asked. With another sigh, Sostratos tossed his head.

5

On the fourth afternoon after the brush with the pirates, the lookout at the bow called, "Land! Land dead ahead!" and Menedemos knew it had to be Cape Tainaron, the most southerly point on the mainland of Hellas. The Aphrodite had sailed through the narrow channel with Cape Maleai and Cape Onougnathos on the right hand and the little island of Kythera on the left not long before, so he'd been expecting the call, but it still sent a jolt of mixed excitement and alarm through him.

We'll pick up some mercenaries here, he thought. We'll take them to Taras - maybe even to Syracuse, depending on what kind of news we hear when we get to Italy - and we'll rake in the silver doing it. He did his best to keep that thought uppermost, but another one kept intruding. We'll rake in the silver, provided we get away from Tainaron in one piece.

Diokles said, "Even if the lookout hadn't seen land, all these other ships bound for the tip of Tainaron would tell us we were heading towards a fair-sized town."

"A fair-sized town at the tip of the cape has to be supplied by sea," Menedemos answered. "You can't get much in the way of grain down there by road. You can't get much of anything down there by road - which is why the mercenaries have their camp there."