Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

When he opened them, it was still dark. He didn't think he'd slept till he noticed how the galley's motion had eased. It was still raining, but not so hard. "What's the hour?" he asked the man at the steering oars.

"Middle of the night sometime, captain - about the sixth hour, I'd say," the man replied - not Diokles, but a burly sailor named Hagesippos.

"How long has the oarmaster been off?" Menedemos asked.

"I've had the steering oars about an hour," Hagesippos answered. "He gave 'em to me not long after the weather started easing off a bit."

"That sounds like him." Menedemos yawned and stretched. He still felt abused, but he could return to duty. The Aphrodite was his ship. "I'll take them now, Hagesippos. Get some sleep yourself. Stretch out where I was, if you care to."

The sailor tossed his head. "All the same to you, I'll go back to my bench. That's how I'm used to sleeping when we're at sea."

"Suit yourself." Menedemos slapped the sailor's bare shoulder as Hagesippos went down into the waist of the akatos. The slap rang louder than he'd expected: his hand was wet, and so was Hagesippos' flesh.

As the rain diminished, men's snores came through it. The rowers who weren't at their oars grabbed rest as they could. Menedemos wondered how the peafowl had come through the storm. He peered up toward the bow, hoping to spot Sostratos' long, angular form silhouetted against the sky. When he didn't see his cousin, he felt miffed. He knew that was foolish - Sostratos had the right to rest, too - but he couldn't help it.

Because he was miffed, he took longer than he should have to realize he could see stars, there in the north. The rain died to spatters, and then stopped. The clouds blew past the Aphrodite. By the time rosy-fingered dawn began streaking the eastern sky, the storm might never have happened.

Diokles opened his eyes, saw Menedemos at the steering oars, and said, "Well, I might have known you'd be there. When did you take 'em back from Hagesippos?"

"Middle of the night sometime," Menedemos answered with a shrug. "That's what he told me, and how can I guess any closer?"

"You can't," the keleustes agreed. He got up, stretched as Menedemos had, and looked around. "Good weather after the storm."

"I'd sooner it were instead of, not after," Menedemos said. Diokles laughed. Easy to laugh under blue skies on a calm sea. Menedemos laughed, too.

A few at a time, the sailors woke up. So did Sostratos, who'd slept between the rows of peafowl cages. "They all seem sound," he called to Menedemos. Then he stripped off his chiton to let it dry and went around as naked as most of the sailors. That struck Menedemos as a good idea, so he did the same. Bare skin proved a lot more comfortable than soaked wool.

When the whole crew had awakened, Menedemos ordered the men not rowing to break out the several wooden buckets the Aphrodite carried and start bailing the water she'd taken on during the storm. Getting the water out a bucketful at a time was slow, hard work, but he knew no better way to do it, nor did anyone else.

Philippos the mercenary said, "Where are we at, captain? I'm all topsy-turvy on account of that horrible storm."

"We're somewhere in the Ionian Sea," Menedemos answered. Philippos looked as if he wanted a more precise answer. Menedemos wanted one, too; again, he didn't know where to get one. "I couldn't have told you any more than that if the weather'd stayed perfect. If we sail northwest, we'll raise the Italian mainland. Once we do that, I promise we'll find Taras. Fair enough?"

"I suppose so." The mercenary didn't seem convinced. With a shudder, he went on, "Wasn't that the worst blow you ever went through in all your born days?"

"Not even close." Menedemos tossed his head. "We didn't have to lower the yard" - he pointed up to the long spar at the head of the sail - "let alone start throwing cargo overboard to make sure we stayed afloat. This wasn't a little storm, but there are plenty worse."

"Zeus strike me dead if I ever set foot on another boat as long as I live," Philippos said, and descended from the poop deck into the akatos' waist before Menedemos could dress him down for calling the ship a boat.

Sostratos hadn't spent quite so much time asea as Menedemos. He was also a more thoughtful man, more in the habit of imagining things that could go wrong than was his cousin. Both those factors had made the storm seem worse to him than it had to Menedemos.

For once, he almost welcomed the attention he had to give the peafowl. As long as he was busy, he didn't have to think so much. He couldn't let the birds exercise while the sailors were bailing. They wouldn't have had much room to run around, and they would have made nuisances of themselves. He didn't need to give them water, not for a while; they'd had plenty during the storm. But he could pour barley into bowls for their breakfasts, and he did. His spirits lifted when the birds ate well. That was the surest sign the storm had done them no harm.

And he could check on the eggs in the peahens' cages. Being the meticulous man he was, he knew exactly how many each peahen had laid. One, to his annoyance, had broken the day it was laid, falling from the nest to the planks of the foredeck. He imagined drakhmai broken with it. How much would a rich man who couldn't get his hands on one of the peafowl pay for an egg? He didn't know, not to the last obolos, but he'd looked forward to finding out.

Checking the nests was easiest when the peahens came off them to feed. Helen had five eggs in her clutch. That made sense to Sostratos. The peacock had mated with her more than with any of the others, which was how she'd got her name.

"One, two, three, four . . ." Sostratos frowned. He leaned closer to the cage, risking a peck from Helen. He saw only four eggs. He didn't see any bits of shell that would have shown one had fallen out of the nest during the storm. The slats were too close together to have let an egg escape the cage altogether. His frown deepened as he went on to the next cage.

After finishing with the peafowl, he hurried back to the poop deck; pushing past anyone who got in his way. His face must have spoken before he did, for Menedemos asked, "What's wrong?"

"We're missing three eggs," Sostratos answered. "One from Helen's cage, one from the peahen with the scar on her leg, and one from the smallest bird."

"Are you sure?" Menedemos asked. Again, Sostratos' expression must have spoken for him, for his cousin said, "Never mind. You're sure. I can see it. They didn't fall out and break during the storm?"

"No. I thought of that." Sostratos explained why he didn't think it had happened. Menedemos dipped his head to show he agreed. Sostratos went on, "No, somebody's gone and stolen them. How much would a peacock egg be worth? Never mind - we don't know exactly, but more than a little. We can be sure of that. And it's money that belongs to us, not to some thief. We've earned it." As much as his sense of justice, his sense of order was outraged. That anyone else should try to take advantage of all the hard work Menedemos and he had done infuriated him.

"We'll get them back," Menedemos said, and then, less happily, "I hope we'll get them back. When was the last time you counted them?"

"Yesterday morning," Sostratos answered.

"Before the storm." Menedemos still didn't sound happy. "A lot of people have been up on the foredeck since, either securing the cages or just looking at the peafowl. The passengers have all been interested in them." He rubbed his chin. "I wonder if one of them got too interested."

In a low voice, Sostratos said, "I know which one I'd bet on."

"So do I," Menedemos said, also quietly. "Anybody who needed to come aboard in such a tearing hurry isn't to be trusted, not even a little. And Alexidamos is a Rhodian. He's liable to have a better notion of what those eggs are worth than the other fellows. Well, we'll find out." He turned to Diokles, who'd been listening. "Tell off the ten men you trust most. If they're on the oars, set others in their places. Belaying pins and knives should be plenty for this job, but nobody's going to raise a fuss when we search his gear."