Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"What do we do if we catch the thief?" Sostratos asked.

"If it's one of the rowers, we'll give him a set of lumps and he'll forfeit his pay and we'll put him ashore at Taras - and good riddance to bad rubbish," Menedemos answered. "If it's one of the passengers . . . well, we'll come up with something." Seeing the look on his cousin's face, Sostratos would not have wanted to be the thief.

Diokles gathered his sailors near the stern. He dipped his head to Sostratos and Menedemos to show they were ready. Sostratos raised his voice. He couldn't make it carry the way Menedemos did, but he managed: "Three peafowl eggs have been stolen. We are going to search for them. We will find them, and we will punish the thief. Each man will turn out his gear, starting with the passengers."

He eyed the four mercenaries. Philippos and Kallikrates looked astonished. Alexidamos and Rhoikos showed no expression. Rhoikos was Sostratos' second suspect. He hadn't done anything illicit Sostratos knew about, but to Rhodians Cretans were thieves and pirates till proved otherwise.

Rhoikos also stood closest to Diokles and his search party. "Let's see your duffel," the oarmaster told him.

"I'll watch to make sure you don't take anything," Rhoikos said, and handed Diokles the leather sack. The keleustes and a couple of sailors started going through it.

Sostratos, meanwhile, kept his eye on the other mercenaries. "Let that be," he called to Kallikrates when the latter made a move toward his sack. "Your turn will come." Alexidamos stood calmly, watching everything going on as if it had nothing to do with him. Isn't that interesting? Sostratos thought. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Menedemos was, too. Seeing his cousin wrong might almost be worth the blow to his own pride at making a mistake.

Diokles looked up from Rhoikos' weapons and tunic and mantle and kilt and his little sack of coins. "No eggs here."

"Kallikrates next," Sostratos said.

Reluctantly, the mercenary handed the keleustes the sack with his worldly goods: cuirass, greaves, helmet, wool headcover to fit inside the helm, sword, a wooden game board with ivory pieces and a pair of bone dice, and a leather sack. Diokles blinked when he picked it up. "Got to be three, four minai in there," he said.

"It's mine, every obolos of it," Kallikrates growled, warning in his voice.

"Nobody said it wasn't," the oarmaster replied, and set it down. "No eggs here, either." Kallikrates visibly relaxed.

"Now Alexidamos," Menedemos called from the steering oars.

The mercenary who'd paid a triple fare to come aboard the Aphrodite pointed to his sack. One of the sailors brought it back to Diokles. He took out Alexidamos' sword and his greaves and his helmet, in which the protective headcloth was bundled. Sostratos stooped and pulled up a corner of the cloth. Under it lay three large, off-white eggs, one of them speckled. "Oh, you bastard," Alexidamos said mildly, as if Sostratos had thrown a double six with Kallikrates' dice. "I thought I'd get away with it."

"You must have, or you wouldn't have done it," Sostratos answered. "Of course, you must have thought you'd get away with it when you took up with that captain's boy, too."

"Of course I did," the mercenary said. "And I would have, too, if the wide-arsed little fool had kept his mouth shut."

Sostratos looked back toward Menedemos. "It's your ship, cousin. What do we do with him?"

"If I threw him over the side, nobody would miss him," Menedemos said. That was true and more than true. No one but the Aphrodite's crew and the other three passengers would even know what had happened to Alexidamos, and none of them seemed likely to care. Menedemos scratched his head. "How much silver has he got there, Diokles?"

"Let's have a look." The keleustes went through the canvas sack till he found Alexidamos' money bag. He hefted it. "Not as much as Kallikrates, but a couple minai, easy."

"I wonder how much is his by right, and how much he's stolen," Sostratos said.

"By the gods, it's mine," Alexidamos said.

"You're not in the best position to be believed," Sostratos pointed out.

"No, you're not," his cousin agreed. "Here's what I'll do. For stealing from the cargo, I fine you a mina of silver. Diokles, count out a hundred drakhmai. Take Athenian owls like he paid us before or turtles from Aigina: we'll make it a nice, heavy mina. And we'll keep him in bonds except when he eats or eases himself till we sight land. Then we'll put him ashore by himself wherever it happens to be, and many good-byes to him, too."

"You might as well kill me now," Alexidamos muttered.

"If that's what you want, you'll have it." Menedemos' voice held no hesitation. If anything, it held eagerness. Alexidamos quickly tossed his head. "No?" Menedemos said. "Too bad." He took a hand off one steering oar to gesture to the sailors. "Tie him up."

They did, ignoring the mercenary's yelps of pain and protest. Diokles counted coins. They clinked musically as he stacked them in piles of ten. Sostratos took the eggs back to the peafowl cages on the foredeck. He got pecked twice replacing them. As far as he was concerned, Diokles was welcome to make a few drakhmai, or more than a few, disappear on his own behalf, too. Maybe the oarmaster would. Diokles was a practical man in every sense of the word.

Alexidamos kept whining and complaining till Menedemos said, "If you don't shut up, we'll put a gag on you. You did this to yourself, and you've got no cause to moan." The mercenary did quiet down after that, but the look on his face was eloquent.

Flying fish jumped from the water and glided through the air. One unlucky fish, instead of falling back into the sea, landed in a rower's lap. "Isn't that nice?" the fellow said, grabbing it. "First time I ever had my opson come to me."

Dolphins leaped from the water, too. Sostratos recalled that Arion had set out from Taras on the journey where the dolphins carried him to shore at Cape Tainaron. When he said as much to Menedemos, his cousin answered, "Well, of course. That's why the Tarentines put a man riding a dolphin on their coins."

Sostratos made an irritated noise. He'd forgotten that, and he shouldn't have. He said, "Now that we've bailed out the ship, may I start exercising the peafowl again? We'll want them at their best when we get in to Taras."

"Yes, go ahead," Menedemos said. "It does look to do them good."

Sure enough, the birds seemed eager to run up and down the length of the Aphrodite. After a while, Sostratos wasn't so eager to run after them. But he and the sailors he detailed to help him stayed with the peafowl. Each one got its exercise and went back into its cage. Sostratos hoped being away from the peahens hadn't hurt the eggs Alexidamos had purloined.

As he hurried past Alexidamos after the peacock, the mercenary growled, "Who would've thought anybody'd keep track of how many eggs each miserable bird laid?"

"I keep track of all sorts of things," Sostratos answered. Alexidamos suggested something rude he could keep track of. He contrived to step on the thief's foot. Alexidamos cursed. Sostratos said, "I told you I keep track of all sorts of things," and went on by to keep track of the peacock.

So things went until, on the afternoon of the sixth day out from Zakynthos, the lookout at the bow - it wasn't Aristeidas, but Teleutas, one of the men Sostratos had taken on at the last moment when they set out from Rhodes - sang out: "Land ho! Land ho dead ahead!"

From his station at the steering oars, Menedemos said, "That's not bad. That's not bad at all. The storm hardly slowed us at all." He raised his voice to call to Teleutas: "Can you make out what land it is? It's got to be Italy, but whereabouts along the coast are we?"

"I'm sorry, captain, but I'm not the one to tell you," the sailor answered. "This is my first time in these waters."