Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

He thought he pleased her when they lay down together. Afterwards, though, she started to cry. Awkwardly, he stroked her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I do have to go."

"I know," she wailed. "And I have to stay." Her tears splashed down on his bare shoulder. They felt hot as melted lead.

"There's no help for it," Sostratos said. "Maybe it will be better from now on. We've tried to do things so it would be." Yes, I'm trying to salve my own conscience, too, he thought.

"Maybe." But Maibia didn't sound as if she believed it, and Sostratos' conscience remained unsalved.

8

With the coast of Italy on his right hand, with the Aphrodite's steering oars firm in his grip, with the poop deck rolling gently beneath his bare feet, Menedemos felt at home once more. "By the gods, it's good to get back to sea."

"I suppose so." Sostratos didn't sound convinced.

"You've been sour ever since we left Taras yesterday morning." Menedemos eyed his cousin. "You're pining for that redhead girl. Foolish to get yourself in such an uproar over a slave."

"You're a fine one to speak of foolishness," Sostratos snapped: that had got his notice. "How's your ankle feeling these days?"

"It's doing pretty well," Menedemos answered blithely. "It hardly bothers me unless I turn just the wrong way." That exaggerated his improvement, but not by a great deal. He got in a jab of his own: "At least I never imagined I was in love with Phyllis."

"I wasn't in love with Maibia," Sostratos said. "She hoped I would be, but I wasn't. I'm not so silly as that."

"Well, what is your trouble, then? Was she that good in bed?"

"Never a dull moment - I will say that," his cousin replied. "I do feel bad about leaving her back there to take on all comers again."

"All comers, indeed," Menedemos said, and Sostratos gave him a dirty look. Trying to get Sostratos to show a little common sense, Menedemos went on, "Do you think she thinks you were all that wonderful?"

His cousin turned red. Stammering a little, he answered, "I - I like to think so, anyhow."

"Of course you do. But are you thinking straight? To a girl in a brothel, a man's just another man, a prick's just another prick." Menedemos leered at Sostratos. "Or are you another Ariphrades? He found a way to make the girls in the brothels happy with him." Grinning, he quoted from Aristophanes' Wasps:

\t" 'And so Ariphrades is the very cleverest fellow.

His father swore he learned from no one else,

But taught himself by his own wise nature

To work his tongue in the whorehouse, going in time after time.' "\t

Sostratos looked revolted. "I wouldn't do anything like that," he said.

"I did hope not, best one," Menedemos said. "But if this girl was really mooning over you, I wondered if you'd given her some strange sort of reason." He quoted Aristophanes again, this time from the Knights:

\t" 'Whoever isn't altogether disgusted with such a man

Will never drink from the same wine cup with us.' "\t

"Nor with me." Sostratos raised an eyebrow. "I read the historians, and try to remember things they say that will help us when we trade. You read Aristophanes, and what do you remember? The filthiest parts, that's what."

"If you're going to read Aristophanes, that's the stuff worth remembering," Menedemos said. "And I read Homer, too, and there's nothing filthy about him." He glared a challenge at Sostratos. His cousin was so infected with radical modern ideas, he might even try to argue about that.

But, to Menedemos' relief, Sostratos dipped his head. "Nothing wrong with Homer."

"And nothing wrong with Aristophanes, either," Menedemos said stoutly. "He's just different from the poet." Wherever Hellenes lived - a vast stretch of ground indeed these days, after Alexander opened the whole of the east - Homer was the poet.

"You're looking for a quarrel," Sostratos said. Menedemos didn't deny it. If a quarrel would shake Sostratos out of his funk, Menedemos was ready to give him one. But his cousin just laughed. "I don't really care to squabble today, if it's all the same to you."

"All right," Menedemos said. Whether Sostratos felt like squabbling or not, he sounded a little more like himself. And if he sounded more like himself, he could be used: "Go forward and see how the peafowl chicks are doing. They're still your babies, you know."

"My babies?" Sostratos exclaimed in moderately high dudgeon. "The peacock was welcome to his ladies, as far as I'm concerned. All I ever wanted to do with them was roast them, not screw them." Clicking his tongue between his teeth at the absurdity of the notion, he headed up toward the foredeck.

Menedemos chuckled a little, under his breath. Sostratos did seem a bit happier. And every heartbeat put Taras farther behind the Aphrodite. The longer Sostratos was away from Maibia, the more likely he was to stop brooding about her. Maybe he'd get himself another girl he enjoyed. That would help.

Sostratos had plenty of hands to help him now: a brisk breeze from the north meant the Aphrodite went by sail, with the rowers off their benches and free to chase chicks. Diokles pointed southwest and asked, "Do you aim to put in at Kroton, skipper?"

"I hadn't planned to," Menedemos answered. "It's a good-sized town, I suppose, but it's not a place where much ever happens." The keleustes raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He knew his place; he wouldn't come right out and tell his captain he thought him wrong. But his expression was eloquent enough to make Menedemos pause and reflect. "Oh," he said. "You want to find out how the war is going before we try rounding Italy and heading up through the Sicilian Strait, don't you?"

"Might be a good idea." Diokles' voice was dry.

"Well, so it might," Menedemos admitted. "All right, we will put in at Kroton. Who knows? Maybe we'll sell something."

Kroton boasted the only real harbor between Taras and Rhegion - and to reach Rhegion, the Aphrodite would have to round the south-westernmost tip of Italy and start up into the strait. If the Syracusans or Carthaginians had ships in the neighborhood, that wouldn't be a healthy thing to do.

Menedemos worked the steering oars to change course to the southwest. At his command, the sailors swung the yard to take best advantage of the breeze on the new course. Had he not given the command, they might have done it on their own. They knew what wanted doing, and went about it without any fuss.

The harbor mouth faced northeast, so the men didn't even have to go to the oars to bring the Aphrodite into port. But the water inside the harbor remained choppy, for Kroton wasn't a town with all the latest improvements, and had built no moles to break the force of the sea. A lot of boats and even ships had simply been dragged up onto the beach, too, but Menedemos managed to find space at one of the piers.

"What do you hear from Sicily?" he called to a skinny fellow standing on the quay.

"Who're you, and what news have you got?" the Krotonite returned, his Doric accent much like that of Taras.

"We're out of Rhodes," Menedemos said. He gave his own name, and told of the deaths of Roxane and Alexandros, and of Polemaios' defection from Antigonos, his uncle. The local soaked up the news from the east like a sponge soaking up water. When Menedemos finished giving it, he repeated his own question: "What's the word from Sicily?"

"Well, the Carthaginians still have Syracuse harbor shut up pretty tight," the Krotonite answered. Menedemos dipped his head. He'd expected that; were it not true, he'd have seen more Syracusan ships in Taras. The dock lounger went on, "The barbarians have an army moving to lay siege to the place, too."

"Does it look like falling?" Menedemos asked anxiously; that would be a disaster.

With a shrug, the Krotonite said, "Who knows? They do say Agathokles pulled a fast one on his enemies in town, though."