Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"That's splendid." Sostratos clapped his hands. "We sold two birds for the price of three, more or less, or earned a couple of extra days' wages for the whole crew."

"Tempts me to lay over here for one more day," his cousin said. "Maybe Rhegion holds some more rich fools - I mean, customers."

"Well, why not?" Sostratos said. "We can afford it now. And even if we only sell at the regular price, we still come out ahead."

"That's true." Menedemos dipped his head. "All right, then. I'll do it."

Sostratos went into the market square at first light the next morning. Not only did he talk about the Aphrodite's cargo, he called, "Men of Rhegion, two of your fellows have already bought peafowl chicks. Do you want them to be the only ones in this polis lucky enough to own these beautiful birds?"

Men rich enough to buy peafowl chicks might not come to the agora themselves, but their slaves surely would. And he'd found that making people jealous of their neighbors was one of the best ways to get them to part with their silver.

After plucking at his beard in thought, he added, "We also have fine perfume made from Rhodian roses. How many women in Rhegion want to make themselves smell sweet for their husbands?" How many want to make themselves smell sweet for somebody else's husband? went through his mind, too, as it surely wouldn't have done had his cousin had a different nature.

Again, women who might buy Rhodian perfume for themselves - whether respectable matrons or rich hetairai - didn't frequent the agora, but their slaves did. Sostratos pitched that call to the slave women there. He smiled to himself when a couple of them hurried out of the market square. For good measure, he put some extra emphasis on the Koan silk, too.

He returned to the merchant galley at sunset, as he had the day before. "How did we do?" he called to Menedemos as he walked down the gangplank into the ship.

"Didn't sell any more birds." But Menedemos seemed happy enough, and explained why a moment later: "We had a run on silk and perfume, though. One fancy hetaira came herself, veiled up like a rich man's wife. When she took off her veil to haggle . . ." His eyes went big and wide. "Aphrodite, she was gorgeous! If she'd given me some of what she had under her chiton, I'd've let her have the perfume for free."

"I believe that," Sostratos said tartly. "I also believe I'd have let you explain to your father how it came to be that we ended up not having this perfume and not getting any money for it."

His cousin's expression changed to one of horror. "You're a nasty fellow, do you know that?"

"Thank you," Sostratos said, which did nothing to improve Menedemos' temper.

They left Rhegion the next morning. Sostratos expected Menedemos to go up the Italian coast, but his cousin chose to cross the Strait of Sicily to Messene instead. "Why not?" Menedemos said when Sostratos shot him a curious look. "We did well in Rhegion. No reason we can't do it there as well."

"No, I suppose not," Sostratos said, but then he added, "so long as the war in Sicily hasn't come that far north."

"We would have heard in Rhegion," Menedemos replied, which was probably true. He couldn't resist a gibe: "You always fuss."

"If you'd listened to my fussing back in Taras, your ankle would be better off," Sostratos retorted, and Menedemos mimed taking a wound.

From his usual station in the bow, Aristeidas pointed to starboard and called, "Something funny there." A moment later, he found a word for it: "Whirlpool!"

A few sailors exclaimed in alarm. More who weren't rowing hurried to the rail to get a look for themselves. Diokles said, "You get 'em in these waters now and again. It's the current, I expect. Most of 'em don't amount to anything much."

"They can pull a ship down to the bottom of the sea in less time than it takes to tell," a young rower quavered.

"Sure, a big one can," the oarmaster said. "But that one there? Don't be silly. It's not much more than you get when you mix water and wine in the jug called a dinos." That eased the sailors' worries and made several of them smile; the very name of the vessel meant spinner. Sostratos admired Diokles' quick wits.

After Menedemos saw that it wouldn't alarm the men, he began reciting from the twelfth book of the Odyssey:

\t" 'We sailed up the strait, lamenting.

For there was Skylle, and on the other side divine Kharybdis,

A wondrous thing, swallowed the water of the salt sea.

I assure you, when she vomited it forth, she made it boil

And stirred it up as if in a metal pot on a great fire.

The foam fell on the high crags to either side.

But when she gulped down the water of the salt sea

Every place where she troubled came into view: echoing rock

Appeared, a marvel, and the dark sandy earth - and green

fear seized them.' "\t

The nervous young sailor pointed toward the whirlpool and asked, "Skipper, d'you think that's the real Kharybdis?"

Before Menedemos could speak, Sostratos did: "If it is, she's been washed in hot water once too often, because she's shrunk." That got a laugh from the men, and drew a grin and a wave from Menedemos. Sostratos mentally patted himself on the back for coming up with the right thing to say at the right time rather than two days too late. He prided himself on such moments, and wished they happened more often.

The Aphrodite passed within a couple of plethra of the whirlpool. Had it not been for Aristeidas' sharp eyes, nobody would have known it was there. An hour or so later, the merchant galley glided into the little sickle-shaped bay on whose south side the town of Messene sat.

Once the ship lay alongside a pier, Sostratos mentioned the whirlpool to one of the longshoremen who was making a rope fast. The fellow dipped his head. "You're lucky you came away with your lives," he said. "There's plenty of ships been sucked down to the bottom prow-first. They wash up, all broken to pieces, on the shore south of here."

Some of the sailors looked worried again. Sostratos said, "Sounds to me like a story to frighten strangers." The longshoreman gave him a sour stare. He concluded he was right.

As happened at any port around the Inner Sea, a small crowd of curious men gathered on the wharf by the Aphrodite. Menedemos began extolling the goods the akatos had brought to Messene. He also threw in tidbits of news from out of the east. In turn, the Messenians told him what they knew of the war raging farther south on the Sicilian coast. Unfortunately, they knew no more than the folk of Rhegion had.

Sostratos asked, "What will you do here if the Carthaginians do take Syracuse?"

That produced an unhappy silence in the crowd. At last, a skinny, gray-haired man said, "Hope they'll let us pay tribute and not put in a garrison."

"Not me!" a younger man said. "If it looks like the Carthaginians are going to take over all of Sicily, I'm getting out of here. I'm not taking any chances with those whoresons, not me. You know what happens when they sack a city?" He gave a melodramatic shudder.

Without a doubt, the Carthaginians did dreadful things when they took a city. So did Hellenes. Sostratos thought of what Alexander had done to Tyre not long after he was born. That story had been circulating for a generation now, and hadn't shrunk in the telling. Sostratos did a little discreet shuddering himself. Like every other Rhodian, he hoped none of Alexander's surviving generals would cast a covetous eye toward his polis.

As Hellenes had a way of doing, the Messenians standing on the pier divided into factions and started arguing with one another. Before long, they were paying hardly any attention to the Aphrodite: their own quarrel seemed more entertaining. Sostratos nudged Menedemos. "Why don't you run out the gangplank? I'll go into the agora and see if I can drum up some business."