Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Sostratos sniffed at the dirt, tasted of it. He was a trader, not a farmer, but, like most Hellenes, he knew something about judging soils. If this dirt wasn't rich with brimstone, he would have been astonished. No wonder the grapevines grew so exuberantly.

He led the mule over to the rock and climbed aboard it once more. It let out an amazingly human-sounding sigh, as if to say it had hoped its work was done for the day. But, being a reasonably good-natured beast, it consented to walk on with no more complaint than that.

After a while, Sostratos halted again, this time under the shade of a gray-branched, gray-green-leaved olive tree. The mule nibbled at grass that grew in little patchy clumps in the shade while Sostratos ate barley bread and sheep's-milk cheese and drank from a little jar of some local wine or another. He thought about sleeping for a while in the heat of the day, but tossed his head. Menedemos would say that was asking for trouble, and he'd very likely be right.

And so Sostratos mounted the mule once again - awkwardly this time, because he had no rock handy to give himself a boost, but he managed. The mule protested much more loudly and vehemently than it had before: it was convinced he was extorting an unfair amount of work from it. He had to whack its haunch with the flat of his hand to make it get going again.

He looked back toward the gray stone walls of Pompaia. He had no trouble spotting the town; he'd been riding mostly uphill, so it hadn't vanished behind higher ground. But he was surprised at how many stadia the mule, dismayed braying and all, had managed to cover. A glance at the sun showed noon already gone.

"Time to head back," he told the mule, and turned it toward the Sarnos River once more. It seemed no happier about going downhill than it had about going up-, and almost bucked him off over its head when an ocellated lizard as long as his arm dashed across the road in front of it.

"Hold still, you stupid, gods-detested thing!" Sostratos cried, hanging on to the mule's bristly mane for dear life till he got an arm around its neck. "It's not even a snake. It couldn't hurt you if it bit you." He didn't think the beast believed him.

Some time later, when he was a good deal nearer to Pompaia and the farms clustered more closely together, a large gray-and-white dog of a breed he'd never seen before advanced on the mule from a field. By the dog's fierce, stiff-legged gait and by the way it bared long, sharp teeth, Sostratos wouldn't have been the least surprised to learn it was half wolf.

As it came nearer and snarled again and again, he drew the sword that he hadn't needed against robbers. Fighting a dog from muleback was about as close as he cared to come to actual cavalry combat.

But the mule proved not to need his help. The harmless lizard had terrified it. It brayed at the dog - which really could have done it harm - and lashed out with its forefeet. The dog made one little barking rush, then decided it didn't feel like sampling either mule or Hellene after all. It loped off toward a round stone farmhouse with a thatched roof a couple of plethra from the road. The mule seemed inclined to pursue it.

Sostratos yanked back hard on the reins. The mule brayed and gave him a resentful stare. He stared back. "You really are a stupid creature," he told it. "You don't know the difference between what can hurt you and what can't." By the way it tried to pitch him off onto the dirt road again, it believed him no more than it had about the ocellated lizard.

He got into Pompaia a little before sunset, exactly as he'd planned, and succeeded in making his way back to the agora from the northern gate without having to ask directions of anyone. After returning the mule to the local from whom he'd hired it, he walked over to Menedemos: walked with a slow, rolling, bowlegged stride, for he'd done no riding for a long time before this.

His cousin laughed, recognizing the signs. "Don't you wish you'd stayed here with us?" Menedemos asked.

"I do not," Sostratos replied with dignity. "I've gone exploring, and I'm glad I did it."

"Have any trouble?"

"Oh yes - twice." Sostratos dipped his head. He made as if to draw the sword again. "Once I almost had to fight."

"Do you see? Do you see?" Menedemos said, his voice rising in excitement. "I told you it was dangerous out there. You're probably lucky to get back here alive. What happened, by the gods?"

"You're right - the Italian countryside is a rougher place than I ever thought it was," Sostratos said gravely. "The first time, a lizard tried to carry off my mule: that's what the mule thought, anyhow. And then we were assailed again, the second time by a . . . stray dog."

The sailors in the market square with Menedemos laughed. After a moment, so did Sostratos' cousin. He said, "All right, you got by with it. If you want to make me look the fool, I don't suppose I can blame you. But I still say you were the foolish one for going off by yourself."

Sostratos grunted. He'd hoped for more of a rise out of Menedemos. What was the fun of annoying him if he wouldn't get annoyed? Dissatisfied but doing his best not to show it, Sostratos asked, "How did you do here?"

Now Menedemos' face lit up. "I'll tell you, I'm tempted to stay here longer, to the crows with me if I'm not. I sold Ariousian, I sold silk, I sold perfume, I sold a peafowl chick. A lot of these Pompaians look to have more silver than fancy goods to buy with it, so they leap hard when they see something they want."

"Do you think the same won't hold true in Neapolis?" Sostratos asked. "That's a real polis, and the folk there won't have seen the kinds of things we've got any more than the Pompaians have."

"Some truth to that - but only some, I think," Menedemos said. "Ships from Hellas surely come to Neapolis more often than they put in here."

"You may be right," Sostratos said. "Even so, though, I've seen as much of Pompaia and the countryside as I care to."

"Well, yes, but have we seen as much of Pompaia's silver as we're going to? That's the real question, wouldn't you say?"

"You're the captain. I can't tell you when to sail," Sostratos answered. "I'm just thinking that in a small town like this, you do most of your business right at the start, and then it peters out after that." Menedemos looked mulish. Have had all too recent experience with a veritable mule, Sostratos had no trouble noting the resemblance. With a sigh, he said, "Very well, O best one. If you want to stay in Pompaia a while longer, stay a while longer we shall."

"That's right," Menedemos said smugly.

Menedemos glanced out over the agora. He was beginning to hate Pompaians. Over the past two days, he'd sold one amphora of Ariousian, one bolt of Koan silk, and not a single peafowl chick. He wasn't even meeting the Aphrodite's expenses, let alone turning a profit.

His glare reached over to Sostratos. His cousin only smiled back, which irked him further. Had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, they could have had a good, satisfying, air-clearing quarrel. Of course, had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, Menedemos' pride probably would have made him keep the Aphrodite tied up outside Pompaia for another couple of days. He knew that perfectly well. In fact, he was looking for the excuse.

But Sostratos kept his mouth shut. He just went on smiling that irritating, superior smile. As sunset of the second long, boring, empty day neared, Menedemos knew he was beaten. "All right," he snarled, as if Sostratos were arguing with him. "All right, curse it. Tomorrow morning we'll head up toward Neapolis."

"Fair enough," his cousin said. "All things considered, the stop was worthwhile - we did make money here."

"Well, so we did." Menedemos gruffly allowed Sostratos to let him down easy.