Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Later, he sometimes wondered what would have happened had Sostratos chosen that afternoon to squabble. His life, and his cousin's, would have been very different. He was sure of that, if of nothing else.

In Pompaia, the taverns and brothels lay close by the river. After returning to the Aphrodite, Menedemos sent Diokles and a double handful of sober sailors through them, making sure his crew would be in place and ready to go at dawn. "Tell 'em they can stay with the barbarians here if they don't want to come with you," he instructed the oarmaster.

"Don't you worry about a thing, skipper," Diokles said. "I'll take care of it."

And he did, too, with his usual unfussy competence. He had every sailor back aboard the merchant galley before the night could have been more than two hours old. That was a performance even Menedemos hadn't expected. "By the dog of Egypt, how did you manage?" he asked when Diokles returned with the last two sodden Hellenes.

"Not so hard," the keleustes answered. "All I had to do was listen for real Greek. It would've been a lot tougher job down in one of the towns of Great Hellas."

"All right. Good. You've done everything we've asked of you since we went out from Rhodes, Diokles, and you've done most things better than Sostratos or I would have hoped," Menedemos said. "When we get home, you'll find I haven't forgotten."

"That's mighty kind of you, captain," the oarmaster said. "Me, I'm just doing my job."

"And very well, too." Menedemos looked up to the flickering stars and yawned. "And now you'd better get some sleep. No matter how good a job you were doing, I'd bet you had maybe a cup of wine or two yourself while you were tracking down the boys who'd sooner drink or screw than row."

"Who, me?" Diokles was the picture of innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about." He and Menedemos both laughed. Then he went to perch on a rower's bench and leaned against the planking of the ship, while Menedemos spread his himation on the poop deck and, the night being fine and mild, slept on it rather than under it.

As he usually did, he woke with morning twilight in the air. When he went over to the rail to piss into the Sarnos River, he found Sostratos already standing there. "Good day," his cousin said.

"Good day," Menedemos answered. Having made up his mind to leave, he was already starting to look ahead: "We should squeeze more silver out of Neapolis than we got here - a lot more, with luck."

"Let's hope so," Sostratos said. "We should be there today, shouldn't we?"

"Oh, yes, by Zeus," Menedemos said. "We should be there by noon, or not much later. We'll probably have to row most of the way, though - the breeze feels like it'll be blowing right in our face."

"Maybe it'll swing round a bit once we get out onto the sea," Sostratos said.

"May it be so," Menedemos said. "Come on, let's get the men up. The more we can do before the sun gets hot, the happier we'll all be. One thing - " He chuckled. "We've got all the fresh water we'll need for the trip."

"There is that," his cousin agreed.

As they got ready to disembark, Menedemos instructed the crew: "When I give the order to back oars, I want you to row hard. Our boat has to be clear of the next wharf farther downstream before the current pushes us into it. This business of moving is more complicated than it would be if we were moored in an ordinary seaside harbor."

With Diokles calling the stroke, the Aphrodite did get out into the middle of the Sarnos without any trouble. Menedemos swung the ship's bow toward the mouth of the river. He took most of the men off the oars, but kept half a dozen on either side busy to add speed and precise direction to the current pushing the akatos out toward the Tyrrhenian Sea.

A little naked herdboy watering his sheep at the riverbank waved to the Aphrodite as she glided past. Menedemos lifted a hand from the steering oars to wave back. Diokles said, "This is pretty settled country. A lot of places, he'd run from a ship for fear we'd grab him and sell him somewhere."

"That's true. He'd bring two, three minai, even scrawny as he is." Menedemos shrugged. "More trouble than he's worth." He wondered if he would have said the same thing had the voyage not been turning a profit.

At the bow, Aristeidas pointed ahead and called, "Thalassa! Thalassa!"

"The sea! The sea!" The rest of the sailors took up the cry.

Sostratos, on the other hand, started to laugh. "What's so funny?" Menedemos asked.

"That's what Xenophon's Ten Thousand, or however many of them were left alive by then, called out when they came to the sea after they got away from the Persians," Sostratos answered.

"Xenophon was an Athenian, wasn't he?" Menedemos said. When Sostratos dipped his head, Menedemos went on, "I'm surprised he didn't write, 'Thalatta! Thalatta!' instead." He pointed at his cousin. "Some of that Attic dialect has rubbed off on you - I've heard you say glotta for glossa and things like that."

Hearing his tongue mentioned, Sostratos stuck it out. Menedemos returned the gesture. Sostratos said, "As a matter of fact, if I remember rightly, Xenophon did write, 'Thalattta!' "

"Ha!" Menedemos felt vindicated. "I bet his soldiers, or most of them, said it the way Aristeidas just did."

"You're probably right," Sostratos said. "But if you expect an Athenian to give up his dialect just because it doesn't match the way someone actually said something, you're asking too much."

"I never expect anything from Athenians," Menedemos said. "They'll come up with better excuses for cheating you than . . ." His voice trailed away. His cousin's face had gone hard and cold. A few words too late, Menedemos remembered just how much Sostratos had enjoyed his time at Athens, and just how gloomy he'd been when he first came back to Rhodes. Doing his best to sound casual, Menedemos continued, "Well, I'd better keep my mind on sailing the ship."

"Yes, that would be good." Sostratos sounded like a man holding in anger, too. Menedemos sighed. Sooner or later, he would have to make it up to his cousin.

The Aphrodite wouldn't give him a hard time, not on a fine bright day like today, with only a lazy breeze and the lightest of chop ruffling the blue, blue surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Even so, he steered away from land; he wanted a few stadia of leeway between the merchant galley and the shore. You never can tell, he thought. Ashore, with just his own neck to worry about, he took chances that horrified the cautious Sostratos. At sea, with everything at stake . . . He tossed his head. Not usually.

And so when, some time later that morning, Aristeidas called out, "Sail ho! Sail off the starboard bow!" Menedemos smiled and dipped his head. He wouldn't have to change course - that other ship, whatever it was, would pass well to leeward of him.

But then Aristeidas called out again: "Sails to starboard, skipper! That's not just a ship - that's a regular fleet."

Menedemos' eyes snapped toward the direction in which the lookout was pointing from the foredeck. He needed only a moment to spot the sails himself, and only another to recognize them for what they were. "All men to the oars!" he shouted. "That's a fleet of triremes, and they can have us for lunch if they want us!"

Sailors ran to their places on the benches. Oars bit into the sea. Without waiting for an order from Menedemos, Diokles picked up the stroke. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite away from those low, lean, menacing shapes.

They couldn't be anything but triremes: they sported foresails as well as mainsails, which smaller galleys like pentekonters and hemioliai never did. Looking back over his shoulder, Menedemos did his best to count them. He'd got to eighteen when Sostratos said, "There are twenty."

"Twenty triremes!" Menedemos said. "That's not a pirate's outfit - that's a war fleet. But whose?"