Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"Let's hope we don't find out," Sostratos said. "They're traveling under sail, and they look as if they know just where they want to go. May they keep right on going."

"May it be so," Menedemos said. "They look like they're heading straight for the mouth of the Sarnos. Maybe they aim to raid Pompaia." He spoke before his cousin could: "If they do, it's a good thing we got out of there this morning. If they'd caught us tied up at the pier, they could have done whatever they pleased with us."

"That's true, and I'm glad we're away, too," Sostratos said - as close as he came to I told you so, and not close enough to be annoying. Then he grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly. "The trireme closest to us just brought out its oars. It's . . . swinging this way."

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, a pestilence," he said softly. Sostratos was right, not that he'd really expected his cousin to be wrong. And when a full crew rowed a trireme, she fairly leaped through the water - she had a hundred seventy men at her three banks of oars, compared to the Aphrodite's forty on a single level. "Pick up the stroke," Menedemos told Diokles.

"We're doing everything we can now, captain," the keleustes answered. "She's faster than we are, that's all." Menedemos cursed. He knew that. He knew it much too well. And if he hadn't known it, the way the trireme got bigger every time he looked at it would have told him.

Sostratos was peering aft with a fascination somewhat less horrified and more curious. "There's a wolf painted on the mainsail," he remarked. "Who uses the wolf for an emblem?"

"Who cares?" Menedemos snarled.

To his surprise, Diokles said, "The Romans do - those Italians who're fighting the Samnites."

"How do you know that?" Sostratos asked, as if discussing philosophy at the Lykeion in Athens.

"Tavern talk," the oarmaster answered, as Menedemos had a few days before. "You hear all sorts of things sitting around soaking up wine."

"How interesting," Sostratos said.

"How interesting that we know who's going to sell us for slaves or knock us over the head and pitch us into the drink," Menedemos said. The trireme was gaining on the Aphrodite at a truly frightening rate. As he watched, the Romans - if they were Romans - brailed up the sails and stowed the mast and foremast. Like Hellenes, they would make their attack run under oar power alone.

They weren't the best crew in the world, nor anything close to it. Every so often, a couple of oars would bang together or a rower would catch a crab. Their keleustes was probably yelling himself hoarse, trying to get more out of them. But they had so many men at the oars, their little mistakes hardly mattered. Against another trireme, they might have, but against an akatos with fewer than a quarter as many rowers? Not likely.

Not likely if we keep running, anyhow - they'll just run us down, Menedemos thought. His men were rowing as if possessed, sweat streaming down their bare torsos. They couldn't hold such a pace much longer, and even this pace wasn't doing anything but putting off the inevitable.

If we keep running, they catch us. But what can we do except keep running? All of a sudden, Menedemos laughed out loud. It was a slightly crazed laugh, or perhaps more than slightly - both Sostratos and Diokles sent him sharp looks. He knew just what it was: the laugh of a man with nothing to lose.

"Port side!" he called, and the heads of the rowers on that side of the ship swung toward him. "Port side!" he sang out again, so they would be ready for whatever command he gave them. Then he shouted once more, and this time he gave the order: "Port side - back oars!"

He felt like cheering at the way the men on the oars obeyed him. He had a good, tight crew, one of which he could be proud. Most of the men had pulled an oar on a Rhodian warship at one time or another, and his work and Diokles' had, as the saying went, beaten them into a solid, steady unit. The Romans behind them, he was sure, would have made a hash of the maneuver.

He hauled back on one steering-oar tiller and forward on the other, aiding the Aphrodite's turn back toward her pursuer. As she spun on the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea, he called out to the handful of sailors not on the oars, "Get the sail brailed up to the yard!" They too leaped to do his bidding.

It was a godlike feeling, sure enough - and would have been even more so had he not known just how bad the odds against him still were. Sostratos said, "You're not going to attack them?" His voice broke like a youth's on the word he had trouble believing.

"They'll run us down and ram us if we flee," Menedemos answered. "That's certain sure. This way, we have a chance."

"A small chance," Sostratos said, which reflected Menedemos' thoughts altogether too well.

He bared his teeth in what only looked like a smile. "Have you got a better idea, O cousin of mine?" After a long moment, Sostratos tossed his head.

No sooner had he done so than Menedemos forgot about him. All his attention focused on the Roman trireme and on the rapidly narrowing stretch of water between them - down to a few stadia now. He raised his eyes from the trireme for an instant to look at the rest of the Roman fleet. The other ships were unconcernedly sailing on toward the mouth of the Sarnos. Their captains thought one trireme was plenty to chase down a merchant galley.

They're liable to be right, Menedemos thought. No, by the gods - they're likely to be right.

But then he tossed his head. He couldn't afford doubt now, not if he was to have even a small chance against that much larger ship. If Sostratos were at the steering oars now, would doubt paralyze him? Menedemos tossed his head again. He didn't have time to wonder, either.

He watched the Roman trireme. It was cataphract - fully decked - as a bigger ship, a four or a five, would have been. Marines in bronze helms and corselets and nearly naked sailors ran about on the deck. Some of them pointed toward the Aphrodite. Faint across the water, he heard their shouts.

They wonder what in Tartaros I'm up to. Maybe they think I've lost my mind. I wonder, too. Maybe I have.

On came the trireme, looking bigger and fiercer with every heartbeat. Its ram, aimed straight at Menedemos' ship, sliced through the sea as smoothly as a shark's snout. Its oars rose and fell, rose and fell, with almost hypnotic unity. Almost - sure enough, that crew either hadn't been together long or wasn't well trained. Menedemos' rowers were much more professional - but, again, he measured forty men against the Roman captain's one hundred seventy. That gave the barbarian a lot of room for error . . . and Menedemos none whatever.

More Roman marines came up on deck. The two ships were close enough now for Menedemos to see they carried bows. They were as jumpy as anyone else on either galley - they started shooting well before the ships were in range. One after another, their arrows splashed into the sea in front of the Aphrodite.

But that wouldn't last, and Menedemos knew it. "Anyone who's wounded," he called, "get up from your oar if you're too badly hurt to keep rowing. You men who aren't at the oars, jump in as fast as you can. And everyone, by the gods! Listen for my commands and obey them the instant you hear them. If you do, we can beat that big, ugly, clumsy trireme. We can!"

The rowers raised a cheer. Before Sostratos said anything, he came up close to Menedemos, which showed better sense than he sometimes used. In a low voice, he asked, "How can we beat that big, ugly, clumsy trireme?"

"You'll see." Menedemos did his best to show the confidence he was also doing his best to feel. He patted his cousin on the arm. "Now do get out of the way, best one, if you'd be so kind. I have to be able to see straight ahead." For another wonder, Sostratos moved aside without argument.