Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Arrows started thudding into the Aphrodite's planking. The two ships were only about three plethra apart now, and closing fast. Menedemos wished he had a catapult up on the foredeck, not cages full of peafowl chicks. A few of those darts would give the Romans something to think about! Of course, the catapult would also make the akatos bow-heavy as could be; not even a trireme could afford the weight of such an engine. A rower howled with pain. He sprang up from his bench, an arrow transfixing his right arm. Another sailor took his place. The Aphrodite scarcely faltered. Menedemos let out a silent sigh of relief.

Each heartbeat felt as if it came about an hour after the one just past. Menedemos' gaze fixed on the Roman trireme's ram. He could read the other captain's mind. If these mad merchants want a head-on collision. I'll give them one, the barbarian had to be thinking. My bigger ship will roll right over theirs and capsize it, sure as sure.

Menedemos didn't want a head-on collision: that was, in fact, the last thing he wanted. But he had to make the Roman captain think he did up till the last possible instant, which was just about . . . now.

Another wounded rower screamed, and another. Menedemos ignored them. He ignored everything, in fact, but the onrushing bulk of the enemy trireme and the feel of the steering-oar tillers in his hands.

He tugged on the tillers ever so slightly, swinging the Aphrodite to port just before she and the trireme would have smashed together. At the same time, he cried out in a great voice: "Starboard oars - in!"

As smoothly as they had in practice farther south, the rowers brought their oars inboard. Instead of ramming the Roman trireme, the Aphrodite glided along beside her, close enough to spit from one ship to the other. And the merchant galley's hull rode over the trireme's starboard oars and broke them as a man's descending foot would break the twigs of a child's toy house.

Rowers aboard the Roman ship screamed as the butt ends of the oars, suddenly propelled by forces much greater than they could generate, belabored them. Menedemos heard two splashes in quick succession as Roman marines fell into the sea. Their armor would drag them down to a watery grave. His smile was fierce as a wolf's. He wanted to wave good-bye to them, but couldn't take his hands off the tillers.

The Aphrodite slid past the crippled trireme. "Starboard oars - out!" Menedemos shouted, and his ship, undamaged, pulled away from the Roman vessel. He looked east. The rest of the Roman fleet had headed up the Sarnos. He was all alone with this ship that had tried to sink him. Now he did turn and wave to the man at the trireme's steering oars. The fellow was staring back over his shoulder at the merchant galley, his eyes as wide as any man's Menedemos had ever seen.

"You can ease back on the stroke now, Diokles," Menedemos told the oarmaster. "Let us get a little distance between our ship and that polluted barbarian, and then . . ."

"Aye aye, skipper!" Diokles said. Menedemos had never heard so much respect in his voice. And I earned it, too, by the gods, he thought proudly.

"What are you going to do?" Sostratos asked.

"I'm going to ram that wide-arsed catamite, that's what." Menedemos' voice was savage as a maenad's. "Romans don't sail any too bloody well. Let's see how good they are at swimming."

"I wish you wouldn't," Sostratos said.

"What?" Menedemos stared. He wondered if he'd heard correctly. "Are you out of your mind? Why not? You treat your friends well and your enemies badly, and if these bastards aren't enemies, what are they?" He tugged on the steering-oar tillers to bring the akatos' bow around to bear on the trireme. The Romans were starting to shift oars from their undamaged port side to starboard. That would eventually let them limp away, but it wouldn't let them escape a vengeful Aphrodite.

"They're enemies, all right," Sostratos said. "But think - wasn't it wildest luck that we hurt them in the first place?"

"Luck and a good crew," Menedemos growled. He still hungered for revenge.

"Agreed. Agreed ten times over," Sostratos said. "But now that we've been lucky once, wouldn't another run at that cursed big ship be hubris? Suppose the ram stuck fast. All those marines - except for the ones we knocked into the drink, I mean - and all those rowers would swarm aboard, and that would be the end of that."

Menedemos grunted. He wanted to tell his cousin there wasn't a chance in the world of that happening. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Such mishaps were all too common; ramming could be as hard on the attacking ship as on the victim. And if that did happen here, it would be as deadly to the Aphrodite as Sostratos said. He took a deep breath and let it out, then blinked a couple of times almost in surprise, like a man suddenly lucid again after a ferocious fever broke.

"You're right," he said. "I hate to admit it - you have no idea how much I hate to admit it - but you're right. Let's get out of here while the getting's good."

"Thank you," Sostratos said softly.

"I'm not doing it for you," Menedemos said. "Believe me, I'm not doing it for myself, either. I'm doing it for the ship."

"This far from home, that's the best reason," Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged, despite watching Diokles dip his head. He'd made his decision. That didn't mean he had to like it.

The Romans on their trireme's deck gawked at the Aphrodite as she passed safely out of arrow range. Menedemos thought some rowers were gaping out through the oar ports, too. "Got a little lesson today, didn't you?" he shouted at them; though they were a long way off and probably didn't speak Greek anyhow. His rowers were much less restrained. They blistered the Romans with curses they'd picked up all over the Inner Sea.

"I don't suppose we're heading up to Neapolis any more," Sostratos remarked.

"What? Why not?" Menedemos said in surprise.

As if to an idiot child, his cousin answered, "Because how do we know that that's the only Roman fleet around? Suppose four triremes come after us the next time. What do we do then?"

"Oh." Menedemos blinked. He rubbed his chin as he thought. At last, he said, "Well, best one, you're right again. Twice in one day - I didn't think you had it in you." He grinned at Sostratos' splutters, then went on, "I hadn't thought it through. I was too busy dealing with that one bastard."

"And you did it splendidly," Sostrastos said. "I thought we were doomed."

So did I, Menedemos thought. Aloud, he answered, "If you've got only two chances - one bad, the other worse - you do the best you can with the bad one." He raised his voice to call out to the sailors: "Lower the sail from the yard. We're heading back down south, and the wind should be with us most of the way."

Men leaped to obey. They'd leaped ever since Aristeidas first spotted the Roman triremes. Then it had been out of fear. Now . . . Now it's because they admire me, Menedemos thought. And after what I did, they should.

One of the sailors said, "Pity we can't land and set up a trophy to remember this by."

That only made Menedemos prouder. He showed it in an offhand way: "The barbarians wouldn't know what it meant, anyhow, and they'd just plunder it. We have our trophy, perfect in memory forever."

"That's right, by the gods," Diokles said. "And we've got a story we can drink on in every wineshop from Karia to Carthage, too."

"Truth," Menedemos said.

But Sostratos tossed his head. "I don't think so."

"What? Why not?" Menedemos demanded.

"Wrecking a trireme with an akatos?" Sostratos said. "Be serious, O cousin of mine. Would you believe a story like that if you heard it?" Again, Menedemos thought for a moment. Then he too solemnly tossed his head.

Sostratos was glad to sail south past the island of Kapreai. He doubted whether any Roman fleet, no matter how aggressive, would ever dare to come deep into Great Hellas. And, after beating a trireme, he didn't worry nearly so much about piratical pentekonters as he had before.