Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Two of the sailors Roman arrows had hurt quickly began to heal. The third had taken a wound in the belly. Even though the injury didn't look too bad, he began to run a high fever. It soon became clear he wouldn't live.

The men began to mutter among themselves. Few ritual pollutions were worse than having a corpse on board. "What are we going to do?" Menedemos murmured to Sostratos, not wanting anyone else to hear. "It's as if they're forgetting we beat that trireme."

"Let's put him in the boat," Sostratos answered. "He's too far gone to care what happens to him, and that way the Aphrodite won't be polluted when he dies. We can either have a priest cleanse the boat when we put in at a polis or else, if we have to, just buy a new one."

Menedemos stared at him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "Those brains of yours are good for something after all - every once in a while, anyhow."

"Why did you add that last little bit?" Sostratos asked.

"To keep you from walking around with a swelled head," his cousin answered with a wicked grin.

"Thank you so much," Sostratos said, which only made Menedemos' grin wider. A couple of sailors eased the man with the belly wound down into the merchant galley's boat. Sure enough, he was so lost in his battles with demons only he could see, he hardly noticed being moved. They rigged an awning with sailcloth to keep the sun off him. Every so often, someone went down into the boat to give him watered wine from a dipper. He drank a little, but spilled more.

"Sail ho!" Aristeidas sang out. "Sail ho off the starboard bow!"

Everyone jumped. Sostratos' heart began to thud in his chest. The last time the lookout spied a sail, they'd been lucky to escape with their lives, let alone their freedom. Along with the whole crew - since they were moving under sail, they didn't have anyone facing backwards at the oars - he anxiously peered southward.

After only a few minutes, relief flowered in him. "That's a round ship's sail," he said. "It's bigger than anything a galley would carry."

One after another, the sailors dipped their heads. "If we have to run from a merchantman, we're really in trouble," Diokles said. The laughter the oarmaster got was louder than the feeble joke deserved. Relief, nothing else but, Sostratos thought. He certainly felt it himself.

"He's not running from us," Sostratos remarked after a while.

"No, he's not," Menedemos agreed. "He's tacking his way north - if he turns and runs before the wind, he'll take three or four times as long beating his way back as he would to flee. And, since we're really not pirates, he wins his gamble."

Sostratos wondered if he would have risked life and freedom against convenience. He hoped not. But then, after a longer look at the merchantman, he said, "I don't think he's gambling. I think he recognizes us, and I think I recognize him, too. Isn't that Leptines' ship?"

His cousin squinted to peer across the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. "By the gods, I believe it is," Menedemos said. "All that reading you do hasn't shortened your sight yet, anyhow. Maybe I'll put you up at the bow instead of Aristeidas."

"Don't!" Sostratos tossed his head. "He's a regular lynx - I know his eyes are better than mine. Most of the time, yours are, too, I think - you just weren't paying any attention." If his cousin gibed at him, he was going to return the favor.

Menedemos tugged on the steering-oar tillers, swinging the Aphrodite's bow to starboard, toward Leptines' round ship. "I want to get within hailing distance and warn him off," Menedemos said. "Wouldn't do to have him sail up the Sarnos to Pompaia and right into the jaws of those Roman wolves."

If that wasn't Leptines, and if he hadn't recognized the Aphrodite, then he was a prime fool to let the akatos approach his ship so closely. But, before long, Sostratos saw the tubby skipper with his hands on the steering-oar tillers for his tubby ship.

Leptines lifted one hand from a steering oar to wave. He shouted something Sostratos couldn't make out. Sostratos cupped a hand behind his ear to show as much. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Menedemos doing the same thing.

Leptines tried again. This time, Sostratos understood him: "How was Pompaia?"

"Pompaia was fine," Menedemos yelled. "We did some good business. But you don't want to go there."

"What? What's that you say?" Leptines asked. "Why not?"

"Because there's a Roman fleet attacking the town and the countryside right now, that's why," Menedemos answered. "If you sail up there, you're just sticking your head in the wolf's mouth."

"Herakles!" Leptines exclaimed. "A barbarian fleet? Not pirates? Are you sure? How did you get away?"

He asked more questions than one man could conveniently answer. Sostratos said, "They were Romans, all right - they all had the Roman wolf on their sails," at the same time as Menedemos replied, "One of their triremes chased us, and we crippled it, that's how."

"What?" Leptines said, and he didn't mean he had trouble making sense of two voices at once. "How could you beat a trireme with that puny little akatos of yours? I don't believe a word of it."

"I told you so," Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. His cousin made a horrible face at him.

But the sailors wouldn't let Leptines get away with thinking Menedemos a liar. They still reckoned themselves heroes, and shouted out the details of what they'd done. If they'd been pirates and not the crew of a real, working merchant galley, it would have gone hard for the round ship's skipper and his sailors. For a moment, Sostratos wondered whether it would go hard for Leptines and his men anyway; the sailors from the Aphrodite were in no mood to be slighted.

Leptines didn't need long to figure that out for himself. "All right! All right!" he called. "I do believe you!" By then, the two ships lay only ten or fifteen cubits apart. Had Menedemos or his crew chosen to turn pirate, the other captain could have done nothing to stop him. "Where will you go now?" he asked Menedemos.

"I'd had in mind heading up to Neapolis," Menedemos said. "You know about that - I told you when we were in port together. But who knows how many Roman ships are prowling that stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea right now? Better to head back south, I figured, so that's what I'm doing."

"You figured?" Sostratos said under his breath. This time, Menedemos didn't hear him, which might have been just as well. By the way his cousin spoke, Menedemos was convinced coming south had been his own idea and no one else's. Sostratos knew better.

Or do I just remember differently? he wondered. After a moment, he tossed his head. He knew what had happened there after he talked Menedemos out of ramming the Roman trireme. But his cousin sang another song altogether.

If - no, when - I write my history, how will I be able to judge which of two conflicting stories is the true one? he thought. Both men will be certain they have it right, and each will call the other a liar. How did Herodotos and Thoukydides and Xenophon decide who was right? The next time he looked at their works, he would have to think about that.

Meanwhile, Leptines was saying, "That's smart, getting out of there. Polluted barbarians are everywhere these days. They might as well be cockroaches. We Hellenes should have squashed them before they got so strong." A few days before, he'd extolled the Pompaians. Would he remember that if Sostratos reminded him of it? Not likely, and Sostratos knew it full well.

"Pity you had to work so hard just to turn back," Menedemos said.

"Maybe so, but I thank you for your news," Leptines replied. "Going forward would have been a bigger pity."

"Have a safe trip south," Sostratos said. Leptines waved to him. So did a couple of the round ship's sailors. He waved back. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to catch the wind once more. She began to glide over the waves. Leptines' ship wasn't nearly so handy. Sostratos looked back past the sternpost for some time before he saw the other ship also heading away from trouble instead of toward it.