Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

All that made a certain amount of sense to Sostratos, but only a certain amount. He pointed toward the oncoming war galleys, which were closing with the fleet of grain carriers at a frightening clip - it certainly frightened him. "Do you really think we can fight those even a little bit?" Some of the galleys had two banks of oars - those would be fours. Others had three banks - those would be fives. All of them dwarfed the Roman trireme the Aphrodite had crippled. And Sostratos could see how smoothly the rowers handled the oars. These weren't half-trained crews, like the one in that trireme.

"Of course we can," Menedemos said, so heartily that Sostratos knew he was lying in his teeth.

Sostratos couldn't even call his cousin on it, not without disheartening the crew. The Carthaginian galleys scurried toward the round ships like so many scorpions. The sternposts that curved up and forward over their poops like upraised stings added to the blance. But the galleys carried their stings at the bow, in their rams. White water foamed from the three horizontal flukes of those rams. Sostratos could see it much more clearly than he would have liked.

But then Aristeidas proved he was indeed a first-rate lookout. "Ships ho!" he sang out. "Ships ho off the port bow!" He'd kept looking around while everyone else thought of nothing but the Carthaginian war galleys, and pointed southeast, where another fleet of warships was rounding Ortygia, heading north as fast as their rowers could take them.

"Are those the Carthaginians who'd been patrolling outside the Great Harbor?" Sostratos asked. "If they are, why aren't they coming after us?"

"How should I know?" Menedemos, for the first time, sounded harassed. He'd seemed ready to deal with one fleet. Two . . .

Sostratos hadn't been ready to deal with even one fleet. He didn't think his cousin had, either, no matter what Menedemos said. But, when he saw something strange, he wanted to find out about it.

And find out about it he did. The Carthaginians had come within three or four stadia before they noticed the compact formation of ships to the east. Then Sostratos heard cries in the harsh Phoenician language. The Carthaginian war galleys forgot all about the fleet of grain ships. They turned their prows to the east, ready to ward off the onslaught they expected from the other ships.

Menedemos whooped for joy. "Those aren't more Carthaginian galleys!" he exclaimed. "Those are Agathokles' ships, sailing out of Syracuse to save us!"

The sailors aboard the Aphrodite cheered. They couldn't have been any happier than Sostratos at the thought of those Carthaginian fours and fives bearing down on the akatos, and could know nothing but relief when the enemy fleet's rams turned in a new direction. But then Sostratos said, "If Agathokles aims to rescue us, why aren't his ships turning in on the Carthaginians?"

He'd expected Menedemos to have an answer ready for him. He wasn't ignorant of the sea himself - few Rhodians were - but his cousin knew as much as a man twice his age. All Menedemos said, though, was, "I don't know."

Diokles undoubtedly knew more about the sea than Menedemos. He too sounded baffled. "They're rowing north right on past us, fast as they can go. What are they doing?"

"I haven't the faintest notion," Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head to show he didn't know, either.

Agathokles' fleet kept on heading north, at the best speed the rowers could make. Again, Sostratos heard shouts from the closest couple of Carthaginian war galleys. He wished he understood the Phoenician tongue. Before long, though, the Carthaginians' actions showed what was in their minds: they began to row after the ships from Syracuse, forgetting about the round ships they'd been on the point of capturing or sinking.

"They're more worried about Agathokles than they are about us." Menedemos sounded affronted.

But Sostratos said, "Wouldn't you be? Those ships can fight back. This fleet can't."

He waited for Menedemos to tell him the Aphrodite certainly could fight back. His cousin only sighed, dipped his head again, and said, "But what's Agathokles doing? He's sailing out of the harbor where he's safe, he's sailing away from Carthage, not toward it . . .." His voice trailed off.

What had to be the same thought struck Sostratos at the same time. "If they go along the north coast of Sicily . . ." His voiced faded away, too.

Menedemos took up the idea for him: "They can make for Carthage that way. If that's what Agathokles is doing, he's got balls and to spare." He let out an admiring whistle.

"Look at the way the Carthaginians are chasing him," Sostratos said. "They have to think that's what he's after."

"I do believe you young gentlemen are right," Diokles said. "At least, I can't think of anything else Agathokles'd be up to. And he's a son of a whore who's always up to something, if half the stories you hear about him are true."

"That's the truth," Sostratos said. "Look at how he let his enemies leave the polis and then got rid of them."

"He's ready for anything, sure enough," Menedemos said. "Now we've got to get ready to get into Syracuse ourselves."

"We've got to get ready for more than that," Sostratos said.

"How do you mean?" his cousin asked.

"We've got to get ready to see if we get paid."

"Yes, I suppose that does matter," Menedemos agreed.

"Matter?" Sostratos said. "Matter? Now that we've come all this way without getting killed or captured, making what we were promised would almost make up for the fear we went through getting here. Almost - though I can't think of anything else that would even come close."

Menedemos grinned at him and said, "You worry too much." He pulled back on one steering oar and forward on the other, guiding the Aphrodite toward the waiting, welcoming harbor ahead.

"Yes, of course you'll be paid," the Syracusan official said - officiously - as slaves carried sacks of grain off the Aphrodite and down the quay into hungry Syracuse. "Come to the palace on Ortygia tomorrow, and you shall have every obolos owed you. So Agathokles promised, and so shall it be."

He spoke as if the sun wouldn't rise if Agathokles broke a promise. Menedemos wondered how the Syracusan tyrant's political enemies felt about that. A moment later, he stopped wondering: being dead, they doubtless felt nothing at all.

No matter how bold a front he'd put up for Sostratos and the akatos' crew, he knew he'd stuck his head in the lion's mouth by sailing down to Syracuse. Now he was going to have to put his head there again. If Agathokles - or rather, Agathokles' brother Antandros, who was in charge of the city while the tyrant led the fleet to Africa - didn't feel like living up to the bargain Onasimos the proxenos had made in Rhegion, what could anyone do about it? Not much, as Menedemos knew too mournfully well.

Some of the sweating slaves taking grain off the Aphrodite and the round ships were big, pale, fair-haired Kelts. Some were stocky Italians of one sort or another (Menedemos hoped there were plenty of Romans among them, but couldn't tell by looking). Most, though, had the swarthy, hook-nosed look of Carthaginians.

"Plenty of Hellenes enslaved in Carthage, too," Sostratos said when Menedemos remarked on that. "If you get captured instead of doing the capturing, that's what happens to you. We were lucky, you know."

"Maybe we were." Menedemos could admit it now that they were tied up in the Little Harbor. "But Tykhe is a strong goddess."

"Fortune is a fickle goddess, too," Sostratos said. "Remember what happened to the Athenians who came here a hundred years ago. Most of them would have been lucky with anything so light as lugging sacks of grain."

"I think I've heard you tell that story before," Menedemos said. "Me, I'm more worried about what will happen tomorrow than what happened a hundred years ago."