Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

He looked into the morning sky. It did seem dimmer than it should have, and more so by the moment. Alarm and something greater than alarm, something he belatedly recognized as awe, prickled through him. "I don't think it's your hangover," he said in a voice hardly above a whisper. "I think it's an eclipse."

The sky kept getting darker, as if dusk were falling. The chatter of wagtails and chaffinches died away. The breeze caressing Sostratos' cheek felt cooler than it had. But his shiver when he peered up toward the sun had nothing to do with that. Like the shadows, it too had been pared to a skinny crescent.

"By the gods!" Menedemos was whispering, too. "You can see some of the brighter stars."

So Sostratos could. And seeing them, oddly, touched a chord of memory in him. Speaking a little louder than he had before, he said, " 'In the same summer, at the time of the new moon - since, indeed, it seems to be possible only then - the sun was eclipsed after noon and was restored to its former size once more: it became crescent-shaped, and certain stars appeared.' "

"It's not after noon," the Syracusan servitor said, his voice raucous in the sudden, uncanny gloom. "It's only about the third hour of the morning."

Menedemos knew his cousin far better than the stranger did. He asked, "What are you quoting from?"

"Thoukydides' history, the second book," Sostratos answered. "That eclipse happened the year the Peloponnesian War broke out, more than a hundred and twenty years ago. The world didn't end then, so I don't suppose it will now." He shivered, hoping he was right. In the face of something like this, rationality came hard, hard.

Screams - from women and men both - showed that a lot of people weren't making the least effort to stay rational. "A horrible monster is eating the sun!" someone howled in accented Greek.

"Is he right?" the servitor with Sostratos and Menedemos asked anxiously. "You fellows sound like you know something about it."

Sostratos tossed his head. "No, he's mistaken. It's a natural phenomenon. And look - it's one that doesn't last long. See? It's already getting lighter."

"Gods be praised!" the servitor said.

"I can't make out the stars any more." Menedemos sounded sad.

Birds started singing again. The clamor that had echoed through Ortygia - and, no doubt, through all of Syracuse - ebbed. The small speckles of sunlight on the ground and walls remained crescent-shaped rather than round, but the crescents seemed wider to Sostratos than they had when the eclipse was at its height.

"Well, that's something I can tell my grandchildren about, if I live to have any." Agathokles' man - Antandros' now - recovered his aplomb quickly.

So did Menedemos. "Lead on, if you would," he told the fellow.

Following them both, Sostratos thought, I should be making notes, or at least standing still and remembering all I can. When will I see another eclipse? Never, probably. But he kept on after his cousin and the servitor. With a sigh, he strode into the palace from which Agathokles had ruled Syracuse and in which his brother now held sway for him.

Before they came into Antandros' presence, more servitors patted them most thoroughly to make sure they carried to weapons. Sostratos thought himself more likely to want to kill someone after that sort of indignity than before it, but kept quiet.

Antandros sat on what wasn't quite a throne. He was older than Sostratos had expected; he'd lost much of his hair, and gray streaked what remained. When a steward murmured to him who Sostratos and Menedemos were, he leaned toward the man with a hand cupped behind his ear. "What was that?" he asked. The steward repeated himself, louder this time. "Oh," Antandros said. "The chaps from the akatos." He turned his gaze on the two Rhodians. "Well, young men, between the Carthaginians and the eclipse, I'd bet you've had more excitement the past couple of days than you really wanted."

We certainly have! Sostratos thought. But before he could speak, Menedemos said, "I always thought a quiet life was a boring life, sir."

Antandros held his hand behind his ear again. "What was that?" As the steward had, Menedemos repeated himself. Antandros said, "My little brother would agree with you. Me, I don't mind sleeping soft in my own bed with a full belly every now and again, and that's the truth."

I'm with you, Sostratos thought. But Antandros' homely desires went a long way toward explaining why Agathokles ruled Syracuse and his older brother served him.

"How many sacks of grain did you bring into the polis?" Antandros asked.

Menedemos looked to Sostratos, trusting him to have the number at his fingertips. And he did: "It was 791, sir," he replied, loud enough to let the man in charge of Syracuse hear him the first time.

Antandros' smile showed a missing front tooth. "Paying you won't even hurt. A merchant galley doesn't hold much next to a round ship, does she?"

"She wasn't built to haul grain, sir," Sostratos agreed, "but we were glad to help your polis as best we could." Menedemos was, anyhow.

Amusement sparked in Antandros' eyes. Sostratos got the feeling Agathokles' brother knew he was lying. But all Antandros said was, "You'll be glad to get paid, too, won't you?"

"Yes, sir." Sostratos wouldn't deny the obvious.

"You will be," Antandros said. "No, you aren't made for hauling grain, sure enough. What other cargo have you got aboard?"

"Rhodian perfume, Koan silk, Ariousian from Khios, papyrus and ink - and peafowl chicks," Sostratos answered.

"What was that last?" Hearing something unfamiliar, Antandros hadn't got it.

"Peafowl chicks," Sostratos said again. "We sold the grown peacock and peahens earlier, mostly in Taras."

"Can't let the polluted Tarentines get ahead of Syracuse," Antandros exclaimed. "Now we have plenty of grain to feed birds, too - plenty of grain to feed everyone. We went from hungry to fat in one fell swoop when the fleet got in. What do you want for these chicks? And how many have you got?"

"We have seven left, sir." Sostratos flicked a glance toward Menedemos. His cousin's lips silently shaped a word. Sostratos fought back the urge to whistle in astonishment. Menedemos didn't do things by halves. But Sostratos had, in a way, asked, and the gamble struck him as good, too. In a calm voice, he went on, "We want three minai apiece."

The steward looked horrified. Privately, Sostratos didn't blame him a bit. "I'll take all of them," Antandros said. "To the crows - no, to the peafowl - with the Tarentines. As soon as I get the chance, I'll send one on to my little brother in Africa."

"Ahh!" With the pleasure of curiosity satisfied and a guess confirmed, Sostratos forgot about the dismayed steward. "So that's what Agathokles was up to! He is sailing around the north side of Sicily, then?"

"That's right." Antandros dipped his head. "Up till now, all the fighting in this war has been here in Sicily. But my brother decided it was time for the Carthaginians to see how they like war among their wheatfields and olive trees. No one has ever invaded their homeland - till now."

"May he give them a good kick in the ballocks, then," Menedemos said. Sostratos thought the same thing. The Macedonian marshals littering the landscape in the east of the Hellenic world were bad enough. Having barbarians overrunning poleis in Great Hellas struck him as even worse.

A moment later, he wondered why. What could the Carthaginians have visited on Syracuse that Hellenes hadn't already inflicted on other Hellenes? The question struck him as no great compliment to Carthage, but rather a judgment on what Hellenes had visited on one another.

Antandros spoke to the steward: "Take them to the treasury. Pay them for the grain and for these birds."

"Yes, sir," the steward replied, though he looked as if he would have said something else had he dared. He turned to Sostratos and Menedemos. "Come with me, O best ones." He didn't sound as if he meant that, either.