Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

After a little more chat, the roustabout did leave. Sostratos hurried back toward the stern and climbed up onto the poop deck. "I don't think we ought to spend much time here at all," he said. "Hipparinos wasn't happy with us when we came here last. Now, thanks to that accursed dog, he'll like us even less."

"And thanks to our giving him the lie about the price he paid," Menedemos added.

"Yes, thanks to that, too," Sostratos agreed. "Besides, we did sell what we could when we were here last. I think we should push on straight to Kallipolis tomorrow morning."

"You're probably right," Menedemos said with a sigh. "The wind's out of the north, though. That means either tacking or rowing, and a two-day trip across the gulf either way."

"Things would be simpler if we could put in at Taras," Sostratos pointed out.

Menedemos glared. "Things would be simpler if you'd keep your mouth shut, too. I'm getting tired of hearing about that."

Had Sostratos pushed it any further, Menedemos would have given him all he wanted and then some. But his cousin just shrugged and said, "We both may be glad not to see each other for a while once we get back to Rhodes." Sostratos pointed north. "What do you make of those clouds?"

After studying them, Menedemos shrugged. "Maybe rain, maybe not. I don't think they look too bad. How about you?"

"They seem the same way to me, too," Sostratos answered, "but I know you've got the better weather eye."

That was true, but it was one more thing Menedemos wouldn't have admitted so casually. He tasted the wind, trying to read the secrets it held. "I think we will get rain if it stays steady. No more than a little rain, though. It's still early in the year for one of those equinoctial storms - a bit early, anyhow."

"Good," Sostratos said. "I was hoping you'd tell me something like that. Because you're so weatherwise, of course I believe you." Menedemos felt proud of that till he remembered how fond of irony his cousin was.

Sostratos woke before sunrise. The eastern sky was just going from gray to pink. Dawn didn't become spectacularly red. That eased his mind; a red, red, sunrise often warned of bad weather ahead. His gaze swung to the north. The clouds covered more of the sky than they had the day before, but not a great deal more.

From behind him, Menedemos said, "I'd like the weather better if we weren't likely to have to spend a night at sea."

Sostratos started. "I didn't know you were awake."

"Well, I am." Menedemos looked up the pier toward the dark, jumbled mass of houses and shops and temples that made up Kroton.

"Expecting Hipparinos with an army of ruffians at his back?" Sostratos asked.

"An army of ruffians and a Kastorian hound with a taste for peafowl." Menedemos' tone was light, but Sostratos didn't think he he was joking. And, sure enough, he started shaking sailors awake. "Come on, boys," he said. "The sooner we're on the open sea again, the better."

"Says who?" a sleepy man asked around a yawn.

"Says your captain, that's who," Menedemos answered.

"And your toikharkhos," Sostratos added, throwing his obolos of authority after Menedemos' drakhma.

Diokles sat up straight on the rower's bench where he'd slept. "And your keleustes," he said. Formally, his rank was lower than Sostratos'. Among the sailors, though, his word carried more weight.

Hipparinos had not made an appearance, with or without bravos, by the time the Aphrodite left Kroton. "Many good-byes to the town, and to the crows with him and his hungry hound both," Menedemos said.

The wind kept backing and shifting, coming now from the north, now from the northwest. When it blew from the northwest, the Aphrodite could sail quite handily, but whenever it swung back toward the north Menedemos had to tack, zigzagging his course with the akatos taking the wind first on one bow and then swinging about to take it on the other. Grunting sailors heaved the yard round till it ran from bow to quarter and slanted toward the breeze. It was a slow business, and a miserably inexact one when it came to setting a course.

"Here's hoping we can find Kallipolis when we get in the neighborhood," Sostratos said.

"As long as I head northeast, I'll strike the mainland somewhere," Menedemos said. "Then we can feel our way along the coast till we come to the island."

"There ought to be a way to navigate more surely," Sostratos said. "The only trouble is, I don't know what it would be."

"If you did, you'd get rich enough to make Kroisos look like a piker," Menedemos said. "Every captain in the world would buy whatever you had."

"Buy it or try to steal it." Sostratos pointed north. "Here come those clouds."

"I think they're finally done fooling around," Menedemos said unhappily. "When they cover the sun, I'll have even less idea of just where we're going - one more drawback to sailing out of sight of land."

"That storm almost sank us the last time you did it," Sostratos said. "I wonder if you offended some god without knowing it."

He didn't mean it seriously. Even so, Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic. Diokles rubbed his apotropaic ring. "Shouldn't say things like that," he muttered, just loud enough for Sostratos to hear.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, rain started pattering down. When Sostratos looked in the direction he thought to be northeast, he couldn't see anything much. All of a sudden, he was glad to be well out of sight of land. Without much in the way of visibility, he had no desire to find land where he least expected it.

Menedemos must have had the same thought. He called, "Aristeidas, go forward. You've got the best eyes of anybody aboard."

"All right, skipper, but I don't think we're anywhere close to shore," the sailor said.

"I don't, either. But I don't care to get any nasty surprises," Menedemos answered. "Besides, you can look out for fishing boats, too, and merchantmen. In this weather, anything can loom up before we know it's there."

Aristeidas dipped his head. "Right you are." He headed up toward the foredeck.

Sostratos blinked as a raindrop got him right in the eye. For a moment, he couldn't see anything. Not seeing anything gave him an idea. "Shouldn't you have a man with the lead up there, too?" he asked Menedemos.

"You're right - I should," his cousin answered, and gave the necessary orders.

The lead splashed into the sea. A few minutes later, the sailor handling it called, "No bottom at a hundred cubits."

"We're still out in the middle of the gulf," Menedemos murmured. He raised his voice: "I thank you, Nikodromos." The sailor waved to show he'd heard and hauled in the line hand over hand.

Rain kept splashing down for the rest of the day. A sail that got a little wet worked better than a dry one: the water filled the spaces in the weave so the breeze couldn't sneak through. But a sail that got more than a little wet grew too heavy to belly and easily fill with air. It hung, almost limp, from the yard, as laundry did from olive branches ashore. Menedemos called men to the oars to keep the Aphrodite moving.

"Gauging your course by the breeze?" Sostratos asked.

"It's all I've got left right now," his cousin answered. "If I keep it on my left hand, not quite straight in my face, we can't go too far wrong."

"That seems to make sense," Sostratos said. But not everything that seemed to make sense was true. He wished he hadn't thought of that.

The sea never got more than a little choppy. This wasn't a real storm, only rain - an annoyance, and a reminder the sailing season wouldn't stretch too much longer. It was indeed time to be heading home.

Dusk fell rather earlier than Sostratos had expected it to. The rain kept falling, too, making the night even more miserable and uncomfortable than it would have been otherwise. "How are we supposed to sleep in this?" Sostratos said.