Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Menedemos tossed his head. "I told you, it's too close to craneflying season. Too much chance of a storm's blowing up for me to make the long journey across the open sea. But the pirates will be out. They'll know what honest skippers are thinking, the gods-detested bastards."

For once, though, the usually cautious Sostratos was the bolder of the two of them. "I still think you're worrying too much," he said. "If a pirate sees our hull, what will he think? He'll think the same thing half the fishermen in Great Hellas - and over in the Aegean, too - have already thought: that we're pirates ourselves. We don't look anything like a round ship, after all. And he'll leave us alone."

"Here's hoping you're right." Menedemos looked back over his shoulder toward the rocks of Cape Iapygia, the southeasternmost point of Italy. Soon it would disappear from view, and the Aphrodite would be out of sight of land till Korkyra or the mainland of Hellas or Macedonia crawled up over the eastern horizon. "But dogs eat dogs. Why shouldn't pirates eat pirates?"

"You've said it yourself: we've got enough men aboard to put up a good fight," Sostratos said.

Menedemos' laugh was less cheerful than he would have liked. "Well, maybe we'll find out if I'm as smart as I think I am."

They got their chance to find out sooner than he would have liked. It wasn't Aristeidas who sang out, "Sail ho!" but a sailor who was pissing from the Aphrodite's stern. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, as he had for Cape lapygia. He had to follow the sailor's pointing finger to spot the sail, which wasn't much different in color from the sky or the sea. Whoever captained that ship didn't want it seen.

"Fast," Diokles remarked as the sail got bigger and the hull came into view. It too was painted greenish blue, so as not to stand out against waves and sky. "Almost bound to be a pirate, with that turn of speed and that paint job."

"I was thinking the same thing." Menedemos raised his voice: "Take your weapons, men. We may have a fight on our hands."

The skipper of that other ship was bound to be making calculations about the Aphrodite. Yes, she was a galley, but she didn't try to disguise herself and she was on the beamy side for a rowed vessel. That made her an akatos, not a pentekonter or hemiolia - probably not a pirate ship herself, but still a vessel with a formidable crew, one not to be taken lightly.

When Menedemos got a better look at the pirate ship, he saw she wasn't quite so long and low as he'd expected. She carried two banks of oars, though the rowers' benches of the upper deck aft of the mast could be taken out in a hurry to stow the mast and yard and sail. "Hemiolia," Sostratos remarked, coming up onto the poop deck: he'd noted the same thing.

"Which would mark her for a pirate even without her paint job," Menedemos said. "Not much use for hemioliai except to steal from slow ships and run away from fast ones."

"They might make naval auxiliaries," said Sostratos, who sometimes showed himself altogether too good at looking at all sides of a question to suit Menedemos.

But the hemiolia coming up behind the Aphrodite was without a doubt, without argument even from Sostratos, a pirate. Menedemos, who couldn't conveniently take down his own mast, could and did order the sail brailed up to the yard and put a full complement on the oars. As he'd done twice before, he swung his ship toward the pirate, showing he was ready for a fight if her skipper wanted one.

That skipper didn't run, as the other two had done. But he didn't attack the merchant galley, either. Instead, he shouted across a couple of plethra of seawater: "Ahoy! You coming from Italy? What news?" His Greek held a peculiar accent, perhaps Macedonian, more likely Epeirote.

"You have news of Hellas?" Menedemos shouted back. The pirate captain nodded, which proved him an Epeirote or something of the sort - Macedonians dipped their heads like proper Hellenes. Menedemos went on, "I'll trade what what I know for what you do. I won't give it away."

"All right," the other captain called. "I tell you, Polyperkhon still has Corinth and the isthmus and Sikyon to the west, and he's made friends with the Aitolians north of the Gulf of Corinth."

That was worth knowing. Menedemos spoke of Agathokles' dash to Africa, with the Carthaginian fleet on his heels. "I don't know how long he'll be fighting there, but the war between Carthage and Syracuse won't be the same any more."

"You're right about that, trader," the pirate agreed. "I tell you, too, Polyperkhon has from Pergamon the youngster called Herakles, the son of Alexander the Great and Barsine. He says he will make the youth king of Macedonia."

"He's not really Alexander's son," Sostratos said quietly. "He's just a pretender Antigonos raised up . . . I think."

"I know that - I've heard the same stories you have," Menedemos answered. "But whoever he really is, he's plenty to make Kassandros pitch a fit in Macedonia."

"Well, yes," Sostratos said. "When you think about what Kassandros did to Alexandros and Roxane, you know he doesn't want any heirs to the Macedonian throne running around loose. They hurt his own position."

"What's Polemaios doing?" Menedemos called to the pirate.

"He's still down in the south of the Peloponnesos," the fellow answered. "If that was me, I wouldn't go anyplace Antigonos could get his hands on me. If Old One-Eye caught his nephew now, I bet he'd keep him alive for months."

"You're probably right," Menedemos said. "Speaking of Antigonos, what do you know about the war between him and Ptolemaios?"

"Not a thing," the pirate said, shrugging. "Who gives a fart what happens way over in the east?" He seemed suddenly bored with talking instead of plundering, and shouted orders to his crew. The hemiolia glided south, looking for prey easier than the Aphrodite.

"Which way will you go?" Sostratos asked.

"Over in Corinth, Polyperkhon's got trouble with Kassandros and Polemaios both," Menedemos said. "That makes Cape Tainaron a better bet, I think." Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth, but didn't try to tell him he was wrong.

12

"Telos behind us at last," Sostratos said. His cousin made a face at him, for the Aegean island's name sounded nearly the same as the word for at last. Grinning at Menedemos, he pointed eastward. "And there's Rhodes ahead."

"A good thing, too," Menedemos said. "No guessing how much longer decent sailing weather will hold."

"You've been grumbling about that ever since we left Syracuse," Sostratos said. "The weather couldn't have been much better."

"That's true, but it didn't have to stay good," Menedemos replied. "And when have you ever known a sailor who didn't worry about the weather?"

Sostratos didn't answer that. He eyed the birds overhead flying south for the winter. Sure enough, there was a long, straggling line of cranes, bigger than any of the other birds he could see. Aristophanes had had it right. But he was still wrong about Sokrates, Sostratos thought.

If he said that, he would start a real quarrel, and he didn't feel like one now, not with the Aphrodite so close to home. Instead, he chose something he reckoned harmless. "It'll be good to get back to our family."

But his cousin only grunted. "Good for you, maybe," he said at last. "You wait. My father will say he could have done better and made more money."

He's probably right, Sostratos thought. Uncle Philodemos is never satisfied. Aloud, he said, "Why don't you just smile and dip your head and tell him he's bound to know best?"

"Ha!" Menedemos rolled his eyes. "For one thing, he cursed well doesn't know best. And for another, if I told him he did, he'd fall over dead from the shock. I don't want his blood on my hands even by accident, the way Oidipous had Laios'."