Harry Turtledove - Owls to Athens

Menedemos sneaked an anxious glance toward the sun. It was sinking fast, descending toward the sea that would quench its light. His gaze swung back to the scurrying, scuttling hemiolia. Would he have enough daylight left to finish the chase? He didn’t know, but he intended to find out.

As before, he ordered marines to the bow to shoot at the fleeing ship. She wasn’t in range yet, but he wanted to be ready ahead of time. Philokrates grinned and dipped his head to show he approved. “We’re gaining on them!” the keleustes shouted for the benefit of the hardworking rowers, who were looking away from the chase. “Keep at it. We may catch ‘em before they can beach.”

If the Dikaiosyne could do that, if she could ram or come alongside, grapple, and board, the pirates wouldn’t last long. Menedemos watched the hemiolia as the war galley came up on her. Her captain posted archers at the stern, too-posted them there and then started quarreling with them. Menedemos could guess why. A hemiolia was the fastest galley on the Inner Sea… except, now, a trihemiolia. The skipper and his crew couldn’t have expected to get overhauled, and were probably blaming one another.

But the Karian coastline was coming closer with every stroke of the oars, and the Dikaiosyne wasn’t much faster than her quarry. Getting within arrow range took longer than Menedemos had hoped it would. And then the pirates put on a mad spurt of rowing that would have burst their hearts if they kept it up for long. The oarsmen on the trihemiolia matched it, but the smaller ship slid up onto the beach. Men streamed from her, some naked but for weapons, others gaudy and glittering in finery and gold no doubt stolen. A few stayed close to the hemiolia to shoot at the Dikaiosyne. Most, though, ran for the nearest trees without looking back.

“Do we land and go after ‘em, sir?” Philokrates asked.

Menedemos eyed the sun again. The flattened ruddy ball hung just above the horizon. Regretfully, he tossed his head. “No. No point to it, not when we’ll be fumbling around in the dark. We’ll burn the ship and go home.”

No one argued with him. The hemiolia went up in flames, as the pentekonter had earlier in the day. “A pretty fair patrol,” Philokrates said. “Yes, sir, pretty fair. Far as I’m concerned, O best one, you can take the Dikaiosyne out any time you please.” Both mates grinned and dipped their heads.

“Thank you,” Menedemos said. The words didn’t come close to showing how delighted he was, but they were the best he had. He used them again: “Thank you, friends.”

Sostratos went to the gymnasion more from a dogged sense that he really should than from any real enjoyment he got there. He wasn’t ashamed to take off his clothes and exercise. He’d never had the kind of body a sculptor would choose as a model for Zeus or Ares, but he’d never let himself go soft or get fat, either. Looking down at his angular, knobby frame, he sometimes wondered if he could get fat, even with the most diligent effort. He didn’t care to find out. Like most Hellenes, he believed no man had any business letting himself go to seed that way.

And so, dutifully, he exercised. He ran sprints, his bare feet kicking up the dust. Menedemos wasn’t here; at least he didn’t have to eat his cousin’s dust along with his own. He threw javelins at canvas targets stretched across bales of hay. He shot arrows at the targets, too, grunting with effort because he’d chosen a bow he could barely draw. He was a tolerable-better than a tolerable-archer, which had helped more than once aboard the Aphrodite .

And he dusted his oiled body with sand and got into the wrestling pits to grapple with his fellow citizens. There he came close to having a good time, because he could hold his own with most of them. He didn’t have the lizard-quick reactions that would have made him one of the very best wrestlers, but he used his long limbs to good advantage, he was stronger than he looked-because he was tall and lean, his muscles didn’t bulge the way a squatter man’s would have-and he was always one to come up with new holds and variations on old ones. He used his head when he wrestled, not just his arms and his back.

This morning, he cast down a fellow named Boulanax son of Damagoras, a man of about his own age. Boulanax spat dirt out of his mouth and said, “I didn’t see that coming at all. Show me what you did.”

“Certainly.” Sostratos liked to teach. “When you came at me, I twisted and jerked and threw you over my hip. Do it again, slowly, and I’ll show you just how I got the hold.”

“All right.” Boulanax did. Sostratos went through the throw at half speed this time. “I see.” Boulanax dipped his head and smiled. His body could have been the model for a young Zeus. And he was handsome, too, handsome enough to have been almost as popular as Menedemos when they were youths. But he didn’t seem offended to have lost, as some men did when Sostratos threw them. Instead, he said, “Well, I’ll surprise the next fellow I take on, by the dog. Did you come up with that yourself? “

“As a matter of fact, I did.” By Hellenic standards, Sostratos was modest, but not modest enough to keep from taking credit for what was really his.

“Good for you, then.” Boulanax clapped his hands together in approval. “Why aren’t you in the gymnasion more often?”

“I spent most of the spring and summer in Athens,” Sostratos replied.

“That’ll do it,” the other Rhodian agreed. As Sostratos hoped he would, he took that to mean Sostratos had been studying there, not that he’d been engaging in commerce. Boulanax himself drew the sort of income from his lands that Damonax wished he did. He said, “So you were there when Antigonos’ son drove out Demetrios of Phaleron?”

“Yes, I was,” Sostratos said.

“What do you think of him?”

“He’s formidable, no doubt about it,” Sostratos answered. “Charming, too-I met him.”

“Did you?” The other man’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Wait. Aren’t you the son of Philodemos the merchant?”

Oh, well, Sostratos thought. Now he won’t believe I was studying in Athens. But he answered with the truth: “Philodemos is my uncle. I’m the son of Lysistratos, his younger brother.”

“That’s right. It’s Menedemos who’s Philodemos’ son.” Boulanax’s voice had a certain edge to it. Did he still think of Menedemos as a rival because they’d both been popular as youths? Maybe he did, for that edge remained when he asked, “And how is your cousin doing these days?”

“Very well, thanks,” Sostratos said, pretending not to hear it. “He’s just back from skippering the Dikaiosyne on a patrol against pirates. They burned two pirate ships when they were out there. Admiral Eudemos took him out drinking after he brought the trihemiolia back to Rhodes.” He and Menedemos often chafed each other when they were together, but they presented a united front against the world.

“Two pirate ships?” Boulanax’s eyes widened again. “Euge! That’s fine work. Many goodbyes to them.” No Rhodian would say a word against someone who hurt pirates, even if he didn’t care for the man.

“Menedemos was the one who suggested building trihemioliai in the first place,” Sostratos added, twisting the knife a little. “They’re so fast, they’ve been giving pirates a hard time in these waters.”

“Good.” Boulanax hesitated, then went on, “I hope you’ll excuse me, O best one, but I… just recalled I’m late for an appointment. Good day. Farewell.” He hurried off.

Sostratos suspected that the appointment was mythical, that Boulanax had heard as much good news about Menedemos as he could stand. Selling truffles or wine or crimson dye in Athens wouldn’t have impressed him; that was commerce, and commerce was vulgar. But thinking of a new type of war galley and burning pirate ships- things like those were a different story. They helped the polis, something every Rhodian citizen aspired to do. Boulanax couldn’t look down his nose at Menedemos for them, no matter how much he might want to.