Harry Turtledove - The Sacred Land

Sostratos didn’t care to argue, either, not when he’d come to thank the Phoenician for his Aramaic lessons. Bowing again, he said, “Your slave is grateful for your hearkening unto him and now must depart.”

“May the gods keep you safe,” Himilkon said, bowing back to him. Sostratos made his way out of the warehouse, past shelves piled high with treasures and others piled even higher with trash. Himilkon, no doubt, would be as passionate about selling the trash as he would the treasure. He was a merchant down to the very tips of his toes.

After the gloom inside Himilkon’s lair, the bright morning sun sparkling off the water of the Great Harbor made Sostratos blink and rub his eyes till he got used to it. He saw Menedemos talking with a carpenter over at the base of a quay a plethron or so away. Waving, he walked over toward them.

His cousin clapped the carpenter on the back, saying, “I’ll see you later, Khremes,” and came toward him. “Hail. How are you?”

“Not bad,” Sostratos answered. “Yourself?”

“I could be worse,” Menedemos said. “I could be better, but I could be worse. Were you making horrible growling and hissing noises with Himilkon?”

“I was speaking Aramaic, yes. You can’t say my learning it didn’t come in handy.”

“No, I don’t suppose I can,” Menedemos agreed. “After all, you never would have been able to seduce that innkeeper’s wife if you hadn’t been able to speak her language.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Sostratos said. “I was talking about the beeswax and the balsam and the embroidered cloth and the help I gave you in Sidon. I think of those things, and what do you talk about? What else but a woman?”

“I’m entitled to talk about her. I didn’t go to bed with her,” Menedemos said. “I didn’t go to bed with anybody this sailing season, unless you count whores-and I wouldn’t, believe me. You were the one who had the good time.”

“It wasn’t that good a time,” Sostratos said. “It was strange and sad.”

His cousin started to sing a melancholy love song. The object of the lover’s affection in the song was a pretty boy, but that didn’t stop Menedemos. “Oh, go howl!” Sostratos said. “It wasn’t like that, either.” The lovemaking itself had been fine. He would have remembered it fondly if Zilpah hadn’t changed her mind about him the moment the two of them finished. But she had, and he couldn’t do anything about it now.

“Well, what was it like?” Menedemos asked with a leer.

To keep from having to answer, Sostratos looked out to sea. He pointed. “Hello!” he said. “What ship is that?”

Such a question would always draw a merchant skipper’s attention. Menedemos turned and looked out to sea, too, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand. “To the crows with me if that’s not the Dikaiosyne, coming back from her cruise,” he replied. “Shall we go over to the naval harbor and get a good close look at her?”

“Why not, best one?” Sostratos said, though he couldn’t help adding, “We almost got a closer look at her than we wanted while we were coming back to Rhodes.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Menedemos said. “A trihemiolia’s made to hunt pirates-that’s the whole point of the type. Of course she’s going to come up to any galley she spots and sniff around like a dog at another dog’s backside.”

“You always did have a gift for the pungent figure of speech,” Sostratos said, whereupon his cousin held his nose.

Chuckling, they walked up to the naval harbor, which lay just to the north of the Great Harbor. Like the latter, it had long moles protecting its waters from wind and weather. Shipsheds lined it, so the Rhodian naval vessels could be hauled up out of the sea, keeping their timbers dry and them light and swift. The narrower sheds sheltered pirate-hunting triremes; the wider ones warded the fives that would fight against any navy presuming to move against Rhodes.

Pointing to the Dikaiosyne, which had entered the harbor by way of the north-facing entrance, Menedemos said, “They won’t have had to build anything special for her: she’ll fit into the same shed as any trireme.”

“True.” Sostratos dipped his head. The trihemiolia put him in mind of a trireme stripped of everything that added even a drakhma’s worth of extra weight. Triremes, these days, had their projecting oarboxes, through which the upper, or thranite, oarsmen rowed, covered over with planking to protect them from arrows. Not the Dikaiosyne: hers was open. Nor was she fully decked, to let her post a maximum complement of marines. Only a narrow stretch of decking ran down her midline from foredeck to poop.

Backing oars, the Dikaiosyne’s crew positioned her just in front of a shipshed. A couple of naked slaves came out of the shed and fitted a stout cable to the ship’s sternpost. One of them turned his head and shouted back toward the shed. More slaves inside hauled at an enormous capstan. The line went taut. Little by little, the work gang hauled the trihemiolia out of the sea and up the sloping ramp inside the shipshed. The beech planking of her protective false keel scraped on the timbers of the ramp.

As soon as the ship’s stern came out of the water, the slaves at the capstan paused. Sailors and marines began leaving the Dikaiosyne, lightening her so the haulers would have an easier time. Easier, though, was a relative term; Sostratos wouldn’t have cared to bend his back and push against one of the great bars of the capstan.

He and Menedemos waved to the trihemiolia’s crew. “Hail, best ones!” Menedemos called. “How was the hunting?”

“Good,” answered a sailor who wore only a loincloth. He laughed. “As we were heading away from Rhodes, we scared the piss out of one of our own merchant galleys coming home. She looked like a pirate till we got up close. We were all set to sink her and let her crew try and swim back to Rhodes, but they had the right answers, so we let ‘em go.” He spoke with a certain rough regret.

Sostratos could laugh about it, too-now. He bowed to the sailor. “At your service, sir. We’re the toikharkhos and captain from the Aphrodite . ”

“Is that so?” The fellow laughed some more as he returned the bow. “Well, I bet you’re glad we did stop and ask questions, then.”

“Oh, you might say so,” Menedemos allowed. “Yes, you just might say so. How did things go once you got to the Lykian coast?”

“Pretty well,” the sailor from the Dikaiosyne replied. “She’s fast as a galloping horse, the Justice is. We went after one hemiolia that couldn’t have been anything but a pirate. Most of the time, those bastards’ll show their heels to anything, even a trireme. But we didn’t just keep up-we gained on her. Finally, the fellow in charge beached her. The pirates aboard her ran for the woods and got away, but we sent men ashore and burned the ship.”

“Euge!” Sostratos said. “To the crows-to the cross-with pirates.”

“Pity you couldn’t have burned them, too,” Menedemos added.

“We sank a couple of others, and many goodbyes to the whipworthy rogues they carried,” the sailor said. “Whoever came up with the notion for the Dikaiosyne was a pretty clever fellow, let me tell you. And now farewell, friends-I’m off for some wine and a go or two at a boy brothel.” With a wave and a smile, he hurried away.

“Well, you pretty clever fellow, what do you think of that?” Sostratos asked.

“I like it,” Menedemos said. “Let the pirates beware, by the gods. Here’s a ship they can’t hope to fight, and one that can hunt them down even when they try to run. I hope we build a fleet of trihemioliai, a big fleet. It’d make things a lot safer for merchant skippers. What do you think, my dear?”