Harry Turtledove - The Sacred Land

Sostratos said, “I don’t think that’s a pirate.”

“Oh? How can you be so sure?” Menedemos snapped. “Your eyes aren’t even as good as mine.”

“I know that, but I also pay attention to what I see,” his cousin replied. “Most pirates dye their sails and paint their hulls to look like sky and sea, so they’re as hard to spot as possible. That ship has a sail of plain, undyed linen, and so she probably isn’t a pirate.”

He spoke as if to a halfwitted child. What really stung was that he was right. Menedemos hadn’t thought of that, and it was true. Furies take me if I’ll admit it, though, he thought.

A couple of minutes later, Aristeidas said, “Looks like she’s turning away-maybe she thinks we’re pirates and doesn’t want any part of us.”

“We see that every year,” Menedemos said.

“We see it every year even though we’re still close to Rhodes,” Sostratos said. “That’s what really makes me sad, because our navy does everything it can to put pirates down.”

“Ptolemaios’ captains seem to go after them pretty hard, too,” Menedemos said. “That’s one reason to like him better than Antigonos: they say old One-Eye hires pirates to eke out his own warships. To the crows with that, as far as I’m concerned.”

Sostratos dipped his head. There the two cousins agreed completely. “It’s all one to Antigonos,” Sostratos said. “To him, pirate fleets on the sea are the same as mercenary regiments on land.”

Menedemos shuddered. Any trader would have done the same. “Mercenary regiments can turn bandit-everybody knows that’s so. But pirates are bandits, right from the beginning. They live by robbery and plunder and kidnapping for ransom.”

“Robbery. Plunder.” Sostratos spoke the words as if they were even viler than was in fact the case. A heartbeat later, he explained why: “The gryphon’s skull.”

“Yes, the gryphon’s skull,” Menedemos said impatiently. “But you seem to forget: if those gods-detested, polluted whoresons had had their way, they wouldn’t just have taken your precious skull. They’d have gone off with everything the Aphrodite carried, and they’ve have murdered us or held us for a ransom that would have ruined the family, or else sold us into slavery.”

“That’s true,” Sostratos said in thoughtful tones. “You’re right-I don’t usually remember it as well as I ought to.” More readily than anyone else Menedemos knew, his cousin was willing to admit he was wrong. He went on, “All the more reason to crucify every pirate ever born, I’d nail ‘em to the cross myself.” That carried more weight from him than it would have from another man, for he normally had little taste for blood.

Diokles said, “Begging your pardon, young sir, but I’d have to ask you to wait your turn there. I’ve been going to sea longer than you have, and so I’ve got first claim.”

Sostratos bowed. “Just as you say, most noble one. I yield to you as the heroes of the Iliad yielded to ancient Nestor.”

“Now wait a bit!” Diokles exclaimed. “I’m not so old as that.”

“Are you sure?” Menedemos asked slyly. The keleustes, who was graying-but no more than graying-gave him a sour look. The rowers close enough to the stern to hear the chatter grinned back toward Diokles.

“You’re making for Patara?” Sostratos asked as the Aphrodite sailed southeast.

“That’s right,” Menedemos said. “I don’t want to put in anywhere along this coast except at a town. That’d be asking for trouble. I’d sooner spend a night at sea. We were talking about bandits a little while ago. This hill country swarms with ‘em, and there might be bands big enough to beat our whole crew. Why take chances with the ship?”

“No reason at all,” his cousin said. “If you were as careful with your own life as you are with the akatos here…”

Menedemos glowered. “We’ve been over this ground before, you know. It does grow tedious.”

“Very well, best one; I’ll not say another word,” Sostratos replied. Then, of course, he said several more words: “Helping to keep you out of harm’s way after you debauch some other man’s wife grows tedious, too.”

“Not to me,” Menedemos retorted. “And I don’t usually need help.”

This time, Sostratos said nothing. His silence proved more embarrassing to Menedemos than speech might have, for his own comment wasn’t strictly true. Sometimes he got away with his adulteries as smoothly as Odysseus had escaped from Kirke in the Odyssey. In Taras a couple of years before, though, he had needed help, and in Halikarnassos the year before that…

He didn’t want to think about Halikarnassos. He still couldn’t set foot there for fear of his life, and he’d been lucky to escape with that life. Some husbands had no sense of humor at all.

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead. A black-capped tern plunged into the sea only a few cubits from the Aphrodite ’s hull. It emerged with a fine fat fish in its beak. But it didn’t enjoy its dainty for long. A gull started chasing it and buffeting it with its wings and pecking at it. At last, the tern had to drop the fish and flee. The gull caught the food before it fell back into the water. A gulp and it was gone.

Sostratos had watched the tern and gull. “As with people, so with birds,” he said. “The uninvited guest gets the choice morsel.”

“Funny,” Menedemos said, grinning.

But his cousin tossed his head. “I don’t think so, and neither did the tern.”

“Haven’t you ever got drunk at one symposion and then gone on to another one?” Menedemos asked. “Talking your way in-sometimes shouting your way in-is half the fun. The other half is seeing what sort of wine and treats the other fellow has once you do get inside.”

“If you say so. I seldom do such things,” Sostratos answered primly.

Thinking back on it, Menedemos realized his cousin was telling the truth. Sostratos always had been a bit of a prig. Menedemos said, “You miss a good deal of the fun in life, you know.”

“You may call it that,” Sostratos said. “What about the fellow whose drinking party you invade?”

“Why would he throw a symposion in the first place if he didn’t want to have fun?” Menedemos said. “Besides, I’ve been to some that turned out jollier on account of people who came in, already garlanded, off the street.”

He suspected he sounded like Bad Logic in Aristophanes ’ Clouds, and he waited for Sostratos to say as much. Menedemos liked Aristophanes ’ bawdy foolery much more than his cousin did, but Sostratos knew-and disapproved of-the Clouds because it lampooned Sokrates. To his surprise, though, Sostratos brought up the Athenian in a different way: “You may be right. You know Platon’s Symposion, don’t you, or know about it? That’s the one where Alkibiades comes in off the street, as you say, and talks about the times when he tried to seduce Sokrates.”

“Wasn’t Sokrates supposed to be ugly as a satyr?” Menedemos asked. “And wasn’t Alkibiades the handsomest fellow in Athens back whenever that was?”

“About a hundred years ago,” Sostratos said. “Yes, Sokrates was ugly, and yes, Alkibiades was anything but.”

“Why did Alkibiades try to seduce him, then?” Menedemos asked. “If he was as handsome as that, he could have had anybody he chose. That’s how things work.”

“I know,” Sostratos said, a certain edge to his voice. Menedemos feared he’d stuck his foot in it. He’d been an exceptionally handsome youth and enjoyed the luxury of picking and choosing among his suitors. Nobody’d paid court to Sostratos, who’d been-and who still was-tall and gawky and plain. After a moment, Sostratos went on, “If Alkibiades could have chosen anyone he wanted but set out to seduce Sokrates, what does that tell you?”