Harry Turtledove - The Sacred Land

Sostratos came back toward the stern to help the sailor who’d been shot through the leg. He knew something about doctoring-Menedemos suspected he knew less than he thought he did, but even the best physicians could do only so much. He drew the arrow and bandaged the wound. The sailor seemed grateful for the attention, so Menedemos supposed his cousin was doing no harm.

And Sostratos had done very well indeed from the foredeck. “Euge!” Menedemos called once more. “You shot the pirate at the steering oars at just the right time there.”

“I would have shot the abandoned wretch sooner if I hadn’t missed him twice,” Sostratos said. “I could practically have spit across the sea and hit him, but the arrows went past.” He looked disgusted with himself.

“Don’t fret about it,” Menedemos said. “You did hit him, and that’s what counts. They lost enough time so they couldn’t turn into our stroke or turn away from it, either, and we hit ‘em good and square. The ram does a lot more damage that way.”

“Do you think the other one will come after us?” Sostratos asked.

“I don’t know for certain. We’ll just have to find out. I hope not,” Menedemos replied. “I promised Poseidon something nice if he brought us through. I’ll have to make good on that when we get back to Rhodes.”

“Fair enough, my dear,” his cousin said. “The god earned it. And you earned praise, too, for your seamanship.” He called out to the sailors: “Another cheer for the skipper, boys!”

“Euge!” they shouted.

Menedemos grinned and raised one hand from a steering-oar tiller to wave. Then he looked over his shoulder again. Still no sign of the other pirate ship. Not only was the triakonter not pursuing, she’d disappeared

The Sacred Land 343

below the horizon. Menedemos didn’t say anything, though, not yet. Though he couldn’t see her from his place on the poop deck, her crew might still be able to make out the Aphrodite ’s mast and sail. He was content to sail on and see what happened.

The breeze continued to freshen. At last, he took his men off the oars and went on under sail alone. He thought the pirates would have to do the same: either that or wear out their men altogether. He kept looking back in the direction from which the merchant galley had come. Still no sign of a sail.

At last, he allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. “I truly don’t think they’re coming after us,” he said.

“Euge!” the sailors yelled again.

“how does your leg feel, Kallianax?” Sostratos asked anxiously.

“It’s still sore as can be, young sir,” the sailor answered. “It’ll stay sore a while longer, too, I reckon.” His Doric drawl was thicker than most. “You don’t get shot without having it hurt. By the gods, I wish you did.”

“I understand that,” Sostratos said. “But is it hot? Is it inflamed? Is there any pus in it?”

“No, none of that there stuff,” Kallianax said. “It just hurts.”

“As long as it doesn’t swell or turn red or start oozing pus, though, it’s healing the way it should,” Sostratos told him. “You keep pouring wine on it, too.”

Kallianax made a face. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your leg. Wine makes it burn like fire.”

“Yes, I know,” Sostratos said. “But it does help make you better. Do you want to lose a long-term advantage because of some pain now? If a wound goes bad, it can kill. You’ve seen that-I know you have.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t figure this here one would,” Kallianax said.

“Please don’t take the chance,” Sostratos said. With obvious reluctance, the sailor dipped his head. Sostratos resolved to keep an eye on him to make sure he did as he was told. Some people did habitually place the short term ahead of the long. He knew that, knew it as a fact without altogether understanding it.

Menedemos laughed when he said as much. “I can think of a couple of reasons why it’s so,” his cousin said.

“Enlighten me, O best one,” Sostratos said.

That only made Menedemos laugh more. “I know you, my dear. You can’t fool me. Whenever you get too polite for your own good, that means you don’t think I can enlighten you. Some people are fools, plain and simple. They wouldn’t care about month after next if you whacked them over the head with it.”

“But are they fools by nature or only because they haven’t been educated to be anything else?” Sostratos asked.

He expected a neat either-or answer. That was how he’d been educated. But Menedemos said, “Probably some of each. Some people are fools, like I said. They’ll act like idiots whether they’re educated or not. Others-who knows? Maybe you can show some people that folly is folly.”

Sostratos grunted. His cousin’s reply wasn’t neat, but it made a good deal of sense. “Fair enough,” he said, and started to turn away.

But Menedemos said, “Hold on. I wasn’t done.”

“No?” Sostratos said. “Go on, then.”

“Thank you so much.” An ironical Menedemos was a dangerous creature indeed. Go on he did: “If the reward you get now is big enough, you won’t care about trouble later on, either. After Alexandros chose Aphrodite above Hera and Athene, he got Helen to keep his bed warm. Do you think he worried about what might happen to Troy later on account of that? Not likely!”

“There you go, making comparisons about women again,” Sostratos said. Menedemos didn’t let go of the steering-oar tillers, but he made as if to bow even so. But Sostratos, after a little thought, had to admit, “Yes, that’s probably true, too.”

“Are you enlightened, then?” Menedemos asked.

“I suppose I am.”

“Good.” Menedemos grinned. “You have any more of these little problems, just bring them to me. I’ll set you straight.”

“Go howl,” Sostratos said, which only made Menedemos laugh more.

The Aphrodite put in at several towns along the Lykian coast, not so much to do business as because the coastal cities, held by Ptolemaios’ garrisons, were the only safe halting places in that stretch of the world. If none was near when the sun went down, the merchant galley spent the night well offshore.

Another reason the Rhodians didn’t do much business in the Lykian towns was the hope they would get higher prices for their goods in the Aegean the following spring than they could hereabouts. Phoenician merchants sometimes brought their own goods this far west; few of them got to the poleis of Hellas proper.

One of Ptolemaios’ officers in Myra bought a couple of amphorai of Byblian for a symposion he was planning to put on. “This will give the boys something to drink they haven’t had before,” he said.

“I’d think so, yes,” Sostratos agreed. “How do you like being stationed here?”

“How do I like it?” The soldier made a horrible face. “My dear sir, if the world needed an enema, they’d stick the syringe in right here.” That jerked a laugh from Sostratos and Menedemos both. The officer went on, “The Lykians are jackals, nothing else but. And if you killed every single one of them, you wouldn’t do yourself any good, because these mountains would just fill up with other human jackals in no time flat. This kind of country is made for bandits.”

“And pirates,” Sostratos said, and he and Menedemos took turns telling of their fight out on the Inner Sea.

“You were lucky,” Ptolemaios’ officer said when they finished. “Oh, I don’t doubt you’re good sailors and you have a good crew, but you were lucky all the same.”

“I prefer to think we were skillful.” Menedemos had his share of faults, but modesty had never been among them.