The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “Ten to one, no more,” Menelaos said. “This isn’t Philip of Macedon’s day, when a gold drakhma would buy you twelve silver ones.”

  He wasn’t wrong; ten to one was the most common exchange rate nowadays. A century before, the ratio had been thirteen or even fourteen to one. “If you’ll wait till we can bring a couple of men here, I think I’d sooner have it in silver,” Sostratos answered. “As you say, gold’s fallen over this past generation, and it may fall further.”

  “However you please,” Ptolemaios’ brother said with a shrug. “I’ve got the silver.” Sostratos was sure he had it. How big was his army on Cyprus? He probably spent more than a couple of talents every day on his soldiers’ pay.

  Menedemos said, “I’ll go over to the Aphrodite to get the sailors. Can you give us some guards when we’re taking the money back to the ship, most noble one?”

  “Certainly,” Menelaos answered. “Worried about getting knocked over the head between here and the harbor, are you? Don’t blame you a bit. Salamis can be a tough town.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Menedemos said. “If you’d told me no, I’d’ve come back with a lot more than just two men, I’ll tell you that.” He waved and hurried away.

  That left Sostratos alone with Menelaos and Simias. He usually hated such situations, as he was a man of little small talk. Now, though, he asked, “Sir, did you hunt tigers in distant India, as Ptolemaios did?”

  “Did I? I should say I did!” Menelaos exclaimed, and he was off on a hunting story that not only fascinated Sostratos and told him two or three things about tigers that he hadn’t known but also relieved him of the obligation to say much more till his cousin got back with the sailors. Not bad, he thought, for a double handful of words.

  11

  Menedemos pulled in on one 5teering-oar tiller and pushed the other one out. The Aphrodite rounded Cape Pedalion, the highland that marked the southeastern corner of Cyprus. Diokles said, “That headland is supposed to be sacred to Aphrodite, so there’s a good omen for our ship, if you like.”

  “I like good omens just fine, thanks very much,” Menedemos answered. “I’ll take ‘em wherever I can find ‘em, too.”

  “Why is this part of Cyprus sacred to the love goddess?” Sostratos asked. “Didn’t she rise from the sea at Paphos? Paphos isn’t near here, is it?”

  “No, young sir, Paphos is way off to the west,” the oarmaster said. “I don’t know why Cape Pedalion’s sacred to her. I just know that it is.”

  Sostratos still looked discontented. Menedemos shot him a glance that said, Shut up. For a wonder, his cousin got the message. Menedemos wanted the sailors to think the omens were good. The happier they were, the better they’d work. If Diokles hadn’t given him a real one, he might have invented a good omen to keep them cheerful.

  The beaches west of Cape Pedalion were of fine white sand, the soil inland from them a red that promised great fertility, though fields lay fallow under the hot sun, waiting for fall and the rains that would bring them back to life. But the promontory did strange things to the wind, which went fitful and shifting, now with the merchant galley, now dead against her.

  “By the gods, I’m glad I’m in an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to sail this coast in a round ship. You could spend days going nowhere at all. And if the wind did blow in one direction, like as not it’d drive you aground instead of taking you where you wanted to go.”

  “You don’t want that,” Sostratos said. “You don’t want that anywhere. You especially don’t want it on a shore where nobody knows you.”

  Diokles dipped his head. “No, indeed. And you really especially don’t want it on this shore, where most of the people are Phoenicians, not Hellenes at all. Kition, the next city up ahead, is a Phoenician town.”

  “From what we saw in Sidon, Phoenicians aren’t any worse than Hellenes,” Sostratos said.

  “I’m not saying they’re worse. I’m saying they’re foreign,” the keleustes replied. “If I were a Phoenician skipper, I’d sooner go aground here than up by Salamis, where the people are mostly Hellenes.”

  “I’d sooner not go aground anywhere,” Menedemos said. “I’d sooner not, and I don’t intend to.”

  He did put in at Kition the next day to buy fresh bread. It looked like a Phoenician town, with tall buildings crowding close together and with men in caps and long robes. The gutturals of Aramaic dominated over Greek’s smooth rising and falling cadences.

  “I can understand what they’re saying,” Sostratos exclaimed. “When we first set out, I wouldn’t have followed even half of it, but I can understand almost all of it now.”

  “You’ve been speaking the language yourself,” Menedemos said. “That’s why. I can even understand a little myself. But I expect I’ll forget it as soon as we get back to Rhodes. I won’t need to know it anymore.”

  “I don’t want to forget!” Sostratos said. “I never want to forget anything.”

  “I can think of a few things I’d just as soon forget,” Menedemos said, “starting with Emashtart.” He laughed and tossed his head. “I didn’t have any trouble keeping my oath on account of her. How about you, O best one? Outrage any husbands in Ioudaia? You never swore you wouldn’t.”

  To his surprise-indeed, to his amazement-his cousin coughed and shuffled his feet and generally acted flustered. “How did you know?” Sostratos asked. “Were you talking with Moskhion or Teleutas? Did they blab?”

  “They never said a word, my dear, and I never thought to ask them about that,” Menedemos answered. “But now I’m asking you. Who was she? Was she pretty? You wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t thought she was pretty, would you?”

  “Her husband ran the inn where we stayed in Jerusalem,” Sostratos said slowly. “Her name was Zilpah.” He bared his teeth in what wasn’t quite, or wasn’t just, a smile. “While I was going after her, I thought she was the most wonderful thing in the world.”

  Menedemos laughed out loud. “Oh, yes. I know all about that. I kept trying to tell you, but you didn’t want to listen.”

  “I understand better now.” By the way Sostratos said it, he wished he didn’t.

  Laughing still, Menedemos said, “So you finally got her, did you?”

  “Yes, on the way back from Engedi.” Sostratos didn’t sound particularly proud of himself. “If she hadn’t been angry at her husband, I never would have.”

  “They all say that,” Menedemos told him. “Maybe they even believe it. It gives them an excuse for doing what they want to do anyhow. Well? How was it?”

  “Better than with a whore, certainly-you’re right about that,” Sostratos admitted.

  “Told you so,” Menedemos said.

  “You tell me all sorts of things,” Sostratos said. “Some of them turn out to be true, and some of them don’t. She started crying afterwards, though, and wished she’d never done it. Everything was fine-better than fine-up till then. As soon as we’d finished, though…” He tossed his head.

  “Oh. One of those. Just your luck to run into one like that the first time you play the game,” Menedemos said sympathetically, and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “It happens, I’m afraid.”

  “Obviously, since it happened to me,” Sostratos said. “And it did feel like a game. I didn’t like that.”

  “Why not? What else is it?” Menedemos asked in honest puzzlement. “Best game in the world, if you ask me, but still, only a game.”

  Sostratos groped for an answer: “It shouldn’t be only a game. It’s too important to be only a game. For a little while there, I was… in love, I suppose. I don’t know what else to call it.”

  “That can happen,” Menedemos agreed. Sostratos hadn’t sounded happy about it. Menedemos didn’t blame him. Love was as dangerous a passion as the gods had inflicted on mankind. Menedemos went on, “I don’t suppose you can do anything halfway, can you?”

  “Doesn’t seem that way, does it?” Sostratos spread his hands. “There’s my story,
such as it is. I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t done before.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, it’s something you haven’t done before.”

  “I know.” No, Menedemos’ cousin didn’t seem happy at all. “Now I understand the fascination of your game. I wish I didn’t.”

  “Why?” Menedemos asked. “Because now you have a harder time looking down your nose at me?”

  Relentlessly honest, Sostratos dipped his head. “Yes, that’s the main reason why, and I won’t tell you any different. And because I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep from doing something like that again one of these days. I hope so, but how can I know for certain?”

  “Don’t worry about it so much,” Menedemos told him. “You got away. You’ll never see the woman or her husband again. Nobody got hurt. Why are you in such an uproar? You don’t need to be.”

  Sostratos was relentlessly precise as well as relentlessly honest. “I wouldn’t say nobody got hurt. If you’d seen Zilpah afterwards…” His mouth tightened. He was looking back on a memory that didn’t please him at all.

  But Menedemos repeated, “Don’t worry about it. Women get funny sometimes, that’s all. The day after you left the inn, she’d probably forgotten all about you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sostratos said. “I think she thought she loved me, the same way I thought I loved her. Then we lay with each other, and that made her decide her husband was really the important one. I think she- how do I put it?-blamed me for not being who, or maybe what, she thought I was.” He sighed.

  “Well, what if she did?” Menedemos asked. “How is that your fault? It isn’t, my dear, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “ ‘That’s all there is to it,’“ Sostratos echoed in a hollow voice. “Easy enough for you to say, O best one. Not so easy for me to persuade myself.”

  Menedemos started to tell him not to be a fool. Considering how many times Sostratos had told him the same thing, he looked forward to getting some of his own back. But before the words could pass the barrier of his teeth, a sailor called out a warning from the bow: “Skipper, a soldier’s coming up the pier to look us over.”

  “Thanks, Damagetos,” Menedemos answered with a sigh. Kition might have been a Phoenician town, but, like the rest of Cyprus, it lay under Ptolemaios’ rule these days. The garrison here had to prove itself alert. The Aphrodite wasn’t likely to be part of an invasion fleet ordered out by Antigonos, but at first glance she easily might have seemed a pirate. Scorching Sostratos would have to wait.

  “What ship are you?” The inevitable question floated through the air as soon as the officer got within hailing distance.

  “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes,” Menedemos answered, resisting the impulse to yell back, Whose man are you? He’d asked it before and discovered what he should have known anyhow: cracking wise with a fellow who could cause you trouble wasn’t a good idea. Even so, the temptation remained.

  “Where have you been, and what’s your cargo?” Ptolemaios’ officer asked.

  “Sidon, and lately Salamis,” Menedemos answered. “We’ve got Byblian wine, crimson dye, balsam of Engedi, and a few jars of Rhodian perfume and olive oil.”

  “Olive oil?” the soldier said. “You must have been daft, to carry olive oil in a scrawny little ship like that.”

  Everyone who heard about that part of the cargo said the same thing. For a long time, hearing it had made Menedemos grind his teeth. Now he could smile. “You might think so, best one, but we unloaded almost all of it,” he said. “Would you care to try one of the jars we have left?”

  “No, thanks,” the officer replied with a laugh. “But you’re traders, all right. Welcome to Kition.” He turned and walked back into the city.

  A sharp, metallic clicking in the sky made Menedemos and a good many others look up. He stared. “What in the world are those?” he said.

  “Bats,” Sostratos answered calmly.

  “But I’ve seen bats before-everybody has,” Menedemos protested. “They’re little things, like dormice with wings. These aren’t little. They’ve got bodies like puppies and wings like a crow’s.”

  “They’re still bats,” Sostratos said. “They’ve got noses, not beaks. They’ve got ears. They’ve got bare wings and fur, not feathers. What else would they be?”

  “They’re too big to be bats,” Menedemos insisted. “If they were any bigger, they’d be like vultures, by the gods.”

  “So you say big bats are impossible?” Sostratos asked. “Fine. Have it your way, my dear. They’re big birds that happen to look exactly like bats.”

  Menedemos’ ears burned. To make matters worse, Sostratos spoke in Aramaic to a Phoenician longshoreman. The fellow answered volubly, pointing back into the long, rolling hills behind Kition. Sostratos bowed his thanks, exactly as a Phoenician might have done.

  He turned back to Menedemos. “They are bats,” he said. “They live in caves, and they eat fruit. That’s what the fellow said, anyhow. I always thought bats ate bugs. I wish we could stay and learn more about them. May we?”

  “No,” Menedemos said. “You would be the one to care more for learning about bats than for learning about women, wouldn’t you?”

  Sostratos winced. “I didn’t say that.”

  And so he hadn’t, but Menedemos, having been embarrassed over the bats, was delighted to take a little revenge. If he ruffled his cousin’s feathers (or, seeing that those creatures were bats, his fur), too bad.

  The trouble with being angry at someone aboard an akatos, as Sostratos had long since discovered, was that you couldn’t get away from him. The ship wasn’t big enough. And so, even though he thought the crack Menedemos had made was grossly unfair, he couldn’t go off by himself and sulk. The only possible place for him to go off by himself was up on the tiny foredeck, but he didn’t have the luxury of sulking there. If he stood on the foredeck, he had to do lookout duty.

  That he did, staring out at the water of the Inner Sea in lieu of looking back at his cousin. But the first thing that crossed his mind then was how, had everything gone well, Aristeidas would have stood here instead. He blamed himself because the sharp-eyed sailor wasn’t. Blaming himself, he forgot all about blaming Menedemos.

  More big bats flew overhead the next evening, as the Aphrodite neared the town of Kourion. Sostratos pretended not to notice them. Menedemos didn’t say anything about them, either: a strange sort of truce, but a truce even so.

  Menedemos even made an effort to be friendly, asking, “What do you know about Kourion? You know something about almost every place where we stop.”

  “Not much about this one, I’m afraid,” Sostratos answered. “ King Stasanor of Kourion went over to the Persians during the Cypriot rebellion almost two hundred years ago. Thanks to his treachery, the Persians won the battle on the plains near Salamis, and the rebellion failed.”

  “Sounds like something a town’d rather not be remembered for,” Menedemos remarked. “What else do you know?”

  Sostratos frowned, trying to flog more bits from his memory. “Kourion is a colony sent out from Argos,” he said, “and they worship an odd Apollo here.”

  Diokles dipped his head. “That’s right, young sir: Apollo Hylates.”

  “Apollo of the Wood-yes! Thanks,” Sostratos said. “I couldn’t recall the details. You know more than I do here, Diokles. Go on, if you would.”

  “I don’t know much more,” the oarmaster said, suddenly shy. “I’ve only been here a couple of times myself. But I do know the god has strange rites, and anyone who dares touch his altar gets thrown off those cliffs yonder.” He pointed to bluffs west of the town. As cliffs went, they weren’t very impressive; Sostratos had seen far higher and steeper ones in Lykia and in Ioudaia. Still, a man flung from the top was bound to die when he hit the bottom, which made them high enough to punish sacrilege.

  Menedemos asked what struck Sostratos as a couple of eminently reasonable questions: “Why would anybody want to touc
h that altar, if people know what happens to those who do? And how often is anybody going to be mad enough to do it?”

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you, skipper,” Diokles replied. “All I know is what I remember-or what I think I remember-from when I did put in here. That was years ago now, so I may have it wrong.”

  No war galleys patrolled outside Kourion, or none Sostratos saw. He hadn’t spied any around Kition, either. Ptolemaios seemed to be keeping his whole fleet at Salamis, that being the port closest to the Phoenician coastline from which Antigonos might launch an attack against Cyprus. And if the ruler of Egypt had garrisoned Kourion, as Sostratos assumed he had, the local commander was most incurious. No one asked any questions of the Aphrodite ’s crew except the longshoremen who moored the merchant galley to a quay.

  “Whence come ye?” a naked man inquired in the old-fashioned Cypriot dialect as he made a line fast. “Whither be ye bound?”

  As usual, Menedemos told him, “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes. We’re heading home from Sidon.” The Doric drawl Sostratos’ cousin spoke seemed all the stronger after the longshoreman’s archaic speech.

  “ Rhodes, say you, good sir? And Sidon? In sooth, you’ve traveled far, and seen many things passing strange. What think you the most curious amongst ‘em?”

  “I’ll answer that, if I may,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos waved for him to go on. He did: “In loudaia, inland from the Phoenician coast, there’s a lake full of water so salty, a man can’t drown in it. He’ll float on the surface with head and shoulders and feet sticking out into the air.”

  “Tush! Go to!” the Cypriot exclaimed. “Think you to gull me so? You rank cozener! Why, water’s water, be it salt or fresh. An you throw a man in’t, if he swim not, he’ll sink down and drown. ‘Tis but natural that it be so. Who told you such lies?”

  “No one told me,” Sostratos said. “I saw this with my own eyes, felt it with my own body. I went into this lake, I tell you, and it bore me up from the great amount of salt in it.”