The Gryphon's Skull

by Harry Turtledove

  Before Sostratos could answer, Aristeidas and several other sailors shouted, “Ship ho!” and “Ship to starboard!” and “Pirate coming at us!” Others added curses that would have sunk the hemiolia sprinting out from behind a spit of land if only the gods were listening.

  “All men to the oars!” Menedemos called, and the crew scrambled to obey. As soon as every oar was manned, he turned to Diokles and barked, “Give us the stroke, keleustes—the best we can do.”

  “Right you are, skipper. . . . . Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The oarmaster struck urgent notes from die bronze square. The rowers, grunting with effort, pulled hard. And the , which had been ambling over the wine-dark Aegean, seemed to gather herself and then leap forward.

  Since they'd been going against the wind, the sail was already brailed up to the yard. Menedemos glanced over toward the onrushing pirate ship. Her crew had taken down her mast and stowed it before sallying forth. And, however fast the akatos was going, the hemiolia, by the nature of things, had a better turn of speed. The needed to carry cargo as well as rowers, and was beamier than the lean predator knifing through the water propelled by its two banks of oars.

  Menedemos' smile went wolfish. Relative speeds would have mattered more had he been trying to run away. But that wasn't what he intended. He yanked hard on the steering-oar tillers, swinging the straight toward the pirate ship.

  “Going to ram, eh?” Sostratos said.

  “If those bastards don't sheer off, I will,” Menedemos answered. He'd played this game before. Pirate galleys weren't warships—they wouldn't strike home without counting the cost. They wanted easy victims, not fights. Show them you were ready to give them all they could handle and they weren't so likely to want anything to do with you.

  That was the theory on which Menedemos operated, anyhow. It had worked for him more than once. This time . . . This time, his ship and the piratical hemiolia closed with each other at a truly frightening clip. The wind of the 's passage blew against his face and ruffled his hair. The hemiolia showed no signs of backing away. She swelled with each stroke of the merchant galley's oars, with each stroke of her own. She had archers on the foredeck, and a black-bearded ruffian at the steering oars bawling orders to his crew.

  ... Menedemos said, “Sostratos, duck under me here, grab my bow and arrows, and go forward. You're a decent shot, and you're not rowing or steering.”

  “Certainly,” his cousin answered, and did it. He fumbled a little as he strung the bow, but he was ready to shoot by the time he got to the 's foredeck. Menedemos knew he was a better archer than Sostratos, but he was also the akatos' best ship-handler, and that counted for more.

  Only a couple of stadia separated the two galleys now: less every heartbeat. The rowers, gasping and drenched with sweat, couldn't see that, but Menedemos could. He bit his lip till he tasted blood. Had he outsmarted himself? The hemiolia carried more men than his akatos. If it came to that kind of fight, he would likely lose.

  But if I ram, or if I can scrape my hull along her side and break half her oars . . . He'd done that to a trireme the summer before— an astonishing victory for an akatos. But those Italians had been amateurs on the sea. By the way she was rowed, by the way she steered, the hemiolia had a solid crew. Now, who's got more nerve? Menedemos wondered. Me, or that son of a whore over there?

  “They're shooting,” Diokles said. The rhythm of mallet on bronze never faltered.

  “I see 'em,” Menedemos answered grimly. The arrows splashed into the sea, ahead of the 's ram. always started too soon. Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: “Give 'em a couple, Sostratos! Show 'em we've got teeth, too.”

  His cousin waved, drew the bow back to his ear, and let 0y. To Menedemos' astonished delight, one of the bowmen on the pirate ship clutched at his shoulder. His howl of pain came loud and clear across the water. Sostratos whooped joyfully and shot again. He had no luck that time, or none Menedemos could see.

  And then, instead of going on to make a ramming attack against the , the hemiolia heeled sharply to starboard. The pirates' oarmaster screamed at his men, to get the last little bit of speed from them and make sure the merchant galley couldn't ram their ship. The black-bearded chieftain lifted a hand from the steering oars to shake a fist at Menedemos. Menedemos lifted his hand, too, to blow the pirates a kiss.

  That hemiolia was faster than the . Even had Menedemos wanted to pursue the pirates, which he didn't, he couldn't have caught them. “Let the men ease off, Diokles,” he said, thinking, If I were the captain of a trireme, I would go after those bastards. But even a trireme, as swift a naval vessel as there was, couldn't always keep up with a hemiolia. Menedemos scowled, wishing there were a ship that could scour swift pirate galleys from the seas.

  But his scowl didn't last. The rowers raised a panting cheer. And Diokles said, “That was nicely done, skipper. Most of those abandoned catamites haven't got the stomach for a real fight.”

  “That's what I was counting on,” Menedemos answered. “The son of a whore with the whiskers made me nervous, though. I wondered if he really did want to mix it up.” He raised his voice so everyone on board could hear: “Let's have a cheer for Sostratos, who shot a pirate with his first arrow.”

  The rowers hadn't seen that, of course; they'd been looking back toward the stern. The cheer they gave Menedemos' cousin was louder than the one he'd got himself; they had some of their wind back. Menedemos watched with amusement as Sostratos, still up on the foredeck, gave a wave the rowers also couldn't see and stammered out, “Thank you very much.” Even when he gets a chance to shine, he doesn't know what to do with it, Menedemos thought.

  Carrying the bow and quiver, Sostratos made his way back toward the stern. Menedemos greeted him with a line from the Iliad: “Hail, 'best of the Akhaioi in archery.' “

  “I'm not, you know,” Sostratos answered with his usual relentless honesty. “You're a better shot than I am, though not by a lot. And hitting anything when you're shooting at a moving target from a moving ship is as much a matter of luck as anything else.”

  Both those things were true. Neither of them mattered even an obolos' worth, not right now. Menedemos tossed his head. “You won't get out of it that easily, my dear. Like it or not, you're a hero.”

  He would have basked in the acclaim himself. What was a man worth, unless his fellows praised him? Not much, not as far as Menedemos was concerned. But Sostratos turned as red as a handsome youth importuned for the first time by an older man. Menedemos swallowed a sigh. There were times when his cousin took modesty much too far.

  The channel between and Euboia had an evil reputation, but its waters were calm enough when the crossed it. Once Euboia lay on the ship's right hand and the coastline of Attica on the left, Sostratos allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. '“We don't have to worry about that anymore,” he remarked.

  Menedemos tossed his head. “Of course we do—unless you hadn't planned on going back?” As Sostratos' cheeks heated, his cousin let him down easy: Tm not sorry to get to leeward of Euboia myself, I will say that.”

  “Nor I,” Sostratos said. The long, narrow island lay like a shield to the northeast of Attica. “Khalkis tomorrow.”

  “I expect so,” Menedemos answered, and began to quote from the Iliad's Catalogue of Ships;

  “ 'The Abantes, breathing fury, held Euboia—

  Khalkis and Eiretria and Hisitaia rich in grapes,

  Coastal Kerinthos and the steep city of Dion;

  They also held Karystos and dwelt in Styra.

  Their leader was Elephenor, descendant of Ares,

  The son of Khalkedon: lord of the great-hearted Abantes.

  Him the swift Abantes followed, with their hair long in back:

  Spearmen with ash spears ready

  To rend the corselets on the chests of their foes.

  Forty black ships followed him.' “

  “Old cities,” Sostratos murmured. But he looked west, toward Attica: toward the land to which he wished
the were going. He pointed. “There's a place that's not so old, but it bears a name that will live as long as Troy: Marathon,”

  His cousin cared little for history, but even he knew what that meant. “Where the Athenians gave the Persians the first lesson on what it means to tangle with free Hellenes,” he said,

  Sostratos dipped his head. “That's right.” And so it was, though things weren't quite so simple. Up till the battle at Marathon, the Persians had won their fights against the Hellenes with a monotonous regularity no one cared to remember these days. Sostratos asked, “Do you know the story of Pheidippides?”

  “Oh, yes,” his cousin said. “He's the fellow who ran from Marathon to Athens with news of the fight, gasped out, 'Rejoice! We conquer!'—and fell over dead.”

  “That's right,” Sostratos said, “When I was in Athens, I went out to Marathon once, to see with my own eyes what the battlefield looks like. It was most of a day on the back of a mule—a long day's march for a hoplite. I don't wonder that Pheidippides dropped dead if he ran it all at once.”

  “What on earth made you want to go all that way?” Menedemos asked.

  “I told you—to see it for myself,” Sostratos answered.

  “It's just a place,” Menedemos said. “The battle happened a long time ago.” They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension. With an amused shrug, Menedemos went on, “Well, to each his own. I think I'll put in at Rhamnous, up past Marathon on the Attic side of the strait here. That's a better anchorage than I could get on the Euboian side.”

  “You're trying to drive me mad, aren't you, my dear?—either that or to tempt me to jump ship,” Sostratos said. Menedemos laughed, and Sostratos was joking. He wouldn't snatch up the gryphon's skull, tuck it under his arm, and run like Pheidippides down to the Lykeion. No, I won't, he thought, however much I want to. Not quitechanging the subject, he went on, “A little inland from the seaside village at Rhamnous, there's a temple to Nemesis, with the goddess' statue carved from a block of Parian marble the Persians had brought along for the victory monument they would set up in Athens. Some say Pheidias carved it, others his pupil Agorakritos.”

  “You've seen it?” his cousin asked.

  “Oh, yes; on the trip to Marathon I stopped there, too. It's very fine work. She's wearing a crown ornamented with tiny Victories and with deer. In one hand, she holds a bowl carved with figures of Ethiopians in relief, in the other an apple branch.”

  “Ethiopians?” Menedemos said. “Why?”

  “To the crows with me if I know,” Sostratos replied. “A priest said it was because Okeanos is Nemesis' father and the Ethiopians live alongside Okeanos, but that seems like a stretch to me. It's just as likely Pheidias felt like carving Ethiopians, and so he did.”

  Rhamnous was a sleepy fishing village. The arrival of a merchant galley that looked a lot like a pirate ship created a small sensation. To explain the 's presence in those waters, Menedemos displayed some of the most transparent silk he'd got from Pixodaros and said, “We're bringing it up to Khalkis for Polemaios' favorite hetaira. If I told you how much he's paying, you'd never believe me.”

  “Let him waste his money,” somebody said, to which there was a general mutter of agreement. Sostratos hadn't expected anything else. Polemaios had broken with Kassandros, whose puppet ruled Athens and Attica. Demetrios of Phaleron was a popular leader, too; if he and Polemaios didn't get along, the people of Attica wouldn't have much use for Antigonos' nephew.

  “A good story,” Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. “No one will go hotfooting it back to Athens to let know we're on our way up to Khalkis to see Polemaios.”

  “No, not for some silk,” his cousin agreed, stowing the filmy fabric once more. “I wonder how fancy the hetairai in Khalkis are.”

  “Of course you do,” Sostratos said. Menedemos clapped both hands over his chest and staggered, as if Sostratos had hit him with an arrow as he'd hit the pirate in the hemiolia. Sostratos laughed; he couldn't help himself. “You're Impossible.”

  “Thank you,” Menedemos said, which set them both laughing all over again.

  Menedemos got the out of Rhamnous not long after sunrise; the akatos neared Khalkis not long after noon. A wooden bridge spanned the Euripos, the narrow channel separating Euboia from the mainland of Hellas. The fortress of Kanethos on the mainland protected the bridge, and was reckoned part of the city of Khalkis.

  Putting in at Khalkis proved a good deal harder than getting to it had been. A strong current flowed south through the Euripos; the rowers had to pull hard to hold the merchant galley in place, let alone make headway against the rushing water. “You couldn't even get near this place from the south in an ordinary round ship,” Menedemos said.

  “Be patient, best one,” Sostratos told him.

  Sure enough, after something less than an hour, the current abruptly reversed itself and began flowing north. It almost carried the past Khalkis. Only some smart rowing let her ease her way alongside a pier. “By the dog of Egypt, I'd heard of that, but I wasn't sure I believed it,” Menedemos said. He raised his voice to call out to the sailors: “Make sure she's securely moored. We don't want her swept away.”

  “Now you see it's true,” Sostratos said as the men checked the lines and the knots. “The current In the Euripos changes direction six or seven times a day. Sometimes more—sometimes even twice that.”

  “Why would it do such a mad thing?” his cousin asked.

  “I haven't the faintest idea, and I don't think anyone else has, either,” Sostratos replied.

  “One of your philosopher friends ought to look into it,” Menedemos said. “Either it's something natural, in which case he'll figure it out, or it's a god putting his finger in there, in which case a philosopher won't do anybody much good.”

  “A cause could be natural without being easy to understand,” Sostratos said.

  His cousin didn't rise to the argument. Instead, Menedemos said, “Get that letter from Ptolemaios and come on. We've got to find Polemaios.”

  The winding streets of Khalkis were full of soldiers who followed Antigonos' rebellious nephew. They all had swords or spears. Quite a few of them had taken on too much wine. Ordinary Khalkidians mostly stayed indoors. Seeing how quarrelsome the soldiers were, Sostratos couldn't blame the locals. One of the soldiers, though, directed him and Menedemos to a house not far from the market square.

  As at Ptolemaios' residence back on Kos, sentries stood guard in front of this one. One of them—an immense man, three or four digits taller even than Sostratos—rumbled, “Yes, he's here. Why should he want to see you people, though?”

  “I have a letter for him.” Sostratos showed it to the sentry. “He'll have some kind of answer to give us, I expect.”

  “Give me the letter,” the big guard said. “I'll take it to him. You wait here.” He held out his hand. That was, plainly, the best offer Sostratos would get. He handed the fellow the letter. The big man went into the house. The remaining guard set a hand on his sword-hilt, as if expecting Sostratos and Menedemos to try to leap on him and beat him into submission.

  Polemaios, Sostratos reflected, had burned two bridges in rapid succession. Maybe it was no wonder that his men seemed jumpy. Antigonos and Kassandros both wanted their commander dead. How could they be sure a couple of Rhodians weren't a couple of hired murderers? That was simple: they couldn't. And Polemaios himself had to feel more hunted than any of his soldiers.

  That thought had hardly crossed his mind before the door opened again. Out came the bodyguard, followed by a man bigger still by a digit or two. “Hail,” the newcomer said. “I'm Polemaios. You're the Rhodians, eh?”

  “That's right,” Sostratos said. He'd heard that Antigonos and his sons, and Philippos, were big men; it evidently ran in the family. was supposed to be very handsome. Polemaios wasn't. He had a broken nose and what looked to be a permanent worried expression. He was, Sostratos judged, getting close to forty.

  “You'd better come in,” he said
now. “I think we've got some things to talk about.” Like Ptolemaios, he spoke an Attic Greek with a faint undercurrent of his half barbarous northern homeland.

  He'd been drinking wine in the andron. At his gesture, a slave poured cups for Sostratos and Menedemos, then left the room in a hurry. Polomaios picked up his cup and took a long pull, After pouring a small libation, Sostratos drank, too. The wine was sweet and thick and strong and quite unmixed with water. After a small sip, he set down the cup. He also shot Menedemos a warning glance—Polemaios seemed to live up to, or down to, stories about Macedonian drinking habits.

  He didn't seem drunk, though, as he leaned toward the two Rhodians and said, “So Ptolemaios will take me in, will he?”

  “That's right, sir,” Sostratos said.

  Something glinted in Polemaios' eyes. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was even fiercer. “He wants to use me,” he said in tones that brooked no contradiction. “My uncle thought he'd use me. Kassandros thought he'd use me, too.” Sostratos judged he was bound to be right about Ptolemaios, even if the word he chose for use was the one that described what a man did with a boy.

  Menedemos spoke quickly: “Ptolemaios spoke to us of an alliance between the two of you.” He sounded more solicitous than usual. Sostratos didn't need long to figure out why—if Polemaios decided not to go back to Kos on the , that threw forty minai of silver into the sea.

  “Only goes to show he knows how to tell lies, too,” Antigonos' nephew said with a bitter laugh, “But I'll tell you something, Rhodians.” His intent, solemn stare showed the effects of the neat wine. So did his being rash enough to jab his thumb at his chest and speak his mind to strangers: “I'm all done with being used. I'm no wide-arsed slave boy, not me. From now on, I do the using.”

  Ptolemaios wants this fellow around? Sostratos thought, doing his best to hold his face steady. Me, I'd sooner pet a shark.