The Gryphon's Skull

by Harry Turtledove

  “We'll get there yet,” Menedemos said soothingly.

  “But not with the gryphon's skull.” Sostratos scowled at his cousin, though it wasn't Menedemos' fault. But he couldn't get the picture out of his mind: the pirate, maybe—he hoped—wounded, undoing the leather lashing that held the sack closed, staring in horrified dismay at the skull that stared blindly back, and then, cursing, flinging it into the sea while all his thieving comrades laughed.

  “Can't be helped. We were lucky to get away with our freedom and most of our goods,” Menedemos said.

  He was right again; Sostratos knew as much. But his cool indifference grated. “So much knowledge wasted!” Sostratos said.

  “A lot, a little—how can you tell?” Menedemos remained indifferent. “You can't even tell for sure whether your philosophical friends would have cared a tenth as much about the skull as you did.”

  Sostratos bit down on that like a man biting down on a big piece of grit in a chunk of bread, and counted himself lucky not to break a mental tooth. He didn't know what the philosophers of the Lykeion and the Academy would have made of the gryphon's skull. He never would know now. He gave back the best answer he could: “Damonax was interested in it.”

  “Damonax didn't care about studying it—he wanted it for a decoration,” Menedemos said. “That says something nasty about his taste, but it doesn't say anything about what a real philosopher would think of it.”

  Stubbornly, Sostratos said, “Aristoteles wrote books about animals and the parts that make them up. His successor Theophrastos, whom I studied under, is doing the same thing with plants. He would have wanted to see the gryphon's skull.”

  “Why? Would he think it grew on a tree like a pine cone?”

  “You're impossible!” Sostratos said, but he laughed in spite of himself.

  Maybe that was what his cousin had had in mind. Little by little, Athens receded behind the . Sostratos found things with which to busy himself about the ship instead of mooning over the city like a lover over his lost beloved. Eventually, he looked up and saw that it lay far astern. I will come back, he thought, even if it is without the gryphon's skull.

  For now, though, mundane business: he asked Menedemos, “Are you going to put in at Sounion again tonight?”

  “That's right. Why?” His cousin gave him a suspicious look. “Do you plan on jumping ship and heading back to Athens even without your precious toy?”

  “No, no, no.” Sostratos tossed his head. Having taken so many barbs, Sostratos gave one back: “I was just thinking how handy it was that there are still a few places around the Inner Sea where you haven't outraged any husbands.”

  “Heh,” Menedemos said: one syllable's worth of laughter. But he'd never been a man who could dish it out without taking it. After a moment, he lifted one hand from the steering-oar tillers and waved to Sostratos. “All right, my dear, you got me that time.”

  Sounion, as far as Sostratos was concerned, remained as unprepossessing as it had been the last time the put in there, a few days earlier. Now, at least, the ship didn't need to be cleansed of pollution (unless adultery counts, he thought), and they had no dead or dying aboard. The setting sun sent gold and orange and crimson ripples across the sea as the akatos' anchors splashed down into the water.

  A boat rowed out from the hamlet toward the merchant galley. Sostratos had seen the man at the oars before, but not his passenger, a dapper fellow who looked out of place in Sounion. The dapper man hailed the ship: “Ahoy, there! Who are you, and where are you bound?”

  “We're the , out of , and we're heading home,” Sostratos replied.

  “Told you so,” said the man at the oars in the small boat.

  The dapper man ignored him. “Will you take a passenger to Kos?” he called.

  “That depends,” Sostratos said.

  “Ah, yes.” The dapper man dipped his head and grinned. “It always does, doesn't it? Well, what's your fare?”

  Sostratos considered. This fellow plainly didn't belong here, which meant that, for one reason or another, he had some urgent need to go east. And so the only question was, how much to charge him? Sostratos thought of Euxenides of Phaselis, and how much they'd squeezed out of him for a much shorter trip. Bracing himself for either a scream of fury or a furious haggle, he named the most outrageous price he could think of: “Fifty drakhmai.”

  But the dapper man in the boat didn't scream. He didn't even blink. He just dipped his head and said, “Done. You sail in the morning, don't you?”

  Behind Sostratos, Menedemos muttered, “By the dog of Egypt!” Sostratos couldn't tell whether that was praise for him or astonishment that the dapper fellow—the new passenger, he was now— hadn't screamed blue murder. Some of both, maybe. As for Sostratos himself, he had the feeling he could have asked for a whole mina, not just a half, and he would have got the same instant agreement.

  He had to make himself remember the man's question. “That's right,” he said. “You pay half then, half when we get there.”

  “I know how it's done,” the dapper man said impatiently. “I'll have my own food and wine, too.”

  “All right.” Sostratos knew he sounded a little dazed, but couldn't help it. He had to make himself come out with one more question: “And, ah, your name is. . . ?”

  “You can call me Dionysios son of Herakleitos,” the man answered. “I'll be aboard early enough to suit you, I promise.” He spoke to the local at the oars, who took him back to Sounion.

  Sostratos stared after him. “Well, well,” Menedemos said. “Isn't that interesting?”

  “I wonder what he's running from,” Sostratos said. “Nothing right here in town, surely, or he'd have asked to spend the night on the foredeck. Something back in Athens, I suppose. He looks like an Athenian—sounds like one, too.”

  “I wonder who he is,” Menedemos said.

  “Dionysios son of Herakl—” Sostratos began.

  His cousin tossed his head. “He said we could call him that. He didn't say it was his name.” Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He prided himself on noticing such things, but he'd missed that one. Menedemos went on, “He strung a couple of the most ordinary names in the world together, is what he did. He might have been Odysseus telling Polyphemos the Cyclops to call him Nobody.”

  “Trust you to haul into it somehow,” Sostratos said, but he had to admit the comparison was apt. And then his own wits, stunned since Dionysios so casually agreed to that ridiculous fare, started to work again. “He wants to go to Kos.”

  “He said so,” Menedemos agreed. After a moment, he snapped his fingers. “And staying on Kos—”

  “Is Ptolemaios,” Sostratos finished for him, not wanting to hear his own thought hijacked. “I wonder if he's some sort of envoy from Demetrios of Phaleron here in Attica, or from Kassandros, or if he's one of Ptolemaios' spies.”

  “I'd bet on the last,” Menedemos said. “Ptolemaios has all the money in the world, so why should his spies have to quarrel about fares?”

  “That makes sense,” Sostratos said. “Of course, just because it makes sense doesn't have to mean it's true. I'll tell you something else.” He waited for Menedemos to raise a questioning eyebrow, then continued, “Whatever he is, we won't find out from him.”

  “Well, my dear, if you think I'm going to argue about that, you're mad as a maenad,” Menedemos said.

  Dionysios son of Herakleitos—or whatever his real name was— proved as good as his word. He hailed the so early the next morning, some of her sailors were still asleep. Carrying a leather sack big enough to hold food and wine and the few belongings a traveling man needed, he scrambled up from the local's rowboat into the low waist of the merchant galley.

  “Hail,” he said as Sostratos came up to him.

  “Good day,” Sostratos replied.

  “I doubt it,” Dionysios replied. “It's going to be beastly hot. I hope you don't expect a man to bring his own water along with everything else.”

&nb
sp; “No,” Sostratos said. “Water we share, especially on a hot day— and I think you're right: this will be one. My eyes feel drier than they should, and the sun's not even over the horizon.” He held out his hand. “Now, if you'd be so kind, the first part of the fare.”

  “Certainly.” Dionysios reached into the sack for a smaller leather wallet. He took coins from it and gave them to Sostratos one by one. “Here you are, best one: twenty-five drakhmai.”

  The coins had an eagle on one side and a blunt-featured man's profile on the other. “These are Ptolemaios' drakhmai!” Sostratos said in dismay—they were far lighter than the Attic owls he'd expected.

  “You never said in whose currency you wanted to be paid,” Dionysios pointed out.

  “Have we got a problem?” Menedemos called from the stern. After Sostratos explained, his cousin asked, “Well, what do we do about that? Shall we send him back to shore unless he comes up with the proper weight of silver?”

  “Where's the justice in that?” Dionysios demanded. “I'm not cheating you out of anything I promised to give.”

  “So what?” Menedemos said. “If you don't pay us what we want, you can wait for another ship.” That made the dapper man unhappy, try as he would to hide it.

  But Sostratos reluctantly tossed his head—that gibe about justice struck home. “He's right, Menedemos. It's my own fault, for not saying we wanted it in Attic money.” He took advantage of exchange rates whenever he could; it wasn't often that anyone got the better of him, but it had happened here.

  “You're too soft for your own good,” Menedemos grumbled.

  Dionysios son of Herakleitos gave Sostratos a bow. “What you are, my dear fellow, is a kalos k'agathos.”

  “A gentleman? Me? I don't know about that,” Sostratos said, more flattered than he was willing to show. “I do know I expect people who deal with me to be honest, so I'd better give what I hope to get.”

  “And if that doesn't make you a kalos k'agathos, to the crows with me if I know what would,” Dionysios said.

  The sun, a ball of molten bronze, rose over the little island of Helena, where had paused on her way home to Sparta after the Trojan War. Almost at once, the air began to quiver and dance, as it would above hot metal in a smithy. Those first few harsh beams seemed to scorch the hillsides back of Sounion. They'd been sere and dry and brown before; Sostratos knew as much. But he could almost watch the last moisture baking out of them now. He marveled that he couldn't watch the sea steam and retreat, as water would in a pot left over the fire too long.

  “Papai!” he exclaimed. “I hope we have some wind. Rowing in this will be worse than it was the last time we went through the Kyklades.”

  Dionysios rummaged in his sack again. This time, he pulled out a broad-brimmed hat, which he set on his head. “I don't care to cook, thank you very much,” he said.

  “Why don't you go up to the foredeck so the rowers can work freely?” Sostratos said.

  “Oh, of course. I don't mean to be a bother.” Dionysios picked up his bag and headed for the bow.

  Sostratos went back to the stern and climbed up onto the poop deck. He waited for Menedemos to rake him over the coals; his cousin had earned the right. But Menedemos just clicked his tongue between his teeth and said, “Well, well—the biter bit.”

  “I never dreamt he'd give me Ptolemaios' money,” Sostratos said. “He's as cocksure as an Athenian ought to be; he speaks good Attic Greek; I expected owls. This does make it all the more likely he's Ptolemaios' man.”

  “Because he uses coins from Egypt? I should say so.”

  “Well, that, too, but it isn't what I had in mind. I was thinking that he acts like a rich cheapskate, the way Ptolemaios did when we were haggling over the price for the tiger skin,” Sostratos said.

  “A rich cheapskate.” Menedemos savored the paradox before dipping his head in agreement. “That's good. He can get anything he wants and pay anything he wants, and he knows it, but he still doesn't want to pay too much.”

  Up at the bow, capstans creaked as sailors brought up the anchors. Rich cheapskate or not, Dionysios son of Herakleitos knew enough to stay out of their way. Sweat and olive oil sheened their naked bodies. Sostratos swiped a forearm across his brow. It came away wet. “I'm going to get a hat for myself, too,” he said. “I don't care to bake my brains today.”

  His cousin wet a finger and tested the breeze—or would have, had there been any breeze to test. He sighed. “That's a good idea, however much I wish it weren't.”

  Diokles said, “I'm only going to put half a dozen men on a side at the oars, and I'll change shifts more often than I usually do. Otherwise, we'll lose somebody from heatstroke, sure as sure.”

  “As you think best,” Menedemos told the keleustes.

  With shouted orders from the captain and the oarmaster, the left the little harbor of Sounion and started east across the Aegean toward Kos and then toward and home. Sostratos kept looking back towards the north and west, towards Athens, toward what might have been. He cursed the pirate who'd stolen the gryphon's skull—and every other pirate who'd ever lived. Those curses felt weak, empty. The skull was gone, and he'd never see its like again. He wondered if the world would.

  Rather than merely cursing pirates, Menedemos got ready to fend them off, serving out weapons to the crew as he had on the voyage towards Attica. Seeing that, the 's passenger took a hoplite's shortsword from his bag and belted it on around his waist. He had the air of a man who knew what to do with it.

  In a dead calm, the Aegean lay smooth as polished metal under that fierce, broiling sun. Sweat rivered off Menedemos as he stood at the steering oars. He guzzled heavily watered wine to keep some moisture in him. So did the rowers. They couldn't pull their best, not in heat like this. Diokles didn't chide them. The oarmaster knew they were giving what they could.

  Halfway between Sounion and Keos, the slid past a becalmed round ship. Sailors on the tubby merchantman shouted in alarm when they spied the merchant galley. Had she been a pirate ship, they couldn't possibly have escaped. The sailors on the round ship shouted again, this time in relief, when the akatos didn't turn toward them.

  Well before noon, Menedemos decided to put in at Keos. “We'll fill up our water jars and hope for wind tomorrow,” he told Sostratos. “I know we've only come about a hundred stadia, but even so. ...”

  To his relief, his cousin didn't feel like arguing. “We wouldn't have made Kythnos by sundown, anyhow, and we need the fresh water.”

  “That's right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “And the water here is better than the nasty stuff they have on Kythnos.”

  Keos did look greener and more inviting than its southern neighbor, though the savage sun was baking it, too. As the came into the harbor at Koressia, one of the little island's four poleis, Sostratos remarked, “This was the place where, in the old days, they made people drink hemlock when they turned sixty—they didn't want any useless mouths to feed.”

  Menedemos snapped his fingers. “I knew that was one of the Kyklades, but you could have given me to a Persian torturer and he wouldn't have squeezed which one out of me.”

  Sostratos said, “I remember useless things—you know that. It's also where Simonides the poet came from.”

  “ 'Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.' “ Menedemos quoted the epitaph for the men who'd died at Thermopylai.

  “He wrote a lot of other verses besides that one,” Sostratos said.

  “I know, but it's the one everybody recalls,” Menedemos said. “I'm not like you, my dear—I don't come up with the strange things at the drop of a hat.”

  Sostratos took off his hat. Menedemos wondered if he would drop it, but he only fanned himself with it and put it back on. One of his eyebrows rose. He studied Menedemos the same way he'd examined the gryphon's skull—analyzing him, classifying him, finding a place for him in the bigger scheme of things. Menedemos didn't know that he cared for the place to which his cousin had assig
ned him. It would be higher on the scheme of things than the gryphon, surely, but how much higher?

  Before Sostratos could give him the answer there—in greater detail than he would like, he guessed—Dionysios came back to the stern. “Considering the price I'm paying, I hoped to get closer to Kos my first day out than one miserable little hop,” the dapper man said.

  “I hoped to get closer, too,” Menedemos answered, “but there was no wind, and I don't intend to kill my rowers. Maybe we'll do better tomorrow.”

  “We'd better,” Dionysios said darkly.

  With a smile even cooler and nastier than the one he'd just bestowed on Menedemos, Sostratos said, “Well, O marvelous one, if our pace doesn't suit you, I'll give you back all but five drakhmai of your fare, and you're welcome to find another eastbound ship here.”

  The dull red Dionysios turned had nothing to do with the heat. The harbor at Koressia, into which the Elixos River ran, held no other ships besides the : only little fishing boats that never got out of sight of the island. How long would the traveler have to wait for another vessel bound for Kos? Menedemos had no idea, and neither, plainly, did Dionysios.

  With twin splashes, the akatos' anchors went into the sea. Sailors wrestled water jars into the boat and went ashore with them. The men made for the Elixos to fill the jars. Menedemos said, “Shall we go into the market square with some perfume and a little silk and see if we can sell 'em?”

  “Here?” Sostratos' glance was eloquent. “I don't think they've done anything here since they sent a couple of ships to fight the Persians at Salamis.”

  Menedemos laughed. “You're probably right. Even so, though, they're bound to want their women to smell sweet and look pretty.”

  “I suppose so,” his cousin admitted. “But can they pay for what they want?”

  “Always a question,” Menedemos admitted. “I think it's worth finding out.”

  Next to no one in Koressia was stirring as the two Rhodians made their way to the agora. Men stayed in wineshops or squatted like lizards in whatever shade the walls gave them. A couple of drunks lay snoring, empty cups or wine jars beside them. Sostratos raised an eyebrow. Menedemos only shrugged.