Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  Over the Wine-Dark Sea

  Harry Turtledove

  Over the Wine-Dark Sea

  H. N. Turteltaub

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  New York

  www.ebookyes.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  OVER THE WINE-DARK SEA

  Copyright 2001 by H. N. Turteltaub

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  Map by Mark Stein Studios

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 0-312-70193-4

  First Edition: July 2001

  By H. N. Turteltaub from Tom Doherty Associates

  Justinian

  Over the Wine-Dark Sea

  This book is for Professor Stanley Burstein of California State University, Los Angeles, and for Noreen Doyle, with many thanks for their friendship and for their help with my research.

  A NOTE ON WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND MONEY

  I have, as best I could, used in this novel the weights, measures, and coinages my characters would have used and encountered in their journey. Here are some approximate equivalents (precise values would have varied from city to city, further complicating things):

  1 digit = 3/4 inch

  4 digits = 1 palm

  6 palms = 1 cubit

  1 cubit = 1 1/2 feet

  1 plethron = 100 feet

  1 stadion = 600 feet

  12 khalkoi = 1 obolos

  6 oboloi = 1 drakhma

  100 drakhmai = 1 mina

  (about 1 pound of silver)

  60 minai = 1 talent

  As noted, these are all approximate. As a measure of how widely they could vary, the talent in Athens was about 57 pounds, while that of Aigina, less than thirty miles away, was about 83 pounds.

  1

  Menedemos and his cousin Sostratos walked down toward the Aphrodite in the main harbor of Rhodes. Both young men wore thigh-length wool chitons. Sostratos had a wool chlamys on over his tunic. He didn't really need the cloak, though; it was still late in the month of Anthesterion, before the vernal equinox, but the sun shone warm out of a clear blue sky. Like any men who often went to sea, the two cousins went barefoot even on dry land.

  A mild breeze blew down from the north. Tasting it, Menedemos dipped his head in anticipation. "Good sailing weather coming soon," he said. He was little and lithe and very handsome, his face clean-shaven in the style Alexander the Great had made popular twenty years before.

  "Sure enough," Sostratos agreed. He'd spent enough years studying in Athens to have a sharper accent than the Doric drawl usual in Rhodes. Careless of fashion, he'd let his beard grow out. He towered more than half a head above his cousin. "Some traders have already put to sea, I hear."

  "I've heard the same, but Father says it's too early," Menedemos answered.

  "He's probably right." Sostratos, as far as Menedemos was concerned, showed altogether too much self-restraint for someone only a few months older than he was.

  "I want to be out there," Menedemos said. "I want to be doing things. Whenever we sit idle over the winter, I feel like a hare caught in a net."

  "Plenty to do during the winter," Sostratos said. "It's what you do then that lets you succeed when you can sail."

  "Yes, Grandfather," Menedemos said. "No wonder I command the Aphrodite and you keep track of what goes aboard her."

  Sostratos shrugged. "The gods give one man one thing, another man another. You're always ready to seize the moment. You always have been, as long as I can remember. As for me . . ." He shrugged again. Even though slightly the older and much the larger of the two of them, he'd had to get used to living in Menedemos' shadow. "As you said, I keep track of things. I'm good at it."

  "Well, nobody can quarrel with you there," Menedemos said generously. He raised his voice to a shout and hailed the akatos ahead: "Ahoy, the Aphrodite!"

  Carpenters in chitons and naked sailors aboard the merchant galley waved to Menedemos and Sostratos. "When do we go out, skipper?" one of the sailors called. "We've been stuck in port so long, my hands have got soft."

  "We'll fix that, don't you worry," Menedemos said with a laugh. "It won't be long now, I promise." His sharp, dark-eyed gaze swung to a carpenter at the poop of the forty-cubit vessel. "Hail, Khremes. How are those new steering oars coming?"

  "They're just about ready, captain," the carpenter answered. "I think they'll be even smoother than the pair you had before. A little old bald man sitting in a chair with a cushion under his backside could swing your ship any way you wanted her to go." He waved in invitation. "Come on up and get the feel of 'em for yourself."

  Menedemos tossed his head to show he declined. "Can't really do that till she's in the water, not hauled out to keep her timbers dry." Sostratos following him, he walked toward the bow of the ship. The Aphrodite had twenty oars on either side, giving her almost as many rowers as a pentekonter, but she was beamier than the fifty-oared galleys so beloved by pirates: unlike them, she had to carry cargo.

  Sostratos tapped the lead sheathing the Aphrodite below the waterline with a fingernail. "Still good and sound."

  "It had better be," Menedemos said. "We just replaced it year before last." He tapped, too, at one of the copper nails holding the lead and the tarred wool fabric below it to the oak planking of the hull.

  Up at the bow, another carpenter was replacing a lost nail that helped hold the three-finned bronze ram to the bow timbers inside it. He must have heard Menedemos' remark, for he looked up and said, "And I'll bet you were glad you finally could do it year before last, too."

  "He's got you there," Sostratos said.

  "No, we finally got him and his pals back," Menedemos answered. "For a while there, ordinary Rhodians had a cursed hard time getting carpenters to work for them - everybody was building ships for Antigonos to use against Ptolemaios."

  "That was a mistake - helping Antigonos, I mean," Sostratos said. "Rhodes does too much business with Egypt for us to get on Ptolemaios' wrong side."

  "You can say that - you were studying up in Athens. You don't know what things were like here." Menedemos scowled at the memory. "Nobody had the nerve to try crossing One-Eyed Antigonos, believe you me."

  As terns screeched overhead, Sostratos made a placating gesture. "All right. I wouldn't want to try crossing him myself, since you put it that way." Another screech rang out, this one louder, more raucous, and much closer than the high-flying sea birds. Sostratos jumped. "By the dog of Egypt, what was that?"

  "I don't know." Menedemos trotted away from the Aphrodite. "Come on. Let's go find out."

  Sostratos flipped his hands in protest. "Our fathers sent us down here to see if the ship is ready to take out."

  "We'll do that," Menedemos said over his shoulder. "But whatever's making that noise may be something the Hellenes in Italy haven't seen before. I know I've never heard it before."

  The horrible screech rang out again. It sounded more like a bugle than anything else, but it didn't really sound like a bugle, either. "I hope I never hear it again," Sostratos said, but, as he did so often, he followed where Menedemos led.

  Since the screeches, once begun, resounded at pretty regular intervals, tracking them didn't require dogs. They came from a ramshackle pierside warehouse about a plethron from the Aphrodite. The owner of the building, a fat Phoenician named Himi
lkon, came running out, hands clapped over his ears, just as Menedemos and Sostratos trotted up.

  "Hail," Menedemos said. "Is that the noise a leopard makes?"

  "Or has some Egyptian wizard summoned up a kakodaimon from the depths of Tartaros?" Sostratos added.

  Himilkon shook his head from side to side, as Phoenicians did when they meant no. "Neither, my masters," he answered in gutturally accented Greek. Gold gleamed from hoops that pierced his ears. He plucked at his curled black beard, much longer and thicker than Sostratos', to show distress. "That accursed fowl is pretty, but it will drive me mad."

  "Fowl?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow at yet another screech. "What kind of fowl? A pigeon with a brazen throat?"

  "A fowl," Himilkon repeated. "I do not recall the name in Greek." He shouted back into the warehouse: "Hyssaldomos! Bring out the cage, to show the miserable creature to these fine gentlemen."

  "He wants you to buy it, whatever it is," Sostratos whispered to Menedemos. The captain of the Aphrodite dipped his head in impatient agreement.

  Hyssaldomos' voice came from within: "Be right there, boss." Grunting under the weight, the Karian slave carried out a large, heavy wooden cage and set it down on the ground by Himilkon. "Here you go."

  Menedemos and Sostratos crouched to peer through the slats of the cage. A very large bird with shiny blue feathers and a curious crest or topknot stared back at them with beady black eyes. It opened its pale beak and gave forth with another screech, all the more appalling for coming from closer range.

  Rubbing his ear, Menedemos looked up at Himilkon. "Whatever it is, I've never seen one before."

  Hyssaldomos supplied the Greek word: "It's a peacock."

  "That's right, a peacock," Himilkon said with pride that would have been greater if he hadn't had to talk around a screech.

  "A peacock!" Menedemos and Sostratos exclaimed, in excitement and disbelief. Menedemos wagged a finger at the creature and quoted Aristophanes, his favorite playwright: " 'Which are you, bird or peacock?' "

  "My slave and I told you it was a peacock," said the Phoenician merchant, who'd probably never heard of the Birds. "And be careful with your hands around it. It bites."

  "Where does it come from?" Sostratos asked.

  "India," Himilkon replied. "Since the divine Alexander went there with an army of you Hellenes, more of these birds have come back to the Inner Sea than ever before. I have the peacock here, and five peahens still caged in the warehouse. They're quieter than he is, Baal be praised."

  "From India?" Sostratos scratched his head in bewilderment. "But Herodotos doesn't talk about peafowl in India in his history. He talks about the clothes made from tree-wool, and the enormous ants that mine gold, and the Indians themselves, with their black hides and their black semen. But not a word about peacocks. If they came from India, you'd think he'd say so."

  Himilkon shrugged. "I don't know anything about this Hellene, whoever he is. But I know where peacocks come from. And if he didn't talk about them, my bet is he didn't know about them."

  With a chuckle, Menedemos said, "You can't argue with that, Sostratos." He enjoyed teasing his cousin, who, he sometimes thought, would sooner read about life than live it. He took another look at the peacock, then asked Himilkon, "What are those feathers piled up on top of it? They don't look like they're growing out of its back."

  "No, no, no." The Phoenician made little pushing motions, as if to deny the very idea. "Those are tail feathers. The cage is too small, too crowded."

  "All that mess? Its tail?" Menedemos raised that eyebrow again. "You're having me on."

  "No such thing." Himilkon drew himself up, the picture of affronted dignity. "I'll show you." He turned to Hyssaldomos. "Open the door and let it out, to show the gentlemen. They may be customers, eh?"

  His slave plainly didn't care whether Menedemos and Sostratos were customers or not. "Oh, boss, have a heart!" the Karian wailed. "I'm the one who'll have to herd it back in there afterwards."

  "And what else have you got to do?" Himilkon retorted. "It's not going to fly away; its wing is clipped. Go on, you lazy good-for-nothing."

  Muttering under his breath, Hyssaldomos squatted and undid the two bronze hooks and eyes that held the cage door closed. Even after he opened the door, the peacock didn't come out right away. "He's stupid," Hyssaldomos said, looking up at the two Hellenes. "I mean to tell you, he's really stupid."

  But then, with another screech, the peacock finally seemed to realize what had happened and rushed out of the cage. Menedemos exclaimed in astonishment. He'd seen it was big, but hadn't realized just how big: its body was almost swan-sized, and the tail - Himilkon hadn't lied - at least doubled its apparent size.

  "He's beautiful," Sostratos breathed. The sun gleamed metallically from the blue and green feathers of the peacock's body and tail.

  Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "He certainly is. They've never - " He'd started to say they'd never seen the like in Italy, but bit down on the words before they escaped. If Himilkon knew he badly wanted the bird, the price was bound to go up.

  "Oh, there he goes!" Hyssaldomos wailed as the peacock started to run. "Get in front of him, young sirs, and head him off!"

  Both Menedemos and Sostratos tried to get in front of the peacock, but it dodged them like a flutegirl dodging a drunken, groping reveler at a symposion. And then it was off, running like a racehorse and screeching as it ran. Its legs weren't goose- or swanlike; they put Menedemos more in mind of those of a bustard or pheasant. He and Sostratos pounded after it. Urged on by Himilkon's curses, Hyssaldomos ran after them.

  The peacock kept trying to take to the air. It couldn't fly; as Himilkon had said, its wings were clipped. But every flapping, fluttering burst lent it extra speed. "It's - faster - than we are," Sostratos panted.

  "I know." Menedemos was panting, too. "We could enter it at the next Olympics, and it'd win the dash." He raised his voice to a shout: "Two oboloi to whoever catches the bird unhurt!"

  Sailors and workmen and passersby were already staring at the peacock, or perhaps at the spectacle of three men chasing a peacock. The prospect of a reward sent a double handful of them after the bird, too, converging on it from every angle at once.

  A naked sailor grabbed for the peacock. "I've got you!" he cried in triumph. A moment later, he cried out once more, this time in dismay: "Oimoi! Help!" The peacock kicked and raked him with its big clawed feet. It buffeted him with its wings. And it pecked, hard. "Oimoi!" he yelled again, and let go.

  "Himilkon told you it could bite off a finger," Sostratos said to Menedemos.

  "That wasn't his finger," Menedemos answered. "And he's lucky it didn't bite it off."

  From then on, nobody seemed nearly so eager to close with the peacock. From the doorway to his warehouse, Himilkon shouted, "Herd it back over here." People were more willing to try that. Yelling and waving their arms and shying pebbles - and staying at a respectful distance - they managed to turn the peacock so it was running toward the Phoenician merchant instead of away from him.

  "It'll trample him if he tries to catch it by himself," Menedemos said, still running after the bird.

  "He's brought something else out of the building," Sostratos said. "Looks like another cage."

  When they got a little closer, Menedemos asked, "Is that another peacock in there?"

  "Not a peacock." Sostratos replied. "See how much plainer it is?"

  The peacock had seen the same thing as Sostratos, and more quickly, too. It skidded to a stop, sand and gravel flying up from between its toes. All at once, it might have forgotten the mob of men pursuing it. Noting as much, Menedemos slowed down, too, and waved his comrades to a halt with him.

  "What's it doing?" somebody asked.

  "Showing off for the peahen," Sostratos answered.

  And then everyone, even Himilkon, said, "Ahhh!" as the peacock raised its long tail and spread it wide. The blue spots on the green and yellow plumes caught and held the light. The peacoc
k slowly backed toward the caged peahen, then turned to give her the full magnificent display.

  "Argos' eyes," Sostratos said softly.

  "There's no myth about Argos and the peacock," Menedemos said.

  "Of course not," Sostratos said. "Back in the days when the myths were made, who'd ever seen a peacock? But if people had, that's the myth they would have made."

  While they spoke, Himilkon, a practical man, tossed a net over the distracted peacock. It let out a horrified squawk and tried to get away again, but couldn't. Despite its struggles, Himilkon and Hyssaldomos wrestled it back into its cage without incurring more than minor flesh wounds.

  "Please don't let it out again any time soon, boss," the Karian slave pleaded, fastening the hooks and eyes that kept the peacock imprisoned.

  "Oh, shut up." The merchant drew back his foot as if to kick Hyssaldomos, but relented. "If I have a customer, I'll put the bird through his paces."

  "And me through mine, by Zeus Labraundeus," Hyssaldomos grumbled. He scowled at Menedemos and Sostratos. "Besides, who says they're customers? Just a couple of gawkers, if you ask me."

  "Oh, we might be interested . . . if the price is right," Menedemos allowed.

  In the fight with Himilkon and Hyssaldomos, the peacock had shed one of those astonishing tail feathers. Menedemos plucked it off the ground and admired it. "Three oboloi if you want to keep it," Himilkon said briskly.

  "Half a drakhma?" Menedemos yelped. "For a feather?" A drakhma a day could feed and house a man and his family - not in any style, but it would put a roof over their heads and keep them from starving. "That's robbery!"

  Himilkon smiled. "I'll deduct it from the price of the bird . . . if you're a customer."

  Like any Hellene going out where he might spend some money, Menedemos had a couple of oboloi tucked between his cheek and his teeth. He spat the little silver coins into the palm of his hand and dried them on his tunic. Then he nudged his cousin, who produced another one. Menedemos handed Himilkon the coins. The Phoenician popped them into his own mouth. Menedemos asked, "Well, what do you want for him - and for the peahens, too?"

  Some of the men who'd chased the peacock went back to what they had been doing now that it was back in its cage. Others hung around to watch the haggling, which might also prove entertaining.