Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  "No such thing as good times for traders," Menedemos said. "No such thing as safe times, anyway. My father would say that, anyway, and I think yours would, too."

  "Probably." Sostratos yawned, then sighed. "I was hoping for a real bed tonight, and what do I get? Wood." He wrapped his himation around himself.

  His cousin laughed. "I was hoping for a real bed with somebody warm and friendly in it, and what do I get? Wood and you." He too stretched out on the poop deck and made himself as comfortable as he could. "Good night."

  "Good night." The planks were hard, but Sostratos had had a long, wearing day. He fell asleep almost at once.

  He woke a little before sunup. The peacock, punctual as a rooster, announced the coming day with a squawk that probably shook half of Knidos out of bed. Sostratos yawned and stretched and rolled over so that he faced Menedemos. His cousin's eyes were also open. "Do you think Diokles is awake?" Menedemos asked.

  "Yes, unless that horrible screech frightened him to death," Sostratos answered.

  "Ha! If only that were a joke." Menedemos got to his feet. With his himation a blanket and his chiton a pillow, he was as naked as the day he was born: nothing out of the ordinary on a ship, in port or on the sea. He raised his voice: "Diokles."

  The keleustes had slept on a rower's bench, leaning up against the planking of the Aphrodite. He waved back toward the poop. "Good day, captain," he said. "Gods, that's a sweet-voiced fowl we're carrying, isn't it?"

  "Sweet as vinegar," Menedemos answered. "Sweet as rancid oil. How many rowers went into town yesterday and still haven't come back?"

  Diokles didn't even have to look around to answer: "Five. Not too bad, all things considered."

  "No, not too," Menedemos said. "But tell off some men and start scouring the wineshops and the whorehouses. I want a full crew when we sail, and I want to leave inside an hour's time. The wind'll be in our teeth all the way to Kos, so I don't want to head up there with any empty benches - we'll row every cubit of the trip."

  "I'll see to it," Diokles promised. "Most of the dives are close by the harbor, so we shouldn't need long to sift through 'em. And if we're still a man or two short, there's bound to be somebody who'll want to ship with us."

  "Let's try to round up our own first," Menedemos said, and the oarmaster dipped his head. He chose large, well-made men to come with him. They all had knives on their belts, and some of them carried belaying pins, too. "He's smart," Menedemos remarked to Sostratos. "The best way not to run into trouble is to show that you're ready for it."

  "You're bound to be right." Naked as Menedemos, Sostratos strode to the gunwale and pissed over the side into the harbor water. Then he went up to the little foredeck to see how the peafowl were doing. The peacock greeted him with another raucous screech.

  "How do they look?" Menedemos called from the stern.

  "All right, I suppose," Sostratos answered. "We're still finding out how they're supposed to look. Nothing wrong with their voices, that's certain. I'm going to give them something to eat while the ship's still tied up to the quay."

  He waited for his cousin to wave agreement, then undid a leather sack of barley and piled grain onto half a dozen plates, one of which he set in front of each cage. The slats in the doors were wide enough to let the birds stick their heads out and eat. That made anyone who walked by step lively, but it meant he didn't have to open the cages to feed the peafowl.

  "Are they eating all right?" Menedemos asked. On land, he did as he pleased, indulging his passions far more than Sostratos chose to do. Aboard ship, nothing escaped his notice. The peacock had Argos' eyes in its tail; Sostratos' cousin seemed to have them in his head.

  Sostratos watched the birds pecking away like so many outsized chickens, then dipped his head. Menedemos waved again to show he'd seen the answer. No, nothing got past him.

  A couple of the missing rowers returned by themselves, one hung over and the other so drunk he almost fell off the pier before he got to the Aphrodite. "Are you going to dock his pay?" Sostratos asked.

  His cousin tossed his head. "No, he's here on time - and he's here all by himself, too." An evil smile spread over Menedemos' face. "I'll do something worse - I'll wait till he's really starting to hurt, and then I'll put him on the oars. If that doesn't cure him, gods only know what will."

  "Not a bad notion," Sostratos said, admiring the rough justice of it. He paused thoughtfully. "The exercise may help ease the confusion in his humors and cure him quicker than sitting idle would."

  "Maybe." Menedemos chuckled. "Even if it does, though, he won't be happy while it's going on." Sostratos could hardly disagree with that.

  One of the rowers came running up the pier toward the Aphrodite. "Diokles says to tell you we've got three of them, captain," he called. "No sign of the other two."

  "They came back on their own," Menedemos answered. "Diokles can bring in the rest of the lost sheep, and then we'll be off."

  The sailors had to carry one of their comrades, who'd guzzled himself into a stupor. By the glint in Menedemos' eye, Sostratos knew what his cousin had in mind for that fellow once he revived. Fair enough, Sostratos thought. Drinking yourself blind is excessive. Diokles giving the beat, the Aphrodite left the harbor of Knidos and headed for Kos.

  3

  "Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!" Diokeles used the oarmaster's chant along with the rhythm of mallet on bronze. As Menedemos had thought it would, the wind blew straight out of the north, straight into his face, as the merchant galley he commanded made for Kos. A sailing ship bound for Kos from Knidos would have had to stay in port; it could have made no headway against the contrary breeze. He just left the sail brailed up tight, so that the akatos proceeded on oars alone.

  Waves driven by the headwind splashed against the Aphrodite's ram and pointed cutwater. Striking the ship head-on, they gave her an unpleasant pitching motion. Menedemos, who stood on the raised poop deck handling the steering oars, didn't mind it so much, but he'd spent the night aboard ship. Some of the rowers who were rather the worse for wear leaned out over the gunwales and fed the fish of the Aegean.

  "Keep an eye peeled," Menedemos called to the lookout at the bow. "The mainland of Asia belongs to Antigonos." He took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller to wave toward the misty mainland. "Kos, though, Kos is under Ptolemaios' thumb. And if the treaty the generals signed last summer is just a broken pot, the way it seems, they're liable to go at each other any time."

  He kept a wary eye out for warships and pirate galleys himself. All he saw, though, were a few little fishing boats bobbing in the chop. A couple of them spread their sails and scooted away from him as fast as they could go. He laughed at that: the akatos looked too much like a piratical pentekonter for them to want to let it get close.

  "You're the one who's been hearing most of the news lately, cousin," he said to Sostratos. "Do you have any idea what sort of fleet Ptolemaios has at Kos?"

  But Sostratos tossed his head. "Sorry - haven't heard that. It had better be a good-sized one, though, because Antigonos has a lot of ports on the mainland and the islands farther north." He grimaced. "The same holds for Rhodes, you know."

  "We have got a good-sized fleet, and a good thing, too," Menedemos said. "Antigonos knows better than to quarrel with us, the same as a dog knows better than to bite a hedgehog. Now, where have you got those perfumes stowed?"

  "To port, a little aft of amidships," Sostratos answered. "Are you thinking of trading them for silk?"

  "That's just what I'm thinking," Menedemos told him. "The Hellenes in Italy can make their own perfume. You can't get silk anywhere but Kos."

  "If we can make a good bargain with the silk merchants, that's fine," Sostratos said. "If not . . ." He shrugged. "If not, we'd do better spending silver on silk and saving the perfumes for a market where they'll bring us more."

  "You'll be the judge of that," Menedemos said. "That's why you're along."

  "Nice to know you think I have some use," Sostratos said dr
yly.

  "Some," Menedemos agreed, to make his cousin squirm. He pointed. "And you'd better keep an eye on that peahen, too, before she goes into the drink."

  As one had done on the first day it was let out of its cage, a peahen had hopped up onto a vacant rower's bench and was peering over the side. Menedemos didn't know if the bird would try to fly off and fall into the sea, but he didn't want to find out the hard way, either. Sostratos was of like mind. He netted the bird before it could do anything the young men who'd bought it would regret.

  The peahen pecked Sostratos through the mesh of the net. "Down to the house of Hades with you, you accursed, abominable thing!" he shouted, rubbing at his ribs through his chiton. He turned to Menedemos. "If it weren't for what we paid for them, I'd like to watch them drown."

  "So would I," Menedemos said. "I'd hold them under myself, in fact."

  "I never imagined sailing with a valuable cargo I hated," Sostratos said, releasing the peafowl by the socket that fixed the mast to the keel. He pointed a warning finger at the bird. "Stay down here where you belong, Furies take you!" To Menedemos, he added, "I don't much care for cargo that won't stay where I stow it, either."

  "The birds would, if you left them in their cages," Menedemos said.

  His cousin tossed his head. "We've been over that. I think they'll be better for getting out, though they may drive me mad by the time we make Italy."

  Menedemos laughed. Sostratos rolled his eyes. That made Menedemos laugh more. But before he could twit his cousin any further, the watchman on the foredeck sang out: "Sail ho, off the starboard bow!" A moment later he amended that: "Sails ho! She's got a foresail, captain!"

  "A big one," Menedemos muttered, peering in the direction the lookout's pointing finger gave. He had sharp eyes; he needed only a moment to spot the ship. When he did, he cursed. He'd hoped to see a big merchantman, bound perhaps for Rhodes and then Alexandria. No such luck: that low, lean shape could belong only to a war galley.

  "He's seen us, too," the lookout called. "He's turning this way."

  His voice held alarm. Menedemos didn't blame him. He was alarmed, too. "What do we do, skipper?" Diokles asked.

  "Hold course," Menedemos answered. "Best thing we can do is put up a bold front. If we were in a pentekonter or a hemiolia, we might have hoped to turn and outrun him downwind, but we haven't got a prayer of that in this akatos - she's too beamy. We have every right to be here, and a proper warship won't give us any trouble, because nobody wants any trouble with Rhodes."

  I hope. He'd spoken brashly to hearten his men - and to hearten himself, too. But brashness didn't come easy, not as the galley approached, now under sails and oars. "Eagles on the sails," the lookout called.

  "He's one of Ptolemaios', then," Sostratos said.

  Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "Patrolling out of Kos, I suppose."

  "Too big and broad to be a trireme," his cousin observed. "A four or a five."

  "A five," Menedemos answered. "Three banks of rowers, see? One man on each thalamite oar down low, two on each zygite, and two on each thranite oar on top. If it were a four, it'd be two-banked, with two men on each oar."

  "You're right of course." Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as he often did when he thought he'd been foolish. "Whatever it is, it's big enough to eat us for opson and still be hungry for sitos afterwards."

  "And isn't that the truth?" Menedemos said unhappily. "Got to be a hundred cubits long, if it's even a digit." For a merchant galley, the forty-cubit Aphrodite was of respectable size. Compared to the war galley, it was a sprat set beside a shark. The five was fully decked, too; armored marines with spears and bows strode this way and that, their red cloaks blowing in the breeze. The outrigger through which the thranite oarsmen rowed was enclosed with timber, making the ship all but invulnerable to archery.

  "Catapult at the bow," Sostratos remarked. "From what Father says, they were just starting to mount them on ships when we were little."

  "Yes, I've heard my father say the same thing," Menedemos agreed. He hadn't been paying the dart-thrower any mind; he'd been looking at the eyes painted on either side of the five's prow. The Aphrodite had them, too, as did almost every ship in the Middle Sea, but these seemed particularly fierce and menacing - not least because, at the moment, they were glaring straight at his ship.

  One of the men on the war galley's deck cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted: "Heave to!"

  "What do we do, skipper?" Diokles asked again.

  "What he says," Menedemos answered, watching seawater foam white over the topmost fin of the five's ram. The green bronze fins had to be a cubit wide; they could smash a hole in the Aphrodite's side that would fill her with water faster than he cared to think about. Even if he were mad enough to try to use his much smaller ram against her timbers, she had extra planking at the waterline to ward against such attacks.

  "Oöp!" the keleustes shouted, and the akatos' rowers rested at their oars.

  Up came the five to lie alongside the Aphrodite. Men brailed up the sails to keep the great ship from gliding away to the south. The war galley's deck rose six or seven cubits out of the water; the archers there could shoot down into the akatos' waist, while Menedemos' men could do next to nothing to reply.

  A fellow in a scarlet-dyed tunic looked the Aphrodite over. By the way he put his hands on his hips, what he saw didn't much impress him. "What ship is this?" he demanded.

  "The Aphrodite, out of Rhodes," Menedemos said. And then, deliberately mocking, he gave the galley the same sort of once-over her officer had given the akatos. It wasn't so easy for him, because he had to crane his neck upwards to do a proper job of it, but he managed. And, looking up his nose because he couldn't look down it, he asked, "And what ship are you?"

  Perhaps taken by surprise, the war galley's officer replied, "The Eutykhes. General Ptolemaios' ship, out of Kos." Then he glared at Menedemos, who smiled back. He snapped, "I don't have to answer your questions, and you do have to answer mine. If you're lucky " - he played on the meaning of his ship's name - "you'll be able to."

  "Ask away," Menedemos said cheerfully. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sostratos looking worried. Sostratos would never have baited the Eutykhes' officer. Because he was rational and sensible, he thought everybody else was, too. Menedemos had a different opinion. Insulting an arrogant ass was often the only way to get him to acknowledge you.

  Of course, it also had its risks. With a scowl, the officer said, "You look like a gods-detested pirate to me, is what you look like. Rhodes? Tell me another one. Give me the name of the man you serve and give me your cargo and do it fast, or you'll never get the chance to do anything else."

  "I serve two men: my father Philodemos and Lysistratos, his younger brother," Menedemos answered, all business now. "If you don't know of them, ask your crew; someone will."

  And, to his relief, one of the marines aboard the Eutykhes came up to the officer. Menedemos couldn't make out what the fellow said, but the sour look on the officer's face argued that the other man did know of Philodemos and Lysistratos. A snap in his voice, the officer said, "Any rogue may hear a name or two, and put them in his own mouth when he finds them handy. I am not convinced you are what you claim to be. Your cargo, and be quick about it."

  "Quick as you please," Menedemos answered. "We carry ink and papyrus and crimson dye and fine perfumes and . . ." He grinned slyly. "Five peahens and a peacock."

  As he'd hoped, that rocked the Eutykhes' officer back on his heels. "A peacock?" he growled. "I don't believe you. If you had a peacock on board, I'd see it. And if you're lying to me, you'll be sorry."

  "Sostratos!" Menedemos called. His cousin waved. "Show the gentleman the peacock, if you please."

  "Right." Sostratos hurried up to the foredeck. He undid the latches on the peacock's cage and opened the door. The bird, which would have bolted out screeching at any other time, stayed where it was and kept quiet. Menedemos flicked a gl
ance to the officer aboard Ptolemaios' five. The man stood on the deck with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn't about to believe anything Menedemos said, not till he saw it with his own eyes.

  There had been times when Menedemos faulted Sostratos for dithering when he should have been doing. This wasn't one of those times. When the peacock refused to come out of its cage, Sostratos picked up the cage and dumped the bird out onto the foredeck. It squawked then, squawked and ran down into the waist of the Aphrodite.

  "A peacock," Menedemos said smugly. "Tied up at anchor, we'd charge you a khalkos or two to see it, but here on the sea I give you the sight for nothing."

  He was, perhaps, lucky: the Eutykhes' officer paid no attention to his patter. The fellow stared down at the bird and its magnificent tail. Marines and other officers hurried over to have a look, too. So many men rushing to starboard might have capsized the Aphrodite, but they gave the far bigger war galley only a slight list.

  "A peacock," Menedemos repeated softly.

  "A peacock," the officer agreed. Because the Aphrodite's sailors weren't watching the bird so closely as they might have been, it pecked a rower in the leg. He sprang up from his bench, howling curses. The men on the Eutykhes howled laughter.

  "May we cage it up again now?" Menedemos asked. "It's pretty, no doubt about it, but it's a cursed nuisance."

  "Go ahead." The Eutykhes' officer absently dipped his head in assent. His eyes remained fixed on the bird. He had to gather himself before finding a question of his own: "You'll be putting in at Kos today?"

  "That's right," Menedemos answered. "We're bound for Italy, and we'll want to take some silk with us if we can get a decent price."

  "Good trading, then," the officer said. He turned away from Menedemos and shouted orders to his own crew. The five's mainsail and foresail descended from their yards. The keleustes clanged on something louder and less melodious than the bronze Diokles used. The oars began to work. Eyeing the Eutykhes, Menedemos judged the crew had been together for a while. Their rowing was very smooth. The war galley resumed its southbound course, picking up speed quickly despite its massive bulk.