Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  Slowly, slowly, the fleet sailed past Taruomenion and Naxos and Akion. Sostratos looked longingly at each inviting little harbor, and sighed as the Aphrodite and the round ships crawled past each one. That summer sun seemed to speed across the sky. Before the fleet reached Katane - the largest polis on the east coast of Sicily except for Syracuse - it set behind the island. Anchors splashed into the water as the captains got ready to spend a night at sea.

  "Unless I'm wrong, those merchant skippers wish they were tied up at a quay," Sostratos remarked to Menedemos.

  "Well, when you get right down to it, so do I," his cousin answered. "If a storm were to blow up all of a sudden, we'd be in trouble, especially when we're heavy with grain."

  "A storm, right now, is the least of our worries." To show what he meant, Sostratos pointed south.

  Menedemos tossed his head. "A storm is never the least of your worries, not when you're at sea. If you want to worry about the Carthaginians more, I don't suppose I can stop you."

  "I wonder how you say, 'Sail ho!' in the Phoenician language," Sostratos said. "Himilkon would know. I wish I were back in the harbor of Rhodes so I could ask him."

  "After we deliver the grain and get paid, we'll be going home," Menedemos answered. "You can find out, if you still want to know by then."

  He kept his tone light. If he didn't believe everything would go well when the fleet got to Syracuse, he didn't let on. Some of that, no doubt, was to keep the crew from fretting. The rest, Sostratos was convinced, sprang from his cousin's natural self-confidence - or was it arrogance? Menedemos had never yet found himself in a spot from which he couldn't wiggle out, and so seemed convinced he never would.

  Sostratos hoped his cousin was right without believing it. That wasn't how things worked. Hoping Menedemos would prove right this particular time seemed a better bet . . . though not a very good one. We'll know tomorrow, Sostratos thought. He wrapped himself in his himation and lay down on the sacks of grain. They were a little more yielding than the planks of the poop deck, if lumpier.

  He thought he would worry too much to find sleep, but exhaustion proved stronger. Next thing he knew, Menedemos announced the new day like a rooster. Several sailors let out groans and sleepy curses. Sostratos said, "If I were wearing shoes, I'd throw one at you."

  "It's a day worth celebrating," Menedemos said, his voice full of the false heartiness some traders used to sell things that weren't worth buying. "Tonight we'll feast in Syracuse, a polis famed for its feasts wherever Hellenes live."

  That made some of the sailors cheer up. It did nothing to raise Sostratos' spirits. For one thing, Syracuse was a city under siege. What kind of feast would the Syracusans be able to make? For another, weren't the Aphrodite's crew and those of the rest of the fleet likelier to make opson for the eels and crabs than to feast off seafood themselves?

  But all around the fleet captains were shouting their crews awake, even if none of the others chose to crow. There was Aphrodite's wandering star glowing through the twilight in the east, with the very thinnest sliver of moon not far from it. Were it not for the blazing beacon of the wandering star, Sostratos doubted he would have noticed the moon at all.

  Menedemos wasn't worrying about either the moon or Aphrodite's wandering star. Like any captain worthy of the name, he was tasting the wind. "Out of the north, sure enough," he said. "As long as it holds, we can slide right into the northern harbor - the Little Harbor, they call it - at Syracuse."

  Well, we could if it weren't for the Carthaginian war galleys, Sostratos thought. They're between us and where we want to go, and with oars driving them they don't care which way the wind blows. Those are the things Menedemos conveniently forgets to mention.

  His cousin went right on not mentioning them, too. The crew raised the dripping anchors. They lowered the sail from the yard. The round ships' big sails were coming down, too, and filling with the fine breeze that would waft them in exactly the direction they were mad enough to choose to go.

  Again, the Aphrodite felt much more solid, much more stable, in the water than usual. And again, she moved through the water much more slowly than usual. Sostratos went up onto the poop deck. "If we had to," he asked Menedemos, "could we have the men who aren't rowing throw sacks of grain overboard?"

  "You mean, to lighten ship if the Carthaginians were chasing us?" Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin shrugged. "We could have them do it. I doubt it would help much."

  The answer struck Sostratos as honest if uninspiring. He watched Katane come into view and then disappear behind him. It was a good-sized town, bigger than Messene. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He still thought it would be a good place to pause for, say, twenty or thirty years. But Menedemos didn't care what he thought, and Menedemos was in command. Sostratos wondered why more soldiers led by a bad general didn't simply run away.

  He couldn't run away, not in a ship. Katane was too off away to swim to, and a lot of sailors couldn't swim at all. And Sostratos didn't know Menedemos was a bad captain. He did, however, have a strong opinion about that.

  His cousin was doing all the little things he needed to do to succeed. He had sharp-eyed Aristeidas in the bow as lookout. And, some time past noon, Aristeidas called, "Ship ho! Ship ho dead ahead!" He pointed south, toward Syracuse. There was the city on the mainland. There was the small island of Ortygia, a few plethra offshore and also heavily built up. And there, worse luck, was the Carthaginian fleet blockading the Little Harbor north of Ortygia and the Great Harbor south of the island.

  Aristeidas had spoken with the precision a good lookout needed: he'd called, Ship ho! and not, Sail ho! The Carthaginian war galleys had their masts down; as warships on active duty did, they moved with oars alone, ready to fight at any moment. Only specks in the distance now, they would look bigger all too soon. Sostratos knew that better than he wanted to.

  "What do we do now?" he called to Menedemos.

  "Hold our course," his cousin answered. "What else can we do?" Run sprang to Sostratos' mind again. But Menedemos went on, "I still think we've got a pretty good chance of sneaking into the Little Harbor. The Carthaginians will go after the round ships before they bother us."

  "And how do you know that, O sage of age?" Sostratos demanded.

  "For one thing, all the round ships carry a lot more grain than we do," Menedemos answered with surprising patience. "That's what the Carthaginians want to keep from getting into Syracuse. And, for another, we can fight a little bit, and the round ships can't. Why should the Carthaginians make things harder on themselves than they have to?"

  All that made a certain amount of sense to Sostratos, but only a certain amount. He pointed toward the oncoming war galleys, which were closing with the fleet of grain carriers at a frightening clip - it certainly frightened him. "Do you really think we can fight those even a little bit?" Some of the galleys had two banks of oars - those would be fours. Others had three banks - those would be fives. All of them dwarfed the Roman trireme the Aphrodite had crippled. And Sostratos could see how smoothly the rowers handled the oars. These weren't half-trained crews, like the one in that trireme.

  "Of course we can," Menedemos said, so heartily that Sostratos knew he was lying in his teeth.

  Sostratos couldn't even call his cousin on it, not without disheartening the crew. The Carthaginian galleys scurried toward the round ships like so many scorpions. The sternposts that curved up and forward over their poops like upraised stings added to the blance. But the galleys carried their stings at the bow, in their rams. White water foamed from the three horizontal flukes of those rams. Sostratos could see it much more clearly than he would have liked.

  But then Aristeidas proved he was indeed a first-rate lookout. "Ships ho!" he sang out. "Ships ho off the port bow!" He'd kept looking around while everyone else thought of nothing but the Carthaginian war galleys, and pointed southeast, where another fleet of warships was rounding Ortygia, heading north as fast as their rowers could t
ake them.

  "Are those the Carthaginians who'd been patrolling outside the Great Harbor?" Sostratos asked. "If they are, why aren't they coming after us?"

  "How should I know?" Menedemos, for the first time, sounded harassed. He'd seemed ready to deal with one fleet. Two . . .

  Sostratos hadn't been ready to deal with even one fleet. He didn't think his cousin had, either, no matter what Menedemos said. But, when he saw something strange, he wanted to find out about it.

  And find out about it he did. The Carthaginians had come within three or four stadia before they noticed the compact formation of ships to the east. Then Sostratos heard cries in the harsh Phoenician language. The Carthaginian war galleys forgot all about the fleet of grain ships. They turned their prows to the east, ready to ward off the onslaught they expected from the other ships.

  Menedemos whooped for joy. "Those aren't more Carthaginian galleys!" he exclaimed. "Those are Agathokles' ships, sailing out of Syracuse to save us!"

  The sailors aboard the Aphrodite cheered. They couldn't have been any happier than Sostratos at the thought of those Carthaginian fours and fives bearing down on the akatos, and could know nothing but relief when the enemy fleet's rams turned in a new direction. But then Sostratos said, "If Agathokles aims to rescue us, why aren't his ships turning in on the Carthaginians?"

  He'd expected Menedemos to have an answer ready for him. He wasn't ignorant of the sea himself - few Rhodians were - but his cousin knew as much as a man twice his age. All Menedemos said, though, was, "I don't know."

  Diokles undoubtedly knew more about the sea than Menedemos. He too sounded baffled. "They're rowing north right on past us, fast as they can go. What are they doing?"

  "I haven't the faintest notion," Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head to show he didn't know, either.

  Agathokles' fleet kept on heading north, at the best speed the rowers could make. Again, Sostratos heard shouts from the closest couple of Carthaginian war galleys. He wished he understood the Phoenician tongue. Before long, though, the Carthaginians' actions showed what was in their minds: they began to row after the ships from Syracuse, forgetting about the round ships they'd been on the point of capturing or sinking.

  "They're more worried about Agathokles than they are about us." Menedemos sounded affronted.

  But Sostratos said, "Wouldn't you be? Those ships can fight back. This fleet can't."

  He waited for Menedemos to tell him the Aphrodite certainly could fight back. His cousin only sighed, dipped his head again, and said, "But what's Agathokles doing? He's sailing out of the harbor where he's safe, he's sailing away from Carthage, not toward it . . .." His voice trailed off.

  What had to be the same thought struck Sostratos at the same time. "If they go along the north coast of Sicily . . ." His voiced faded away, too.

  Menedemos took up the idea for him: "They can make for Carthage that way. If that's what Agathokles is doing, he's got balls and to spare." He let out an admiring whistle.

  "Look at the way the Carthaginians are chasing him," Sostratos said. "They have to think that's what he's after."

  "I do believe you young gentlemen are right," Diokles said. "At least, I can't think of anything else Agathokles'd be up to. And he's a son of a whore who's always up to something, if half the stories you hear about him are true."

  "That's the truth," Sostratos said. "Look at how he let his enemies leave the polis and then got rid of them."

  "He's ready for anything, sure enough," Menedemos said. "Now we've got to get ready to get into Syracuse ourselves."

  "We've got to get ready for more than that," Sostratos said.

  "How do you mean?" his cousin asked.

  "We've got to get ready to see if we get paid."

  "Yes, I suppose that does matter," Menedemos agreed.

  "Matter?" Sostratos said. "Matter? Now that we've come all this way without getting killed or captured, making what we were promised would almost make up for the fear we went through getting here. Almost - though I can't think of anything else that would even come close."

  Menedemos grinned at him and said, "You worry too much." He pulled back on one steering oar and forward on the other, guiding the Aphrodite toward the waiting, welcoming harbor ahead.

  "Yes, of course you'll be paid," the Syracusan official said - officiously - as slaves carried sacks of grain off the Aphrodite and down the quay into hungry Syracuse. "Come to the palace on Ortygia tomorrow, and you shall have every obolos owed you. So Agathokles promised, and so shall it be."

  He spoke as if the sun wouldn't rise if Agathokles broke a promise. Menedemos wondered how the Syracusan tyrant's political enemies felt about that. A moment later, he stopped wondering: being dead, they doubtless felt nothing at all.

  No matter how bold a front he'd put up for Sostratos and the akatos' crew, he knew he'd stuck his head in the lion's mouth by sailing down to Syracuse. Now he was going to have to put his head there again. If Agathokles - or rather, Agathokles' brother Antandros, who was in charge of the city while the tyrant led the fleet to Africa - didn't feel like living up to the bargain Onasimos the proxenos had made in Rhegion, what could anyone do about it? Not much, as Menedemos knew too mournfully well.

  Some of the sweating slaves taking grain off the Aphrodite and the round ships were big, pale, fair-haired Kelts. Some were stocky Italians of one sort or another (Menedemos hoped there were plenty of Romans among them, but couldn't tell by looking). Most, though, had the swarthy, hook-nosed look of Carthaginians.

  "Plenty of Hellenes enslaved in Carthage, too," Sostratos said when Menedemos remarked on that. "If you get captured instead of doing the capturing, that's what happens to you. We were lucky, you know."

  "Maybe we were." Menedemos could admit it now that they were tied up in the Little Harbor. "But Tykhe is a strong goddess."

  "Fortune is a fickle goddess, too," Sostratos said. "Remember what happened to the Athenians who came here a hundred years ago. Most of them would have been lucky with anything so light as lugging sacks of grain."

  "I think I've heard you tell that story before," Menedemos said. "Me, I'm more worried about what will happen tomorrow than what happened a hundred years ago."

  He'd hoped that would annoy his cousin. It did, but not quite enough to suit him. Instead of going off in a huff, Sostratos answered seriously: "What happens tomorrow will happen in part because of what happened a hundred years ago. How can you understand the present if you don't understand the past?"

  "I don't know, and I don't much care," Menedemos said. That did affront Sostratos. He stalked toward the bow, dodging men with sacks of grain on their shoulders. Menedemos smiled behind his back.

  The slaves weren't the only people on the pier. A tavern tout called, "First two cups of wine free for all the sailors who brought us grain when we needed it so bad. Come to Leosthenes' place, right off the harbor."

  A cheer went up on the Aphrodite. The cheers that rose from the round ships were smaller - they carried fewer sailors. Menedemos said, "Diokles, I'm going to want half a dozen men on board through the night. Two days' bonus pay for anybody who's willing not to drink and screw himself blind tonight."

  He hadn't tried to keep his voice down, on the contrary, he wanted the sailors to hear and to volunteer to pick up an extra three drakhmai. Along with the sailors, Sostratos also heard. He whirled in alarm: he hated spending extra silver. Menedemos thought he would protest out loud, which wouldn't have been good. But Sostratos proved to have sense enough not to do that. Menedemos beckoned him back to the stern as Diokles found volunteers.

  "Don't worry," Menedemos told his cousin. "Once Antandros pays us, a few drakhmai won't matter one way or the other."

  "They always matter," Sostratos said primly, "and I always worry. One of the things I'm worrying about now is, suppose Antandros doesn't pay us?"

  "His man said he would," Menedemos said, that being the strongest reply he could make. He was worried, too, and doing his best not
to show it. "And even if he doesn't, we still got half again the going rate up in Rhegion - and we're in Syracuse, by the dog of Egypt! We've got a fresh chance for top prices on peafowl chicks and silk and Ariousian - and a fresh chance to unload what's left of our papyrus and ink. If we can't sell 'em here, we can't sell 'em anywhere this side of Athens. And everybody takes them there, so nobody gets a good price for them."

  He waited to see if his cousin would stay mulish. Most men would have.But Sostratos was uncommonly reasonable - sometimes, as far as Menedemos was concerned, too reasonable for his own good. Instead of growling, he stopped and thought. At last, grudgingly, he dipped his head. "Fair enough, I suppose. You were right about coming here, as things worked out. Maybe you'll be right again. I hope so."

  "Me, too," Menedemos said. And then, because Sostratos had gone halfway toward healing the quarrel, he tried to do the same himself: "I'd have had more faith myself coming down here if I'd known ahead of time that Agathokles would pick that moment to sally forth. Good luck, like we said before."

  Sostratos snapped his fingers in annoyance. "By the gods, I'm an idiot! Why didn't I see that before?"

  "If you'd asked me, I could have told you you were an idiot," Menedemos said cheerfully. Sostratos glowered. Menedemos went on, "But what didn't you see?"

  "It probably wasn't just good luck," Sostratos answered.

  "What wasn't?" Menedemos hated it when his cousin got ahead of him. Sostratos thought too well of his thinking as things were.