Owls to Athens

by Harry Turtledove

  Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to port. Kythnos was longer than it was wide; to go east from the island’s single town, one had to round a headland at either the northern or southern tip of the island. He’d chosen the latter. To catch the wind abeam, the sailors swung the yard from the port bow back. They’d started the motion only a heartbeat after he started the turn, and finished it at about the same time. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t even had to give an order.

  “Pretty day,” Diokles remarked as they swung past the headland, and it was. The sun shone warm and bright in the blue, blue sky, though it no longer stood so high as it had at the start of summer. The Aegean was a deeper blue, or rather several deeper blues. Kythnos, on the merchant galley’s left hand, added variety: brown soil, gray rock, streaks of greenery amid sun-dried yellow.

  Other islands of the Kyklades dotted the horizon: everything from black rocks with the sea foaming around them, good for nothing but tearing the bottom out of a ship that came upon them unawares, to Syros and Paros and Naxos in the east, Siphnos in the southeast, and rocky Seriphos and Melos beyond it due south.

  Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, skrawking and mewing. They often attended ships; what was garbage to men was opson to them. An osprey folded its wings and plunged feet first into the sea two or three plethra from the merchant galley. It came up again a heartbeat later, flapping strongly to get back into the air. Its talons clutched a writhing fish.

  “When terns dive in, gulls steal from them,” Sostratos said. “But who’s going to steal from an osprey?”

  “No one in these waters, by ,” Menedemos answered.

  “I wonder what the fish was,” Sostratos said. “I wonder if the bird chose it because it likes that kind of fish, or just because it chanced to be swimming near enough to the surface to be seen.”

  Menedemos laughed. “I wonder, O best one, if there’s any limit to how many questions you can dream up. If there is, you haven’t touched it yet.”

  His cousin looked wounded. “What’s wrong with curiosity? Where would we be without it? We’d be living in mud huts and trying to knock hares over the head with rocks, that’s where.”

  “Two more questions,” Menedemos said, “even if you did answer one of them.” He wondered how angry—and how entertaining—Sostratos would get at the tweaking. He didn’t tease his cousin as much as he had when they were younger; Sostratos had got better at holding his temper, and so offered less amusement now.

  He held it this morning, saying, “I have one question more: what difference does it make to you?”

  “None, really. I was just curious.” Menedemos made a face, realizing he’d delivered himself into Sostratos’ hands.

  “Thank you, my dear. You just proved my point for me.” Sostratos could have said more and worse. That was small consolation to Menedemos. What his cousin had said was plenty: plenty to make his ears heat, plenty to make Diokles laugh softly. For the next little while, Menedemos gave exaggerated attention to steering the ship—which, at the moment, needed little steering. He’d lost the exchange; he knew he’d lost it; and he hated losing at anything. That he’d lost it through his own foolish choice of words only made losing more annoying.

  But he couldn’t stay irked for long, not with the breeze filling the sail and thrumming in the rigging, not with the gentle motion of the ship and the soft splashing as the ram at her bow cut through the water, not with . . .

  Thinking of the ram brought him up short. “Serve out helmets and weapons to the crew, Diokles,” he said. “More pirates in these waters, Furies take ‘em, than fleas on a scavenger dog. If they want us, we’d better make sure they get a hard fight.”

  Since the akatos had had to fight off pirates each of the past two sailing seasons, Diokles couldn’t very well disagree. In fact, he dipped his head and said, “I was going to do that anyway pretty soon.”

  Before long, with bronze pots on their heads and swords and spears and axes in their hands, the men on the looked piratical themselves. The merchant galley was beamier than a pentekonter or hemiolia, but the crews of fishing boats and round ships weren’t inclined to make such fine distinctions. They never had been. Now, though, they fled with as much haste as Menedemos had ever seen. Fishing boats smaller than the neat little craft the merchant galley towed behind her rowed away with the men in them pulling as hard as if they crewed a war galley charging into battle. Two different sailing ships heeled sharply to the south as soon as their sailors spied the . They wanted to get as far away from her as they could, as fast as they could.

  “If standing behind the sail and blowing into it would help them go faster, they’d do that, too,” Menedemos said with a laugh.

  “They’ll be hours beating their way back up to their old course against the wind,” Sostratos said.

  “Too bad for them,” Menedemos said.

  “Hard to blame them,” Sostratos said. “When taking chances can get you sold into slavery or murdered and tossed over the side, you don’t do it. If we believed in taking chances, we wouldn’t have armed ourselves.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Even so, Menedemos said, “You know, there are times when you squeeze all the juice out of life.”

  “There are times when I think you want just enough juice to drown yourself,” Sostratos replied.

  They scowled at each other. Menedemos yawned in Sostratos’ face to show how dull he thought Sostratos was. Sostratos turned his back, walked over to the rail, and pissed into the wine-dark sea. Maybe that was general contempt; maybe he was getting rid of juice. Menedemos didn’t inquire. Sostratos set his chiton to rights and stalked up to the foredeck, back very stiff.

  Diokles clucked in distress. “The two of you shouldn’t quarrel,” he said. “The ship needs you both.” He used the dual, implying Menedemos and Sostratos were a natural pair.

  Menedemos was steering the ship. He couldn’t turn his back on Diokles, no matter how much he wanted to. At the moment, he would sooner have given his cousin a good kick in the fundament than been yoked to him in the Greek language as part of a pair. Sanctimonious prig, he thought.

  For the rest of the day, none of the sailors seemed to want to come near either him or Sostratos. The men walked on tiptoe, as if the ’s planking were covered with eggs and they would be whipped if they broke one. Songs, jokes, the usual chatter—all disappeared. Only the sounds of wind and wave remained. The merchant galley had never been so quiet.

  Too stubborn and too proud to make any move toward Sostratos, Menedemos stayed at the steering oars the rest of the day. Slowly, slowly, the island of Syros drew near. It was even more desiccated than Kythnos. The had stopped here, too, a couple of years before. Menedemos remembered the verses from the Odyssey wherein Eumaios the swineherd praised the island from which he’d come. He also recalled Sostratos’ comment: that the praise proved a blind poet.

  He angrily tossed his head; he didn’t want to think about Sostratos at all. Doing his grim best not to, he steered the merchant galley around the northern tip of the island (which, like Kythnos, was taller than it was wide) and down toward Syros town on the eastern coast. The town sat inside the curve of a little bay. The harbor was fine; had the island of Syros had more in the way of water and people and crops, the harbor could easily have supported a real city. As things were, it mattered about as much as nice eyebrows on an ugly girl.

  Because only a few fishing boats and the occasional ship going from somewhere else to somewhere else used the harbor, no one had bothered to improve it with moles and piers. The sat in the bay a couple of plethra from the town. Her anchors plopped into the water to hold her fast.

  By the sun, an hour or so of daylight remained. Sostratos called for sailors to row him ashore. “Where do you think you’re going?” Menedemos demanded.

  “There’s a temple to here,” Sostratos answered. “There’s supposed to be a sundial in it made by Pherekides, who taught . It may be the oldest sundial in Hellas. While we’re here, I’d like to take a look at it. Why?
Are you planning to sail off without me?”

  “Don’t tempt me.” But Menedemos gestured gruffly toward the boat. “Go on, then. Be back by dark.”

  Sostratos pointed to the handful of houses that made up the town. “If you think I’d stay there, you’re—” He broke off.

  You’re even stupider than I thought you were. That was what he’d been on the point of saying, that or something like it. Menedemos’ resentment flared anew; he conveniently forgot all the equally unkind thoughts he’d had about Sostratos. “On second thought, stay away as long as you please,” he snapped.

  He watched the boat take his cousin to the shore, watched Sostratos talk with an elderly local and take an obolos out of his mouth to give the fellow, watched the graybeard point uphill and to the north, and watched Sostratos hurry off in that direction. He also watched the men who’d rowed Sostratos ashore disappear into a wineshop.

  “Skipper, what will you do if the young gentleman has trouble?” Diokles asked. “Going off on your own in a strange place isn’t always the smartest thing you can do.”

  “How could there possibly be a problem?” Menedemos answered. “Sostratos seems sure it’s safe, and he knows everything. If you don’t believe me, just ask him.”

  Diokles gave him a reproachful look. “Most of the time, the two of you”—he used the dual again, perhaps to drive home his point, perhaps to annoy Menedemos—”have pretty good sense. But when you don’t, you really don’t.” Most of the time, he would have added something like, meaning no disrespect. Today, he didn’t bother.

  Menedemos pointed to the boat, which lay on the beach. “What am I supposed to do when that’s there?”

  Unfazed, the oarmaster replied, “Find some sailors who can swim, and make sure they’re good and ready.”

  That made better sense than Menedemos wished it did. Muttering under his breath, he strode the length of the galley, asking men if they could swim. Less than half the crew could, which didn’t surprise him, though he knew how himself. “We’ll wait till half an hour after sundown,” he said. “If Sostratos isn’t back by then ...”

  But he was. Menedemos spied his long, angular form with a curious mixture of resentment and relief. After brief confusion when Sostratos didn’t see the sailors, he went into the wineshop and brought them out. They weren’t too drunk to row him back to the .

  “And how was your precious sundial?” Menedemos asked after his cousin scrambled back into the akatos.

  “It seemed remarkably like . . . an old, decrepit sundial.” Sostratos looked and sounded sheepish.

  “Eat some supper and then lay your old, decrepit bones down on the planks.” Menedemos spoke gruffly, like a father annoyed at a wayward child. That was how he felt. Again, how Sostratos felt about him never entered his mind.

  Resentment sparked in Sostratos’ eyes, but he seemed to decide he couldn’t disobey sensible advice like that without looking a proper fool. He wrapped himself in his himation. Before long, he was asleep. If he spoke very little to Menedemos ... I don’t much want to talk to him right now, either, Menedemos thought, just before sleep also overtook him.

  Sostratos looked down at the waxed wooden tablets on which he’d kept the accounts of the trading run to Athens. As long as he paid attention to those, he didn’t have to worry about Menedemos. That, at the moment, suited him fine.

  Clang! Clang! The keleustes’ bronze square beat out time for the rowers. The wind had died. The sail was brailed up tight to the yard. The glided east from Syros across a dead-calm sea, propelled by ten grunting, sweating rowers on each side: every other bench had a man in place.

  “Sail ho!” called the lookout on the foredeck. “Sail ho off the port bow!”

  That made Sostratos look up from his accounts. The lookout was pointing northeast. Sostratos stood up to see farther. Before long, he spied the sail, too. He shaded his eyes with his hand to cut the glare from the morning sun.

  Nor was his the only head to swing that way. After a few heartbeats, a sailor said, “That’s a round ship. Nothing to worry about.” He was right. That huge sail and broad, beamy hull could only belong to one of the merchantmen that hauled grain and lumber and cheap wine and oil and other bulk commodities around the Inner Sea. The only way a round ship could endanger the akatos was by colliding with her.

  Once the sailors saw the ship to the northeast was no threat, they went back to whatever they’d been doing. Sostratos was tired of going over the accounts. He already knew them well. Keeping an eye on the round ship also let him avoid having anything to do with his cousin.

  Because the Aphrodite?, sail was brailed up against the yard, the round ship’s crew needed longer to spot her than they would have otherwise. When they did, they swung their bow away from her. They couldn’t very well run, not on this windless day. Their ship would have had trouble outrunning a clam.

  From his place on the poop deck, Menedemos said, “If I were ever tempted to turn pirate, a time like this would do it. That fat sow can’t flee, can’t fight, and can’t hide. She’s just sitting there, waiting to be taken.”

  “I wonder how much loot she’s got,” Teleutas said wistfully—or was it hungrily? Sostratos couldn’t tell, though he was always ready to think the worst of the sailor.

  Menedemos spoke sharply: “We’re Rhodians. Remember it. We knock pirates over the head when we get the chance. We don’t play that game ourselves.”

  “Only kidding, skipper,” Teleutas said. “You were the one who brought it up, you know.”

  And so Menedemos had—but he’d made it plain he was talking about something contrary to fact. He wasn’t really tempted to turn pirate. Was Teleutas? Sostratos wouldn’t have been surprised. But Teleutas, as usual, had an excuse just plausible enough to keep him out of trouble.

  Sostratos stowed the account tablets in a leather sack. Then he went back to the poop deck. “Hail, young sir,” Diokles said, not changing his rhythm a bit as he beat out the stroke for the rowers. Menedemos didn’t say anything. He kept his hands on the steering-oar tillers and his eyes on the sea. Sostratos might not have been there.

  But Sostratos finally had something he could talk about without starting a fight. “That Teleutas,” he said in a low, angry voice. He couldn’t stand the sailor, but was grateful to him in a curious way.

  And, sure enough, Menedemos dipped his head. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” he agreed. “You were right about that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been a pirate now and again.”

  “Neither would I,” Sostratos said. “I will turn him away if he tries to sail with us next year.”

  “Suits me.” Menedemos suddenly seemed to realize he was talking with Sostratos instead of shouting at him. He tried to glue the scowl back on his face, but had less luck than he might have wanted. Instead, he gave Sostratos an odd, grudging half smile. “Hail.”

  “Hail, yourself,” Sostratos answered in those same grudging tones.

  “We’re . . . stuck with each other, aren’t we?” Menedemos said.

  “We seem to be,” Sostratos said. “If we were married, we could divorce. Since we’re tied by blood . . . well, you said it. We can make the best of it or the worst, but we are stuck.”

  “I saw you going over the accounts,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin went on, “Just how well did we do?”

  “Do you want it to the obolos, or will the nearest drakhma do?” Sostratos asked in turn. “If it’s to the nearest drakhma, do you want it in Athenian owls, or shall I convert it to Rhodian currency?”

  Menedemos stared at him. Sostratos looked back, deadpan. Menedemos took a hand from the steering-oar tillers to point an accusing forefinger at him. “Oh, no, you don’t. You can’t fool me, you abandoned rogue. You almost did, but not quite. You’re having me on, and I’m smart enough to know it.”

  Sostratos named a sum in Athenian drakhmai. Then he named a larger sum in lighter Rhodian drakhmai. He added, “That assumes we can convert currency wit
hout paying any fees, the way we did in Athens. Silver is silver, no matter what the people who run a polis think. If we do have to pay the fee, what we make goes down by two percent, in which case it would amount to”—he named one more sum—”in Rhodian drakhmai, of course.”

  “You aren’t having me on. You couldn’t be making that up.” Now Menedemos sounded uncertain. For his part, Diokles looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Go through the accounts yourself if you don’t believe me,” Sostratos said, knowing Menedemos wouldn’t. He couldn’t resist adding another barb: “Our fathers will, of course.”

  “So they will.” Menedemos seemed disenchanted with that prospect, too. He said, “When we get back to , we’re Philodemos’ son and Lysistratos’ son again. One of the reasons I like going to sea is that I can be my own man away from , not just my father’s son.”

  “Something to that, I suppose.” But Sostratos spoke more for politeness’ sake and to keep from starting another quarrel than from conviction. His own father was more easygoing than Uncle .

  Of that he had no doubt, or that Philodemos tried much harder to run Menedemos’ life than his own father did with him. Still, Sostratos remained convinced Menedemos would have had a smoother time of it if he didn’t push back so hard against Uncle . He’d tried saying as much now and again, but Menedemos, as usual, didn’t want to listen.

  “I can’t wait till next spring,” Menedemos said now. “I want to get away, to be free, to be myself.”

  Sostratos had never had any trouble being himself in . If the number of wives Menedemos had seduced in the polis was any indication, he hadn’t had all that much trouble there, either. One more thing his cousin wouldn’t want to hear. Sostratos did say, “I can see why you’re eager to be gone, but I’m glad you don’t sound desperate, the way you did when we left a couple of years ago.”