The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  Sostratos trotted over. “Let me have a look at those, Pasiphon, before you throw 'em in a pot,” he said.

  Pasiphon had pulled an oar on the Aphrodite the year before, and knew of Sostratos' ever-wakeful curiosity. “Sure thing,” he said, and tossed Sostratos an egg as he might have thrown him a ball.

  Awkwardly, and as much by luck as anything else, Sostratos caught it without breaking it. It turned out to differ in several ways from the birds' eggs he already knew. For one thing, it was round, not pointed at one end. It can't very well roll out of an underground nest, he thought, but a round egg wouldn't be good up in a tree. Creatures were surely shaped to suit the situation in which they found themselves. He hadn't imagined that extended to eggs, but saw no reason it shouldn't. The eggshell was leather)', not hard and brittle like that of a bird's egg. He wondered why; no explanation immediately occurred to him. The egg was also larger than any bird's egg he'd seen. That did make sense—sea turtles were large creatures themselves.

  A little later, just as the sun quenched itself in the waters of the Aegean, another sailor found a nest. Like the first, it held a couple of dozen eggs. Everybody could have one, to go with the barley bread, cheese, olives, and wine the Aphrodite carried to keep her sailors fed.

  Euxenides proved adept at more than carpentry. He twirled a fire drill and got a blaze going from scratch as fast as anyone Sostratos had ever seen. Searching for the lushest bushes, the sailors found a spring a stadion or so inland from the beach. They filled pots with fresh water and brought them back.

  When Sostratos got his boiled egg, he discovered a couple of other differences between it and a bird's egg. The white didn't coagulate to nearly the same degree as a bird's egg would have. And the yolk was a deeper, richer orange than that of any bird's egg he'd ever seen; even by firelight, he was sure of that. The egg tasted fine, though.

  Menedemos and Diokles told some men to serve as sentries through the night. “I don't think anyone on Telos will bother us,” Menedemos said, “but I don't want to wake up with my throat cut and find out I was wrong.”

  Sostratos was immune to such duties. He found a spot not too far from one of the fires and curled up by it. The sand wasn't so soft as a proper bed, but made a better mattress than the planking of the poop deck. The thick wool of his himation held the night chill at bay. He stared up at the stars, but not for long.

  When Menedemos woke in the predawn twilight, he needed a moment to remember that the Aphrodite wouldn't be leaving Telos as soon as her crew shoved her back into the Aegean. His yawn turned into a curse. “Miserable, polluted rock,” he muttered, and got to his feet to go over and inspect the damage to the steering oar.

  Most of the sailors were still snoring, but Menedemos found Euxenides of Phaselis already crouched by the oar examining it. “Hail,” he said coolly.

  “Oh. Hail,” Euxenides answered. “I should be able to give you something that will serve you pretty well, if you don't mind my taking a few hours to make it. Forgive my saying so, but next to catapults this isn't very fancy work.”

  “That's what you think,” Menedemos said. “If you don't get the shape of the blade exactly right, it won't cut the water the way it should. And if the weight isn't distributed the way it should be, it won't pivot properly, and the fellow steering the ship—me, I mean— will have to work a lot harder than he would otherwise.”

  “Yes, yes,” Euxenides said impatiently, as to a child that kept pointing out the obvious. “I expect I can take care of all that. Only drawback of doing it right here is that I'll be working with green timber. But. ..” He raised an eyebrow. “I'll work for free, and the shipwrights on Kos surely won't.”

  He was right about that. And he sounded so certain he could do what he said he could, he won Menedemos over. “All right,” Menedemos said. “We'll see what you come up with.” If Euxenides proved more wind than work, his crewmen would be able to improvise something that would serve till they got to Kos.

  But Euxenides quickly showed he knew what he was doing. After bread and wine for breakfast, he used one of the ship's hatchets to knock down a pine whose trunk was about the right size to shape into a steering oar. Once he'd lopped off the branches that grew from it, sailors dragged it to the beach with ropes. Using the sound steering oar as his model, Euxenides trimmed the trunk to the proper length with the hatchet, then set to work with the adze to give it the shape he wanted. Chips flew in all directions.

  Perhaps halfway through the work, he looked up and remarked, “I may not be as resourceful as long-suffering Odysseus was, but by the gods I know what to do with a piece of wood.”

  “So you do, best one,” Menedemos admitted. He made a tolerably good woodworker himself, good enough to recognize a master of the craft when he saw one. Euxenides shaped the pine with the same offhand brilliance a sculptor showed with marble. Watching him was an education.

  Watching him kept Menedemos too interested to look out to sea. He jumped when somebody shouted, “Sail ho!” A pirate couldn't hope to do better than to descend on a merchant galley beached. How was he supposed to fight back?

  “This is what happened to the Athenian fleet at the end of the Peloponnesian War,” Sostratos said. “The Spartans caught them ashore at Aigospotamoi and had their way with them.” Only after he'd finished was Menedemos sure their thoughts had gone in the same direction.

  Then the cry of, “Sail ho!” changed to, “Sails ho!” Instead of getting ready to scramble back onto the Aphrodite, belt on his sword, and make what fight he could, Menedemos stared out to sea himself. He couldn't possibly hope to fight off more than one pirate ship.

  The sound he made was halfway between a sigh of relief and an exhalation of awe. He wouldn't have to do any fighting. The fleet sailing west past the north coast of Telos cared no more about a beached akatos than Zeus cared about a flea on the skinny rump of a scavenger dog. Those weren't round ships out there, or even pirate pentekonters and hemioliai. They were war galleys, dozens of them: a fleet bigger and stronger all by itself than Rhodes could hope to put to sea. Triremes served as escorts for the bigger, beamier warships that formed the heart of the fleet. Were those monsters fours, fives, sixes? Did they carry even more than six rowers for each bank of oars? They were ten or fifteen stadia out to sea. Menedemos couldn't be sure.

  “Whose fleet is that?” somebody asked—another good, relevant question.

  Before Menedemos could reply, Euxenides of Phaselis said, “It has to be Ptolemaios'. If Antigonos had that many ships in these waters, they would be sailing toward battle with Ptolemaios over Lykia, not heading away from there.”

  Sostratos added, “They look as if they're making for Kos, too, and Kos is Ptolemaios' chief stronghold in the Aegean.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. “That all makes sense. For all we know, Ptolemaios is aboard one of those ships. They say he came up from Egypt himself this year, instead of giving the job to one of his admirals.”

  “He did,” Euxenides said. Antigonos' officer coughed a couple of times. He turned toward Menedemos. “You've been saying you planned on stopping at Kos. If Ptolemaios' whole naval expedition is there, I don't think I want to visit the place, thank you very much. Can you put me ashore at Knidos instead? You can stop there before going on to Kos.”

  “Yes, I'll do that,” Menedemos said at once. With Ptolemaios' whole great fleet and perhaps Ptolemaios himself at Kos city, he didn't want to get there with Antigonos' officer on board.

  “I thank you.” Euxenides drummed his fingers on the adze handle. “I shouldn't have to pay twenty drakhmai for the trip, either, not when I'm not going to Miletos.”

  Had Euxenides not gone to work on the new steering oar, Menedemos might have argued with him. But Sostratos, who was scrupulously fair, dipped his head in agreement with the officer's words. So Menedemos just said, “Ah, right. I’ll cut the price in half.”

  Euxenides looked . . . half pleased. “Ten drakhmai to Knidos is as outrageous as twenty drakhmai to
Miletos.” He paused. His nails clicked rhythmically on the axe handle. “It's no more outrageous, I suppose. A bargain, captain. Ten drakhmai.”

  He soon finished the steering oar and set to work repairing the pivot on which it would turn. He was as swift and deft there as he had been while turning a tree trunk into something useful. The sun had just swung past noon when he set the new steering oar in its place.

  Menedemos went back aboard the Aphrodite to see how the new steering oar felt. The tiller seemed strange under his palm: it was a lopped-off branch from the tree that had made the steering oar, with the bark still on it. The new steering oar was a little heavier than the old one. It would be, he thought, being made of green wood. But the balance was everything it should have been, and the makeshift only had to last to Kos. Menedemos tossed his head. No, to Knidos, if it turns out not to serve.

  He dipped his head to Euxenides of Phaselis. “Many thanks. It's plenty good enough.”

  Antigonos' officer seemed more embarrassed than pleased. “You're welcome, though I hate to take thanks for anything that simple. The joinery that goes into catapults . . .”

  “Never mind,” Menedemos said. “I believe you. You've made me believe you.” He raised his voice and called out to the Aphrodite's crew: “Come on, boys! Let's get her back into the water.”

  Half a dozen men shoved the merchant galley's boat back out into the Aegean. They made the boat fast to the Aphrodite's bow with a line. The rest of the sailors, along with Menedemos, Sostratos, and Euxenides, stationed themselves along the length of the akatos' hull and at the stern.

  “Ready?” Menedemos waited a heartbeat, then raised his voice to a shout: “Push!” He put his own shoulder against the lead plates that sheathed the ship and shoved with all his might. The men in the boat rowed with all their strength, pulling the Aphrodite while everyone else pushed.

  She didn't move at the first try. Menedemos hadn't expected that she would. She was more heavily built than a war galley or a piratical pentekonter, and she still carried her cargo. Had she had more of it, Menedemos would have had the crew do some unloading before trying to refloat her—or he might not have beached her at all, but left her anchored offshore instead.

  “Push!” he called again. His shoulder complained as he set it against the ship. His feet dug into the sand. His grunt was one of a chorus that rose from the straining men. Telos was a barren place, nowhere anybody could possibly want to be stranded.

  Sand ground under the oak of the akatos' false keel. “She's stirring!” Sostratos gasped from his place a couple of men over from Menedemos.

  “That she is,” Menedemos agreed, also gasping. He paused for a couple of breaths, then managed a shout: “Put your backs into it, you lazy whoresons!” Something creaked in his own back as he shoved, but he didn't let that keep him from giving the work all he had in him.

  Little by little and then, it seemed, all at once, the Aphrodite went into the Aegean. The sailors raised a cheer and waded out after the ship, scrambling aboard wet and naked and dripping, Menedemos took his place on the poop deck. His face wore a curious frown as he reached for the steering-oar tillers, one pale and sweat-stained, the other bark-brown.

  Sostratos understood him perfectly. “Let's find out how that new one does now that it's really in the sea.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. “Just so.” He called out to the crew: “Ten men on a side to the oars. Diokles, give us the stroke.”

  “Right you are, skipper,” the oarmaster replied. He took out his mallet and square of bronze. “Come on, you lugs—pay attention to me. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

  As the merchant galley slid forward over the blue, blue sea, Menedemos pulled and pushed on the steering oars, sending her now to the left, now to the right. He made sure to steer clear of the rock that had hurt the ship before. Sostratos asked, “How does she feel?”

  “Fine,” Menedemos answered. “A little odd, because the two steering oars don't weigh the same, and I can tell, but the makeshift does its job.” He raised his voice: “Many, many thanks, Euxenides.”

  Antigonos' officer stood on the foredeck. He gave Menedemos half a bow. “I told you, you're welcome. I didn't want to stay on Telos any longer than I had to, either.”

  “I think a dead man would be bored on Telos,” Sostratos said.

  “I think you're right,” Menedemos replied. He turned to Diokles. “Do you expect we'll make Knidos by nightfall?”

  “If we don't, we'll be pretty close.” The keleustes gauged the breeze, which blew straight into his face. “It'll be rowing all the way, though. If you want to go north during the sailing season, that's mostly how it is.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. “I know. If we were a round ship, we'd spend forever tacking back and forth, back and forth, sailing four or five stadia, maybe more, for every one we went forward.” He paused. “Of course, if we were a round ship, we wouldn't have tried beaching ourselves, and we wouldn't have lost that steering oar.” He eyed his cousin, who was peering ahead with a hand to his forehead to shield against sun glare. “What's chewing on you, Sostratos?”

  “I was just wondering how big a fleet old One-Eye has in Knidos,” Sostratos answered. “If it's big enough, it might have come out against Ptolemaios'. We don't want to wander into the middle of a sea fight.”

  “No, eh?” Menedemos said slyly. “Think what it would do for your history, if you ever get around to writing it.”

  Sostratos raised an eyebrow. “Wandering into the middle of a sea fight is one of the best ways I can think of to make sure I don't live long enough to write a history.” Menedemos would have argued with him, but found no way to do it.

  The Aphrodite came into Knidos with the sun low in the northwest and the sky streaked with red and gold. Sostratos let out a sigh of relief. He didn't mind the discomfort of a night at sea; reaching port so late, he would probably sleep on the poop deck tonight anyhow. But out on the Aegean the merchant galley was hideously vulnerable to any storm that might blow up. Better, far better, to spend the night tied up at a Knidian quay.

  Knidos was sort of a double city, like Syracuse in Sicily, though the offshore island that formed a part of it lay a little farther out in the sea than did Syracuse's Ortygia. Moles improved the harbor and connected the island to the mainland. Sostratos counted about twenty ship sheds, the sort in which war galleys stayed to keep their timbers dry when they weren't on campaign. No wonder they didn't sally against Ptolemaios, he thought. He bad to have twice that many ships, maybe three times as many.

  The passage of Ptolemaios' fleet hadn't gone unnoticed, and had, understandably, left Antigonos' garrison in Knidos nervous. No sooner had the Aphrodite found a berth than an officer in corselet and helmet came storming up the pier toward her, “What ship are you?” he barked. “Where are you from?”

  “We're the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes,” Sostratos answered soothingly. “We spent last night on Telos.”

  “Rhodes, eh?” the officer said. “Ptolemaios' catamites, are you?”

  “We're a free and autonomous polis, and we're neutral,” Sostratos said, knowing he had to hold his temper.

  Antigonos' officer snorted. “Probably a pack of stinking spies.”

  “Hail, Aristarkhos,” Euxenides of Phaselis said. “Haven't seen you for two or three years—not since we took back Karia.”

  “Euxenides?” the officer—Aristarkhos—-said uncertainly. When the Aphrodite's passenger dipped his head, Aristarkhos went on, “Zeus, Euxenides, what are you doing here?”

  Getting us out of a nasty spot, went through Sostratos' mind. Euxenides answered, “Getting away from Ptolemaios, what else? I was in Phaselis when he took it, and in Xanthos when he took it. By now, he'll have Kaunos, too. The Rhodians here were taking me up to Miletos, but when Ptolemaios' fleet came by this morning T thought they'd do better to drop me off here. That way, I don't have to run the gauntlet heading north.”

  “Oh,” Aristarkhos said. After the single syllable came out
, a long silence followed. He looked as if he'd bitten off a big mouthful of bad fish. A large-souled man, or even an honest man, would have apologized, Aristarkhos plainly knew it, and as plainly couldn't bring himself to do it.

  Sostratos prodded him a little: “You see, O marvelous one, we really are neutrals.” Making sure Antigonos' officers understood that might be important for Rhodes.

  “It. . . could be,” Aristarkhos said after another pause. Sostratos decided not to push any further; that was too likely to make an enemy. Aristarkhos turned back to Euxenides: “So you saw Ptolemaios' fleet go by, too, did you?”

  “I certainly did,” Euxenides replied. “We were on the north coast of Telos. They couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty stadia offshore as they went past. I counted fifty-five ships.”

  How professional of you, Sostratos thought. No matter how useful Euxenides had been, he couldn't warm to the man, who struck him as almost too competent to tolerate. Aristarkhos dipped his head. “That sounds about right.” He frowned. “It must have been close to midday. Why were you still aground? Did you have trouble getting this ship back in the water?”

  “It wasn't that,” Euxenides said. “We needed some repairs.”

  “The steering oar and its housing,” Menedemos said. “Hurt 'em on a rock backing the akatos onto the beach, I'll tell you this, best one”—he was more polite to Aristarkhos than Sostratos had been— “if Antigonos doesn't need Euxenides, he can come to Rhodes and make a good living for himself as a ship's carpenter.”

  “Euxenides the catapult man!” Aristarkhos exclaimed. Now his memory was fully jogged. “Not likely, Rhodian. Antigonos rewards men who are good at what they do, and Euxenides is one of the best.” Euxenides gave back half a bow, acknowledging the compliment.

  “I believe it,” Menedemos said. Sostratos believed it, too. Whether he liked him or not, Euxenides was a consummate craftsman, an artist with adze and drill. If he was ignorant of anything having to do with woodworking, Sostratos couldn't imagine what it would be. He wondered if that made Euxenides also think he knew a great deal about matters in which he had less experience. He wouldn't have been surprised; that was the craftsman's besetting flaw, as Sokrates had pointed out in his Apology.