The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “Oh, apeshtilensh,” Polykles said. “I’ll End you another one… Here!”

  Without much hope, Sostratos took the new scroll. He opened it. It wasn’t Homer, either. It was a poem of sorts, by a writer Sostratos had never heard of. It was also, as the first few lines showed him, one of the most remarkably obscene things he’d ever read. Aristophanes would have blushed.

  He started to give it back to Polykles. Then he hesitated. If I were a bored Hellenic soldier in Phoenicia, would I want to read this? he asked himself. He dipped his head. That seemed true without a doubt. In fact, he read a few more lines himself. Just to make sure it’s all of the same sort, he thought. And it was.

  “I’ll take this one,” he told the scribe. “What else have you got?”

  “I don’t know,” Polykles said, as if he hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’d been doing lately, And, drunk as he was, maybe he didn’t. He gave Sostratos yet another scroll. “Here. Thish one’sh new.”

  Sostratos began to read the book. It was part of Xenophon ’s treatise on horsemanship, something else a soldier might find interesting, or at least useful. It began very well, in a hand as neat and precise as Glaukias’. But Sostratos didn’t have to go far before he found the quality sinking. Polykles must have been working while he was drunk, he thought sadly. The script grew scraggly. Lines wandered now one way, now another. Errors in grammar appeared, errors that would have earned a switching for a boy just learning his alpha-beta. Words were scratched out. Other inkblots seemed to be only that-blots. And, a little more than halfway through the scroll, words petered out altogether.

  “I wish I could keep this one, but it won’t do,” he said.

  “Why not, by the godsh?” Polykles demanded. Sostratos showed him the defects in the scroll. The scribe waved them away. “Who’ll know? Who’ll care?”

  “The man who buys it from me?” Sostratos suggested dryly.

  “Sho what?” Polykles said. “By the time he findsh that shtuff, you’re long gone. Long gone,” he repeated, and made flapping motions, as if he were a bird flying away. That struck him funny. He laughed hoarsely.

  “Sorry, but no. I’m not a thief,” Sostratos said.

  “You fush about every little thing,” Polykles told him.

  Had the scribe sold a couple of books like the Xenophon? If he had, and especially if he’d sold them to Rhodians, he wouldn’t get much business after that. If he didn’t have much business, he’d worry more. If he worried more, he’d drink more. If he drank more, he’d turn out more books like the Xenophon… if he turned out anything at all.

  More than a little sorrowfully, Sostratos held up the lewd poem and said, “I’LL give you five drakhmai for this one,” If anything, that was generous, for the scroll wasn’t very long. Polykles just stared at him. “Five drakhmai. Do you hear me?”

  “Yesh,” the scribe said, “Five drakhmai. I’m shorry, besht one. I wish there were more. But…” Maybe he tried to explain. If he did, he had no words. But then, he didn’t really need any, either.

  Sostratos set the five silver coins where Polykles couldn’t help but see them. “Farewell,” he said, and walked-almost ran-out of the scribe’s place of business. Would those five drakhmai make Polykles fare well? Would they even help him fare well? Or would he, as was much more likely, just use them to buy more wine to pour down his throat?

  He would think that was faring well. But Sostratos tossed his head. How much did what Polykles drunkenly thought was faring well resemble what would in fact be well for him? Not much, Sostratos feared. And he’d helped the scribe continue on his drunken path.

  He sighed and hurried away from Polykles’, hurried back toward the comfortable life he led. He hurried away from what he’d just done, too. While Polykles didn’t follow him-was, indeed, likely to be as grateful to him as his sodden state allowed-his own conscience did.

  “Farewell! “ Menedemos’ father said, standing on the quay

  “Farewell!” Uncle Lysistratos echoed, adding, “Safe journey there, safe journey home.”

  “Thank you, Father. Thank you, Uncle,” Menedemos called from the Aphrodite ’s poop deck. She was ready to sail. Only a couple of ropes still bound her to Rhodes. Her cargo was aboard, her crew likewise. Soon she would nose out across the wine-dark sea to find out what profit, if any, lay in the east.

  “Farewell!” Himilkon the Phoenician called. The bright spring sun glinted from the heavy gold rings he wore in his ears. A couple of the Aphrodite ’s rowers, though Hellenes, wore their wealth the same way. Another had a torn, shrunken earlobe that said some of his portable wealth had been forcibly detached from him once upon a time.

  Himilkon added something else, not in Greek but in a language full of hissing and gutturals. Sostratos, who stood only a couple of cubits from Menedemos, haltingly replied in the same tongue. “What did he say?” Menedemos asked. “What did you say?”

  “He said almost the same thing Father did,” his cousin answered. “He wished us good fortune on the journey. I thanked him.”

  “Ah.” Menedemos dipped his head. “You really have learned some of that barbarous babbling, haven’t you?”

  “Some,” Sostratos said. “I can count. I can haggle. I can get food or ask for a room in an inn. I can be polite.”

  “That should be plenty.” Menedemos pointed to the base of the quay. “Here comes your brother-in-law.”

  “Farewell,” Damonax called, panting a little. “Gods give you good weather and plenty of profit. You know you’ve got splendid oil there to sell.”

  “Yes, my dear,” Sostratos said, proving he could be polite in Greek as well as Aramaic. Menedemos curtly dipped his head. He still wished they weren’t carrying olive oil to Phoenicia.

  He turned away from Damonax and toward Diokles. “Are we set to go?” he asked the keleustes.

  “As soon as we cast off we are, skipper,” Diokles answered. The oar-master was getting close to forty-five, his short beard grizzled. He was the best sailor Menedemos had ever known. Whatever he couldn’t get out of a crew and ship wasn’t there to be had.

  A couple of the men on the pier took care of the last detail, tossing into the Aphrodite the lines that moored her fore and aft. Sailors coiled the ropes and secured them. For the departure, rowers sat at all twenty benches on each side of the merchant galley. They looked expectantly back toward Diokles, who stood not far from Menedemos on the raised poop.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Menedemos murmured.

  “Right,” Diokles said. He took out a square of bronze hung from a chain and a little mallet he used to beat out the stroke. Raising his voice so it would carry all the way to the bow, he called, “All right, you lazy lugs, I know you haven’t pulled on anything but your own pricks all winter long. But we’ve got people watching us, and I don’t want us looking like a pack of idiots, eh? So even if you don’t know what you’re doing, pretend like you do, all right?”

  “He’ll make them sorry if they don’t,” Sostratos said.

  “Of course he will,” Menedemos answered. “That’s his job.”

  Diokles poised the mallet. Menedemos settled his hands on the steering-oar tillers. They weren’t so smooth as he would have liked, not polished by long, intimate contact with his callused flesh: the Aphrodite had lost both steering oars in separate accidents the year before, and the replacements still had a rough feel to them he didn’t care for. Time will fix it, he thought.

  Clang! Diokles smote the square. At the same time, he called out, “Rhyppapai!” to help give the rowers the stroke. Clang! “Rhyppapai!” Clang! “Rhyppapai!”

  The men at the oars did him proud. They pulled as if they were serving on a trireme or a five in the Rhodian navy. Indeed, a lot of them had pulled an oar in the Rhodian navy at one time or another. Slowly at first, then with building momentum, the Aphrodite glided away from the pier.

  “Farewell!” Menedemos’ father called one last time. Menedemos lifted a hand from the tiller to wave to
him but didn’t look back.

  “Good luck!” Uncle Lysistratos said.

  “Good fortune go with you!” Damonax added. With his olive oil aboard the akatos, he had reason to worry about good fortune.

  Artificial moles protected the Great Harbor of Rhodes from wind and wave. The water inside the harbor was as smooth as the finest glazed pottery. A tower at the base of the eastern mole mounted dart- and stone-throwing catapults to hold enemy warships at bay. A soldier on the tower, tiny as a doll in the distance, waved toward the Aphrodite . Menedemos returned the greeting.

  More soldiers in gleaming bronze corselets and helms marched along the mole toward the tip. The early-morning sun glinted from the iron heads of their spears. Thin across the water came the voice of the under-officer in charge of them: “Step it up, you sorry, sleepy bastards! You can sleep when you’re dead.”

  “He sounds like Diokles,” Sostratos said in a low voice.

  “So he does,” Menedemos agreed. “His job’s not much different, is it?”

  Little fishing boats were sculling out of the harbor, too. They couldn’t move nearly so fast as the Aphrodite and made haste to get out of her way. None of their captains wanted the akatos’ sea-greened bronze ram crunching into his boat’s flank or stern. The fishermen and Menedemos waved to one another as the merchant galley slid toward the Great Harbor’s narrow outlet.

  Also making for the outlet was a big, beamy round ship, deeply laden with wheat or wine or some other bulk commodity. Like any round ship, this one was made to travel by sail. Her handful of crewmen strained at the sweeps, but the fat ship only waddled along. Expecting her to move aside for the Aphrodite would have been absurd. Menedemos pulled in on one steering-oar tiller and pushed the other one away from him. Graceful as a dancer, the merchant galley swung to port. As she passed the round ship, Menedemos called out to the other captain: “What’s the name of your wallowing scow, the Sea Snail?”

  “I’d sooner be aboard her than Poseidon’s Centipede there,” the other fellow retorted. They traded friendly insults till the Aphrodite ’s greater speed took her out of hailing range.

  Another round ship, this one with her enormous square sail lowered from the yard and full of the breeze from out of the north, was just entering the harbor as the Aphrodite left. Again, his ship being far more maneuverable than the other, Menedemos gave her as wide a berth as he could, though the harbor mouth was only a couple of plethra across.

  As soon as the akatos got out onto the open sea, her motion changed. That breeze pushed swells ahead of it; the merchant galley began to pitch and roll. Menedemos kept his balance without conscious thought. Sostratos gripped the rail to help steady himself. He gripped it till his knuckles whitened, as a matter of fact, for he needed a while at the start of each trading run to regain his sea legs-and his sea stomach.

  Some of the rowers also looked a trifle green. Maybe that meant they’d done too much drinking the night before. But maybe they also had trouble with the ship’s motion. Most of them, like Sostratos, would soon master it. As for the ones who couldn’t, what business did they have going to sea?

  Menedemos said, “I think we can take most of the men off the oars now.”

  “Right you are, skipper,” Diokles answered. He called out, “Oцp!” The rowers rested at their oars. Menedemos kept the merchant galley’s bow pointing into the swells with the steering oars. Diokles asked him, “Eight men on a side suit you?”

  “That should be fine.” Menedemos dipped his head. “We don’t want to wear them out,” The akatos used its full complement of rowers for swank, as when setting out at the start of each new trading run, and for emergency speed, as when escaping from pirates or turning to fight them. Otherwise, the crewmen took turns at the oars.

  While the sailors being relieved brought their oars inboard and stowed them, Menedemos peered north toward the Karian coast. We’re off again, he thought, and the familiar excitement at being on his own coursed through him. And I’m away from Rhodes, and from my father, and from Baukis. That wasn’t excitement, exactly, but it would do.

  2

  Coming into Kaunos, on the Karian coast, Sostratos knew a certain surge of hope. So might a man coming back to a polis where he’d lived twenty years before have hoped a hetaira he’d kept company with then was still beautiful and still as glad to see him as she had been once upon a time. He’d been to Kaunos only the year before, but all the same…

  “Do you suppose…?” he said to Menedemos.

  Three words were plenty to let his cousin know what he was talking about. “No, my dear, I’m afraid I don’t suppose,” Menedemos answered. “What are the odds?”

  Sostratos prided himself on being a rational man. He knew what the odds were-knew all too well, in fact. Yet, like someone hoping a long-dead love affair might miraculously revive, he did his best to look away from them rather than in their direction. “We found one gryphon’s skull in the market square here,” he said. “Why not another?”

  “You’d do better to ask why we found one, wouldn’t you, when none was ever seen in these parts before?” Menedemos said.

  “I suppose T would.” Sostratos heaved a melodramatic sigh. “After all the evils, hope came out of Pandora’s Box, and I’ll cling to it as long as I can.”

  “However you like, of course,” his cousin answered, guiding the Aphrodite alongside a quay with fussy precision and minute adjustments of the steering oars. Satisfied at last, Menedemos dipped his head. “That ought to do it.”

  “Back oars!” Diokles called to the rowers. After they’d used a couple of strokes to kill the merchant galley’s forward motion, the oarmaster held up his hand and said, “Oцp!”

  The rowers rested. Some of them rubbed olive oil into their palms. Their hands had softened over the winter, and the first couple of days aboard ship had left them sore and blistered. And they’d rowed all the way up from Rhodes. They’d had no other choice, not with the wind dead in their faces all the way north.

  A couple of soldiers strode up the pier toward the Aphrodite . “This seems just like last year,” Sostratos said.

  “Are you trying to make an omen of it?” Menedemos asked. Suddenly shamefaced, Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos laughed. “Omens are often where you find them, I admit, but do remember that last year the men who questioned us served Antigonos. Old One-Eye’s hoplites arc gone. Ptolemaios’ men threw ‘em out.”

  “I’m not likely to forget that,” Sostratos said tartly. “Antigonos’ soldiers almost caught us here in the harbor.”

  “Hush,” Menedemos told him. “You don’t want to say such things where these boys might hear you.”

  That, no doubt, was good advice. “What ship are you?” called the soldier with the fancier plume in his helmet, “Where are you from? What’s your cargo? “

  “We’re the Aphrodite , best one, out of Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. Rhodes tried to stay on good terms with all the squabbling Macedonian marshals, but was especially friendly to Ptolemaios of Egypt, who shipped enormous amounts of wheat through her harbor. “We’ve got perfume, fine oil, Koan silk, books-”

  “Let me see a book,” the soldier said.

  “What would you like? We have some of the best parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or a poem that’s as, ah, spicy as anything you’ve ever read,”

  Ptolemaios’ trooper tossed his head. “I’ve never read anything at all, on account of I haven’t got my letters.” He seemed proud of his illiteracy, too. “But if you’ve really got books, I know you’re traders and not some gods-detested spies.”

  Maybe that was logic. Maybe it was just stupidity. Sostratos couldn’t quite decide which. Would spies be clever enough to bring books along in case some officious junior officer decided he wanted to have a look at them? Who could guess? Sostratos stooped under a rower’s bench, opened an oiled-leather sack, and took out a roll of papyrus. He worked the wooden spindles to show the soldier the roll did indeed have words written on it.


  “All right. All right. I believe you.” The fellow motioned for him to stop. “Put the silly thing away. By Zeus, you are what you say you are.” He turned on his heel and tramped back down the pier. The other soldier, who’d never said a word, followed him.

  “That was easier than I’ve seen it a good many places,” Menedemos remarked.

  “I know.” Sostratos looked up to the forts atop the hills west of Kaunos. Antigonos’ soldiers had held out for a while in one of them, even after the city fell to Ptolemaios’ men. “I wonder if the Rhodian proxenos ever came back here.”

  “If you really care, we can ask,” Menedemos said with a shrug. A year before, the Aphrodite had taken the Kaunian who looked after Rhodian interests in his city to Rhodes itself; he’d feared arrest from Antigonos’ men when word came that Ptolemaios’ soldiers were sweeping west along the southern coast of Anatolia. He’d had reason to fear, too; soldiers who’d come to arrest him had got to his house just too late, and they’d come down to the harbor just too late to keep the Aphrodite from sailing.

  Sostratos went back behind the steering oars, picked up the gangplank, and stretched it from the poop deck to the wharf. Normally, that was work for an ordinary seaman, not the merchant galley’s toikharkhos. Sostratos didn’t care. He was too eager to care. He gave Menedemos an inviting wave. “Come on, my dear. Let’s see what there is to see.”

  “You’re not going to find another gryphon’s skull,” his cousin told him.

  “If I don’t look for one, I certainly won’t,” Sostratos replied with dignity. “Are you coming?”

  “Oh, yes,” Menedemos said. “If you think I’ll pass up a chance to see you act foolish, you can think again.”

  “I don’t see how seeking something I want is foolish,” Sostratos said, more dignified than ever. “When you seek what you want, it usually wears a transparent chiton and perfume.”

  “Well, I’d rather have a live girl than a dead gryphon. If that makes me a fool, I’ll answer to the name.”