The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  As the sun went down, anchors splashed into the Inner Sea. Sailors ate their suppers and washed them down with watered wine. A waxing gibbous moon glowed in the southeastern sky. As twilight deepened, the stars came out. Zeus ’ wandering star hung low in the southwest. A little to the east of it shone Ares’ wandering star, now entering the Scorpion and thus close to its ruddy rival, Antares. Kronos’ wandering star, yellow as olive oil, beamed down from the south, a little west of the moon.

  Snores began to rise in the quiet darkness. Sostratos came back from the poop deck to wrap himself in his himation and stretch out beside Menedemos. He wasn’t quite ready for sleep, though. Pointing up toward Ares’ wandering star, he spoke in a low voice: “I wonder why it’s so much dimmer now than it was this spring. Then it would have easily outshone Antares. Now…” He tossed his head.

  Menedemos was sleepy. “How can we know why?” he asked, his voice grumpy. “It does what it does, that’s all. Do you expect to go up into the heavens and look?”

  “If I could, I’d like to,” Sostratos said.

  “Yes. If. But since you can’t, won’t you settle for going to sleep instead?”

  “Oh, all right. Good night.”

  “Good night,” Menedemos said.

  When he woke the next morning, twilight streaked the eastern sky behind the Aphrodite . “Rosy-fingered dawn,” he murmured, and smiled. He yawned, stretched, and got to his feet. Shivering a little, he picked up the crumpled chiton he’d used for a pillow and put it back on. The day would soon warm up, but the night had been on the chilly side. He walked to the rail and pissed into the Inner Sea.

  Sostratos still snored. He hardly seemed to have moved from where he’d lain down the night before. Diokles was awake; he looked back from the rower’s bench where he’d curled up for the night and dipped his head at Menedemos. As the day brightened, more and more sailors woke. Finally, just before the sun came up over the horizon, Menedemos waved to the men who’d already roused, and they set about waking the rest.

  He woke Sostratos himself, stirring him with his foot. His cousin muttered something, then jerked in alarm. His eyes flew open. For a moment, they held nothing but animal fear. Then reason returned, and anger with it. “Why didn’t you just stick a spear in me?” Sostratos demanded indignantly.

  “Maybe next time, my dear.” Menedemos made his voice as sunny as he could, the better to annoy his cousin. By Sostratos’ scowl, it worked.

  Barley cakes and oil and more watered wine served for breakfast. Grunting with effort, sailors hauled on the capstans to bring up the anchors. They hauled them out of the sea and stowed them near the bow. Menedemos gauged the wind. It was easy to gauge: there was none to speak of. He sighed. The rowers would earn their pay today.

  At his orders, Diokles put eight men a side on the oars: plenty to keep the merchant galley going, yet few enough to keep the crew fresh in case they needed everyone rowing to escape pirates or fight them off. Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert the unwelcome omen.

  As often happened, fishing boats fled from the Aphrodite . They took one look at a galley centipede-striding across the waters of the Inner Sea and assumed they saw a pirate ship. That always saddened Menedemos. Still, had he skippered one of those little boats, he would have run from the Aphrodite , too. Anyone who took chances with his crew’s freedom and lives was a fool.

  The wind did blow up, fitfully, as the morning wore along. Menedemos ordered the sail lowered from the yard. He wondered why he’d bothered. Now it would fill and shove the akatos forward, and then a moment later, when the breeze died again, it would hang as loose and empty as the skin on a formerly fat man’s belly after his polis was besieged and starved into surrender.

  “A pestilence!” he muttered when the wind failed for the fourth time in half an hour. “Might as well be a girl who teases but doesn’t intend to put out.”

  Sostratos stood close enough to hear him. “Trust you to come up with that figure of speech,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you,” Menedemos said.

  He would have gone on in that vein, but Moskhion, who was taking a turn as lookout, shouted from the foredeck: “Ship coming out from behind that headland! No, two ships, by the gods! Two ships off the starboard bow!” He pointed.

  Menedemos’ eyes swung in the direction Moskhion gave. Even so, he needed several heartbeats to spy the ships. They were galleys, their masts down, their hulls and even their oars painted a greenish blue that made them hard to spot against sea and sky. No honest skipper painted his ship a color like that.

  Sostratos saw the same thing at the same time. “Pirates,” he said, as if remarking on the weather.

  “I’m afraid you’re right, my dear.” Menedemos dipped his head. He gauged the speed at which those long, lean galleys were approaching, gauged it and didn’t like it a bit. “I’m afraid we can’t very well run, either, not with the hull as soaked as it is. They’d catch us quick, and this polluted fitful breeze won’t let us sail away, either.”

  “We have to fight, then,” Sostratos said.

  “Yes.” Menedemos dipped his head again. “I’m afraid we do.” He shouted orders: “Raise the sail to the yard! Serve out weapons to everyone! Man all oars! Diokles, as soon as we have a rower on every bench, I’ll want you to up the stroke. We can’t outrun ‘em, but we’ll need as much speed as we can get.”

  “Right you are, skipper.” The oarmaster pointed toward the approaching pirate ships, which stayed a couple of plethra apart. “They’re a little overeager, you ask me. If they’d waited a little longer before they came out of cover, we’d’ve had less time to get ready.”

  “We’re a good ways out to sea; maybe they wanted to make sure we didn’t get away,” Menedemos said. “If they did make a mistake, it’s up to us to prove it.”

  “They’re triakonters,” Sostratos said. “Only thirty rowers in each one, but look how many extra men they’ve packed in for boarding.”

  “Bastards,” Menedemos said. “Grab my bowcase, O best one. Your archery will help us.”

  “I hope so,” his cousin answered. “I can’t shoot all of them, though, however much I wish I could.”

  “I know. I wish you could, too,” Menedemos said. “But the more you hit, the fewer we’ll have to worry about if they do manage to board us.” If they board us, we’re ruined, he thought. As Sostratos had, he saw how full of men the pirate ships were. The Aphrodite ’s crew might well have been able to fight off one. Both together? Not a chance. He knew as much, but he wouldn’t say so out loud. By the expression on his cousin’s face, Sostratos knew as much, too.

  Up went the sail. Rowers hurried to their places. Sailors who weren’t rowing served out swords and pikes and axes and cudgels. Men stowed them where they could grab them in a hurry. Everyone’s eyes were on the pair of triakonters speeding toward the merchant galley. The men also had to know they couldn’t beat back that many boarders. But they’d been through sea fights with Menedemos before. He’d always managed to do something to keep them free and safe.

  What are you going to do this time? he asked himself. He found only one answer: The best I can. Aloud, he said, “Sostratos, loose the boat from the sternpost. Then go forward to shoot. If we win, maybe we’ll come back for the boat. If we don’t…” He shrugged and turned to Diokles as his cousin obeyed. “Up the stroke some more. Don’t show them quite everything we can do, though, not yet. Let them think we’re a little slower and deeper laden than we really are.”

  “I understand, skipper.” The keleustes raised his voice so even the men at the forwardmost oars could hear: “Put your backs into it, you lugs! If you want to pay the whores on Rhodes again, you do what the captain and I tell you. Come on, now! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” He beat out the rhythm with mallet and brass square, too.

  The Aphrodite seemed to gather herself, then to spring across the water toward the two pirates. The akatos’ rowers couldn’t see the foe, of course;
they looked back at Menedemos and Diokles. Diokles had been wise to remind them to obey orders. They relied on the oarmaster and the skipper to be their eyes and brains. They staked their freedom, maybe their lives, on that reliance. By the anxious expressions some of them wore, they were well aware of it, too.

  Then Menedemos had no more time to spare for his own rowers. He steered the merchant galley at the two triakonters as they made for the Aphrodite . The eyes at the bows of the pirate ships stared balefully across the water at the merchant galley. Their rams, and the Aphrodite’s, too, gnawed through the sea, churning it to white foam. Their oars rose and fell, rose and fell, not quite so smoothly as the. Aphrodite ’s but at a remarkably quick stroke. Both ships were faster than the akatos. But not by so much as you think, Menedemos told himself. I hope.

  “I’ll give you something nice, Father Poseidon,” he murmured, “if you let me come home to do it. I promise I will.” He bargained with men almost every day. Why not with the gods as well?

  Things on the sea didn’t always happen swiftly. Even though the Aphrodite and the pirates were closing faster than a horse could trot, they had twenty or twenty-five stadia to cover before they met: close to half an hour. Menedemos had plenty of time to think. So did the pirate captains, no doubt. He suspected he knew what they would do: keep their distance from each other, ply the Aphrodite with arrows for a while, and then close and board from port and starboard at the same time. With numbers thus on their side, they could hardly fail.

  As for what he could do to counter that… There, his thoughts remained murkier than he would have liked.

  Those pirate ships swelled. Suddenly, Menedemos could hear shouts from the men aboard them, see sunlight spark from swords and spearheads. He didn’t think the shouts were Greek, not that it mattered. There had been plenty of Hellenes aboard the pirate ship that attacked the merchant galley the year before in the Aegean. They counted as pirates first.

  He steered the Aphrodite straight for the nearer triakonter here: the left-hand one of the pair. No matter how she altered course-and her fellow with her, in some nice seamanship-he swung the steering-oar tillers so his bow and hers pointed at each other.

  “You going to try ramming her, skipper?” Diokles asked. “You want the extra from the rowers now? I think they can still give it to you, though they’ve been working pretty hard.”

  “I’ll watch what the pirates do, and that’ll tell me what I can do,” Menedemos answered. “Don’t up the stroke till I yell, no matter what.”

  “All right.” The oarmaster didn’t sound doubtful, no matter what he was thinking. That left Menedemos grateful. If Diokles let worry show, it would surely infect the rowers, and that would make a bad situation even worse.

  Archers aboard the closer pirate ship started shooting. Their arrows splashed into the Inner Sea well short of the Aphrodite . Menedemos dipped his head in wry amusement. Bowmen were always overeager. Before long, though, the shafts would start to bite. More arrows arched through the air. These fell short, too, but not by nearly so far.

  Where time hadn’t mattered much before, suddenly now heartbeats were of the essence. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite hard to port, aiming her ram straight for the side of the second triakonter, the one he’d ignored up till now. “Everything they’ve got, Diokles!” he called.

  “Right,” the oarmaster said without hesitation. He upped the stroke: “Come on, boys! You can do it! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” Not even Talos the bronze man could have held that sprint for long. Gasping, thrusting, faces gleaming with sweat and oil, the rowers gave him everything they had in them. The akatos suddenly seemed to bound forward over the sea.

  Menedemos’ only advantage was that he knew what he was doing and neither of the pirate captains did. Had the skipper of the closer ship been more alert, more ready for something unexpected from the Aphrodite , he might have rammed her as she turned toward his comrade. He tried, in fact, but he waited a couple of heartbeats too long before starting his own turn-and the merchant galley’s sudden burst of speed also caught him by surprise. His triakonter passed a few cubits astern of the Aphrodite .

  Two arrows hissed past Menedemos from behind. He couldn’t even look back. If he got hit, he hoped Diokles would shove him out of the way and drive home the attack on the other pirate ship. He aimed the merchant galley at a point halfway between the triakonter’s ram and where her mast would go when it was up.

  The man at the steering oars on the pirate ship should have started to turn toward the Aphrodite or away from her, to make sure the akatos’ ram didn’t hit squarely. The black-bearded ruffian should have. Maybe he even would have; though taken by surprise, he probably had time to do it. But Sostratos shot three arrows at him in quick succession. Two of them missed. The other one hit him in the neck. He shrieked and clawed at himself and forgot all about steering the triakonter.

  “Euge!” Menedemos roared exultantly.

  Another pirate pushed the wounded helmsman aside and seized the steering oars. Too late. Much too late. Heartbeats counted now, and the men in the second ship had none to spare. Menedemos heard their screams, saw their mouths-and their eyes-open wide, wide, wide as the ram slammed home. One of them tried to use an oar to fend off the merchant galley, which did him no more good than a straw would have in fending off an angry dog.

  Crunch! The impact staggered Menedemos. The ram’s three horizontal flukes stove in the triakonter’s timbers, breaking tenons, tearing mortises open, and letting the sea flood in between planks formerly watertight.

  “Back oars!” Diokles shouted. The rowers, who’d known the command was coming, obeyed at once. Menedemos’ heart thudded. If the ram stuck, the pirates could swarm aboard the Aphrodite from their mortally wounded vessel and perhaps yet carry the day. But then he breathed again, for it came away cleanly. He turned the akatos toward the other pirate ship.

  A rower howled as an arrow from the stricken triakonter bit. Another sailor took his place. Menedemos thanked the gods that hadn’t happened during the ramming run, or it might have thrown off his timing and made him deliver a less effective blow. He noticed yet another sailor, not a man who’d been pulling an oar, down and clutching at a shaft through his calf. That fellow must have been wounded in the attack, but Menedemos, his attention aimed wholly at his target, hadn’t noticed till now.

  Archers aboard the surviving triakonter kept shooting at the Aphrodite , too. Sostratos answered as best he could. One of his shafts hissed just in front of the face of the pirate ship’s helmsman. He jerked back with a startled cry Menedemos could hear across the couple of plethra of water between the two galleys.

  He also heard cries for help coming from the ship he’d rammed as she settled ever lower in the water. She wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the sea-she was, after all, made of wood. But already the oars were of little use; when her hull filled completely, they would be altogether worthless. And she was a good many stadia out to sea. Menedemos, a strong swimmer, wouldn’t have cared to try to get to shore from here by himself. And not so many men could swim at all.

  The other pirate ship might take her crew off her, but that triakonter was already crowded. Besides, if she came up alongside her stricken sister, she would lie dead in the water, waiting for another ramming run from the Aphrodite .

  A nice problem for her skipper, Menedemos thought. He and the other pirate captain maneuvered warily. Neither of the ships was at its best anymore; the rowers on both were worn. Still, the triakonter remained faster. Menedemos couldn’t catch up to her. After a little while, he stopped trying, for fear he would altogether exhaust his men and leave them at the pirates’ mercy.

  As they sparred, the rammed ship continued to settle. Before long, pirates were bobbing in the sea clinging to oars and to anything else that would float. Their cries grew ever more pitiful-not that they would have known any pity themselves, had they rammed the merchant galley rather than the other way round.

  The breeze began to rise. It made
the sea rougher. The pirate ship filled faster yet. The men who’d abandoned her rose on wavecrests and slid down into troughs. Menedemos tested the wind with a wet thumb. “What do you think?” he asked Diokles. “Will it hold for a while?”

  “Hope so.” The oarmaster leaned into the wind. He smacked his lips, as if tasting it, then dipped his head. “Yes, skipper, I think it will.”

  “So do I.” Menedemos raised his voice: “Let down the sail from the yard. I think these polluted temple robbers have had all they want of us. If they come after us with the ship they’ve got left, we’ll make ‘em sorry all over again.”

  Cheers rang out, weary but heartfelt. Diokles eased back on the stroke; now the wind was playing a larger role in pushing the merchant galley across the sea. Menedemos looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, the one triakonter hurried over to the other, taking men off her. No one aboard the sound pirate ship seemed to be paying the Aphrodite any mind. And even if the pirates were still thinking about her, a stern chase was a long chase. The extra weight of the several dozen men would make the surviving triakonter slower, too.

  Sostratos came back toward the stern to help the sailor who’d been shot through the leg. He knew something about doctoring-Menedemos suspected he knew less than he thought he did, but even the best physicians could do only so much. He drew the arrow and bandaged the wound. The sailor seemed grateful for the attention, so Menedemos supposed his cousin was doing no harm.

  And Sostratos had done very well indeed from the foredeck. “Euge!” Menedemos called once more. “You shot the pirate at the steering oars at just the right time there.”

  “I would have shot the abandoned wretch sooner if I hadn’t missed him twice,” Sostratos said. “I could practically have spit across the sea and hit him, but the arrows went past.” He looked disgusted with himself.