"You can ease back on the stroke now, Diokles," Menedemos told the oarmaster. "Let us get a little distance between our ship and that polluted barbarian, and then . . ."
"Aye aye, skipper!" Diokles said. Menedemos had never heard so much respect in his voice. And I earned it, too, by the gods, he thought proudly.
"What are you going to do?" Sostratos asked.
"I'm going to ram that wide-arsed catamite, that's what." Menedemos' voice was savage as a maenad's. "Romans don't sail any too bloody well. Let's see how good they are at swimming."
"I wish you wouldn't," Sostratos said.
"What?" Menedemos stared. He wondered if he'd heard correctly. "Are you out of your mind? Why not? You treat your friends well and your enemies badly, and if these bastards aren't enemies, what are they?" He tugged on the steering-oar tillers to bring the akatos' bow around to bear on the trireme. The Romans were starting to shift oars from their undamaged port side to starboard. That would eventually let them limp away, but it wouldn't let them escape a vengeful Aphrodite.
"They're enemies, all right," Sostratos said. "But think - wasn't it wildest luck that we hurt them in the first place?"
"Luck and a good crew," Menedemos growled. He still hungered for revenge.
"Agreed. Agreed ten times over," Sostratos said. "But now that we've been lucky once, wouldn't another run at that cursed big ship be hubris? Suppose the ram stuck fast. All those marines - except for the ones we knocked into the drink, I mean - and all those rowers would swarm aboard, and that would be the end of that."
Menedemos grunted. He wanted to tell his cousin there wasn't a chance in the world of that happening. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Such mishaps were all too common; ramming could be as hard on the attacking ship as on the victim. And if that did happen here, it would be as deadly to the Aphrodite as Sostratos said. He took a deep breath and let it out, then blinked a couple of times almost in surprise, like a man suddenly lucid again after a ferocious fever broke.
"You're right," he said. "I hate to admit it - you have no idea how much I hate to admit it - but you're right. Let's get out of here while the getting's good."
"Thank you," Sostratos said softly.
"I'm not doing it for you," Menedemos said. "Believe me, I'm not doing it for myself, either. I'm doing it for the ship."
"This far from home, that's the best reason," Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged, despite watching Diokles dip his head. He'd made his decision. That didn't mean he had to like it.
The Romans on their trireme's deck gawked at the Aphrodite as she passed safely out of arrow range. Menedemos thought some rowers were gaping out through the oar ports, too. "Got a little lesson today, didn't you?" he shouted at them; though they were a long way off and probably didn't speak Greek anyhow. His rowers were much less restrained. They blistered the Romans with curses they'd picked up all over the Inner Sea.
"I don't suppose we're heading up to Neapolis any more," Sostratos remarked.
"What? Why not?" Menedemos said in surprise.
As if to an idiot child, his cousin answered, "Because how do we know that that's the only Roman fleet around? Suppose four triremes come after us the next time. What do we do then?"
"Oh." Menedemos blinked. He rubbed his chin as he thought. At last, he said, "Well, best one, you're right again. Twice in one day - I didn't think you had it in you." He grinned at Sostratos' splutters, then went on, "I hadn't thought it through. I was too busy dealing with that one bastard."
"And you did it splendidly," Sostrastos said. "I thought we were doomed."
So did I, Menedemos thought. Aloud, he answered, "If you've got only two chances - one bad, the other worse - you do the best you can with the bad one." He raised his voice to call out to the sailors: "Lower the sail from the yard. We're heading back down south, and the wind should be with us most of the way."
Men leaped to obey. They'd leaped ever since Aristeidas first spotted the Roman triremes. Then it had been out of fear. Now . . . Now it's because they admire me, Menedemos thought. And after what I did, they should.
One of the sailors said, "Pity we can't land and set up a trophy to remember this by."
That only made Menedemos prouder. He showed it in an offhand way: "The barbarians wouldn't know what it meant, anyhow, and they'd just plunder it. We have our trophy, perfect in memory forever."
"That's right, by the gods," Diokles said. "And we've got a story we can drink on in every wineshop from Karia to Carthage, too."
"Truth," Menedemos said.
But Sostratos tossed his head. "I don't think so."
"What? Why not?" Menedemos demanded.
"Wrecking a trireme with an akatos?" Sostratos said. "Be serious, O cousin of mine. Would you believe a story like that if you heard it?" Again, Menedemos thought for a moment. Then he too solemnly tossed his head.
Sostratos was glad to sail south past the island of Kapreai. He doubted whether any Roman fleet, no matter how aggressive, would ever dare to come deep into Great Hellas. And, after beating a trireme, he didn't worry nearly so much about piratical pentekonters as he had before.
Two of the sailors Roman arrows had hurt quickly began to heal. The third had taken a wound in the belly. Even though the injury didn't look too bad, he began to run a high fever. It soon became clear he wouldn't live.
The men began to mutter among themselves. Few ritual pollutions were worse than having a corpse on board. "What are we going to do?" Menedemos murmured to Sostratos, not wanting anyone else to hear. "It's as if they're forgetting we beat that trireme."
"Let's put him in the boat," Sostratos answered. "He's too far gone to care what happens to him, and that way the Aphrodite won't be polluted when he dies. We can either have a priest cleanse the boat when we put in at a polis or else, if we have to, just buy a new one."
Menedemos stared at him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "Those brains of yours are good for something after all - every once in a while, anyhow."
"Why did you add that last little bit?" Sostratos asked.
"To keep you from walking around with a swelled head," his cousin answered with a wicked grin.
"Thank you so much," Sostratos said, which only made Menedemos' grin wider. A couple of sailors eased the man with the belly wound down into the merchant galley's boat. Sure enough, he was so lost in his battles with demons only he could see, he hardly noticed being moved. They rigged an awning with sailcloth to keep the sun off him. Every so often, someone went down into the boat to give him watered wine from a dipper. He drank a little, but spilled more.
"Sail ho!" Aristeidas sang out. "Sail ho off the starboard bow!"
Everyone jumped. Sostratos' heart began to thud in his chest. The last time the lookout spied a sail, they'd been lucky to escape with their lives, let alone their freedom. Along with the whole crew - since they were moving under sail, they didn't have anyone facing backwards at the oars - he anxiously peered southward.
After only a few minutes, relief flowered in him. "That's a round ship's sail," he said. "It's bigger than anything a galley would carry."
One after another, the sailors dipped their heads. "If we have to run from a merchantman, we're really in trouble," Diokles said. The laughter the oarmaster got was louder than the feeble joke deserved. Relief, nothing else but, Sostratos thought. He certainly felt it himself.
"He's not running from us," Sostratos remarked after a while.
"No, he's not," Menedemos agreed. "He's tacking his way north - if he turns and runs before the wind, he'll take three or four times as long beating his way back as he would to flee. And, since we're really not pirates, he wins his gamble."
Sostratos wondered if he would have risked life and freedom against convenience. He hoped not. But then, after a longer look at the merchantman, he said, "I don't think he's gambling. I think he recognizes us, and I think I recognize him, too. Isn't that Leptines' ship?"
His cousin squinted to peer across the waters
of the Tyrrhenian Sea. "By the gods, I believe it is," Menedemos said. "All that reading you do hasn't shortened your sight yet, anyhow. Maybe I'll put you up at the bow instead of Aristeidas."
"Don't!" Sostratos tossed his head. "He's a regular lynx - I know his eyes are better than mine. Most of the time, yours are, too, I think - you just weren't paying any attention." If his cousin gibed at him, he was going to return the favor.
Menedemos tugged on the steering-oar tillers, swinging the Aphrodite's bow to starboard, toward Leptines' round ship. "I want to get within hailing distance and warn him off," Menedemos said. "Wouldn't do to have him sail up the Sarnos to Pompaia and right into the jaws of those Roman wolves."
If that wasn't Leptines, and if he hadn't recognized the Aphrodite, then he was a prime fool to let the akatos approach his ship so closely. But, before long, Sostratos saw the tubby skipper with his hands on the steering-oar tillers for his tubby ship.
Leptines lifted one hand from a steering oar to wave. He shouted something Sostratos couldn't make out. Sostratos cupped a hand behind his ear to show as much. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Menedemos doing the same thing.
Leptines tried again. This time, Sostratos understood him: "How was Pompaia?"
"Pompaia was fine," Menedemos yelled. "We did some good business. But you don't want to go there."
"What? What's that you say?" Leptines asked. "Why not?"
"Because there's a Roman fleet attacking the town and the countryside right now, that's why," Menedemos answered. "If you sail up there, you're just sticking your head in the wolf's mouth."
"Herakles!" Leptines exclaimed. "A barbarian fleet? Not pirates? Are you sure? How did you get away?"
He asked more questions than one man could conveniently answer. Sostratos said, "They were Romans, all right - they all had the Roman wolf on their sails," at the same time as Menedemos replied, "One of their triremes chased us, and we crippled it, that's how."
"What?" Leptines said, and he didn't mean he had trouble making sense of two voices at once. "How could you beat a trireme with that puny little akatos of yours? I don't believe a word of it."
"I told you so," Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. His cousin made a horrible face at him.
But the sailors wouldn't let Leptines get away with thinking Menedemos a liar. They still reckoned themselves heroes, and shouted out the details of what they'd done. If they'd been pirates and not the crew of a real, working merchant galley, it would have gone hard for the round ship's skipper and his sailors. For a moment, Sostratos wondered whether it would go hard for Leptines and his men anyway; the sailors from the Aphrodite were in no mood to be slighted.
Leptines didn't need long to figure that out for himself. "All right! All right!" he called. "I do believe you!" By then, the two ships lay only ten or fifteen cubits apart. Had Menedemos or his crew chosen to turn pirate, the other captain could have done nothing to stop him. "Where will you go now?" he asked Menedemos.
"I'd had in mind heading up to Neapolis," Menedemos said. "You know about that - I told you when we were in port together. But who knows how many Roman ships are prowling that stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea right now? Better to head back south, I figured, so that's what I'm doing."
"You figured?" Sostratos said under his breath. This time, Menedemos didn't hear him, which might have been just as well. By the way his cousin spoke, Menedemos was convinced coming south had been his own idea and no one else's. Sostratos knew better.
Or do I just remember differently? he wondered. After a moment, he tossed his head. He knew what had happened there after he talked Menedemos out of ramming the Roman trireme. But his cousin sang another song altogether.
If - no, when - I write my history, how will I be able to judge which of two conflicting stories is the true one? he thought. Both men will be certain they have it right, and each will call the other a liar. How did Herodotos and Thoukydides and Xenophon decide who was right? The next time he looked at their works, he would have to think about that.
Meanwhile, Leptines was saying, "That's smart, getting out of there. Polluted barbarians are everywhere these days. They might as well be cockroaches. We Hellenes should have squashed them before they got so strong." A few days before, he'd extolled the Pompaians. Would he remember that if Sostratos reminded him of it? Not likely, and Sostratos knew it full well.
"Pity you had to work so hard just to turn back," Menedemos said.
"Maybe so, but I thank you for your news," Leptines replied. "Going forward would have been a bigger pity."
"Have a safe trip south," Sostratos said. Leptines waved to him. So did a couple of the round ship's sailors. He waved back. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to catch the wind once more. She began to glide over the waves. Leptines' ship wasn't nearly so handy. Sostratos looked back past the sternpost for some time before he saw the other ship also heading away from trouble instead of toward it.
Even though the round ship's sail was far bigger than the akatos',and even though the breeze filled it well, the Aphrodite easily pulled away. When Sostratos remarked on that, Menedemos said, "I should hope so, by the gods. If that pig outsailed us, I think I'd go home and drink hemlock."
"It still seems strange," Sostratos said.
"Nothing strange about it," Menedemos insisted. "War galleys are faster than we are, because we're beamier than they are. They cut the water like a sharp knife. We cut it like a dull one. And as for that polluted round ship - won't even a dull knife cut water better than a drinking cup?"
"Sokrates couldn't do better, O best one," Sostratos said. "I find no flaws in your logic."
"Thank you very much." Menedemos looked smug.
Sostratos wasn't about to let him get away with that. "Why do you only think so straight when you've got ships on your mind? Why do you start acting like a madman as soon as you smell perfume?"
"I don't know," Menedemos answered.
"Well, at least you don't deny it," Sostratos said.
"Ships aren't women, though," his cousin said. "Even if we give them feminine names, they aren't. Most of the time, a ship will do what you want. Oh, you can make a mistake, but you usually know what's what. But with women . . . My dear fellow! You can't know what a woman will do next, for she usually doesn't know herself. So what's the point to logic?"
Sostratos stared at him. "That's the most logical argument for illogic I've ever heard," he said at last.
"And I thank you again." Menedemos grinned. He'd won that round, and he knew it.
When they got down to the little town of Laos once more the following evening, a ship so like Leptines' was tied up at a quay, Sostratos wondered if the plump merchant skipper had somehow stolen a march on the Aphrodite. But the skipper of this round ship proved to be a scrawny fellow named Xenodokos. He said, "If you've got more greed than brains, you might want to think about getting down to Rhegion quick as you can."
Sostratos hoped he had more brains than greed. Because of that, a certain amount of horror went through him when he heard Menedemos ask, "Oh? Why?"
"Because Agathokles of Syracuse has men getting up a fleet of grain ships there," Xenodokos answered. "He's going to try and sneak 'em past the Carthaginian fleet so his polis doesn't starve. He'll pay gods only know how many times the going rate, even for a load from a skinny little ship like yours."
"And what will he pay if the Carthaginians catch us?" Sostratos asked.
"Syracuse," Xenodokos said.
Sostratos looked at his cousin. He didn't care for the gleam in Menedemos' eye. "The ship," he said pointedly.
"I know, the ship." Menedemos sounded impatient. "Remember, we have to go by Rhegion anyway." Sostratos remembered. His heart sank.
10
Menedemos was like a child with a new toy. "We'll make the family rich with this run!" he said. "We'll throw grain into the Aphrodite till we're down to about a digit's worth of freeboard, and we'll get paid for it as if we were that full of fine wine. What could be better?"
>
His cousin, predictably, was like a mother watching her son play with a sword he thought was a toy. "What could be better?" Sostratos said. "Not getting sunk could be better. So could not getting caught. Not getting killed. Not getting sold into slavery. Not getting gelded. If you give me a little while, I can probably think of some more things."
"Oh, nonsense." It wasn't altogether nonsense, as Menedemos knew. But he didn't want to dwell on that. Had he dwelt on it, he would have been just like Sostratos. He had trouble imagining a fate less appealing - or, for that matter, a fate less interesting.
As a brisk, hot breeze from out of the north pushed the Aphrodite ahead of it towards Rhegion, Sostratos scowled. Sostratos, in fact, did everything but stamp his foot on the timbers of the poop deck. "It isn't nonsense. What you want to do is senseless. We already have a profit. This is a needless risk."
"We'll be fine." Menedemos did his best to sound soothing. "From what Xenodokos said, there'll be a whole fleet down at Rhegion. The polluted Carthaginians can't nab everybody."
"Why not?" Sostratos retorted. "And you didn't see Xenodokos setting out for Syracuse, did you? Not likely! He went the other way. I wish we would, too."
"You worry too much," Menedemos said. "You were jumping up and down about putting in at Cape Tainaron, too, and that worked out fine. Why shouldn't this?"
"We weren't sailing into the middle of a war when we put in at Cape Tainaron," his cousin answered. "You're just asking for trouble."
"The wind should be with us and against the Carthaginians," Menedemos said. "We'll just slide right into the harbor at Syracuse along with all the round ships - and if the barbarians do get after this fleet, they'll have an easier time catching round ships than they will with us."
Sostratos exhaled angrily. "All right. All right, by the gods. You're going to act like an idiot - I can see that. You lust for this the same way you lusted for that Tarentine's wife. But promise me one thing, at least."
"What is it?" Menedemos asked.
"This: if Xenodokos is wrong, if there is no fleet of merchantmen gathering at Rhegion, you won't load the Aphrodite up with grain and try to sneak into Syracuse all by your lonesome."
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