"I half expected to see him bearing down on us in Taras, spear in one hand, shield in the other, blazing for revenge because we threw him off the ship," Sostratos said.
"He must have fallen foul of the Samnites before he made it to the polis," Menedemos replied. "I can't say I'm sorry, either. The only thing worse than a thief on board is a man with a sickness that spreads."
"How far are we from Kallipolis?" Sostratos asked.
"A couple of hundred stadia, maybe a little more," his cousin answered. "If I have this stretch of coastline straight in my mind, it's about halfway between Taras and Kallipolis."
"Can we make Kallipolis by nightfall?"
"I doubt it." Menedemos didn't sound happy about having to doubt it. He swung his leg in a way that meant he would have kicked at the dirt had he not been aboard ship. "I hadn't planned on spending two nights in a row at sea, but I'm not going to beach the Aphrodite on this coast."
"I should hope not." Sostratos shuddered at the thought of losing all the silver they'd worked so long and hard to gather. Every crewman within earshot dipped his head to show he didn't want to ground the ship, either.
"It's the rain's fault," Menedemos said. "We'd have gone faster and I'd have navigated better without it."
"Maybe it'll work out for the best," Sostratos said. "We'll have a little chance to dry out, so we won't look like such ragamuffins when we do come into port."
"We haven't got much left to sell," his cousin said. "It isn't worth worrying about."
"We may come back there one of these days," Sostratos said. "People will remember. They always remember scandal." He didn't need to read any history to be sure of that, and was slightly scandalized when Menedemos only shrugged. He has no sense of anything but the moment, Sostratos thought sadly. Maybe that's why he ends up in trouble over women so often. It never occurred to him to wonder what Menedemos was thinking about him just then.
They didn't make Kallipolis before nightfall, and did anchor offshore. The men grumbled a little about that. Sostratos wondered at their logic. They'd just made it very clear that they didn't care to risk going ashore, but they still didn't want to stay at sea? What did that leave? He imagined the Aphrodite floating several hundred cubits up in the air. Daidalos and Ikaros might get to the ship then, but he didn't see how anyone else would.
Menedemos' imagination was of a more practical sort: "I hadn't planned to lay over a night in Kallipolis, but I think I'd better, to give the men a chance to drink and roister."
"Good idea, skipper," Diokles said. If the oarmaster thought it a good idea, Sostratos wouldn't argue with him.
When they reached Kallipolis the next morning, it proved to lie on an island just off the Italian mainland, as Ortygia lay just off the Sicilian coast. Kallipolis, though, had never expanded off its island the way Syracuse had. It remained what so many of the colonies of Great Hellas had been in their early days: a Hellenic outpost at the edge of a land full of barbarians.
Despite its name, it didn't strike Sostratos as a particularly beautiful city. When he said as much, Menedemos laughed at him. "What would you expect them to call it? Kakopolis?" his cousin asked. "They'd enjoy trying to lure settlers to a polis with a name like that, wouldn't they? Uglytown?"
"All right, I see your point," Sostratos said. "But if you found a land full of snow and ice, you wouldn't call it a green land, would you?"
"I would if I wanted to get anybody to live there with me," Menedemos replied. "But I'm a good Rhodian. I don't even want to think about snow and ice, let alone live with 'em."
"It did snow once when I was in Athens," Sostratos said. "It was beautiful, but Zeus! it was cold." He shivered at the memory.
"We won't need to worry about that here," Menedemos said. "We have some wine, and we have some silk. Let's see if we can unload them. And" - he wagged a finger at Sostratos - "we don't need to tell the Kallipolitans what we think of their polis."
"I understand," Sostratos said. "We'll tell them the land is green."
His cousin laughed. "Exactly. That's just what we'll do."
Seen from its narrow, winding streets, Kallipolis was even less prepossessing than when viewed from the streets. Because the island wasn't very big and had been settled for centuries, the locals used every digit of space they could. Many of their buildings were two and three stories high. They leaned toward one another above the streets, making them even closer and darker and smellier than they would have been otherwise.
That was one of the first things that struck Sostratos about the place. The second didn't take much longer. "Do you notice how nobody's smiling?" he said. "Everybody has a frown on his face."
"What is there to smile about?" Menedemos returned."If you lived in a miserable little town in the middle of nowhere, how happy would you be? They probably wonder whether the barbarians will snap them up tomorrow or the day after." Since he was bound to be right, Sostratos took that no further.
They had to ask their way to the agora. On their way there, they passed several parties of mercenary soldiers: some Hellenes, others Italians in ordinary enough helmets but wearing odd, almost triangular, cuirasses that, in Sostratos' view, didn't cover nearly enough of the chest. The mercenaries looked no more cheerful than the ordinary Kallipolitans.
Menedemos was never one to leave well enough alone. Pointed to the soldiers, he said, "You see?"
And Sostratos had to admit, "I see."
The market square looked as if it had been bigger than it was. Buildings encroached on it from all sides, like weeds growing at the edge of a field. People buying and selling huddled together in the shadows the buildings cast. By the way merchants and customers kept glancing over their shoulders, they might have thought more buildings would spring up while they weren't looking.
"Fine wine from Khios! Transparent silk from Kos! Fragrant Rhodian perfume!" Menedemos' voice rang through the agora, echoing from the buildings that seemed to lean toward him from all the edges of the square. People stared, as if wondering who this loud stranger was. He certainly made more noise than half a dozen locals. "By the dog of Egypt," he murmured, "I think they're all so many wraiths here, like the spirits of the dead in the Odyssey."
"Fine wine and transparent silk will liven anyone up, if he gives them half a chance," Sostratos observed.
Menedemos shot him a quizzical look. "You can say that, when you want to hit me over the head with something whenever I go out and have a good time?"
"Yes, I say that," Sostratos answered. "I also say there's a time and a place for everything, and you haven't got the faintest notion of when and where."
"I think you're just jealous and using fancy talk to hide it," Menedemos said, and went back to crying their wares before Sostratos could do anything but let out an indignant, incoherent protest. Sostratos spent the next little while wondering whether his cousin had slandered him. He thought so, but he wasn't sure, and that worried him.
He didn't have long to worry undisturbed. In that rather subdued agora, Menedemos' brash, raucous shouts drew people far more readily than they would have, say, back at Rhodes. A tailor and a brothelkeeper almost got into a brawl over the length of silk Sostratos had brought from the Aphrodite. Only when Sostratos said, "We have enough for both of you, best ones," did they leave off glaring and snarling at each other. The brothelkeeper ended up buying some perfume, too, as Sostratos had hoped he might.
When a man in a fine chiton said, "Will you let me taste some of this fine wine of yours?" both Sostratos and Menedemos paused in embarrassment. They hadn't hauled an amphora from the merchant galley to the market square. They'd talked about selling Ariousian in Kallipolis, but they hadn't really believed they would. And now their failure was hurting their chances.
Sostratos would have brushed off a ragged Kallipolitan, but this fellow looked as if he could afford the best. "If you'd be kind enough to stay here, sir, I'll bring a jar from the ship. I won't be long."
"You should have one ready to hand," the loca
l said. Since that was true, Sostratos could only dip his head and hurry away.
Nobody aboard the Aphrodite looked enthusiastic about putting an amphora on a carrying pole and lugging it to the agora, but Aristeidas and Teleutas did. On the way to the market square, Teleutas stuck his foot in a hole in a muddy street. He stumbled. The pole slipped from his shoulder. Only a desperate grab by Sostratos kept the amphora from smashing.
"That was fast," Aristeidas said as Sostratos helped Teleutas reassume the burden.
"That was me thinking about what Menedemos would say if we got back to the agora with a few potsherds and told our customer there he was welcome to lick them," Sostratos replied. Aristeidas and Teleutas both laughed, but he hadn't been joking.
They stabbed the pointed end of the amphora down in the mud when they got to the square. Sostratos scraped the pitch away from the stopper and got it out. They had to borrow a cup from a potter in the agora. The same thing had happened in Pompaia. Sostratos made a mental note to do something about that, at the same time wondering if he would remember it when the Aphrodite sailed away from Kallipolis. The Kallipolitan sipped the wine. Try as he would, he couldn't keep his face straight. "This was worth waiting for, I must admit," he said. "How much for the jar?"
"Sixty drakhmai," Menedemos answered, as he had up in Pompaia.
This Hellene howled louder at that than any of the Pompaians had. He and Menedemos were throwing arguments back and forth when somebody yelled, "You whoresons! You wide-arsed, turdeating bastards!" a good deal louder than Menedemos had called out the virtues of his silk and wine and perfume - loud enough to drown out every other sound in the agora, in other words.
"Uh-oh," Sostratos said - quietly, but with great sincerity. He and Menedemos had idly wondered what had happened to Alexidamos the larcenous mercenary. Now they'd found out. Sostratos, for once, could have done without the enlightenment.
"Throw me off your stinking ship, will you?" Alexidamos shouted, even louder than before. "Leave me to be barbarians' meat, will you?" He carried no spear, but drew his sword and trotted toward the men from the Aphrodite.
Sostratos wore no sword. Neither did Menedemos. Neither did the other two sailors from the akatos. Few men did wear swords in a polis. If a man wasn't safe among his fellow Hellenes, where would he be? Nowhere, went through Sostratos' mind.
"Stop him!" someone exclaimed. But nobody seemed eager to stop Alexidamos. Who would want to try, unarmed, to stop a man with a sword in his hand and murder in his eyes? And, for all these people know, he really does have some good reason to want revenge against us. There were times when Sostratos wished he weren't so good at seeing the other fellow's point of view.
"Good day," said the Kallipolitan who'd been haggling with Menedemos. His departure showed a turn of speed that wouldn't have disgraced a sprinter at Olympos or any of the other Panhellenic festivals. When Sostratos looked around to ask for help from Aristeidas and Teleutas, he didn't see the latter, either. He cursed under his breath. He trips in the street and runs from trouble. Many good-byes to him!
"Whoresons!" Alexidamos shouted again. "Abandoned catamites!"
Aristeidas looked ready to take to his heels as the furious mercenary charged across the agora. So, for that matter, did Menedemos. Sostratos' cousin was a formidable sprinter in his own right. I wish I were, Sostratos thought. But if I run, he'll catch me from behind. What man wants his death-wound in the back?
Sostratos didn't want his death-wound at all. Since running would do him no good, he stooped, plucked a stone from the mud, and flung it at Alexidamos with all his strength. Had he missed, things would have gone hard for him - something he paused to think about only later. But, by then, Alexidamos was only three or four strides away; Sostratos had nearly waited too long to do anything at all. The stone struck the mercenary right in the nose.
The wet splat made Sostratos' stomach lurch. Blood splashed as Alexidamos' nose, already kinked by a scar, flattened and smashed. Alexidamos gave a great bellow of pain. He kept coming, but his hands - including the one with the sword - went to his face.
Menedemos jumped on him. Sostratos grabbed at his right arm and twisted the blade away from him. Aristeidas added his weight to the struggle. The three of them quickly subdued the mercenary.
As Sostratos helped hold Alexidamos down, he listened to the chatter of the Kallipolitans all around. "Should we seize them?" somebody asked.
"I don't see what for," someone else said. "They were only defending themselves. He attacked them for no reason I could see." The mutter of agreement that rose relieved Sostratos in no small measure.
A third local said, "If the soldier thinks they wronged him, better he should take them to law than slice them up." That produced more mutters of agreement. The fellow added, "He must think he's an Italian or a wild Kelt, to act the way he did."
Menedemos distracted Sostratos, saying, "I didn't know you could throw so straight."
"Neither did I," Sostratos answered, which made Menedemos laugh. Sostratos went on, "I did what I had to do. Out of necessity, throwing" - aparaphrase of Homer's out of necessity, fleeing.
"I understand." By his smile, Menedemos caught the allusion as well as the truth behind it. "Grab this lovely fellow's sword, Aristeidas. We don't want him getting his hands on it again."
"We sure don't," the lookout agreed. "But he'll never be lovely again, not with his nose looking like a beet you just stepped on."
"Too bad." Sostratos and Menedemos spoke together. Menedemos added, "Where did that cowardly wretch of a Teleutas disappear to? By the gods, I ought to pitch him off the ship."
Before Sostratos could answer that, there was a commotion in a nearby street. Teleutas reappeared in the agora, at the head of a dozen sailors carrying assorted implements of mayhem. When he paused to look around and find out what had happened, the expression on his face would have done credit to a comic mask. "You didn't even need me," he said indignantly.
"Well, now that you mention it, no," Sostratos answered. "But thanks for bringing help anyway."
"I still think he just ran off," Menedemos muttered. But he did no more than mutter, for Teleutas had returned promptly, and the reinforcements he brought might have been useful.
"What do we do with Alexidamos here?" Aristeidas asked.
"One of the useful things you might do would be to pluck that dagger from the sheath on his belt," Sostratos told him. After Aristeidas had done that, Sostratos said, "Listen to me, Alexidamos."
"To the crows with you, you stinking son of a whore." Alexidamos' voice didn't sound right. He probably couldn't breathe very well through that ruined nose. "You've maimed me. May the gods curse you forever."
"This is what you get for being a thief," Sostratos replied. "I told you once, you'd better listen to me. If we let you go, will you leave us alone after this?"
A considerable silence followed, punctuated by wet snuffling noises as the mercenary struggled for air. At last, he said, "How can I say no?"
Menedemos spoke before Sostratos could: "You'd better mean it when you say yes. Otherwise, we might as well cut your throat and offer you up for fair winds, the way Agamemnon did with his daughter before he sailed off to Troy."
Considering the misfortunes that befell Agamemnon after he sacrificed Iphigeneia, that didn't strike Sostratos as the wisest threat to make. But Alexidamos was not inclined toward literary criticism. "You're more trouble than you're worth," he growled. "You've shown me that twice over now."
Menedemos looked a question at Sostratos. Sostratos was mildly surprised to find his opinion sought. He shrugged and said, "I don't think we'll get any better promise out of him. It's either let him go, kill him, or stay here and go to law against him."
"May that not come to pass!" Menedemos exclaimed. "We might be stuck forever, and we haven't got the time to waste." He relaxed his grip on the mercenary. Sostratos and Aristeidas followed his lead. Menedemos said, "All right, Alexidamos. Count yourself lucky."
Gingerly, Alexidamos felt of his nose. He hissed in pain at the slightest touch, and cursed at the blood on his fingertips. It was running down his face, too, but he couldn't see that. "Lucky?" he said. "I'm going to be ugly for the rest of my days on account of you - " Remembering he didn't have the advantage, he swallowed a couple of choice epithets.
"You are lucky," Sostratos said. "You still have the rest of your life." Even though I did my best to knock your head right off your shoulders when I threw that stone. "You were ready to rob us of ours, the same way you tried to rob us of our peafowl eggs."
Alexidamos didn't answer. He staggered away, still dripping blood. "May we never see him again," Menedemos said.
"I thought we were rid of him when we put him on the beach," Sostratos said, "and then especially when we didn't see him in Taras."
"So did I," his cousin said. "We'll be gone tomorrow. We can keep enough men here till then to make sure he doesn't try anything. If we hadn't spent two nights in a row at sea, and if this weren't the last chance before we sail back to Hellas to let the men get their share of wine and women, I'd leave port now."
"You say that?" Sostratos demanded. "You say that after risking everything on the trip to Syracuse?"
With a shrug, Menedemos replied, "We made a lot of money in Syracuse. I don't see much chance for profit here, do you?"
"Nobody could make much of a profit in Kallipolis, and that includes the Kallipolitans." Sostratos spoke with great conviction. He also spoke quietly, lest any of those Kallipolitans hear him and think he slandered their city. He intended to, but he didn't want them to know it.
A moment later, Menedemos donned a wide, artificial smile. "Hail, best one," he said to the local who'd been dickering for fine Khian when Alexidamos made his unexpected appearance. "Good to see you again."
"Have things, ah, settled down?" the Kallipolitan asked. Then he answered his own question: "Yes, I see they have. Well and good. Where were we?"
"We were right here," Menedemos replied. And we stayed here, while you ran like a rabbit with a pack of Hipparinos' Kastorian hounds baying at your heels, Sostratos thought. He exhaled noisily through his nose in lieu of sighing. Doing business with a man too often meant you couldn't tell him what you thought of him. Smoothly, Menedemos went on, "Here, why don't you have another taste of a wine Dionysos himself must have specially blessed? The genuine Ariousian of Khios doesn't come to Kallipolis every day, or every year, either."
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