The cup they'd borrowed had got broken in the scuffle with Alexidamos. They had to pay for it and get another from the potter. When the local tasted the sweet, golden wine for a second time, his eyes got big. Sostratos smiled to himself; he'd seen that before. The Kallipolitan had to work to keep eagerness from his voice as he said, "Now, you named some ridiculous price before the ruction started."
"Sixty drakhmai the amphora," Menedemos repeated calmly.
"Yes," the local said. "I mean, no. I thought that's what you said, and I won't pay it. I'll give you twenty, and not a drakhma more."
"Good day, sir." Menedemos politely inclined his head. "It's been pleasant talking with you."
"Are you mad?" the Kallipolitan said. "You had to open the jar to give me a sample. It won't keep - wine never does, not after you broach the amphora. How much will you get for vinegar? You'd better take what I offer, and be thankful you're getting that much."
His smug smile said he'd played this game with merchants before. He'd probably got away with it with a few of them, too. Another small-town, small-time chiseler, Sostratos thought. Aloud, he said, "Good day to you, sir, as my cousin said. And to the crows with you, too." He didn't have to waste politeness on a cheat.
The Kallipolitan's eyes widened again, this time with a different sort of astonishment. "But . . . But . . .," he floundered. "You have to sell the stuff, and - "
Sostratos had enjoyed bedding some girls less than he enjoyed laughing in the local's face. "We don't have do do a cursed thing, O marvelous one." Not for the first time, he stole Sokrates' sardonic salutation. "We just ran the Carthaginians' blockade to get grain into Syracuse. We have more silver than we know what to do with, friend. If you don't want the Ariousian - and if you don't want to pay our price for it - we'll give the jar to our sailors to drink."
"I've never had a merchant speak to me that way in all my life," the Kallipolitan said. Sostratos believed it. All he did was shrug. Menedemos matched him. The Kallipolitan spluttered wordlessly, then caught his stride. "Oh, very well. If you insist on being unreasonable, I suppose I can go to thirty drakhmai."
Normally, that would have been the start of a dicker. A dicker had started before Alexidamos interrupted things. Now, Sostratos just tossed his head. He said, "No," and not another word.
"Thirty-five, then." The local turned red. Anger or embarrassment?
Embarrassment, Sostratos judged. "My cousin told you sixty," he said. "Sixty it will be." He had, for once, the freedom of not caring whether or not he sold the wine. It felt exhilarating, as if he'd had a couple of quick nips from the amphora himself.
"You're not being reasonable," the Kallipolitan protested. "Here, now - I'll give you forty drakhmai. That's more than your precious Khian is worth."
"No," Sostratos said again. "Our price is sixty. If you want the wine, you'll pay it."
And the man from Kallipolis did pay it. He took a while to talk himself into it, and tried to get the two Rhodians to agree to forty-five, fifty, and fifty-five drakhmai first. Sostratos yawned in his face. Menedemos, who could be the most engaging of men when he wanted to, turned his back. The Kallipolitan stomped away. When he returned, a slave behind him, he threw a leather sack full of drakhmai at Sostratos almost as hard as Sostratos had thrown the stone at Alexidamos. Sostratos carefully counted the coins before dipping his head to his cousin.
As the local had the slave carry the amphora back toward his house, Sostratos sighed and said, "Thus we bid farewell to our brief layover in Kallipolis, a small polis where nothing interesting ever happens."
Menedemos stared at him, then started to laugh. "If only it were so," he said.
"Now we just have to hope Alexidamos doesn't go after any of our tavern-crawling sailors tonight," Sostratos said.
"No." His cousin tossed his head. "If that gods-detested mercenary is in any shape to go after our boys tonight after what you did to his beak, he's tougher than Talos, the man made all of bronze."
Sostratos considered that. "Well, maybe you're right."
Diokles pounded his bronze square with his mallet hard enough to make a lot of the Aphrodite's sailors wince as the merchant galley left the harbor of Kallipolis. Menedemos leaned forward toward his crapulous crew and favored them with the smile of a man who'd stayed sober. "Next stop, boys, is Hellas," he said.
He got a few answering smiles. He also got a few answering groans. Diokles said, "Some of 'em don't want to live long enough to get to Hellas."
"But they all will by this afternoon," Menedemos replied. "Hangovers don't kill you. You just wish they would."
Sostratos mounted to the poop deck. "And how shall we go back to Rhodes?" he asked. "Around Cape Tainaron again, or by the diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth?"
"I don't know yet," Menedemos answered. "We have a good notion of the risks at Cape Tainaron. But who knows what's happened in and around Corinth while we've been out here in Great Hellas? How can we guess whether we should use the diolkos till we know who controls the polis?"
"Hmmm," Sostratos said, and then, "You've got something there, no doubt about it."
"Nice of you to admit it," Menedemos said. His cousin made a face at him. Ignoring it, he went on, "We can put in at Korkyra and hear the news there before we decide what to do."
"You're not going to sail southeast toward Zakynthos and reverse the way we came?"
"No. It's getting late in the sailing season for me to want to chance so much time on the open sea," Menedemos answered. "The cranes will be flying south for the winter pretty soon, and not many people want to do much on the water after that. How did Aristophanes put it in the Birds?"
"I don't know. How did he put it?" Sostratos said. "If you remember it, it was probably foul."
"That's not fair," Menedemos said indignantly. "Aristophanes could write lovely verses about anything at all."
"Or sometimes about nothing at all," Sostratos said.
"Not here," Menedemos said. "It goes something like this:
'Time to sow when the croaking crane migrates to Libya Which tells the shipmaster to lie idle after hanging up his steering oar.' "
"Well, all right. That isn't bad," Sostratos allowed.
"Do you think you can stand being so generous?" Menedemos said. He loved Aristophanes both for his poetry and for his bawdy wit. Sostratos, he knew, admired some of the verse but wanted nothing to do with the lewdness that went hand in hand with it.
To his surprise, his cousin answered seriously: "Being generous to Aristophanes isn't easy for me, you know. If it weren't for the way he pictured Sokrates in the Clouds, the Athenians might not have decided to make him drink hemlock."
"He's been dead for a hundred years - " Menedemos began.
"Not quite ninety," Sostratos broke in.
"Not quite ninety, then. Fine. Why are you getting so exercised about it?"
"Because he was a great and good man," Sostratos answered. "That's reason enough - more than reason enough. They aren't so common that we can afford to lose them."
"From everything I've heard, he was an interfering old busybody," Menedemos said. "Even if Aristophanes hadn't said a word about him, plenty of people still would've wanted to get rid of him."
For a moment, Sostratos looked as shocked as if he'd said Zeus did not exist - more shocked than that, even, for some bright young men these days did dare doubt the gods. But his cousin, as usual, thought before he spoke. At last, he said, "There may be some truth to that. He never did worry much about what other people thought before he opened his mouth. Platon makes that very plain."
"There you are, then," Menedemos said. "If it was his own fault, why are you blaming Aristophanes?"
"I didn't say it was all his own fault."
"Ha! Now you're backing oars. You can go one way or the other, O best one, but you can't try to go both ways at once," Menedemos said.
"I think you're trying to be as difficult as you can," Sostratos said.
"I'd sooner talk philosophy
- or gossip about philosophers, which isn't quite the same thing - than think about pirates," Menedemos said. "Since I don't usually care to do that, you'd best believe the pirates worry me."
"You could have decided to make for Zakynthos instead of taking the short way across the Ionian Sea," Sostratos said.
Menedemos tossed his head. "I told you, it's too close to craneflying season. Too much chance of a storm's blowing up for me to make the long journey across the open sea. But the pirates will be out. They'll know what honest skippers are thinking, the gods-detested bastards."
For once, though, the usually cautious Sostratos was the bolder of the two of them. "I still think you're worrying too much," he said. "If a pirate sees our hull, what will he think? He'll think the same thing half the fishermen in Great Hellas - and over in the Aegean, too - have already thought: that we're pirates ourselves. We don't look anything like a round ship, after all. And he'll leave us alone."
"Here's hoping you're right." Menedemos looked back over his shoulder toward the rocks of Cape Iapygia, the southeasternmost point of Italy. Soon it would disappear from view, and the Aphrodite would be out of sight of land till Korkyra or the mainland of Hellas or Macedonia crawled up over the eastern horizon. "But dogs eat dogs. Why shouldn't pirates eat pirates?"
"You've said it yourself: we've got enough men aboard to put up a good fight," Sostratos said.
Menedemos' laugh was less cheerful than he would have liked. "Well, maybe we'll find out if I'm as smart as I think I am."
They got their chance to find out sooner than he would have liked. It wasn't Aristeidas who sang out, "Sail ho!" but a sailor who was pissing from the Aphrodite's stern. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, as he had for Cape lapygia. He had to follow the sailor's pointing finger to spot the sail, which wasn't much different in color from the sky or the sea. Whoever captained that ship didn't want it seen.
"Fast," Diokles remarked as the sail got bigger and the hull came into view. It too was painted greenish blue, so as not to stand out against waves and sky. "Almost bound to be a pirate, with that turn of speed and that paint job."
"I was thinking the same thing." Menedemos raised his voice: "Take your weapons, men. We may have a fight on our hands."
The skipper of that other ship was bound to be making calculations about the Aphrodite. Yes, she was a galley, but she didn't try to disguise herself and she was on the beamy side for a rowed vessel. That made her an akatos, not a pentekonter or hemiolia - probably not a pirate ship herself, but still a vessel with a formidable crew, one not to be taken lightly.
When Menedemos got a better look at the pirate ship, he saw she wasn't quite so long and low as he'd expected. She carried two banks of oars, though the rowers' benches of the upper deck aft of the mast could be taken out in a hurry to stow the mast and yard and sail. "Hemiolia," Sostratos remarked, coming up onto the poop deck: he'd noted the same thing.
"Which would mark her for a pirate even without her paint job," Menedemos said. "Not much use for hemioliai except to steal from slow ships and run away from fast ones."
"They might make naval auxiliaries," said Sostratos, who sometimes showed himself altogether too good at looking at all sides of a question to suit Menedemos.
But the hemiolia coming up behind the Aphrodite was without a doubt, without argument even from Sostratos, a pirate. Menedemos, who couldn't conveniently take down his own mast, could and did order the sail brailed up to the yard and put a full complement on the oars. As he'd done twice before, he swung his ship toward the pirate, showing he was ready for a fight if her skipper wanted one.
That skipper didn't run, as the other two had done. But he didn't attack the merchant galley, either. Instead, he shouted across a couple of plethra of seawater: "Ahoy! You coming from Italy? What news?" His Greek held a peculiar accent, perhaps Macedonian, more likely Epeirote.
"You have news of Hellas?" Menedemos shouted back. The pirate captain nodded, which proved him an Epeirote or something of the sort - Macedonians dipped their heads like proper Hellenes. Menedemos went on, "I'll trade what what I know for what you do. I won't give it away."
"All right," the other captain called. "I tell you, Polyperkhon still has Corinth and the isthmus and Sikyon to the west, and he's made friends with the Aitolians north of the Gulf of Corinth."
That was worth knowing. Menedemos spoke of Agathokles' dash to Africa, with the Carthaginian fleet on his heels. "I don't know how long he'll be fighting there, but the war between Carthage and Syracuse won't be the same any more."
"You're right about that, trader," the pirate agreed. "I tell you, too, Polyperkhon has from Pergamon the youngster called Herakles, the son of Alexander the Great and Barsine. He says he will make the youth king of Macedonia."
"He's not really Alexander's son," Sostratos said quietly. "He's just a pretender Antigonos raised up . . . I think."
"I know that - I've heard the same stories you have," Menedemos answered. "But whoever he really is, he's plenty to make Kassandros pitch a fit in Macedonia."
"Well, yes," Sostratos said. "When you think about what Kassandros did to Alexandros and Roxane, you know he doesn't want any heirs to the Macedonian throne running around loose. They hurt his own position."
"What's Polemaios doing?" Menedemos called to the pirate.
"He's still down in the south of the Peloponnesos," the fellow answered. "If that was me, I wouldn't go anyplace Antigonos could get his hands on me. If Old One-Eye caught his nephew now, I bet he'd keep him alive for months."
"You're probably right," Menedemos said. "Speaking of Antigonos, what do you know about the war between him and Ptolemaios?"
"Not a thing," the pirate said, shrugging. "Who gives a fart what happens way over in the east?" He seemed suddenly bored with talking instead of plundering, and shouted orders to his crew. The hemiolia glided south, looking for prey easier than the Aphrodite.
"Which way will you go?" Sostratos asked.
"Over in Corinth, Polyperkhon's got trouble with Kassandros and Polemaios both," Menedemos said. "That makes Cape Tainaron a better bet, I think." Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth, but didn't try to tell him he was wrong.
12
"Telos behind us at last," Sostratos said. His cousin made a face at him, for the Aegean island's name sounded nearly the same as the word for at last. Grinning at Menedemos, he pointed eastward. "And there's Rhodes ahead."
"A good thing, too," Menedemos said. "No guessing how much longer decent sailing weather will hold."
"You've been grumbling about that ever since we left Syracuse," Sostratos said. "The weather couldn't have been much better."
"That's true, but it didn't have to stay good," Menedemos replied. "And when have you ever known a sailor who didn't worry about the weather?"
Sostratos didn't answer that. He eyed the birds overhead flying south for the winter. Sure enough, there was a long, straggling line of cranes, bigger than any of the other birds he could see. Aristophanes had had it right. But he was still wrong about Sokrates, Sostratos thought.
If he said that, he would start a real quarrel, and he didn't feel like one now, not with the Aphrodite so close to home. Instead, he chose something he reckoned harmless. "It'll be good to get back to our family."
But his cousin only grunted. "Good for you, maybe," he said at last. "You wait. My father will say he could have done better and made more money."
He's probably right, Sostratos thought. Uncle Philodemos is never satisfied. Aloud, he said, "Why don't you just smile and dip your head and tell him he's bound to know best?"
"Ha!" Menedemos rolled his eyes. "For one thing, he cursed well doesn't know best. And for another, if I told him he did, he'd fall over dead from the shock. I don't want his blood on my hands even by accident, the way Oidipous had Laios'."
And you're just as stubborn as your father, and you won't yield to him even by a barleycorn's breadth. One more thing Sostratos thought it better not to s
ay. He did say, "Whether the two of you argue or not, he'll be glad to see you. We've come back safe, we only lost one man, and we made money. What more could he ask?"
"More money, of course," Menedemos replied.
"Oh, foof!" Sostratos said. "Once we get into port, the family will throw a celebration the polis will buzz about all through the winter. Your father wouldn't do that if he didn't care about you, and you know it. My mother and sister will be green with envy because they aren't men and won't be able to come."
"Maybe." Menedemos did his best not to sound convinced. "I wonder if my father's second wife will even care."
"Of course she will," Sostratos said. "Baukis is young - I remember that from the wedding, though I doubt I've seen her since, naturally. She'll want something she can gossip about with her friends."
"Maybe," Menedemos said again. He turned away from Sostratos, plainly not wanting to discuss it further. Sostratos wondered if he was angry at his father for remarrying after his mother died. If Uncle Philodemos had a son by his new wife, that would complicate the family inheritance.
As the Aphrodite neared Rhodes, the island stretched across more and more of the horizon. "The vines look good," Sostratos said, even though he was too far away to make any real guess about how they looked. It let him talk about something besides the family, which Menedemos plainly didn't want to do. Trying his best to come up with the light chat that his cousin managed as if by nature, he went on, "Not that we'd ever get sixty drakhmai the amphora if we shipped Rhodian to Great Hellas."
"No," Menedemos said, and made a production out of steering the akatos. So much for light chatter, Sostratos thought mournfully.
The fishing boats that bobbed in the blue, blue Aegean didn't flee when their skippers spotted the Aphrodite - most of them didn't, anyhow. The fishermen knew few pirates dared venture into the well-patrolled waters near their island. "We can certainly be proud of our fleet," Sostratos offered.
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