The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  Diokles didn't argue. That was so obviously true, no one could argue. Most pirates, though, didn't reckon a fight with the large crew of another galley likely to be profitable. If this captain proved an exception . . .

  Menedemos picked a spot not far aft of the hemiolia's bow where he hoped to drive home his ram. The other skipper, the man handling the pirate ship's steering oars, would be picking his target on the Aphrodite. “Go on,” Menedemos muttered. “Run for home, crows take you.”

  Aristeidas sang out: “They're shooting!”

  Sure enough, arrows arced through the air toward the Aphrodite. The first shots splashed into the sea well short of the ship. Archers always started shooting too soon. No, almost always—Sostratos stood calmly on the small foredeck, a shaft nocked but the bow not yet drawn. If anyone could wait till he had the chance to make his missiles count, Menedemos' cousin was the man.

  A shaft thudded into the stempost, a couple of cubits from Sostratos' head. That seemed to spur him into action. He thrust the bow forward on a stiff left arm, drew the string back to his ear as the Persians had taught Hellenes to do, and let fly. No one aboard the onrushing hemiolia fell, so Menedemos supposed he missed. He pulled another arrow from the quiver and shot again.

  This time, Menedemos heard the howl of pain across the narrowing gap. “Eugef he called. “Well shot!”

  A moment later, one of the Aphrodites rowers let out a similar howl and clutched at his shoulder. He lost the stroke; his oar fouled that of the man behind him. The merchant galley tried to swerve. Menedemos worked the steering oars to keep it pointed at the pirate ship. “Clear that oar!” Diokles shouted. A couple of sailors who weren't rowing pulled it inboard.

  More arrows struck the akatos' planking. The pirates had several archers, the Aphrodite only Sostratos. Several shafts whistled past him as they tried to bring him down. None bit. As coolly as if exercising at a gymnasion, he kept shooting back. Another pirate wailed. He fell into the sea with a splash.

  “Oh, very well shot!” Menedemos exclaimed.

  “They aren't pulling away,” Dioldes said.

  “I see that,” Menedemos answered. “Let's see if we can take out their portside oars and cripple them.”

  “Same trick we pulled on the trireme, eh?” After a moment's thought, the oarmaster dipped his head. “Worth a try. Safer than ramming, that's certain.”

  Another sailor on the Aphrodite—not a man pulling an oar— screeched and crumpled, clutching his leg. The hemiolia was terrifyingly close now, her oars rising and falling, rising and falling in smooth unison. Seeing how well the pirates rowed worried Menedemos. With a crew like that and a fast, fast ship, their skipper could make plans of his own. If he swerved at the last instant. . .

  “Portside oars—in!” Diokles bellowed. At the same time, the pirate ship's keleustes roared out an order of his own. And, at the same time as the Aphrodite's, portside rowers brought their oars inboard, so did the hemiolia's. Neither hull crushed the other ship's oars beneath it; neither set of rowers had arms broken and shoulders dislocated as oars flew out of control.

  But the men who would have sat at the rear of the hemiolia's upper bank of oars had none to serve once the ship's mast was stowed. As the two ships passed close enough to spit from one to the other, several of them flung grappling hooks at the Aphrodite.

  “Cut those lines! Cut them, by the gods!” Menedemos shouted.

  Suddenly locked together in an embrace of anything but love, the two galleys pivoted around a common axis. The Aphrodite's sailors frantically hacked at the ropes attached to the grapples, while the pirates hauled on those lines and drew the ships closer together yet.

  With wild cries that hardly sounded like Greek at all, the first pirates leaped across three or four cubits of open water and onto the merchant galley.

  Sostratos shot one last arrow at the shouting men aboard the hemiolia, then set down Menedemos' bow, yanked his sword from the scabbard, and rushed to join the fight in the waist of the Aphrodite, “Dung-eating, temple-robbing whoresons!” he screamed, and swung the sword in an arc of iron at a pirate who was kicking a sailor in the face.

  The blade bit between neck and shoulder. Blood spurted. It stank like hot iron. The pirate let out a horrible screech. He whirled toward Sostratos, who stabbed him in the belly. The fellow crumpled. Sostratos stepped on him to get at the next foe.

  Madness in a very small space—that was how Sostratos remembered the fight afterwards. The Aphrodite's crew by itself crowded the akatos. Having twice as many men aboard the ship meant, in essence, that no one had room for anything but seizing the closest foe and trying to kill him. Even telling who was friend and who foe wasn't easy; one of the Aphrodite's sailors almost brained Sostratos with a belaying pin.

  “Aphrodite!” he shouted over and over. “Aphro—oof!” A pirate who'd lost whatever weapon he carried punched him in the belly. He folded up, then made himself straighten, more by sheer force of will than anything else. If I go down, they'll trample me to death, he thought.

  He grabbed at the nearest man to steady himself. It was another pirate: the fellow had a big gold hoop in each ear, wearing his wealth thus instead of in rings. Sostratos didn't have room to use his sword—hanging on to it was hard enough. But his left hand was free. He took hold of one of those rings and yanked with all his strength. The ring tore free. The pirate roared in pain. The earring remained on Sostratos' index finger.

  Well, I just made a profit on the day, he thought: the first foolish thing that popped into his head. Now I have to see if I live long enough to enjoy it. That, unfortunately, made more sense.

  When the press cleared a little, he traded sword strokes with another pirate. It was nothing like practice in the gymnasion. The Aphrodite pitched and rolled underfoot as the waves and the surge of men, now here, now there, made her rock. Sailors and pirates ah1 around were pushing and shoving and shouting and cursing. Sostratos worried about a knife in the back almost as much as he did about the blade with which the fellow in front of him was trying to drink his life.

  The pirate, who wore a crestless bronze helmet, a sword belt, and nothing else, had ferocity but no great skill. He beat Sostratos' sword aside when the Rhodian thrust at his chest. Sostratos' next blow, though, took him in the side of the head. That helm kept his skull unsplit, but he staggered even so. Sostratos sprang forward and pushed with all his strength. Arms flailing, the pirate went over the rail and fell into the Aegean.

  Nimble as a mountain goat, another pirate leaped from the Aphrodite back to his own ship with a leather sack under his arm. He'd had all the fighting he wanted, but he'd managed to get away with some loot. Absurdly, that outraged Sostratos. “Come back here, you wide-arsed thief!” he yelled. The pirate paid no attention, and probably didn't even hear.

  Then another pirate sprang back to the hemiolia, and another, and another, some with plunder, some without. “See, boys?” Menedemos roared in a great voice. “They can't lick us, and they cursed well know it. lo for the Aphrodite'.”

  “Io! The Aphroditel” Sostratos' heart leaped as he took up the cry. He hadn't seen his cousin in the press of fighting, and hearing his voice was a great relief. Seeing the pirates beginning to flee the merchant galley was an even greater one.

  Now the pirates were the ones who hacked and chopped at the lines tethering their ship to the akatos. Now they were the ones who pushed the hemiolia away from the Aphrodite with poles and oars. A couple of them retrieved the bows they'd left behind and started shooting into the merchant galley as the rest rowed away from a quarry that had proved tougher than they expected.

  Sostratos rushed up to the Aphrodite's foredeck, which had seen almost no fighting. Menedemos' bow and the quiver of arrows lay there undisturbed. Sostratos snatched them up again and shot back at the pirates. He was rewarded when their oarmaster screamed and crumpled with an arrow in his thigh. The Rhodian aimed a couple of shafts at the man handling the hemiolia's steering oars, who he thought was the
captain. They went wide, though, and the man stayed at his station.

  The hemiolia limped off. Not all its oars were manned, not any more. Sostratos wondered if Menedemos would order a pursuit. But his cousin was otherwise occupied: he stooped over a fallen pirate in the waist of the Aphrodite. The pirate raised a hand for mercy. Slowly and deliberately, Menedemos drove his sword into the man's body. Blood glistened on the blade as he straightened up. “Throw this carrion into the sea,” he told the closest sailors, his voice cold as a Thracian winter.

  That thrust hadn't killed the raider. He was still groaning and feebly writhing as the sailors lifted him and flung him over the side. Splash! The groans abruptly ceased.

  Another pirate was already dead, his head smashed like a broken pot. The sailors threw his body out of the Aphrodite, too. Looking back toward the stern, Sostratos saw several men gathered around another body. One of them looked up and caught his eye. “It's Dorimakhos,” the fellow said, and tossed his head to add without words that the sailor wouldn't be getting up again. “Took a javelin through the throat, poor beggar.”

  Menedemos made his way forward. Blood splashed his tunic and his hide, but he seemed hale. Looking down at himself, Sostratos found his own tunic similarly stained. He also found he had a cut on his calf he hadn't even noticed. Now that he knew it was there, it began to hurt.

  “Hail,” Menedemos said. “You fought well.”

  “We all did,” Sostratos answered. “Otherwise, we wouldn't have driven them off. Are you all right?”

  His cousin shrugged. “Scratches, bruises. I'll be fine in a couple of days. This was the worst I got.” He held out his left hand, which bore a ragged, nasty wound.

  “Is that a bite?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos dipped his head. “Pour wine on it,” Sostratos told him. “That's the best thing I know to keep wounds from festering, and bites are liable to. I'm no Hippokrates, but I know that much.”

  “I wish we had Hippokrates aboard now, or any other physician we could get our hands on,” Menedemos said. “You probably know more than most of us—and the men will think you do even if you don't. Come help sew 'em up and bandage 'em. We've got plenty of wine to splash on our hurts, anyhow.”

  Along with Menedemos and Diokles, Sostratos did what he could, suturing and bandaging arms and legs and scalps. He splashed on wine with a liberal hand. The sailors howled at the sting. The needle and thread he used were coarse ones made for sewing sailcloth, but they went through flesh well enough. “Hold still,” he told Teleutas, who had a gash just below his knee.

  “You try holding still with somebody stabbing you,” Teleutas retorted.

  “Do you want to keep bleeding?” Sostratos asked.

  Teleutas tossed his head. “No, but I don't want to keep getting hurt, either.”

  Impatiently, Sostratos said, “You don't have that choice. You can bleed, or you can let me sew up this wound and then bandage it. I won't take long, and you'll stop getting hurt any more as soon as I'm done.”

  “All right. Go on,” Teleutas said, but he jerked and cursed every time Sostratos drove the needle through his flesh. And he complained more when Sostratos wrapped sailcloth around the wound and made it fast with a sloppy knot: “Call that a bandage? I've seen real physicians bind up wounds, by the gods. They make a bandage worth looking at, all nice and neat and fancy. This? Pheu!” He screwed up his face as he made the disgusted noise.

  “I'm so sorry,” Sostratos said with icy irony. “If you like, I'll take it off, tear out the stitches, and start over.”

  “You try and touch that leg again, and I'll make you sorry for it,” the sailor said. “I just want a proper job done.”

  “It's the best I can do,” Sostratos told him. He knew Teleutas had a point. Real physicians made their bandages as neat and elaborate as they could, some to the point of showing off. He went on, “Just because it isn't neat doesn't mean it won't do the job.”

  “That's what you say.” Teleutas pointed up to the yard. “If you were talking about the rigging, would you say the same thing? Not likely! You'd be screaming your head off to get all the lines shipshape.”

  Sostratos' ears burned. So much for the men thinking I know more about doctoring than they do. Of course, Teleutas complained and malingered at any excuse or none. Even so, Sostratos would have wished for a little more gratitude.

  Another sailor did thank him, very politely, when he bandaged a stab wound in the man's belly. He sniffed the wound as he applied the bandage. It wasn't very wide, and wasn't bleeding nearly so much

  The Gryphon's Skull 281

  as Teleutas', but he did get a faint whiff of dung. He said nothing to the sailor, and held his face steady till he'd finished the job. Then he went looking for Menedemos.

  “Why so grim?” his cousin asked as he dealt with a wound much like Teleutas’. The sailor he was helping didn't snarl at him or criticize his inartistic bandages; the man just seemed glad to have the cut dealt with.

  But Sostratos, though he noticed that, had too much on his mind really to envy Menedemos' luck. He said, “I'm afraid Rhodippos is going to die,”

  “Oimoi!” Menedemos exclaimed in dismay. “Why do you say so? He didn't seem that badly hurt. I saw him.”

  “His gut's pierced,” Sostratos answered. “Such men almost always die of fever. Remember that sailor last summer, after the Roman archer shot him from their trireme as we went past?”

  Menedemos drummed his fingers on his right thigh. His hands were bloody. Looking down, Sostratos saw his own were, too. Voice troubled, his cousin said, “Yes, I do. Well, here's hoping you're wrong, that's all.”

  “Here's hoping indeed,” Sostratos said. “I'm not a physician—if you don't believe me, ask Teleutas. But I do remember what I've seen and what I've heard.”

  “I know,” Menedemos said. “You remember everything, as far as I can tell.”

  “I wish I did,” Sostratos said.

  “If you don't, you come closer than anyone else I know,” Menedemos said. “I know we're lucky to have come off even as well as we did, but all the same, ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “We've got a lot of men hurt.”

  “Most of them should get better,” Sostratos said.

  “Gods grant it be so,” Menedemos said. “If it is so, I'll give As-klepios a sheep at his temple on Kos if we put in there on the way home, or back on Rhodes if we don't.” He glanced up toward the heavens, as if hoping to catch sight of the god of healing listening.

  Sostratos wasn't sure a sacrifice would do any good, but he wasn't sure it wouldn't, either. Even Sokrales, when he was dying, remembered he owed Asklepios a cock, he thought.

  “At least the whoresons didn't try to wreck our rigging, the way they would have if we were a round ship,” Menedemos said: maybe that glance heavenward had in fact been aimed at the yard.

  “Not much point to it with a galley,” Sostratos said. “We can still row perfectly well, and we could even if the sail came down. Of course,” he added, “they might not have thought of that. One often doesn't think of everything in the middle of a fight.”

  A sailor limped up to them with the broken shaft of an arrow sticking out of his calf. “Will you draw this polluted thing for me?” he said through clenched teeth. “I tried pulling it out, but it hurt too cursed much for me to do the job myself.”

  “A good thing you stopped,” Sostratos said. “The point's barbed; you would have hurt yourself worse if you'd kept on.” He bent and felt the wound.

  “Well, how will you get it out, then?” the man asked after a yelp of pain.

  “We'll have to push it through,” Sostratos answered, “either that or cut down to the point. Where it is, I think pushing it through is a better bet—it's only a digit or two from coming out already.”

  The sailor looked fearfully to Menedemos. The captain of the Aphrodite dipped his head. “My cousin's likely right, Alkiphron,” he said. “Here—sit down on a bench and stretch out your leg. He'll hold it and I'll p
ush the arrow through and bandage it up. It'll be over before you know it.” To Sostratos, he added a quick, low-voiced aside: “Make sure you hang on tight.”

  “I will,” Sostratos promised as Alkiphron eased himself down to a rower's bench. He bent beside the sailor and grasped his leg above and below the wound. “Try to keep as still as you can,” he told him.

  “I'll do that,” Alkiphron said.

  Menedemos took hold of the protruding shaft. Alkiphron gasped and tensed. Menedemos gave him a broad, friendly smile. “Are you ready?” he asked. Before the wounded man could answer—and before he could tense himself any more—Menedemos pushed the arrow through.

  Alkiphron shrieked. He tried to jerk his leg away. Sostratos couldn't quite stop the motion, but kept it small. The blood-smeared bronze point burst through the sailor's skin. “There,” Sostratos said soothingly as Menedemos drew the shaft out after it. “Now it's over.”

  “You took it like a hero,” Menedemos added, wrapping several thicknesses of sailcloth around the wound. He had a knack for saying things that made men feel better. It's probably the knack that makes him such a fine seducer, Sostratos thought. Whatever it was, he wished he had more of it himself.

  He also noted that Menedemos' bandage was no neater than the ones he'd made himself. Alkiphron didn't seem inclined to be critical. He watched the bandage start to turn red. “That. . . hurt like fire,” he said. “But you're right—it's better now. Thank you both.”

  “Glad to do it,” Menedemos said. “I hope it heals clean,”

  “It should, too,” Sostratos told the sailor. “It's bleeding freely, and that helps,”

  “Take a cup of wine, Alkiphron,” Menedemos said. “That will help build your blood up again.” Sostratos frowned. From what he remembered, Hippokrates and his fellows would have prescribed differently. But Alkiphron looked so pleased at Menedemos' suggestion, Sostratos held his peace. And Menedemos remarked, “I wouldn't mind a cup of wine myself.”