Over the Wine-Dark Sea

3

"Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!" Diokeles used the oarmaster's chant along with the rhythm of mallet on bronze. As Menedemos had thought it would, the wind blew straight out of the north, straight into his face, as the merchant galley he commanded made for Kos. A sailing ship bound for Kos from Knidos would have had to stay in port; it could have made no headway against the contrary breeze. He just left the sail brailed up tight, so that the akatos proceeded on oars alone.

Waves driven by the headwind splashed against the Aphrodite's ram and pointed cutwater. Striking the ship head-on, they gave her an unpleasant pitching motion. Menedemos, who stood on the raised poop deck handling the steering oars, didn't mind it so much, but he'd spent the night aboard ship. Some of the rowers who were rather the worse for wear leaned out over the gunwales and fed the fish of the Aegean.

"Keep an eye peeled," Menedemos called to the lookout at the bow. "The mainland of Asia belongs to Antigonos." He took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller to wave toward the misty mainland. "Kos, though, Kos is under Ptolemaios' thumb. And if the treaty the generals signed last summer is just a broken pot, the way it seems, they're liable to go at each other any time."

He kept a wary eye out for warships and pirate galleys himself. All he saw, though, were a few little fishing boats bobbing in the chop. A couple of them spread their sails and scooted away from him as fast as they could go. He laughed at that: the akatos looked too much like a piratical pentekonter for them to want to let it get close.

"You're the one who's been hearing most of the news lately, cousin," he said to Sostratos. "Do you have any idea what sort of fleet Ptolemaios has at Kos?"

But Sostratos tossed his head. "Sorry - haven't heard that. It had better be a good-sized one, though, because Antigonos has a lot of ports on the mainland and the islands farther north." He grimaced. "The same holds for Rhodes, you know."

"We have got a good-sized fleet, and a good thing, too," Menedemos said. "Antigonos knows better than to quarrel with us, the same as a dog knows better than to bite a hedgehog. Now, where have you got those perfumes stowed?"

"To port, a little aft of amidships," Sostratos answered. "Are you thinking of trading them for silk?"

"That's just what I'm thinking," Menedemos told him. "The Hellenes in Italy can make their own perfume. You can't get silk anywhere but Kos."

"If we can make a good bargain with the silk merchants, that's fine," Sostratos said. "If not . . ." He shrugged. "If not, we'd do better spending silver on silk and saving the perfumes for a market where they'll bring us more."

"You'll be the judge of that," Menedemos said. "That's why you're along."

"Nice to know you think I have some use," Sostratos said dryly.

"Some," Menedemos agreed, to make his cousin squirm. He pointed. "And you'd better keep an eye on that peahen, too, before she goes into the drink."

As one had done on the first day it was let out of its cage, a peahen had hopped up onto a vacant rower's bench and was peering over the side. Menedemos didn't know if the bird would try to fly off and fall into the sea, but he didn't want to find out the hard way, either. Sostratos was of like mind. He netted the bird before it could do anything the young men who'd bought it would regret.

The peahen pecked Sostratos through the mesh of the net. "Down to the house of Hades with you, you accursed, abominable thing!" he shouted, rubbing at his ribs through his chiton. He turned to Menedemos. "If it weren't for what we paid for them, I'd like to watch them drown."

"So would I," Menedemos said. "I'd hold them under myself, in fact."

"I never imagined sailing with a valuable cargo I hated," Sostratos said, releasing the peafowl by the socket that fixed the mast to the keel. He pointed a warning finger at the bird. "Stay down here where you belong, Furies take you!" To Menedemos, he added, "I don't much care for cargo that won't stay where I stow it, either."

"The birds would, if you left them in their cages," Menedemos said.

His cousin tossed his head. "We've been over that. I think they'll be better for getting out, though they may drive me mad by the time we make Italy."

Menedemos laughed. Sostratos rolled his eyes. That made Menedemos laugh more. But before he could twit his cousin any further, the watchman on the foredeck sang out: "Sail ho, off the starboard bow!" A moment later he amended that: "Sails ho! She's got a foresail, captain!"

"A big one," Menedemos muttered, peering in the direction the lookout's pointing finger gave. He had sharp eyes; he needed only a moment to spot the ship. When he did, he cursed. He'd hoped to see a big merchantman, bound perhaps for Rhodes and then Alexandria. No such luck: that low, lean shape could belong only to a war galley.

"He's seen us, too," the lookout called. "He's turning this way."

His voice held alarm. Menedemos didn't blame him. He was alarmed, too. "What do we do, skipper?" Diokles asked.

"Hold course," Menedemos answered. "Best thing we can do is put up a bold front. If we were in a pentekonter or a hemiolia, we might have hoped to turn and outrun him downwind, but we haven't got a prayer of that in this akatos - she's too beamy. We have every right to be here, and a proper warship won't give us any trouble, because nobody wants any trouble with Rhodes."

I hope. He'd spoken brashly to hearten his men - and to hearten himself, too. But brashness didn't come easy, not as the galley approached, now under sails and oars. "Eagles on the sails," the lookout called.

"He's one of Ptolemaios', then," Sostratos said.

Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "Patrolling out of Kos, I suppose."

"Too big and broad to be a trireme," his cousin observed. "A four or a five."

"A five," Menedemos answered. "Three banks of rowers, see? One man on each thalamite oar down low, two on each zygite, and two on each thranite oar on top. If it were a four, it'd be two-banked, with two men on each oar."

"You're right of course." Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as he often did when he thought he'd been foolish. "Whatever it is, it's big enough to eat us for opson and still be hungry for sitos afterwards."

"And isn't that the truth?" Menedemos said unhappily. "Got to be a hundred cubits long, if it's even a digit." For a merchant galley, the forty-cubit Aphrodite was of respectable size. Compared to the war galley, it was a sprat set beside a shark. The five was fully decked, too; armored marines with spears and bows strode this way and that, their red cloaks blowing in the breeze. The outrigger through which the thranite oarsmen rowed was enclosed with timber, making the ship all but invulnerable to archery.

"Catapult at the bow," Sostratos remarked. "From what Father says, they were just starting to mount them on ships when we were little."

"Yes, I've heard my father say the same thing," Menedemos agreed. He hadn't been paying the dart-thrower any mind; he'd been looking at the eyes painted on either side of the five's prow. The Aphrodite had them, too, as did almost every ship in the Middle Sea, but these seemed particularly fierce and menacing - not least because, at the moment, they were glaring straight at his ship.

One of the men on the war galley's deck cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted: "Heave to!"

"What do we do, skipper?" Diokles asked again.

"What he says," Menedemos answered, watching seawater foam white over the topmost fin of the five's ram. The green bronze fins had to be a cubit wide; they could smash a hole in the Aphrodite's side that would fill her with water faster than he cared to think about. Even if he were mad enough to try to use his much smaller ram against her timbers, she had extra planking at the waterline to ward against such attacks.

"Oöp!" the keleustes shouted, and the akatos' rowers rested at their oars.

Up came the five to lie alongside the Aphrodite. Men brailed up the sails to keep the great ship from gliding away to the south. The war galley's deck rose six or seven cubits out of the water; the archers there could shoot down into the akatos' waist, while Menedemos' men could do next to nothing to reply.

A fellow in a scarlet-dyed tunic looked the Aphrodite over. By the way he put his hands on his hips, what he saw didn't much impress him. "What ship is this?" he demanded.

"The Aphrodite, out of Rhodes," Menedemos said. And then, deliberately mocking, he gave the galley the same sort of once-over her officer had given the akatos. It wasn't so easy for him, because he had to crane his neck upwards to do a proper job of it, but he managed. And, looking up his nose because he couldn't look down it, he asked, "And what ship are you?"

Perhaps taken by surprise, the war galley's officer replied, "The Eutykhes. General Ptolemaios' ship, out of Kos." Then he glared at Menedemos, who smiled back. He snapped, "I don't have to answer your questions, and you do have to answer mine. If you're lucky " - he played on the meaning of his ship's name - "you'll be able to."

"Ask away," Menedemos said cheerfully. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sostratos looking worried. Sostratos would never have baited the Eutykhes' officer. Because he was rational and sensible, he thought everybody else was, too. Menedemos had a different opinion. Insulting an arrogant ass was often the only way to get him to acknowledge you.

Of course, it also had its risks. With a scowl, the officer said, "You look like a gods-detested pirate to me, is what you look like. Rhodes? Tell me another one. Give me the name of the man you serve and give me your cargo and do it fast, or you'll never get the chance to do anything else."

"I serve two men: my father Philodemos and Lysistratos, his younger brother," Menedemos answered, all business now. "If you don't know of them, ask your crew; someone will."

And, to his relief, one of the marines aboard the Eutykhes came up to the officer. Menedemos couldn't make out what the fellow said, but the sour look on the officer's face argued that the other man did know of Philodemos and Lysistratos. A snap in his voice, the officer said, "Any rogue may hear a name or two, and put them in his own mouth when he finds them handy. I am not convinced you are what you claim to be. Your cargo, and be quick about it."

"Quick as you please," Menedemos answered. "We carry ink and papyrus and crimson dye and fine perfumes and . . ." He grinned slyly. "Five peahens and a peacock."

As he'd hoped, that rocked the Eutykhes' officer back on his heels. "A peacock?" he growled. "I don't believe you. If you had a peacock on board, I'd see it. And if you're lying to me, you'll be sorry."

"Sostratos!" Menedemos called. His cousin waved. "Show the gentleman the peacock, if you please."

"Right." Sostratos hurried up to the foredeck. He undid the latches on the peacock's cage and opened the door. The bird, which would have bolted out screeching at any other time, stayed where it was and kept quiet. Menedemos flicked a glance to the officer aboard Ptolemaios' five. The man stood on the deck with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn't about to believe anything Menedemos said, not till he saw it with his own eyes.

There had been times when Menedemos faulted Sostratos for dithering when he should have been doing. This wasn't one of those times. When the peacock refused to come out of its cage, Sostratos picked up the cage and dumped the bird out onto the foredeck. It squawked then, squawked and ran down into the waist of the Aphrodite.

"A peacock," Menedemos said smugly. "Tied up at anchor, we'd charge you a khalkos or two to see it, but here on the sea I give you the sight for nothing."

He was, perhaps, lucky: the Eutykhes' officer paid no attention to his patter. The fellow stared down at the bird and its magnificent tail. Marines and other officers hurried over to have a look, too. So many men rushing to starboard might have capsized the Aphrodite, but they gave the far bigger war galley only a slight list.

"A peacock," Menedemos repeated softly.

"A peacock," the officer agreed. Because the Aphrodite's sailors weren't watching the bird so closely as they might have been, it pecked a rower in the leg. He sprang up from his bench, howling curses. The men on the Eutykhes howled laughter.

"May we cage it up again now?" Menedemos asked. "It's pretty, no doubt about it, but it's a cursed nuisance."

"Go ahead." The Eutykhes' officer absently dipped his head in assent. His eyes remained fixed on the bird. He had to gather himself before finding a question of his own: "You'll be putting in at Kos today?"

"That's right," Menedemos answered. "We're bound for Italy, and we'll want to take some silk with us if we can get a decent price."

"Good trading, then," the officer said. He turned away from Menedemos and shouted orders to his own crew. The five's mainsail and foresail descended from their yards. The keleustes clanged on something louder and less melodious than the bronze Diokles used. The oars began to work. Eyeing the Eutykhes, Menedemos judged the crew had been together for a while. Their rowing was very smooth. The war galley resumed its southbound course, picking up speed quickly despite its massive bulk.

Once it had got out of arrow range, Menedemos allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. Diokles dipped his head to show he understood why. "That could have been sticky," the oarmaster said.

"That was sticky," Menedemos said. "But you're right. It could have been even stickier. He might not have stopped to ask questions. He might have just lowered his masts and charged right at us." He paused, imagining the Eutykhes' ram bearing down on the Aphrodite, driven toward her by three hundred rowers pulling like madmen. The mental picture was vivid enough to make him shudder. He tried to drive it from his mind: "Maybe we could have dodged."

"Maybe," Diokles said. "Once, maybe." He didn't sound as if he believed even that. And Menedemos didn't argue with him, because he didn't believe it, either.

Having wrestled the peacock into its cage once more, Sostratos made his way back to the stern. "Ptolemaios' men must be jumpy now that they're fighting Antigonos again," he said, and waved toward the mainland of Asia off to starboard. "Plenty of towns where old One-Eye could put a fleet together for the invasion of Kos. And the channel between the island and the mainland can't be more than twenty-five stadia wide. You can almost spit across it."

"You're right, and I'm an idiot," Menedemos said. Sostratos gaped at him, not used to hearing such things: Menedemos was more likely to call him an idiot. Not now, though. Menedemos went on, "I didn't see the connection between Kilikia and here till you rubbed my nose in it. I probably wouldn't have, either."

"All the pieces fit together," his cousin answered seriously. "That's what history is all about - showing how the pieces fit together, I mean."

"Well, maybe it's good for something after all, then," Menedemos said. "Maybe." He didn't quite know it, but he sounded as dubious as Diokles had when talking about the Aphrodite's chances of escaping the Eutykhes had the five chosen to attack. He didn't worry about that, though. He had more important things to worry about: "On to Kos, and let's see if we can get some silk."

Kos, the main city on the island of Kos, was a new town, even newer than Rhodes. The Spartans, Sostratos knew, had sacked Meropis, the former center, during the Peloponnesian War after an earthquake left it half wrecked. Meropis had stood in southwestern Kos, looking back toward Hellas. The new city of Kos was at the northeastern end of the island, and looked across the narrow strait to Halikarnassos on the Asian mainland.

Like Rhodes', the new city's harbor boasted all the modern improvements: moles to moderate the force of the waves, and stone quays at which merchantmen and war galleys could tie up (though the galleys usually stayed out of the water in shipsheds to keep their timbers from getting heavy and waterlogged). "It's a pretty sight, isn't it?" Sostratos said as the Aphrodite eased up to a quay. "The red tile roofs of the city against the green of the hills farther inland, I mean."

"When I get a chance to look, I'll tell you," Menedemos answered, making a minute turn with the port steering oar. All his attention was on the quay, none on the scenery. He turned to Diokles. "I think that will do it. Bring us to a stop just as we come alongside here."

"Right you are, skipper." The keleustes raised his voice: "Back oars!" A couple of strokes killed the akatos' forward motion. "Oöp!" Diokles shouted, and the men rested at the oars with the Aphrodite motionless in the water only a short jump from the quay.

Sailors tossed lines to men on the quay, who made the akatos fast. "Who are you?" one of the Koans asked. "Where are you from?" another asked. "What's your news?" a third said.

Sostratos wasn't surprised that they already knew about the murders of Alexandros and Roxane, and of course they knew Ptolemaios had gone back to war with Antigonos. They hadn't heard that Antigonos' nephew had gone over to Kassandros, and one of them clapped his hands when Menedemos mentioned it. "Anything that keeps the Cyclops busy somewhere else is good for us here," the fellow said, and his friends chimed in with loud agreement.

"Remind me how I get to the shop of Xenophanes the silk merchant," Sostratos said.

"It's simple, sir," one of the harbor workers answered, and then paused expectantly. With a mental sigh, Sostratos tossed him an obolos. He popped it into his mouth, saying, "Many thanks, best one. Go up three streets " - he pointed - "then turn right and go over two. You can't miss it: there's a bawdy house full of pretty boys across the street."

"That's right." Sostratos dipped his head and turned to Menedemos. "Remember the fellows who were brawling in the street over that one boy when we were here last spring?"

"I certainly do," his cousin said. "That little chap with the gray hair was going for his knife when a couple of people sat on him."

"Foolishness," Sostratos said. "A brothel boy's not worth quarreling over. He wouldn't have cared a fig for either one of them, except for what he could squeeze out of them. Hetairai are the same way, most of the time: more trouble than they're worth, and more expensive, too."

"You sound like my father." By the way Menedemos said that, he didn't mean it as a compliment. He raised an eyebrow. "Besides, what do you know about hetairai?"

Ears burning, Sostratos hurried up the gangplank to the quay. Menedemos stayed aboard the Aphrodite for a little while, setting up a watch schedule that would keep enough men on the ship at all times to deter robbers. The delay let Sostratos recover his composure. Unlike Menedemos - unlike most young men of his wealth - he wasn't in the habit of keeping a mistress. His cousin made it sound as if there were something wrong with him. But I've never met a hetaira who made me believe she cared about me more than she cared about my silver. He didn't bother saying it aloud. Letting it drop seemed better than enduring whatever snide comeback his cousin would surely find.

Menedemos pranced up the gangplank, almost as if he were about to start dancing the kordax. He had one of the little pots of perfume in his left hand. "Let's go," he said cheerfully, and slapped Sostratos on the shoulder. He'd already forgotten he'd been teasing his cousin. Sostratos hadn't. Menedemos continued, "With any luck at all, we'll be able to make a deal before sundown and get back to the ship without having to hire torchbearers."

"Now who's fretting about every khalkos?" Sostratos said, and savored the dirty look Menedemos gave him.

Being a new city, Kos was laid out in a grid, as Rhodes was. Once they got directions, Sostratos and Menedemos had no trouble finding Xenophanes' establishment. A man came out of the establishment across the street with his tunic rumpled and a lazy smile on his face. Other than that, the bawdy house seemed as peaceful as if the proprietor sold wool.

A plump Karian slave bowed when Sostratos and Menedemos walked into Xenophanes' shop. "The gentlemen from Rhodes!" he said in excellent Greek.

"Hail, Pixodaros," Sostratos said.

"My master will be as pleased to see you as I am, best ones," Pixodaros said. "Let me go get him." He bowed again, beamed at Sostratos, and hurried into a back room.

"How did you remember his name?" Menedemos whispered. "You could set a vulture tearing at my liver, the way Zeus did with Prometheus, and I couldn't have come up with it."

"Isn't that why you bring me along?" Sostratos answered. "To keep track of details, I mean?"

"He's just a slave," Menedemos said, as if Pixodaros weren't important enough to be even a detail.

But Sostratos tossed his head. "He's more than just a slave. He's Xenophanes' right-hand man. If he's happy with us, his master will be, too. That can't hurt, and it might help."

Pixodaros returned, Xenophanes following him and leaning on a stick like the last part of the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. The silk merchant's white beard spilled down over half his chest. A cataract clouded his right eye, but the left remained clear. He shifted the stick to his left hand and held out his right. "Good day, gents," he said, his Doric drawl more pronounced than that of the Rhodians.

Menedemos and Sostratos clasped his hand in turn. His grip was still warm and firm. "Hail," Menedemos said.

"What's that?" Xenophanes cupped a hand behind his ear. "Speak up, young fellow. My hearing isn't quite what it used to be."

It hadn't been good the year before, Sostratos remembered. Now, evidently, it was worse. "Hail," Menedemos repeated, louder this time.

Xenophanes dipped his head. "Of course I'm hale. If a man my age ain't hale, he's dead." He laughed at his own wit. So did his slave. And so, dutifully, did Sostratos and Menedemos. Xenophanes turned to Pixodaros. "Fetch us some stools from the back, why don't you? And a jar of wine, too. I reckon we'll chat for a spell before we commence to dickering."

Pixodaros made two trips, one for the stools, the other for the wine, some cool water to mix with it, and cups. He served Xenophanes and the two Rhodians.

"Thanks," the silk merchant said. He waved toward the stools. "Set a spell," he told Sostratos and Menedemos as he perched on the one Pixodaros had brought for him. The Karian had also brought one for himself, and sat down beside his master.

They sipped wine and swapped news. Like the rest of the Koans, Xenophanes hadn't heard about Polemaios' defection from Antigonos. "The nephew will have seen that the sons are rising men," Pixodaros remarked.

"My thought exactly," Sostratos agreed.

Xenophanes ran a hand through his beard. "I'd be just about of an age with One-Eye," he said. "Still a few old mulberry trees the wind hasn't blown down."

"Mulberry trees?" Sostratos said; he hadn't heard that figure of speech before.

"Mulberry trees," Xenophanes repeated, and dipped his head for emphasis. "Call it a silk-seller's joke if you care to, sir." He took another pull from his cup and declined to explain further.

After a while - a little sooner than Sostratos would have - Menedemos said, "I've got some fine perfumes with me, made from the best Rhodian roses."

Xenophanes' smile showed teeth worn down nearly to the gums. "My friend, no matter how fine your perfumes are - and I'm sure they're very fine; your father and I have been doing business longer than you've lived, and I know he handles the best - I doubt the maidens would beat a path to my door if I wore them."

"But they might beat a path to your door if you sold them," Menedemos said. "For that matter, the pretty boys across the street might, too."

That made the silk merchant laugh, but he tossed his head even so. "Making silk, selling silk - those I know. Selling perfumes? I reckon I'm too old to start picking up things I didn't learn when I was younger."

Pixodaros leaned forward on his stool. "Master, perhaps I could - "

"No," Xenophanes broke in. "I said it once, and I'll say it twice. You don't know a single thing more about perfume than I do. As long as I'm breathing, we'll do it my way."

Being a slave, the Karian had no choice but to accept that. Sostratos thought of the character types Theophrastos had discussed at the Lykeion in Athens. One of them was the later learner: the old man who was always trying something new and making a botch of it. Xenophanes was not an old man of that sort; he clung like a limpet to what he understood.

Then Sostratos had another thought. He snapped his fingers and said, "We've also got crimson dye from Byblos. If you like, we can trade you that for silk. Dye, sir, I'm sure you do know."

He and Menedemos would have got more for the dye in Italy, far from Phoenicia, than they could hope to here. But they would get still more for silk. He was sure of that. Menedemos murmured, "See? It comes in handy even if you didn't know about it till the last moment."

Sostratos only half heard him; his attention was aimed at Xenophanes. The old man's good eye lit up. "Dye? I should hope I know dye," he said. "Tyre, now, Tyre made the best crimson, back in the days before Alexander sacked it. It hasn't been the same since; the men who knew the most got killed or sold for slaves. Arados, I reckon, turns out the best nowadays, with Byblos down a notch."

"I wouldn't say that." Sostratos knew a negotiating ploy when he heard one. "Arados makes more dye than Byblos, true. But better? I don't think so, and I don't think you'll find many who do."

"Which of us dyes silk?" Xenophanes returned.

"Which of us sells dye all around the Inner Sea?" Sostratos asked. They smiled at each other. Their moves were as formal, as stylized, as those of a dance.

Pixodaros said, "My master is right." That was an inevitable response, too. He went on, "The crimson of Byblos may be brighter, but that of Arados holds its color better." Sostratos tossed his head to show he disagreed.

Again, Menedemos moved faster than Sostratos would have, saying, "Each jar of dye holds about a kotyle. That may not be very much wine, but it's a whole great whacking lot of boiled-down murex juice. How much silk might you trade for a jar?"

"And of what quality?" Sostratos added. "There's dye and then there's dye, and there's silk and then there's silk."

They haggled till the light in Xenophanes' shop faded. Pixodaros lit lamps that nibbled at the edges of oncoming night without really pushing it back. The familiar smell of burning olive oil filled the air. Xenophanes began to yawn. "I'm an old man," he said. "I need my sleep. Shall we go on come morning? We're pretty close, I reckon."

"Is there an inn close by?" Sostratos asked. "My cousin and I slept on the poop deck last night. We'd sooner have something a little softer tonight."

"That there is, just a couple of blocks over," Xenophanes answered. "I'll have a couple of slaves get torches and light your way there. And I'll give you some bread to eat for your suppers - Skylax will sell you wine till you're too drunk to walk, but you have to bring in your own food. He will cook meat or fish if you pay him."

The slaves were a couple of fair-haired Thracians. They chattered in their incomprehensible language while guiding Sostratos and Menedemos to the inn. Their torches didn't shed much light; Sostratos stepped in something nasty, and kept trying to scrape it off his foot till he got to Skylax's place. He and Menedemos each gave Xenophanes' slaves a couple of khalkoi. The torchbearers hurried back toward the silk merchant's house.

More torches blazed inside the inn. Not all the smoke escaped through the hole in the roof; a lot of it hung in the main room in a choking cloud. The odor of hot oil fought with it: Skylax kept a vat bubbling over a fire. By the smell, Xenophanes lit his home with better oil than the innkeeper used for cooking.

His wine wasn't bad, though, and he didn't seem put out to see Sostratos and Menedemos eating bread and not giving him anything to throw into that bubbling vat. When Sostratos asked about his rooms, he said, "Two oboloi for the pair of you." He wouldn't haggle. When Sostratos tried, he just tossed his head. "If you don't like it, strangers, go somewhere else."

The two Rhodians couldn't very well do that, not in a strange city after dark. Sostratos thought he could have found his way back to the Aphrodite, but he didn't want to sleep on planking again. After a glance at his cousin, he paid Skylax the little silver coins. A slave carrying a lamp guided Sostratos and Menedemos to the room. It held only one bed. The slave set down the lamp and dragged in another one from across the hall. Then he departed, taking the lamp with him and plunging the room into Stygian darkness.

With a sigh, Sostratos said, "We might as well go to sleep. Nothing else we could possibly do in here."

"Oh, there's one other thing," Menedemos said. "If you were a cute little flutegirl . . ."

"Me?" Sostratos said. "What about you?" They both laughed. Sostratos groped his way to a bed, took off his tunic, and draped it over himself. He wished he'd thought to bring his mantle, too; that would have made a better blanket. But the little room was too cramped and stuffy to get very cold. He twisted, trying to make himself comfortable. Creaks from the other bed said Menedemos was doing the same. Just as he heard the first snore from Menedemos, he fell asleep, too.

His cousin shook him awake. A little gray light was sneaking through the closed shutters over the narrow window. "You sound like a saw working through hard wood," Menedemos said.

"I'm not the only one," Sostratos answered. "Did they bother giving us a chamber pot? If they didn't, I'm going to piss in the corner." He looked under the bed. To his relief, both metaphorical and literal, he found one.

After buying more wine from Skylax to open their eyes, the Rhodians went back to Xenophanes'. "Good day, my masters," Pixodaros told them. "My master still sleeps. He told me to bring you food if you came before he rose." With a bow, the Karian slave went into the back of the house. He returned with bread and cheese.

"Thank you," Sostratos said, and then, "This business will be yours one of these days, won't it?"

"It could be." Pixodaros' voice was carefully neutral. "The gods gave my master no children who lived, so it could be."

Even if Xenophanes liberated Pixodaros on his deathbed, the Karian would never be a full citizen of Kos. His children might, though, depending on whom he married. Life is a changeable business, Sostratos thought - not original, but true.

He and Menedemos and Pixodaros made small talk till Xenophanes came out about half an hour later. "I still say you're asking too much for a jar of dye," the silk merchant began without preamble.

Menedemos put on his most winning smile. "But, my dear fellow . . ." he said. He could charm birds out of trees and wives into bed when he worked at it.

But he couldn't charm Xenophanes, who said, "No. It's too much, I tell you. I spent a deal of time thinking on it last night in bed, and my mind's made up."

"All right, then," Sostratos said before Menedemos could speak. Sostratos was the one who used bluntness, not charm, as his main weapon. He got to his feet. "I guess we'll go see Theagenes" - Xenophanes' chief rival - "if you won't see reason. And if Theagenes is stubborn, too, I guarantee we can get a better price for the dye in Taras or one of the other Italian cities than we can here."

That was likely true, though silk would bring more profit still. Mentioning Theagenes' name had the desired effect. Xenophanes looked as if he'd taken a big bite of bad fish. "He'll cheat you," he spluttered. "His silk is full of slubs. It's not nearly so thin and transparent as mine."

"No doubt you're right, O best one." Sostratos didn't sit down. "But he usually knows better than to price himself out of a bargain, and at least we'll have something to show the Italiotes. Come on, cousin." Menedemos rose, too. They both started for the door, though Sostratos was anything but eager to throw away most of a day's haggling.

"Wait." That wasn't Xenophanes - it was Pixodaros. He put his head together with his master. Sostratos stayed where he was. Menedemos started to get closer to try to hear what they were saying, but checked himself at Sostratos' small gesture.

"It's robbery, that's what it is!" Xenophanes spoke loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. Pixodaros didn't. The slave - the slave who might be a master himself one day - kept his voice low, but he kept talking, too. At last, Xenophanes threw his hands in the air and dipped his head to Sostratos and Menedemos. "All right," he said grudgingly. "A bargain. The Karian is right - we do need the dye. A hundred jars, for the bolts of silk you proposed last night."

Slaves carried the silk to the Aphrodite and took the dye back to Xenophanes' shop. Watching them go with the last of the jars, Menedemos said, "Gods be praised, our fathers don't have to worry about passing on what they've spent a lifetime building up to a barbarian slave."

"And here's hoping we never have to worry about it ourselves," Sostratos said, at which his cousin gave him a very peculiar look.

Menedemos decided not to stop in Halikarnassos, even though it lay close by Kos. For one thing, he wanted to press north to Khios, to get some of the island's famous wine to take west. And, for another, he'd left an outraged husband behind on his last visit to the former capital of Karia, and he didn't care to appear there before things had more of a chance to settle down.

Instead, traveling under oars into the breeze, the Aphrodite went up the channel between the mainland and the island of Kalymnos, and beached itself for the night on Leros, the next island farther north. Sostratos quoted a fragment of verse:

\t" 'The Lerians are wicked - not just one, but every one

Except Proklees - and Proklees is a Lerian, too.' "\t

"Who said that?" Menedemos asked.

"Phokylides," his cousin answered. "Is it true?"

"I hope not," Menedemos told him. "Leros and Kalymnos are supposed to be the Kalydian isles Homer speaks of in the Iliad."

"If they are, they've changed hands since," Sostratos said, "for the Lerians nowadays are Ionians, colonists from Miletos on the Asian mainland."

The peacock started screeching. Menedemos winced. "You don't know how sick I am of that polluted bird," he said.

"Oh, I think I may," Sostratos replied. "I may even be sicker of it than you are, because you get to stay back at the steering oars most of the day, while I have to play peacockherd."

Before Menedemos could point out that his staying at the steering oars did have a certain importance to the journey, someone hailed them from the brush beyond the beach. " 'Ere, what's making that 'orrible noise?"

"Ionians, you see," Sostratos said smugly. "No rough breathings."

He didn't say it very loud. In similarly soft tones, Menedemos answered, "Oh, shut up." He raised his voice and called, "Come and see for yourself," to the stranger.

"You'll not seize me for a slave and 'aul me off to foreign parts?" the Lerian asked anxiously.

"No, by the gods," Menedemos promised. "We're traders from Rhodes, not pirates." In another soft aside to Sostratos, he added, "Some withered old herdsman wouldn't be worth our while grabbing, anyhow."

"True enough," Sostratos said. "And it wouldn't be sporting, not after you've promised to leave him alone."

Menedemos cared little for what was sporting and what wasn't. But the rustic who emerged from the scrubby brush was middle-aged and scrawny. He wore only a goatskin tunic, hairy side out. That by itself made Menedemos' lip curl; country bumpkins were the only ones who preferred leather to cloth. And, when the Lerian got closer, Menedemos' nostrils curled, too: the fellow hadn't bathed in a long time, if ever.

"All right," he said. " 'Ere I am. What was that screeching like it was being turned into a eunuch?"

"A peacock," Menedemos answered. "For a khalkos, you can go aboard and see it for yourself." He didn't think he would be able to get two bronze coins out of the local; even one might be pushing it.

As things were, the fellow in goatskins made no move to produce a khalkos. He just stared at Menedemos. "A what?" he said. "You're 'aving me on. You think because I live on a little no-account island you can tell me anything and I'll swallow it. Can't fool me, though. I know there's no such beasts, not for true. Next thing is, you'll be telling me you've got 'Ades' three-'eaded dog Kerberos on your ship, or else a tree nymph out of 'er tree. Well, you must think I'm out of mine, and I'm 'ere to tell you I ain't." He stomped off, his nose in the air.

"No, you can't fool him," Sostratos said gravely. As if to prove the Lerian couldn't be fooled, the peacock let out another screech.

"Sure can't," Menedemos agreed. "He knows what's what, and he's not about to let anybody tell him anything different."

"He would have voted to make Sokrates drink the hemlock," Sostratos said.

"How does that follow?" Menedemos asked.

"You said it yourself," his cousin answered. "He already knows everything he wants to know. That means anyone who tries to tell him anything else must be wrong - and must be dangerous, too, for wanting to tell him wrong things."

"I suppose so," Menedemos said with a shrug. "Sounds like philosophy to me, though."

"Maybe you don't want to know anything more, either," Sostratos said, which left Menedemos feeling obscurely punctured.

When the sun rose the next morning, he shouted his men awake. "Let's get the Aphrodite back into the sea," he called. "If we push hard, we make Samos tonight. Wouldn't you sooner do that than sleep on the sand again?"

"After that Koan inn, I think I'd just as soon stay on the beach," Sostratos said. "Fewer bugs."

"Don't think about bugs," Menedemos said. "Think about wineshops. Think about pretty girls." He lowered his voice. "Think about making the men want to work hard, not about giving them reasons to take it easy."

"Oh." Sostratos had the grace to sound abashed. "I'm sorry." He made a splendid toikharkhos. He always knew where everything was and what everything was worth. He'd done well in the dicker with Xenophanes. When the old coot got mulish, he'd picked the right time to get mulish in return. But ask him to be a man among men, to understand how an ordinary fellow thought . . . Menedemos tossed his head. His cousin didn't have it in him, any more than a team of donkeys had it in them to win the chariot race at Olympos.

With men in the boat pulling and men on land pushing, the Aphrodite went back into the Aegean more readily than she had after beaching on Syme. Menedemos steered the akatos north and a little east, toward Samos. He wished the wind would swing round and come out of the south so he could lower the sail, but it didn't. Through most of the sailing season, winds in the Aegean would stay boreal.

"Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!" Diokles called, amplifying the stroke he gave with mallet and bronze. Menedemos had ten men on the oars on each side of the galley. He planned on shifting rowers when the sun swung past noon, and on putting the whole crew on the oars if he was close to making Samos in the late afternoon. If not . . .

Sostratos asked, "What will you do if we come up short?"

"We have choices," Menedemos replied. "We could head for Priene, on the mainland. Or we could beach ourselves again. Or I might spend a night at sea, just to remind the men there will be times when they need to work hard."

"You didn't want to do that before," Sostratos remarked.

Patiently, Menedemos explained, "Before, it would have just annoyed them. If I can turn it into a lesson, though, that would be worthwhile."

"Ah," his cousin said, and stepped over to the rail: not to ease himself but to think about what Menedemos had told him. Sostratos was anything but stupid; Menedemos knew that. But he had a lot less feel for what made people work than Menedemos did. Once things were set out before him, though, as if at the highfalutin Lykeion at Athens, he could grasp them and figure out how to use them.

After a bit, Menedemos interrupted his musing, saying, "Why don't you give the peafowl some exercise?"

"Oh." Sostratos blinked his way out of contemplation and back to the real world. "I'll do that. I'm sorry. I forgot."

"The ship won't sink," Menedemos said as his cousin headed for the bow. And you'll be too busy to do any philosophizing for a while.

Except when Sostratos' antics were funny or his curses got frantic, Menedemos put him out of his mind for a while. He took in the Aphrodite's motion through the soles of his feet and through the steering-oar tillers in the palms of his hands. It was almost as if he were peering out through the eyes painted at the merchant galley's bow, so much did he feel himself a part of the ship.

More ships were on the sea than had been true even when the Aphrodite set out from Rhodes a few days before. Fishing boats bobbed in the light chop. Some were hardly bigger than the akatos' boat. Others, with many more men dangling lines over the side or trailing nets behind them, were almost half the size of the Aphrodite herself. Menedemos saw most of them at a rapidly increasing distance, as he had the day before. The merchant galley really was beamier and slower than any proper pirate ship, but few skippers conning fishing boats cared to wait around till such details grew obvious.

Larger merchantmen - merchantmen big enough to dwarf the akatos - also spread their sails and scudded away, sometimes fast enough to kick up a creamy white wake at the bow. Their captains commanded bigger ships than Menedemos did, but he had more men aboard his. Like the men in charge of the more numerous fishing boats, they weren't inclined to take chances.

And then, not long before midday, Menedemos felt like scurrying aside himself when he spotted a five majestically making its way south under sails and oars. Instead of Ptolemaios' eagle, this war galley bore the Macedonian royal sunburst on foresail and mainsail both. "Ptolemaios and Antigonos are liable to start going nose to nose here along with their squabbles in Kilikia," Menedemos said.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Diokles answered. "And what can a free polis like Rhodes do if they start?"

"Duck," Menedemos said, which startled a laugh out of the keleustes.

Unlike the Eutykhes, Antigonos' five didn't change course to look over the Aphrodite. Menedemos watched the big ship glide over the waves in the direction of Kos with nothing but relief. Ptolemaios' crew hadn't turned robber. Maybe Antigonos' wouldn't have, either. Maybe. Menedemos was just as well pleased not to have to find out.

Little by little, the mountains of Samos and of Ikaria slightly to the southwest rose up out of the sea. Those of Samos, especially Mount Kerkis in the western part of the island, were taller than their Ikarian neighbors. Menedemos had noticed that every time he approached Samos - Ikaria, inhabited mostly by herdsmen, was hardly worth visiting - but hadn't wondered about it till now.

Diokles just gave him a blank look when he mentioned it. "Why, skipper?" the oarmaster said. "Because that's how the gods made 'em, that's why."

He might well have been right. Right or not, though, the answer wasn't interesting. Menedemos waited till Sostratos came up onto the poop deck and asked the question again. He might joke about philosophy, but it did sometimes lead to lively conversation.

"They are, aren't they?" Sostratos said, looking from the peaks of Samos over to those of Ikaria and back again. Then he did something Menedemos hadn't done: he looked to the Asian mainland east of Samos. "There's Mount Latmos, back of Miletos, and I'd say it's taller than anything on Samos."

"I . . . think you're right," Menedemos said; Mount Latmos was also farther away, which made its height hard to judge. "Even if you are, though, so what?"

"I don't know for certain, but it looks to me as if the islands carry the mountains of the mainland out into the sea," his cousin answered. "If that's so, it would stand to reason that the peaks would get lower the farther out into the sea the islands went. After a while, no more peaks - and no more islands, either."

Menedemos considered, dipped his head, and sent Sostratos an admiring glance. "That would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"It seems to me that it would," Sostratos answered. "I don't know whether it's true, mind you - that isn't the same as being logical."

"Close enough for me," Menedemos said. His cousin raised an eyebrow, but didn't rise to the bait.

Samos rose ever higher out of the sea, while the sun sank ever closer to the water. "Looks to me like we'll make it, skipper," Diokles said.

"We will if the boys put their backs into it," Menedemos replied. Actually, he was pretty sure the keleustes was right, but he wanted to get the rowers working as a team. "Call everyone to the oars and give them a sprint, why don't you? Let's pretend we've got a hemiolia full of Tyrrhenians on our trail."

Diokles stroked the ring with the image of Herakles Alexikakos on it to turn aside the evil omen. "That could happen, you know, even here in the Aegean. Those polluted whoresons don't stay in the Adriatic any more. They're like cockroaches or mice - they're all over the stinking place."

Like any merchant sailor, Menedemos knew that entirely too well. He dipped his head, but said, "They've got more teeth than mice, worse luck. Come on - get the men to the oars and up the stroke. We'll see what kind of crew we've got."

"Right you are." The oarmaster shouted the whole crew to their benches and kept right on shouting once they were in their places: "We're going to push it to get to port before sundown - and so we know what we can do if pirates come after us. Give it everything you've got, boys. Rhyppapai! Rhyppai!"

Mallet met bronze in an ever-quicker rhythm. Diokles hit the bronze harder, too, so each clang seemed more urgent. The rowers didn't spare themselves. Panting, their bodies glistening with oil and sweat, their muscular arms working as if belonging to Hephaistos' automata from the Iliad, they worked like men possessed.

And the Aphrodite fairly seemed to leap ahead. She arrowed through the deep-blue water; a creamy wake streamed from her bow. After a very short time, Menedemos grew sure they would make Samos.

Diokles held the oarsmen to the sprint as long as he could, and eased off as slowly as he could. "Not too bad, captain," he said. "No, not too bad at all. And the rowing's smooth as that silk you bought. We knew we had some good men here, and this proves it."

"You're right," Menedemos answered. "I wouldn't quarrel with a single word you said. But tell me, would we have got away from a pirate ship?"

"Well . . ." The keleustes looked unhappy. "We'd've needed some luck, wouldn't we? They did get her up as fast as she'll go."

"I know they did," Menedemos said. "The trouble is, she won't quite go fast enough." The Aphrodite carried cargo, not just rowers who doubled as fighting men. She was beamier than a hemiolia or a pentekonter, too, which meant there was more of her to resist the sea than held true for their lean, deadly shapes. And she rode deeper in the water, because of her cargo and because her timbers were more waterlogged and heavier than those of pampered pirate ships, which dried out on the beach every night. Because of all that, odds were a ship full of pirates could overhaul them from behind.

"We're all right if we've got a friendly port we can run for," Diokles said.

"Of course we are. But if we don't, we're going to have to fight." Menedemos drummed his fingers on the steering-oar tiller. "I'd sooner do it ship against ship, not man against man. They'll have bigger crews than we do."

"Pirate crews mostly aren't disciplined," the keleustes observed. "They don't want to fight unless they have to. They're out to rob and kidnap, either for ransom or for slaves."

"We've got a lot of men who've put in time aboard war galleys," Menedemos said. "Once we sail west from Khios - maybe even sooner - we will work hard."

"Good," Diokles replied.

Though the sun was not far from setting when the Aphrodite glided into Samos' harbor, Menedemos had enough light to reach the quays and tie up without any trouble. A temple dedicated to Hera lay to the left, where the Imbrasos River ran down into the sea from the mountains in the island's interior. To the right was a shrine for Poseidon that looked across a seven-stadia strait to the mainland.

As longshoremen made the akatos fast to the wharf, the rowers rested at their oars, still worn with the effort they'd put forth in the sprint. One of them said the worst thing he could think of: "I'm liable to be too tired to want to go into town and screw."

"Well, if you are, I hear there are girls up in Khios, too," Menedemos said.

"Likely there are," the sailor agreed, "but I hate to waste a chance." Since Menedemos hated to waste a chance, too, he just laughed and dipped his head.

As kos lay under Ptolemaios' thumb, so Samos belonged to Antigonos. Sostratos wasn't surprised when a couple of officers in gleaming armor tramped up to the quay to inquire about the Aphrodite and where she'd been before coming to Samos. He was surprised when they started asking their questions: he could hardly follow a word they said.

"What is that gibberish?" Menedemos asked out of the side of his mouth.

"Macedonian dialect, thick enough to slice," Sostratos replied, also in a whisper. He raised his voice: "Please speak slowly, O best ones. I will gladly answer all I can understand." That might have been a lie, but the Macedonians didn't have to know it.

"Who . . . art tha?" one of them asked, his brow furrowed in concentration, his accent both rustic and archaic. Homer might have spoken like that, had he been an ignorant peasant and not a poet, Sostratos thought. The Macedonian went on, "Whence . . . art tha from?"

"This is the Aphrodite, owned by Philodemos and Lysistratos of Rhodes," Sostratos said. The officer dipped his head; he could follow good Greek even if he couldn't speak it himself. Sostratos continued, "We're for Khios, and we've stopped at Syme, at Knidos, and at Kos."

"Did you have to tell him that?" Menedemos murmured.

"I think so," Sostratos said. "Someone else may come in who saw us in port or rowing up from the island."

Mentioning Kos got the Macedonians' attention. "What be there?" demanded the one who could make a stab at real Greek. "Ships? Ptolemaios' ships? How many of Ptolemaios' ships?"

"How gross?" the other one added, and then corrected himself: "How big?"

"I wasn't watching all that closely," Sostratos answered, and proceeded to exaggerate what he had seen. No one gave him the lie; though Rhodes' shipwrights had built war galleys for Antigonos, the island inclined more toward Ptolemaios. Rhodes shipped a lot of Egyptian grain all over the Hellenic world.

Sostratos didn't exaggerate enough to make the Macedonians serving Antigonos suspect him - only enough to give them long faces. They spoke back and forth between themselves; he understood not a word. Then, to his relief, they left.

Beside him, Menedemos let out a glad sigh to match his own. "I thought they were going to jump out of their corselets when you started talking about Ptolemaios' sixes and sevens at Kos," Sostratos' cousin said.

"So did I," Sostratos said. "I wanted to give them something to think about - something that wasn't quite true, but sounded as if it could be."

"Well, you hit the nail on the head," Menedemos told him. "If that doesn't set Antigonos' carpenters building like maniacs, to the crows with me if I know what would."

"I wouldn't mind - but where will it stop?" Sostratos wondered. "If you can build sevens, are nine better? What about thirteens, or maybe seventeens?"

Menedemos shrugged. "Not my worry. Not Rhodes' worry, either, I shouldn't think. How many rowers would you need in a seventeen?" He held up a warning hand. "No, don't go trying to figure it out, by the gods. I don't want to know, not exactly. However many it is, Rhodes might be able to man one or two of them. No more, I'm sure."

He was stretching things; but not by that much. He did persuade Sostratos not to finish the calculation he had indeed started. Instead, Sostratos asked, "You don't intend to do much in the way of trading here, do you?"

His cousin tossed his head. "Not much point to it: ordinary wine and plain pottery. I mostly wanted the anchorage." Menedemos hesitated. "If we could get our hands on those statues in Hera's temple, though, they'd bring a pretty price in Italy, don't you think?"

"Myron's Zeus and Athena and Herakles?" Sostratos laughed. "I'm sure they would. But remember, Ikaria's close by, and it got its name because Ikaros fell to earth there after flying too close to the sun. You'd fall and fail if you tried to get those statues, too."

Menedemos laughed. "I know. Had you worried there, didn't I?" Before Sostratos could answer, the peacock screeched. Menedemos snapped his fingers. "That reminds me - time to make ourselves a little money. Do you want to show people the peafowl?"

"I'm dying to," Sostratos replied.

He might as well have saved his breath; Menedemos paid no attention to him. Menedemos paid attention to him only when that suited his purposes. Sostratos' cousin hurried up the gangplank to the wharf and started singing the praises of peafowl. In short order, he started collecting khalkoi. Nobody got to look at the birds without handing over a couple of the little bronze coins. Sostratos showed off the peafowl till it got too dark for spectators to see them.

"What's the take today?" he asked when Menedemos gave up on luring any more spectators aboard the Aphrodite.

Khalkoi clinked as Menedemos built them into shaky piles. "Half an obolos, an obolos, an obolos and a half . . ." When he was through reckoning piles, he said, "A drakhma, four oboloi, six khalkoi. Nothing that'll make us rich, but not bad, either."

"Sixty-three people," Sostratos said after a moment's thought.

"No, that isn't bad at all. Peafowl are interesting birds - it'll be interesting to see if we can get them to Italy without tossing them overboard, for instance."

For once, his cousin didn't rise to the bait of the joke. Instead, Menedemos gave him an odd look. "Without a counting board, I couldn't have figured out how many people saw the birds to save my life."

"It wasn't hard." Sostratos changed the subject: "Will you look for an inn?"

Menedemos tossed his head. "Too late now. I'll just sleep on the deck. I've done it before. I can do it again." He waved a hand. "If you want to go into town, though, don't let me stop you. Plenty of sailors heading in for a good time."

"No, thanks," Sostratos said. His cousin was the one who was fond of luxury. If Menedemos could stand another night wrapped in his himation on the poop deck, Sostratos could, too. A man of philosophical bent was supposed to be indifferent to bodily pleasures . . . wasn't he?

Sostratos wondered about that as he lay with his chiton bundled up under his head for a pillow. Even though he was wrapped in his mantle, he couldn't get comfortable on the planks. He'd had an easier time drifting off on the beach on Leros.

As Menedemos had said, some of the rowers went into Samos to roister. The rest dozed on their benches. Some of them snored. Others, probably even more uncomfortable than Sostratos, talked in low voices so as not to disturb their shipmates. Sostratos tried to eavesdrop on them till he finally fell asleep.

He woke once in the middle of the night, pissed into the water of the harbor, and fell asleep again almost at once. The next time he woke, it was daybreak. Menedemos was already sitting up, an almost wolfishly intent look on his face. He dipped his head to Sostratos. "A lot to do today," he said. "We won't make Khios in one day from here, not rowing all the way. A good two-day pull. Since we didn't pass the night at sea coming to Samos, I intend to do that, to give the men a taste of what it's like."

"Whatever seems good to you," Sostratos agreed. "Our fathers trust you to command the ship. I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're wrong." Saying that didn't come easy to him; Menedemos often wore on his nerves. But his cousin did know what to do with the Aphrodite and how to lead her crew. However much Sostratos might have wanted to deny that, he couldn't.

Menedemos jumped to his feet. He paused just long enough to ease himself over the akatos' side. Then, still naked, he shouted the sailors awake. They yawned and grunted and rubbed their eyes, much less enthusiastic about facing the new day than he was.

He laughed at them. "We're heading toward the finest wine in the world, and you whipworthy catamites complain? I thought I'd signed up a crew of real men." His scorn lashed them to their feet and into action. Sostratos wondered how they would have acted had he exhorted them like that. Actually, he didn't wonder. He knew. They would have flung him into the Aegean. Had they been feeling kindly, they might have fished him out again afterwards.

He had his own morning duties to attend to. He gave the peafowl barley and water for their breakfast. The birds ate with good appetite. He'd seen they ate better in harbor than while the Aphrodite moved across the open sea. That was nothing remarkable. A lot of people went off their feed on the open sea, too.

"How many men are we missing, Diokles?" Menedemos asked.

"Not a one, captain, if you can believe it." The keleustes shook his head in amazement. "I wonder about these fellows, I truly do. You're hardly a man at all if you can't go out and make a night of it."

"They want the Khian, too," Menedemos said. "Even a sailor can afford it when he buys it where they make it."

Sostratos said, "The dealers won't be so generous as the tavernkeepers will. They'll be selling their best, not the cheap stuff you get in taverns, and they'll squeeze us till our eyes pop."

Menedemos grinned at him. "That's why you're along. You're not supposed to let them squeeze us."

"Ha," Sostratos said. "Ha, ha." He brought out the syllables just like that, as if they were dialogue in a comedy. "I can't keep them from squeezing us, and you'd better know it. With a little luck, I can keep them from squeezing us quite so much."

"All right." Menedemos dipped his head. He seemed in a good mood this morning, likely because the Aphrodite wouldn't have to sit in the harbor while Diokles hunted down men who gave more thought to roistering than to how they earned the money to roister. He pointed to Sostratos. "Grab yourself some bread and oil and wine. I want to get out into the open sea as soon as I can."

"All right." Sostratos drummed his fingers on the gunwale. "We'll have to lay in some more supplies when we got to Khios. We're using them faster than I thought we would."

"Take care of it." Menedemos was already eating and spoke with his mouth full. Sostratos tried to resent his cousin's peremptory tone, but couldn't quite. He was the toikharkhos; taking care of such things was his job. As he came back to the poop, Menedemos added, "The sooner I can get out of this port, the better I'll like it."

"Those Macedonians?" Sostratos asked.

"Sure enough," Menedemos agreed. "I didn't like the way they asked questions - like they were demigods looking down their noses at ordinary mortals." He dipped a piece of bread into olive oil and took a big bite. As he swallowed, his lip curled. "Demigods would speak better Greek, though."

"Khios won't be any better when it comes to that," Sostratos predicted. "It bends the knee to Antigonos, too."

"Well, yes, but it's not sitting over Kos, the way Samos is," his cousin answered. "The officers up there won't be so . . . eager to squeeze everything we know out of us. I can hope they won't, anyhow."

"It makes sense," Sostratos said. "You have a pretty good idea of the way the politics work."

"For which I thank you." Menedemos sounded as if he meant it. Then he added, "I may not know everything that's happened everywhere since before the Trojan War, but I do all right."

"I don't pretend to know everything that's happened everywhere since before the Trojan War," Sostratos spluttered. Only after he was done spluttering did he realize Menedemos had been hoping he would. He shut up with a snap. That also amused his cousin, which only annoyed him more.

"Come on!" Menedemos called to his men. "Let's cast off and get going. Like I told you, we're two days away from the best wine in the world." That got the men working. It got the Aphrodite away from the harbor ahead of many of the little fishing boats that sailed out of Kos. And it got the akatos through the narrow channel between the island and the mainland of Asia in fine fashion.

Sostratos hadn't really thought about just how narrow the channel was. "If you had stone-throwers on both sides of it," he remarked to Menedemos, "you could make this passage very hard and dangerous."

"I daresay you're right," Menedemos answered. "It may happen one of these days, too, though I hope none of Antigonos' generals is as sneaky as you are."

Half her oars manned, the Aphrodite fought her way north. The broad stretch of sea between Samos and Ikaria on the one hand and Khios on the other was one of the roughest parts of the Aegean: neither the mainland nor any islands shielded the water from the wind blowing out of the north. The merchant galley pitched choppily as wave after wave slammed into her bow.

The motion gave Sostratos a headache. A couple of sailors reacted more strongly than that, leaning out over the gunwale to puke into the Aegean. Maybe they'd taken on too much wine the night before. Maybe they just had weak stomachs, as some men did.

As some men did, Menedemos had a quotation from Homer for everything:

"What about the north wind?" Sostratos asked. "That's the one troubling us now."

His cousin shrugged. "You can't expect the poet to be perfect all the time. Isn't it marvel enough that he's so good so much of the time?"

"I suppose so," Sostratos said. "But it's not good to lean on him the way an old man like Xenophanes leans on a stick. That keeps you from thinking for yourself."

"If Homer's already said it as well as it can be said, what's the point to trying to say it better?" Menedemos asked.

"If you're quoting him for the sake of poetry, that's one thing," Sostratos said. "If you're quoting him to settle what's right and wrong, the way too many people do, that's something else."

"Well, maybe," Menedemos said, with the air of a man making a great concession. At least he's not sneering at using philosophers' ideas to judge what's right and wrong, the way he sometimes does, Sostratos thought. That is something.

He soon discovered why Menedemos showed no interest in twitting him: his cousin's thought turned in a different direction. Setting a hand on Diokles' shoulder, Menedemos said, "It's two days to Khios no matter what we do. Shall we start putting them through their paces?"

"Not a bad notion," the keleustes replied. "The more work we get in, the better the odds it'll pay off when we really need it."

"With luck, we won't need it at all," Sostratos said. Both Diokles and Menedemos looked at him. He felt he had to add, "Of course, we'd better not take the chance."

His cousin and the oarmaster relaxed. "Enough trouble comes all by itself, even when you don't borrow any," Menedemos said. He raised his voice. "All rowers to the oars. We're going to practice fighting pirates - or whatever else we happen to run into on the western seas."

Sostratos had wondered if the men would grumble at having to work harder than they would have done if they'd rowed straight for Khios. A few of them did, but it was grumbling for the sake of grumbling, not real anger. And so, on the rough sea north of Samos and Ikaria, the akatos practiced darting to the right and to the left, spinning in her own length, and suddenly bringing inboard all the oars now on one side of the ship, now on the other. They worked on that last maneuver over and over again.

"This is our best chance against a trireme, isn't it?" Sostratos said.

"It's our best chance against any galley bigger than we are - best besides running away, I mean," Menedemos answered. "It's our only chance against a trireme: if we can use our hull to break most of the oars on one side of his ship, that lets us get away. Otherwise, we haven't got a chance."

"I suppose not." Sostratos sighed. "I wish someone would keep pirates down all over the Inner Sea, the way Rhodes tries to do in the Aegean."

"While you're at it, wish navies didn't hunt merchantmen when they saw the chance, too," Menedemos said. "Here close to home, we're fairly safe, because Ptolemaios and Antigonos both care about keeping Rhodes happy. Farther west . . ." He tossed his head. Sostratos sighed again. One more thing to worry about, he thought. As if I didn't have enough already.