Over the Wine-Dark Sea

4

Menedemos woke in darkness, the Aphrodite tossing not too gently under him. A couple of cubits away, Sostratos lay on his back on the poop deck, snoring like a saw grinding through stone. Menedemos tried to slide straight back into sleep, but his cousin's racket and his own full bladder wouldn't let him.

Short of kicking Sostratos and waking him up, Menedemos couldn't do anything about his snoring. And Sostratos wasn't the only offender, only the nearest one; a good many rowers buzzed away, making the night anything but serene. I can ease myself, though, Menedemos thought, and got to his feet to do just that.

As he stood at the rail, the Aphrodite might have been alone on the sea, alone in all the world. Zeus' wandering star was about to set in the west, which put the hour somewhere close to midnight. The moon, a waxing crescent, had already vanished. All he could see was the star-flecked dome of the sky, and the blacker black of the night-time sea. Khios to the north, the Asian mainland to the east . . . He knew they were there, but he couldn't prove it, not by what his eyes told him.

One after another in endless succession, waves lifted the merchant galley's hull. The swell was bigger than it had been during the day. Menedemos hoped that didn't mean a storm would be blowing down out of the north. This early in the sailing season, it might.

"Bring me safe to Khios, Father Poseidon, and I'll give you something," he murmured; the sea god had a temple on the island, not far from the city. Praying for good weather was as much as he could do. Having done it, he lay down again, wrapped himself in his himation, and tried to go back to sleep. He wondered if he would succeed with Sostratos making horrible noises almost in his ear. He yawned and pulled the thick wool of the himation up over his head and aimed several unkind thoughts at his cousin.

The next thing he knew, the sun was rising over the distant mainland to the east. He rolled over to wake Sostratos, only to discover that Sostratos was already among those present - was, in fact, fixing him with a reproachful stare. "I hardly slept a wink last night, you were snoring so loud," Sostratos said.

"I was?" The injustice of that all but paralyzed Menedemos. "You're the one who kept making the horrible racket."

"Nonsense," Sostratos said. "I never snore."

"Oh, no, of course not." Menedemos savored sarcasm. "And a dog never howls at the moon, either."

"I don't," Sostratos insisted. Menedemos laughed in his face. Sostratos turned red. He waved toward Diokles, who was stretching on the rower's bench where he'd passed the night. "He'll tell us the truth. Which of us was snoring last night, O Diokles?"

"I don't know," the keleustes answered around a yawn. "Once I closed my eyes, I didn't hear a thing till I woke up at dawn."

"I did." That was Aristeidas, the sharp-eyed sailor who often served as lookout. "You get right down to it, both of you gents were pretty noisy."

Sostratos looked offended. Menedemos felt offended. Then they happened to glance toward each other. They both started to laugh. "Well, so much for that," Sostratos said.

"I'm going to sleep on the foredeck from now on," Menedemos said. "Then I can blame it on the peafowl." He peered north. No clouds gathered on the horizon, though the breeze had freshened. "I hope the weather holds till we make Khios. What do you think, Diokles?"

If anyone aboard the akatos was weatherwise, the oarmaster was the man. Menedemos watched him not just turn to the north but scan the whole horizon. He smacked his lips, tasting the air as he might have tasted fine Khian wine. At last, after due deliberation, he said, "I expect we'll be all right, skipper."

"Good." Menedemos had made the same guess, but felt better to have someone else confirm it. He grinned at the keleustes. "If you're wrong, you know I'll blame you."

Diokles shrugged. "As long as the ship comes through all right, I won't worry about it." He shrugged again. "And if she doesn't come through, if I drown, I won't worry about it then, either, will I?"

Several sailors caressed amulets or muttered charms to avert the evil omen. Sostratos, thought, looked intrigued. "So you think a man's spirit dies with him, do you?" he asked Diokles.

Menedemos recognized a question like that as an invitation to philosophical discussion. Diokles responded as matter-of-factly as he had to the query about the weather: "Well, sir, folks say a lot of things: this one says this, and that one says that. All I know is, nobody who went down with his ship ever came back to tell me what it was like."

That touched off a lively argument among the sailors as they hauled in the anchors and slung them from the catheads at the bow: one more bit of ship's business that the peafowl cages on the foredeck made more awkward. By Sostratos' expression, though, it wasn't the sort of discussion he would have heard at his precious Lykeion. A lot of the men were loudly certain they'd seen, or sometimes talked with, ghosts.

After a while, Menedemos' cousin turned to him, frustration on his face. In a low voice, Sostratos said, "I don't want to offend anyone or make anyone angry, but I don't think I've ever heard so much nonsense all at once in my whole life."

"On land, I'm sure I would agree with you," Menedemos replied. "Out here . . ." As Diokles had done, he shrugged. "Out here, half the things I'd laugh at on land feel true." His chuckle held less mirth than he would have liked. "Out here, especially after we spend the night at sea, I don't even know exactly where I am. If I can't be sure of that, how can I be sure of anything else?"

If nothing else, he'd succeeded in distracting Sostratos. His cousin pointed toward the Asian mainland in the distance. "The shape of the coastline will tell you where you are."

"Well, so it will," Menedemos admitted, "though it wouldn't mean anything to a landlubber. But we'll spend some time out of sight of land when we sail west toward Hellas, and then again when we cross the Ionian Sea to Italy. No way to tell for certain where you are then. I wish there were."

Sostratos frowned. "There ought to be."

"There ought to be all sorts of things," Menedemos said. "That doesn't mean there are." Diokles struck his bronze square with the mallet. The rowers began to pull. The Aphrodite glided north, toward Khios. With the steering oars to tend to, Menedemos didn't have to worry about splitting hairs with his cousin.

Like Samos, Khios lay close to the mainland. The channel between the island and Asia was wider than that separating Samos from the shore, but also longer. Waves built in it, built and rolled toward the galley one after another. Even without a real storm, the going was heavier than it had been since the Aphrodite set out from Rhodes. Menedemos thought it wise to repeat his promise to Poseidon, this time so the whole crew could hear.

Coming up toward the city of Khios - which lay on the eastern coast of the island, looking at the mainland across about forty stadia of water - the Aphrodite fought her way past a temple to Apollo hard by a grove of palm trees, then past the small harbor of Phanai, and at last by a colonnaded building close to the shore. Pointing toward it, Diokles said, "There's the sea god's shrine, skipper."

"I knew where it was. I've been here before," Menedemos answered. The keleustes dipped his head, unashamed at having nagged him. Like any sailor, he wanted to make sure a vow to Poseidon got fulfilled.

Khios the city boasted a very respectable harbor. "How many war galleys do you suppose could shelter here?" Menedemos asked.

"If we're talking about triremes, I'd say eighty, easy," Diokles answered. "Fewer of the bigger ships they're turning out nowadays, though."

Sostratos came up onto the poop deck and pointed toward the sun, which still hung high in the west. "We made good time," he remarked. "We'll have the chance to do some business today."

"We'd have done better still without waves smacking us in the teeth all the way up from Samos," Menedemos answered, "but that's the kind of weather you're likely to run into this time of year. As for the business, you'll have to start without me. First thing I'm going to do is go down to Poseidon's temple and make that offering to thank him for getting us here safe."

"What did you have in mind?" his cousin asked warily.

"I was thinking of a lamb," Menedemos said, and Sostratos relaxed. Along with being the sea god and the earthshaker, Poseidon was also the god of horses, which were sometimes sacrificed to him. Horses, though, were beyond the means of any but the very rich. Menedemos might have thought about giving Poseidon one after coming through a true storm, but the god hadn't earned so great a reward for helping the merchant galley through seas that were rough but weren't really dangerous.

Sostratos said, "Go make your sacrifice, then, and meet me at Aristagoras the wine merchant's. I'll see him first. We can decide later whether to go to an inn or spend another night listening to each other snoring on deck."

"That seems good to me," Menedemos said.

No Macedonian officers came down the wharf to interrogate the men of the Aphrodite, as they had back at Samos. With the more southerly island shielding Khios from Ptolemaios' base on Kos, the local garrison didn't worry about raiders descending on them. Menedemos walked up the pier and into the city without drawing more than a couple of nods from longshoremen and fishermen.

He walked out through the southern gate just as casually. The countryside between the city of Khios and Poseidon's shrine was given over to olive groves and ripening grain; the grapes that yielded the famous Khian wine grew on the higher ground in the northwestern part of the island. Channels brought water from Khios' many springs to the fields and groves, for the island had no rivers worthy of the name.

Poseidon's temple was flanked by neatly trimmed laurel trees. A priest in a spotless white himation came up to Menedemos as he entered the sacred precinct. "Good day. 'Ow may I 'elp you?" he asked: like Samos, Khios was an island settled by Ionians.

"I just got into port. I want to give the god a lamb for letting me come in safe." Menedemos was much more conscious of his own Doric accent here than he would have been back on Rhodes, where everyone spoke as he did.

"I'd be 'appy to oblige you, sir," the priest replied. "Come with me, and you can pick out a beast for yourself."

"I thank you," Menedemos said. He chose a newborn lamb nursing at its mother's udder; the ewe let out a bleat of anger and dismay when the priest took the little white animal from her.

"Let me examine it to make sure it 'as no blemish." The priest looked at its eyes and ears and hooves. He dipped his head when he was through. "It is acceptable." His tone went from pious to businesslike in the blink of an eye. "That will be two drakhmai, sir."

Menedemos gave him two Rhodian coins. He accepted them without a murmur; Khios and Rhodes coined to the same standard, somewhat lighter than that of Athens and a good deal lighter than that of Aigina. Briskly, the priest tied a length of rope around the lamb's neck and led it to the altar.

An attendant brought up a bowl of water. Menedemos and the priest both washed their hands. Once the priest was ritually clean, he also sprinkled water on the lamb. Then the priest, Menedemos, and the attendant all lowered their heads and spent a moment in silent prayer. The lamb let out a bleat, not liking the fire that crackled on the altar or the odor of blood that clung to it.

The attendant sprinkled unground barley over the lamb, the altar, and the priest and Menedemos. The priest took a knife from his belt, cut a tight curl of soft wool from the lamb's head, and threw it into the flames on the altar.

A man with a flute and another with a lyre began to play, to help drown out the victim's death cry. The attendant handed the priest an axe. He killed the lamb with one swift blow, then used the knife to cut its throat. The attendant caught its blood in a silver bowl and splashed it on the altar.

Together, the priest and Menedemos chanted the Homeric hymn to Poseidon:

"He's done that for me," Menedemos added. "I thank him for it."

While they were reciting the Homeric hymn, the attendant began butchering the lamb's little carcass. He gave the god his portion: the thighbones wrapped in fat. As he set them on the fire, the scent of the burning fat sent spit rushing into Menedemos' mouth. Like most Hellenes, he seldom ate meat except after a sacrifice.

With ease born of long practice, the attendant cut up the carcass into chunks of meat of roughly the same size. Butchery after a sacrifice got no fancier than that. The attendant skewered one piece of meat for Menedemos, one for the priest, and one for himself. The two musicians came forward to get their share.

They all roasted the tender bits of lamb over the fire on the altar. After he'd wolfed down his share, Menedemos asked, "Is it permitted to take the rest of the carcass out of the sacred precinct?" Some temples allowed that, some didn't.

The priest tossed his head. "I am sorry, but no - it is not permitted."

"All right, then," Menedemos said. "The god has his fair share of my thanks-offering; the people here are welcome to the rest."

"Many men would argue more," the priest said. When he smiled, he looked years younger. "Many men 'ave argued more. Good fortune go with you, Rhodian, and may the Earthshaker always smile on you."

"My thanks," Menedemos said, and started back toward the city of Khios.

Aristagoras the wine seller dipped his head to his slave. As the Lydian scraped away the pitch around the stopper so he could open a new jar of wine, Aristagoras told Sostratos, "Truly, O best one, you must sample the vintages so you know what you are getting."

"I thank you for your generosity," replied Sostratos, "but if you keep feeding me even little cups of neat wine, pretty soon I'll be too drunk to tell one from another. My head's already starting to spin."

Aristagoras laughed heartily, just as if Sostratos were joking. "Oh, you are the funniest fellow," he said. The broken veins in his nose said he'd had a lot of practice pouring down wine, and it certainly didn't seem to affect him. He turned to the slave. " 'Aven't you got that yet, Alyattes?"

"Just now, master," the Lydian replied in his singsong accent. He pried the stopper out with the knifeblade, then lifted the jar and poured some of its golden contents into what were indeed small cups.

" 'Ere you are," Aristagoras said to Sostratos, and handed him one of the cups. "Now, this jar was laid down in the year Alexander died, which makes it" - he counted on his fingers - "thirteen years old now." He smiled the easy, friendly smile of a man who bought and sold things for a living. "It's getting close to a man's years on it. Go ahead and taste - don't be shy."

Sostratos sipped the sweet, fragrant wine. He smacked his lips and made polite appreciative noises. Had he not been trying to buy the stuff at something close to a reasonable price, he would have burst into cheers. "Very nice indeed," he murmured.

"Nice?" Aristagoras said. "Nice?" He donned indignation as readily as he'd put on friendship. "My dear fellow, that is the authentic Ariousian, the best wine on Khios - which is to say, the best wine in the world."

"I said it was good." Sostratos sipped again, determined to be as moderate as he could. It wasn't easy. The wine was so splendid, he wanted to guzzle like a Skythian. "But whether I can afford it is apt to be a different question. How much for a jar would you ask?"

"For one of the usual size, of a little more than half a metretes?" Aristagoras asked. Sostratos dipped his head. The wine merchant plucked at his beard, which had a couple of reddish streaks that were going gray. At last, voice elaborately casual, he answered, "Oh, twenty drakhmai sounds about right."

Sostratos jerked as if stung by a wasp. "I know I'm young," he said, "but I hope you won't take me for a fool. When I was in Athens, I could get a khous of Khian for two drakhmai, and one of those jars won't hold above seven khoes. So you're asking more - half again as much - wholesale as an Athenian tavernkeeper charged at retail. If that's not robbery, what is?"

"There's Khian, and then there's fine Khian, and then there's Ariousian," Aristagoras said. "Any Khian is worth three times as much as the cheap slop they make most places. I say nothing about Thasos or Lesbos, mind: they turn out pretty good wine, too. But most places?" He wrinkled his nose and tossed his head before continuing, "And Ariousian is to regular Khian what Khian is to regular wine."

"At twenty drakhmai the jar, the gods on Olympos couldn't afford to drink it, let alone mere mortals," Sostratos said.

"You're bound for Italy, you said." Aristagoras looked sly. " 'Ow much can you charge for it there?"

"That's not the point," Sostratos answered. "The point is, how much would you charge for it if I weren't going to Italy?"

"Not an obolos less," Aristagoras insisted. He looked so very sincere, Sostratos didn't believe him for even a moment.

"Are you going to tell me that a tavernkeeper here in Khios city pays you twenty drakhmai for a jar of Ariousian?" Sostratos rolled his eyes to show how likely he thought that was.

"No, I can't tell you that," Aristagoras said, but he held up a hand before Sostratos could pounce on him. "The reason I can't tell you that is, not many tavernkeepers will 'ave anything so fancy around, because there isn't much call for it from the sort of men who drink in taverns. But I've got twenty drakhmai the jar a good many times from people who wanted to put on a proper symposion and make their friends 'appy."

People who wanted to put on an expensive symposion and make their friends jealous, Sostratos thought. But Aristagoras didn't sound as if he were lying this time. A few rich Khians - and, very likely, some of Antigonos' officers here, too - wouldn't count the cost when they bought wine. Still . . . "If you've got twenty drakhmai a good many times," Sostratos said slowly, "that must mean there are times when you've got less, too."

Aristagoras bared his teeth in what only looked like a smile. "Aren't you a clever young chap?" he murmured, making it sound more like accusation than praise.

"And," Sostratos pressed, "they would be buying only a few amphorai at a time. You're bound to have a discount for quantity. Even twelve drakhmai a jar is outrageous, but I'm willing to talk about it for the sake of argument, provided we're talking about enough jars."

"Such generosity," Aristagoras said, and his expression didn't even resemble a smile any more. "Kindly remember who owns the wine you're generous enough to talk of buying."

Oh, a pestilence, Sostratos thought. Now I've gone and put his back up. He couldn't so much as look as if he knew he'd made a mistake: that would only give Aristagoras a greater edge. He wondered how to go about repairing the error.

Before he could say anything, Alyattes the slave came in and announced, "Master, the other trader, the one called Menedemos, is here."

"Bring 'im in. Maybe 'e'll be more reasonable," Aristagoras said. "And if not . . ." The wine seller shrugged. "Many good-byes to them both. They can do business somewhere else."

"Hail," Menedemos said when the Lydian slave led him back to the room where Sostratos and Aristagoras were dickering.

"Hail," Sostratos answered in a distinctly hollow voice.

If Menedemos noticed that, he didn't let it show. He clasped hands with Aristagoras, then slapped Sostratos on the back almost hard enough to knock him off the stool Alyattes had given him. "By the dog of Egypt, cousin, you're the lucky one. I went down to Poseidon's temple and made my offering, and here you've been guzzling away at the nectar of the gods."

Remembering his own comment about the gods' being unable to afford Aristagoras' wine, Sostratos kept his mouth shut. Aristagoras said, "If you'd care to taste this for yourself . . .?" When Menedemos dipped his head, Alyattes poured him a cup. Aristagoras went on, "Your - cousin, is it? - your cousin, yes, 'as been doing 'is best to persuade me the wine isn't worth what I say it is."

Menedemos shot Sostratos a hooded glance, but one so swift, it was gone almost before Sostratos was sure he saw it. With a laugh, Menedemos said, "Well, that's a merchant's job, after all, O best one." He sipped the Ariousian. His eyes widened. "We won't get this cheap, will we?"

"Your cousin was trying 'is best," the wine seller said dryly. "But no, my friend, you won't. I know what I've got, and I know what it's worth."

"I'm sure you do." Menedemos dipped his head. He sipped again. His eyes closed, as if a flutegirl at a symposion had started doing something extraordinarily pleasurable. "Oh, my. That is the real stuff. No one could mistake it, not even for a heartbeat. And what they'll pay in Italy!" His eyes closed again, this time contemplating a different sort of ecstasy.

"I should say it is, and I should say they will." Aristagoras dipped his head, too, and then looked daggers at Sostratos.

Sostratos, for his part, felt like looking daggers at Menedemos. The only reason he didn't was to keep Aristagoras from getting even more of the upper hand in the dicker. But, from everything Sostratos could see, the wine merchant already had a sizable edge, and Menedemos seemed intent on giving him more.

Menedemos drained the little cup Alyattes had given him and sighed. At Aristagoras' gesture, the Lydian slave filled it again. "I thank you," Menedemos told him. He gave Aristagoras a seated bow. "And I thank you." He took another sip. "Exquisite, just exquisite. I wouldn't be surprised if you were getting twelve drakhmai for an amphora, maybe even thirteen."

"I'm getting twenty," Aristagoras said. But he didn't get angry, as he had with Sostratos. Menedemos' charm had softened him a little; he no longer glared like a blunt-nosed viper about to bite. Sostratos saw what he'd done wrong - saw it, as one usually does in such affairs, too late.

"I can well believe that you'd ask twenty." Menedemos' smile remained easy, ingratiating. "But it's a long haul from Khios to Italy, and I have expenses, too - and the Italiotes, in spite of what people say, aren't quite made of money. What do you say to fourteen drakhmai a jar?"

He'd come up twice now, and without even being asked. Would Aristagoras move at all? If he didn't, would Menedemos give him every obolos he demanded? Sostratos had the dreadful feeling his cousin would. If they bought wine, even Ariousian, at twenty drakhmai the amphora, could they sell enough of it in Italy at a high enough price to make it worthwhile? He doubted it.

"Your expenses aren't my worry," Aristagoras said, and Sostratos' heart sank.

"I know that, sir," Menedemos said. Suddenly, Sostratos' hopes began to rise. Whenever his cousin sounded that earnest, good things followed - good things for Menedemos, that is. This was the tone he used to sweet-talk other men's wives into bed with him. He went on, "I do so want to do business with you, but twenty seems the tiniest bit high. You'll have met my father, I expect. You know what he's like. Old-fashioned? I should say so!" He rolled his eyes. "I just don't think he could stay reasonable if he heard a number like that."

Sostratos waited. Had he haggled like that, Aristagoras would have thrown him out onto the street on his backside. He was sure of it. With Menedemos . . . With Menedemos, the wine seller said, "Well, you've gone up a couple of drakhmai. I don't suppose the Persian Empire will come back to life if I drop one."

They settled at sixteen drakhmai the amphora. Sostratos would have been happier at fifteen, but he hadn't been able to make Aristagoras move at all. Menedemos, now, Menedemos had Aristagoras eating out of the palm of his hand. "Have the slaves bring the jars to my ship tomorrow morning," he said.

"I'll do that," Aristagoras said. "Meanwhile, you and your cousin are welcome to take supper with me and to spend the night here if you care to."

"We'll do that, and thank you kindly for it," Menedemos said.

Sostratos added, "Would you send one of your slaves by the Aphrodite now, to let our men know where we'll be in case of trouble?"

"I suppose so, though you seem to worry about every little thing," the wine merchant said. The comment made Sostratos feel like breaking an amphora over Aristagoras' head, but he refrained.

As Aristagoras was instructing the slave, Sostratos managed to murmur a few words to Menedemos. "I'm glad you came along when you did. I managed to get him angry at me, and we wouldn't have had a bargain."

"Don't let it trouble you," Menedemos replied. "I almost queered the deal with Xenophanes, down on Kos. As long as things work out one way or another, who cares how?"

More often than not, Menedemos wouldn't say any such thing. More often than not, he would grab all the credit and leave all the blame for Sostratos. He might do that yet, on this very journey. For now, maybe the thanks-offering to Poseidon had left him feeling more charitable than usual. Sostratos could think of nothing else to account for it. Whatever the reason, he was glad his cousin answered lightly.

Supper included some splendid tuna steaks, enough to warm the heart of the most jaded opsophagos. Supper also included a very pretty serving-girl, with whom Menedemos wasted no time in coming to an arrangement. Aristagoras chuckled. "I'll make sure the two of you have separate rooms. Do you want a girl for yourself tonight, Master Sostratos?"

"No, thank you," Sostratos said. Menedemos looked at him as if he were daft. Aristagoras shrugged. Sostratos didn't regret his choice. The wine seller probably wouldn't have another girl as good-looking as this one, and a slave ordered to go to bed with him wouldn't show much enthusiasm, while the serving-girl seemed about ready to climb up onto the couch with Menedemos and ravish him on the spot.

That all made good sense to Sostratos till he and Menedemos went to bed. Whether from efficiency or cruelty, Aristagoras put them in adjoining rooms. The wall wasn't very thick. Sostratos got to listen to the fun Menedemos was having next door. By the noises he and the girl made, they were having lots of fun. Sostratos wrapped his chiton around his head. That did next to nothing to block the amorous racket. Eventually, he fell asleep in spite of it.

The clear poo-poo-poo call of a hoopoe woke Menedemos somewhere around sunrise. He started to sit up, and discovered he couldn't: the serving-girl's warm, bare body was draped over his. He smiled to himself as he patted her backside. It had been quite a night.

Her eyes came open. "Good day, Leuke," Menedemos said.

For a moment, she looked confused. He wondered how many of Aristagoras' guests she'd slept with. Better not to wonder something like that, he thought. Leuke didn't stay confused long. "Good day," she purred, and stretched languorously.

"One more before I have to go?" Menedemos asked. She hesitated. Menedemos gave her a silver coin, a half-drakhma. "For you either which way," he said, "whether you decide to or not."

"Not just a sweet lover but a generous lover, too," Leuke exclaimed, and rode him as if she were a jockey. He would have had to pay a lot more than three oboloi for that at a brothel; courtesans charged more for it than any other way. After the sweaty exertions of the night before, being ridden suited him fine.

He was whistling when he ate barley porridge and drank wine for breakfast. Sostratos wasn't whistling; he looked glum. "It's your own fault," Menedemos told him. "You could have had a good time, too."

"Maybe another time," Sostratos said, as he usually did when Menedemos asked him why he wasn't enjoying himself now. He ate porridge and drank wine with a concentration that said he didn't want to be disturbed.

But Menedemos said, "Don't spend all day over breakfast. I want us back at the Aphrodite before Aristagoras' slaves fetch the wine. I don't think he'd try to palm off anything but what we agreed to on us, but I don't want to find out I'm wrong the hard way, either."

"You won't really be able to tell unless you open an amphora or two and taste what's in them," Sostratos said.

"Don't remind me." Menedemos got down to the bottom of his bowl of porridge in a hurry. He sat there drumming his fingers till his cousin finished, too. They said their good-byes to Alyattes - Aristagoras was sleeping late, since the sun was well up - and hurried down toward the harbor.

"Where shall we head next?" Sostratos asked as they threaded their way along Khios' narrow, winding, grimy streets.

"West," Menedemos answered.

His cousin paused to give him a mocking bow. "Many thanks, O best one. I never should have guessed. I expected we'd go on to Italy by sailing north."

"I was afraid you might have," Menedemos said with a chuckle.

"Let me ask you some different questions, then." Sostratos was at his most formal, which meant at his most irritating. "Do you plan to put in at Athens? If you do, it's a good market for our papyrus and ink; they probably do more writing there than anywhere else in the world, except maybe Alexandria."

"I hadn't intended to, no," Menedemos said. "The more we sell in the far west, the better the prices we'll get for it. Or do you think I'm wrong?"

"No, probably not - if we can sell the stuff," Sostratos said. "If we can't, we might think about stopping at Athens on the way back to Rhodes." That made good sense. In such matters, Sostratos usually did. But before Menedemos could do more than begin to dip his head, his cousin went on, "How do you plan on getting to the west? Will you go over the Isthmus of Corinth on the diolkos, or do you intend to sail around the Peloponnesos?"

"That's a good question. I wish I had a good answer for it," Menedemos said unhappily. "Most times, I'd sooner have my ship dragged across the tramway from the Saronic Gulf to the Gulf of Corinth, but with Polyperkhon kicking up his heels in the Peloponnesos, who knows if some Macedonian army isn't going to come rampaging through Corinth?"

"Of course, rounding the Peloponnesos is no bargain, either, especially not with that mercenary hiring camp that's sprung up at the end of Cape Tainaron," Sostratos said. "Crete's not very far away, either, and pirates swarm out of Crete the way bugs swarm out from under flat rocks."

"I wish I could say you were wrong," Menedemos answered.

"What will you do, then?" his cousin demanded.

"Sail west," he said with a grin. Sostratos' scowl grew fiercer than ever, which only made Menedemos grin more widely.

Menedemos had wondered if Aristagoras would let Alyattes take charge of delivering the wine and collecting the money for it, but the merchant showed up in person. Menedemos decided he couldn't blame him. Aristagoras was getting more than a quarter of a talent of silver; that much money could easily tempt a slave into striking out on his own, especially with only a few stadia of water separating him from his native Lydia.

Sostratos gave the wine merchant his money, each mina in its own leather sack. "Thank you, young fellow," Aristagoras said, smugly dipping his head as he accepted the last pound of silver. "All I can say is, it's a good thing your cousin came along when he did, or you'd be sailing without my fine Ariousian."

"No doubt, sir," Sostratos replied, as ostentatiously polite as a Phoenician. "And, in that case, you'd be sitting in your house without our fine Rhodian drakhmai."

"Is that a joke?" Aristagoras demanded. "Are you trying to be funny with me?"

"Not at all," Sostratos said. If Menedemos was any judge, his cousin was trying not to kill the wine seller. "All I'm trying to do is tell the truth."

"You'll never make a trader that way," Aristagoras said. "Hail." He turned his back and walked down the wharf and into Khios. Menedemos could hear the silver clinking in the sacks almost until the wine merchant reached solid ground.

"May Athana turn him into a spider, as she did with Arakhne," Sostratos ground out. "She'd have an easier time of it with Aristagoras, because he's already halfway there." He was quivering with fury; Menedemos didn't think he'd ever seen his cousin so angry. He'd even let his dialect slip, calling the goddess Athana in broad Doric rather than speaking in the half-Attic style he usually used.

"Easy, there," Menedemos said, and reached up to put a hand on Sostratos' shoulder. Sostratos shook him off. Menedemos' cousin was bigger than he, but Menedemos could usually count on his strength and grace to give him an edge. Not this time. In Sostratos' fury, he might lash out wildly at the least little thing, and might not care about consequences till much too late. "Easy there," Menedemos repeated, as if gentling a spooked horse. "If you let him get under your skin, he's won."

In a deadly voice, Sostratos said, "I shall bind Aristagoras and his possessions and his thoughts. May he become hateful to his friends. I bind him under empty Tartaros in cruel bonds, and with the aide of Hekate under the earth and the Furies who drive men mad. So may it be."

Menedemos stared at his cousin as if he'd never seen him before. Calm, rational, mild-mannered Sostratos, ripping loose with a curse that would have chilled a Thessalian witch? All the sailors were staring at him, too. Several of the men closest to him edged away. They'd thought Sostratos mild-mannered, too, mild-mannered and ineffectual. But if he could call a curse like that down on a merchant's head, who was to say he couldn't also call its like down on one of them?

Rather nervously, Diokles said, "That was quite . . . something." He fingered his ring.

Sostratos blinked. The flush of fury faded from his cheeks. He looked like a man whose fierce fever had just broken. And when he laughed, he sounded like himself, not the savage stranger who seemed to have seized him for a moment. "It was, wasn't it?" he said.

"Are you . . . all right now?" Menedemos asked, and heard the caution in his own voice.

Sostratos considered that with his usual gravity. At last, he tossed his head. "All right? No. I won't be all right till Khios goes down under the horizon - and if it went down under the waves, I wouldn't shed a tear. But I'm . . . not mad any more, I don't think." He plucked at his beard, the picture of bemusement. "That was very strange. If he'd stayed here even another moment, I would have killed him."

"I noticed," Menedemos said dryly.

"I have to think about that," Sostratos said.

Diokles nudged Menedemos. Lost in thought, Sostratos didn't notice. The oarmaster said, "What we have to do is get out of here, skipper. I don't think anybody but us heard him, but I could be wrong."

"That's . . . probably not the worst idea I ever heard," Menedemos agreed. He raised his voice: "Bring in the lines. Bring in the gangplank. Man the oars. We've got what we came for, and we don't need to hang around any more."

None of the sailors argued with him. By the way they leaped to obey, they might have been thinking along with Diokles and wanted to get out of Khios while they still had the chance. The Aphrodite left the harbor in a hurry, almost as if several of Antigonos' war galleys were in hot pursuit. But the war galleys stayed snug and dry in their sheds, as they usually did when not on patrol.

Once out in the channel between Khios and the mainland, Menedemos swung the akatos south. "Lower the sail," he said. Again, the sailors hurried to follow his order. This time, escape wasn't on their minds. They'd rowed every digit of the way from Knidos up to Khios. Now the wind would do the work for them. The northerly breeze filled the sail. Running before it, the Aphrodite scudded over the waves. Her motion was different, smoother, now that she no longer fought them.

But that motion wasn't quite what it might have been. "Sostratos!" Menedemos called.

His cousin was making sure one of the peahens didn't do anything more than usually birdbrained. Not taking his eyes off the peafowl for a moment, he answered, "Yes? What is it?"

"Get the bird back in its cage," Menedemos said. "Then I'm going to ask you to shift those amphorai we got from Aristagoras farther toward the stern. I don't like her trim - she's down by the bow just a bit." He held his thumb and forefinger together to show he didn't mean much.

"Seems all right to me," Sostratos said, but then, before Menedemos could get angry, he went on, "You're the skipper, so it will be however it suits you." He chivvied the peahen forward and actually succeeded in chasing it into its cage without having to net it first.

That done, he told off several sailors to move the heavy jars of wine back toward the poop deck. He had plenty from whom to choose; with the sail sweeping the Aphrodite along, the oars went unmanned. Even so, the sailors grumbled. "Aristagoras had slaves lugging these miserable jars," one of them said, "and now we've got to do it."

"If you want to bring your slave along, Leontiskos, he can fetch and carry for you," Menedemos said sweetly.

"If I had one, I would bring him," Leontiskos said. But, seeing that his comrades were laughing at him, he settled down and helped do what needed doing.

"That's much better," Menedemos said when the work was finished. "My thanks to you all." It wasn't much better, but he could feel the difference; the Aphrodite responded to the sail and to the steering oars more readily than she had before.

Sostratos ascended to the poop deck and asked, "Now will you tell me what you plan to do?"

Menedemos considered. "I'll make you a bargain," he said at last. "I will tell you - if you answer a question of mine first."

"Go ahead," Sostratos said. Menedemos noticed that he hadn't promised to answer - he wanted to hear the question first.

Well, if he won't give, he won't get, Menedemos thought. Picking his words with care, he said, "Why did you let Aristagoras make you so angry?"

His cousin's face closed like a slamming door. "Why?" Sostratos echoed. "Isn't that obvious?" His voice showed nothing, either.

"If it were, I wouldn't ask," Menedemos told him.

"No?" Sostratos rolled his eyes, as if to call Menedemos an idiot without saying a word. Remembering how frayed his cousin's temper was, Menedemos fought to hold on to his own. When he didn't rise to the bait, Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth and said, "All right, I'll go through it like a mother teaching her little boy to count on his fingers."

There was another slap, another one Menedemos pretended not to notice. All he said was, "Thank you."

Sostratos stared out into the Aegean, as if that were easier than looking at Menedemos. In a voice Menedemos could barely hear, his cousin said, "That polluted whoremonger told me I'd never make a trader. He told me you were the only reason we made the bargain. He told me I told the truth too much, if you can believe the hubris in that."

"And he was trying to make you angry, and you let him," Menedemos said. "You still haven't told me why."

"Are you deaf? Are you blind?" Sostratos blazed. "Why? Because I was afraid he was right, that's why."

"Oh," Menedemos said. "Listen to me, O cousin of mine: if you let somebody like that get your goat, you're the fool." But Sostratos still stood there looking out to sea, his back as stiff as if he'd been cast from bronze. Menedemos knew he'd spoken the truth, but it wasn't the kind of truth his cousin needed to hear. He tried again: "It's like I told you after we finished the dicker: yes, I was the one who jollied Aristagoras into a deal, but you got Xenophanes moving when he turned stubborn on me. Sometimes one man's way works, sometimes another's."

That was better. Menedemos saw as much at once. Sostratos eased into a more nearly human posture. He actually looked back toward Menedemos as he said, "I suppose so."

"Of course!" Menedemos said heartily - but not too heartily, lest Sostratos see that he was jollying him and get angry again. Someone like Aristagoras was easy to manipulate, because he took flattery as no less than his due. Sostratos didn't. He examined everything to see how it worked, to see where the truth lay. And so, still choosing his words one by one, Menedemos went on, "You'd better believe it - and you'd better come out of your shell - because I'm going to need you every stop we make between here and Italy."

"Out of my shell, eh?" Sostratos hunched up his shoulders and forced his mouth into a tight, narrow line and otherwise did such an excellent imitation of a pond turtle that Menedemos' laughter came altogether unforced. His cousin said, "Now you have to keep your side of the bargain, too."

"Who, me?" Menedemos said. "What bargain?" He saw he'd almost been a better actor than he'd intended; his cousin looked ready to fling him over the rail. He pointed to Sostratos. "Before I answer, tell me what you would do if you were me."

"If I were commanding the Aphrodite, we'd go by way of Corinth," Sostratos said slowly. He scratched his chin. "But that's not what you asked, is it? If I were you, I expect we'd go by way of Cape Tainaron."

Doing his best not to show whether Sostratos was right or not, Menedemos asked, "And why is that?"

"Because you think we'll pick up mercenaries bound for Italy: either to Syracuse to fight against Carthage or to the mainland poleis to hold back the local barbarians," Sostratos answered. "Passengers are pure profit, after all."

"So they are." Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "And that is just what I intend to do, and for your reasons. Take note - you're not useless after all, no matter what anybody says."

"You needn't sound so disappointed," Sostratos said. In a different tone of voice, that would have meant he still felt gloomy. As things were, he sounded more like his usual self. Because he sounded like his usual self, Menedemos could forget about him for a while, as he could forget about a parted line after it was spliced. He could - and he did.

As he passed the southern tip of Khios, he swung the Aphrodite west for the passage across the Aegean. The akatos sailed well enough with the wind on the quarter; at his orders, the sailors swung the yard to take best advantage of it, and also brailed up some of the canvas on the leeward side. "A little more," he called, and they hauled again on the lines that raised the fabric section by section. He waved to show he was satisfied.

First the Asian mainland and then Khios itself slid down below the horizon and out of sight astern. Nothing new appeared ahead, nor would anything till the next day. For the first time on the journey, the Aphrodite sailed out of sight of land. Besides his own ship, Menedemos saw a couple of fishing boats, a leaping dolphin, and a few birds. Other than that, nothing but sun and sky and sea.

Diokles said, "Always seems a little odd, doesn't it, being out here all by our lonesome?"

"It makes me wish there were a better way to guide a ship over the open ocean than steering by the sun and by guess," Menedemos answered.

"I've sailed with some skippers who'd rather cross the open sea by night. They say they steer better by the stars than by the sun," Diokles said.

"I've heard others say the same thing," Menedemos replied. "One of these times, I may try it myself. Not today, though. After a while, I want to raise the sail to the yard, put everyone on the oars, and get in more practice at fighting the ship."

The keleustes rumbled approval, deep down in his throat. "That's a good notion, captain, no two ways about it. It's like most things: the more work we do, the better off we'll be."

"With a sunny day, we can twist and turn however we like and have no trouble picking up our course again later," Menedemos added. "When it's all foggy and overcast, you have a hang of a time figuring out which way's which - have to go by wind and wave, and they can change on you before you know it."

"That's true, by the gods. And in a storm . . ." Diokles rubbed his ring, as if speaking of a storm might make one blow up.

"In a storm, you worry about staying afloat first and everything else later." Remembering his cousin for the first time in a while, Menedemos raised his voice: "In a storm, we'll chuck the peafowl over the side to lighten ship."

"Suits me fine," Sostratos said, "as long as you're the one who explains to our fathers why we did it."

Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic, as if that were a more frightening prospect than a storm. After a little thought, he decided it was. A storm would either blow over or sink him, but Sostratos' father, and especially his own, could keep him miserable for years to come.

"Land ho!" Aristeidas called from the foredeck. Pointing, he went on, "Land off the port bow!"

Sostratos was on the foredeck, too, wrestling a peahen back into her cage. He closed the door behind the squawking bird, slipped the bronze hooks into their eyes, and got to his feet. Shading his eyes with his hand, he peered in the direction the lookout's finger showed. "Your sight is sharper than mine," he said. Not very much later, though, he pointed, too. "No, wait - now I see it there." He turned and called back to the stern: "What island is that?"

At the steering oars, Menedemos only shrugged. "We'll find out when we get a little closer. One of the Kyklades, anyway. I was aiming for Mykonos, but you don't always hit what you aim for when you get out of sight of land."

"If that is Mykonos, we'll see a couple of little islands off to the south and east," Aristeidas told Sostratos. "I mean little islands, not much more than rocks."

"Does anyone live on them?" Sostratos asked.

The lookout shrugged. "Probably - but they aren't places where you'd want to stop and find out, if you know what I mean."

In due course, the little islands did appear. Menedemos seemed as proud of them as if he'd invented them himself. "Is that navigating, or is that navigating?" he crowed when Sostratos came back to the poop deck.

"That's navigating, or else good fortune." Sostratos had been annoyed enough lately that he wanted to annoy his cousin in return.

But, to his own further annoyance, he couldn't. Menedemos just grinned at him and said, "You're right, of course. If you think I'll complain when the gods throw me a little good fortune, you're daft."

That didn't even leave Sostratos any room to quarrel. He said, "We ought to put in at the island and take on water. We're getting low."

"All right." Now Menedemos didn't look quite so happy. After a moment, though, he brightened. "I'll anchor offshore and let them bring it out in boats. That'll be easier and faster than beaching."

"More expensive, too," Sostratos pointed out.

"While we're going out to Italy, we spend money," Menedemos said airily. "When we get there, we make money." That was indeed how things were supposed to work. Menedemos took it for granted that they would work that way. Sostratos was the one who had to make them work that way.

He started to get annoyed all over again, but checked himself. I take it for granted that we'll get to Italy so I can work on seeing that the voyage turns a profit. Menedemos is that one who has to make things work that way.

The Aphrodite anchored off Panormos, on the northern coast of Mykonos. Her arrival at first produced more alarm in the little town than anything else. Only after a good deal of shouting could Menedemos convince the locals he wasn't commanding a pirate ship. "They think everything with oars is full of corsairs," he grumbled.

"Maybe they have reason to think so," Sostratos answered. "If they do, we need to be wary in these waters."

Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. "I suppose so. Well, it's not as if it's something we didn't already know." With obvious relief at changing the subject, he pointed to the town. "Here comes the first boat."

After that first boatman - a fellow who, though only a few years older than Sostratos and Menedemos, had lost most of his hair - delivered water to the Aphrodite and came back unscathed, more islanders came out to the akatos. After a while, Sostratos turned to Diokles. "You must have come here before," he said, and the oarmaster dipped his head. Sostratos went on, "Is it my imagination, or are there a lot of bald men on this island?"

"No, sir, it's not your imagination," Diokles answered. "Haven't you ever heard somebody say, 'bald as a Mykonian'?"

"I don't think so," Sostratos said. "Of course, now I'll probably hear it three times in the next two days. That's how those things seem to work."

"So it is," Diokles said with a chuckle. Sostratos started to say something more, but the keleustes held up a hand. "Hold on a bit, would you? I want to hear what that fellow in the boat is telling the skipper."

Sostratos outranked the oarmaster. Not only that, he was the son of one of the Aphrodite's owners. A lot of men, in such circumstances, would have gone right on talking. Menedemos probably would, Sostratos thought. But he fell silent, not least because he was also curious about what the local had to say.

"That's right," the fellow said to Menedemos. "A ship just about the size of yours. That's one of the reasons we all had the hair stand up on the backs of our necks when you sailed toward town." He had little hair save on the back of his neck - he was bald, too.

"Do you know where she's based?" Menedemos asked.

"Sure don't," the Mykonian answered, tossing his head. "Lots of beaches that'll hold a pirate ship. Plenty of little tiny islands here in the Kyklades, places where nobody lives, or else maybe a goatherd or two. A pirate crew could sail out of one of those and you'd never find it, except maybe by accident."

"You're probably right." Menedemos didn't sound happy about agreeing.

" 'Course I'm right," the bald man said with the sort of certainty only people who haven't traveled very far or done very much can have. He went on, "Plenty for the polluted son of a whore to feast on, too, what with all the ships bringing people to pray or to make offerings to Apollo on holy Delos."

"Ah, Delos. That's right," Menedemos said. Sostratos found himself dipping his head, too. Along with its larger but less important neighbor, Rheneia, Delos - famous for being the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister, Artemis - lay just west of Mykonos. Pirates could easily make a comfortable living preying on the ships that brought pious Hellenes there.

"Since you ain't pirates, you'd be smart to watch out for 'em," the Mykonian said. "Otherwise, you might end up on Delos your own selves - in the slave markets, I mean."

"We'll be careful," Menedemos assured him. The local didn't seem convinced. But he also didn't seem much interested in what happened to a ship full of strangers. With a shrug, he rowed back toward Panormos.

"Well, well," Diokles said. "Isn't that interesting?"

"Interesting, yes." Sostratos did his best to sound as detached as the oarmaster. "It's not as if we didn't know there would be pirates along the way. And we haven't run into this ship yet, whosever it may be."

"If the gods be kind, we won't, either." Diokles rubbed the ring with the image of Herakles Alexikakos. But then a scowl darkened his weathered face. "Of course, if these pirates plunder ships bound for Delos, they don't fear gods or men. Too much of that these days, if anyone cares what I think. Back before so many men called themselves philosophers, most folks respected the gods. They didn't go around stealing from them."

Sostratos bristled at that. He was about to launch into a spirited defense of philosophy and philosophers when Menedemos called, "Raise the anchors! Lower the sail! Let's be away - and everybody keep a sharp eye out for pirates, because there's supposed to be one in the neighborhood."

"I wonder how many of your rowers brought swords aboard," Sostratos said to Diokles.

"There'll be some - don't know how many myself, not offhand," the keleustes said. "Everyone'll have a knife. Belaying pins . . . Did your cousin bring his bow?"

"I don't know," Sostratos answered. "I'm sorry."

Diokles made unhappy clucking noises. "We ought to have at least one aboard. That way, nobody can start shooting at us without us shooting back." He rubbed the ring again. "Maybe I'm worrying about the reflection of a bone, like the dog in the fable. The sea is a big place. Maybe we won't have to worry about these pirates at all. I hope we don't."

As the Aphrodite pulled away from Panormos, Sostratos asked Menedemos, "Do you have your bow? The keleustes is worried about it." He was worried about it, too, but didn't care to admit that to his cousin. Menedemos too often made him pay when he showed anything that looked like weakness.

"I've got it," Menedemos answered. "I hope it's not the only one aboard. What I wish we had is a dart-thrower at the bow, like the ones Ptolemaios and Antigonos' fives carry. That would make a pirate ship sit up and take notice." He sighed. "Of course, we've got nowhere to put it, especially not with the peafowl all over the foredeck, and it'd be heavy enough to ruin the ship's trim. But I still wouldn't mind carrying one, not at times like this."

The Aphrodite sailed through the channel between Mykonos and Tenos, the larger island to the northwest. Delos, which seemed hardly more than a speck of land, lay to port after the akatos cleared Mykonos. The polis of Delos stood on the island's west side. The white stone of the temples gleamed dazzlingly under a warm spring sun.

Several boats went back and forth between Delos and Rheneia; the channel separating the two islands couldn't have been more than four stadia wide. "I wonder who's dying," Sostratos murmured.

"What's that?" Menedemos said.

"I wonder who's dying," Sostratos repeated. "Delos is sacred ground, you know - too sacred to be polluted by death. If somebody's in a bad way there, they take him across the channel to Rheneia to finish the job. They do the same for women in childbirth, too."

"Childbirth's just about as bad as dying when it comes to pollution," Diokles said.

Menedemos dipped his head. "Women's things are a strange business. I thank the gods every day for making me a man." Neither Sostratos nor the oarmaster disagreed with him.

A tubby sailing ship approaching Delos from the northwest sheered off sharply when her crew spied the long, lean shape of the Aphrodite. Diokles grunted laughter. "If we were pirates, we'd have them for supper," he said.

Sostratos' cousin steered the merchant galley south past Rheneia's western coast, which held a town even smaller and less prepossessing than Mykonos' Panormos. Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Poor Rheneia," he said, "always running second behind its little neighbor. That must be hard."

You wouldn't know, would you? Sostratos thought. He almost said it out loud, but ended up keeping quiet. What was the use? Menedemos might not even realize what he was talking about.

Far to the south, beyond Rheneia, clouds swirled above Paros, twisting into all sorts of improbable patterns. Sostratos merely admired their beauty. To Diokles, the view of the island helped define the Aphrodite's route. "One nice thing about the Kyklades," the keleustes said. "There's always an island or two on the horizon somewhere, so you can figure out where you are."

"It's a lot easier than navigating out of sight of land," Menedemos agreed.

He had lynx-eyed Aristeidas at the bow as a lookout, but it was one of the sailors one the starboard side who sang out, "Sail ho!" and pointed west.

As Sostratos had when Aristeidas sighted Mykonos, he peered in the direction in which the sailor pointed. This time, he scratched his head and said, "I don't see anything."

"It's there," the man insisted. After a moment, a couple of other sailors added loud - and alarmed - agreement. Sostratos kept peering. He knuckled his eyes, for he kept on seeing nothing.

From the poop, Menedemos shouted, "All men to the oars! Diokles, give us a lively beat. We'll see if we can't show the polluted robbers our heels."

Sailors rushed to their benches. A couple of them trod on Sostratos' toes as they hurried past. He cursed, not from pain but from frustration: he still couldn't see the sail that had everyone else jumping like chickpeas on a hot griddle. He rubbed his eyes again. People said reading could make you shortsighted. Sostratos had never believed that. His vision, if not of the very best like Aristeidas', had always been good enough. Now he began to wonder.

And then, just as the Aphrodite, propelled now by sail and oars, seemed to gather herself and leap forward over the wine-dark water of the Aegean, he did spy the sail and understood at once why he hadn't seen it earlier. He'd been looking for a white square of linen against the blue sky. This sail, though, was blue itself, making it harder to see at any distance.

Now he pointed."There's the pirate," he called back to Menedemos.

"There's a pirate, anyhow," his cousin agreed. "Whether that's the pirate or not, the one the fellow on Mykonos talked about, I don't know and I don't care. But no honest skipper makes his sail into a chameleon."

"Not just his sail." Now that Sostratos knew where to look, he had much less trouble spying the other ship. "His hull's painted the color of the sea, too."

"If you're going to do those things, you don't usually do them by halves," Menedemos said. He turned to Diokles. "Up the stroke, keleustes. They're gaining on us."

"Skipper, we can't row any harder than what we're doing," the oarmaster answered. "In fact, we won't be able to hold this sprint very long."

Menedemos cursed. So did Sostratos, all over again. Sure enough, the pirate ship was visibly bigger than when he'd first spotted it. As did those of the Aphrodite, its oars rose and fell, rose and fell, in smooth rhythm, digging into the water and then breaking free once more. The pirates were stroking no more rapidly than the Aphrodite's crew, but they had a faster ship: they didn't have to worry about hauling cargo, only fighting men.

It hardly seemed fair, Sostratos thought as he counted the oars on the pirate's port side, which he could see better than the starboard as her captain steered on a course that converged with the Aphrodite's. He counted the oars, muttered to himself, and then counted them again. "Menedemos!" he called, his voice rising nearly to a shout. "Menedemos!"

"What is it?" His cousin, understandably, sounded harried. "By the gods, it had better be something good, if you're bothering me at a time like this."

"I think so," Sostratos answered. "If you take a long look at that pirate ship, you'll see she's just a triakonter - she's got fifteen oars on a side, and that makes thirty altogether."

"What?" Menedemos sounded astonished. When he saw the pirate ship, all he'd tried to do was get away, as any skipper would have done. He hadn't bothered taking its measure. Now he did, and started cursing all over again. "We've got more men than he does." He pulled back on the tiller to one steering oar and forward on the other, so that the Aphrodite swung sharply toward the pirate ship. The shout he let out was in much harsher, broader Doric than he usually spoke: "Now let's git him!"

Even as the akatos turned toward the triakonter, Menedemos called more orders. Up went the sail, brailed tight against the yard. Aboard a war galley, the sail and the mast would have been stowed away so as not to interfere with the attack run, which always went in under oar power alone. Menedemos couldn't do that in the Aphrodite, but he did the next best thing.

Sostratos kept his eye on the pirate ship. How many times had potential prey turned on the robbers and killers and slavers that green-blue hull carried? Were they ready to fight? If they were, and if they wanted to do it ship against ship and not man against man, they had a chance, and probably a good one: that triakonter was both faster and more maneuverable than the Aphrodite.

Closer and closer the two galleys drew. Faint across the water, Sostratos heard shouts aboard the pirate ship. Several men stood on its little raised poop deck. By the way they waved their hands and shook their fists, they were arguing about what to do next.

When the ships were only a couple of stadia apart, the pirate suddenly broke off his own attack run, swinging away toward the southwest. Staying aggressive, Menedemos went right after him. But the smaller, leaner ship was now running straight before the wind, and she had a better turn of speed than the merchant galley. Little by little, she pulled away.

"Can I ease the men back, skipper?" Diokles asked. "We're not going to catch those bastards no matter how hard we pull."

"Go ahead," Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster slowed the rhythm of his mallet on bronze. The men sensed the relaxation at once. They let out a great cheer. Some of them took one hand off their oars to wave to Menedemos, and he took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller for a moment to wave back. "Thanks, boys," he called. "I guess those villains didn't know who they were messing with when they tried to mess with us, did they?"

The sailors cheered louder than ever. Menedemos grinned, basking in the praise. Sostratos wondered how he would respond if people cheered him like that. Then he wondered what he could do to make people cheer him like that. He was the one who'd noticed the pirate ship was only a triakonter. Nobody else had even thought to look.

But he'd just been accurate. Menedemos was the one who'd made the bold, unexpected move, the move anybody could see had saved the ship. He got the credit. He knew how to get the credit, and he knew what to do with it once he had it.

Me? Sostratos thought. I'm a good toikharkhos, is what I am. He might wish he were bold, but he wasn't. Well, the world needs reliable men, too. He'd told himself that a good many times. It was, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, true. It was also, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, small consolation.

"Did you see those polluted bastards run? Do you see those polluted bastards run?" Excitement still crackled in Menedemos' voice. He pointed ahead. Sure enough, the pirate ship seemed to shrink every moment.

"Many good-byes to them," Sostratos said as he mounted to the poop deck. "May they try to outrun a trireme next, or one of Ptolemaios' fives."

His cousin dipped his head. "That would be sweet. I wouldn't mind seeing every pirate in the Inner Sea sold to the mines, or else given over to the executioner." He reached up and slapped Sostratos on the shoulder. "That was clever of you, seeing he wasn't so big as he wanted us to think."

"Thanks," Sostratos said, and then, "Do we really have to visit Cape Tainaron? More pirates there than you'll find here in the middle of the Aegean. The only real difference between a pirate and a mercenary is that a mercenary's got someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him, while a pirate has to make his own living."

"There's one other difference," Menedemos said. "A mercenary who's looking for someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him will pay us to take him over to Italy. I like that difference. It makes us money."

"So it does," Sostratos said. "But it also makes us trouble, or it can. Those who run too hard after money often end up regretting it."

"And those who don't run hard enough after it often end up hungry," Menedemos replied. "We've been through this before. I'm not going to change my mind. I say the profit is worth the risk, and we're going on to Tainaron."

He was the captain. He had the right to make such choices. Sostratos asked a rather different question: "Suppose that pirate ship had been a pentekonter or a hemiolia, the way so many of them are. Would you still have turned toward it?"

"I don't know. I might have," Menedemos said. "Most pirates don't want a sea fight. What they want is an easy victim. Sometimes, if you show you're ready to give them a battle, you don't have to."

"Sometimes," Sostratos said. But his cousin had a point. Pirates were no more enamored of hard, dangerous work than anybody else. After a moment, another thought struck Sostratos. "Maybe we ought to paint our hull and dye our sail, too. If we look like a pirate ourselves, the other pirates won't bother us."

He'd meant it as a joke, and his cousin did laugh. A moment later, though, Menedemos said. "That's a long way from the worst idea I ever heard. The only thing wrong with it is, we'd never get an honest cargo again if we sailed into a harbor looking as if we didn't want anybody more than a plethron off to be able to see us."

"I suppose not," Sostratos said. "And then, instead of worrying about pirates all the time, we'd have to worry about real navies chasing us."

"True." Menedemos laughed again, but with little real mirth this time. "That might be a good bargain. By all the signs, there are more pirates running around loose than real warships chasing them."

Sostratos sighed. "We live in troubled times."

"Do you think they'll get better any time soon?" Menedemos asked. With another sigh, Sostratos tossed his head.