The Gryphon's Skull

3

Sostratos had already checked everything aboard the Aphrodite three different times. That didn't keep him from checking things once more. There was the gryphon's skull, securely wrapped in canvas and stowed near the poop. All they were waiting for was a few more sailors and some fresh water. “Then,” Sostratos said, as if the old, old bone could understand, “people will try to figure out what to make of you.”

From his station on the raised poop deck, Menedemos called, “Are you talking to that polluted thing? You need a hetaira to take your mind off what you're doing.”

“Screwing isn't the answer to everything,” Sostratos said with dignity.

“If it isn't, you tell me what is,” his cousin retorted.

Before Sostratos could reply—and, very likely, before the argument could heat up-—a man standing on the pier said, “Hail.”

“Hail,” Sostratos and Menedemos said together. Even as Menedemos asked, “What can we do for you?” Sostratos found himself disliking the newcomer on sight. The fellow was close to forty, medium-sized, handsome, well built, and carried himself like an athlete. Jealous? Me? Sostratos thought, and then, Well, maybe a little.

“I hear you're sailing north and west,” the stranger said. “Will you be putting in at Miletos?” He had an odd accent, basically Doric but with a hissing, sneezy overlay. He's spent a lot of time in Lykia, Sostratos thought.

“Hadn't planned to,” Sostratos said blandly, “but I might.”

The man on the quay dipped his head. “It's like that, is it? What's your fare, then?”

Menedemos flicked Sostratos a glance. As toikharkhos, Sostratos had the job of charging as much as the passenger could bear to pay. Instead of answering directly, he asked a question of his own: “What's your name, O best one?”

“Me? I'm Euxenides of Phaselis,” the stranger replied.

That made Menedemos blink. Sostratos smiled to himself. The fellow's accent and his bearing had made Sostratos think that was who he was. And Antigonos held Miletos. One of his officers might well want to go there. Sostratos enjoyed being right no less than any other man. He said, “Perhaps you should know: it's almost certain we will put in at Kos.”

Kos was Ptolemaios' chief base in the Aegean. Euxenides asked, “Are you saying you'd betray me there? That's not how neutrals should behave.”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Sostratos replied. “But you'd best remember, we'll have a big crew on board—all our rowers. They will go into the taverns, and they will gossip. I don't think anyone could stop them,”

“And Ptolemaios' men will have ears around to hear such things,” Euxenides finished for him. Sostratos dipped his head. Euxenides shrugged. “Chance I take. I'm not of a rank to make it likely that anyone much would have heard of me. How much for my passage? You still haven't said.”

“To Miletos?” Sostratos plucked at his beard, considering. “Twenty drakhmai should do it.”

“That's outrageous!” Euxenides exclaimed.

Most of the time, Sostratos would have asked half as much, and might have let himself be haggled down from there. Now he just shrugged and answered, “I have two questions for you, O marvelous one. First, when do you think another ship will sail from Rhodes to Miletos? And second, don't you think a trip to Miletos puts us in danger of ending up in the middle of a sea fight between Antigonos' ships and Ptolemaios'?”

Euxenides looked around the great harbor, as if hoping to find another ship on the point of sailing. There weren't more than a handful of akatoi in port, though, and he would have a long, slow journey on a round ship that had to tack its way up to Miletos against the prevailing northerly winds.

With a scowl, he said, “You're enjoying this, aren't you?”

“No one goes into business intending to lose money,” Sostratos replied.

“Twenty drakhmai? Pheu!”Euxenides sounded thoroughly disgusted. But he said, “All right, twenty it is. When do you sail?”

“Soon, I hope,” Sostratos said; as far as he was concerned, they'd already stayed in Rhodes much too long. He looked toward Menedemos. Being captain, his cousin had the last word in such things.

“Tomorrow, I hope,” Menedemos said. “We'll share our water, but you do know you'll have to bring your own food and wine?”

“Oh, yes. I've traveled by sea a good many times before,” Euxenides replied. “If we have to spend a night on the water, I expect I'll sleep on the foredeck.”

I wonder if it stilt stinks of peafowl dung when you lie down on it, Sostratos thought. He didn't say that to Antigonos' officer. All he said, was, “That's right.”

“I'll be here in the morning, then.” Euxenides went off down the pier.

“Twenty drakhmai,” Menedemos said. “That's more than I thought you'd squeeze out of him. Euge!”

“Thanks,” Sostratos said. “He wants to get back to Antigonos, and probably to tell him everything he saw of Ptolemaios' fleet and his army.”

“No doubt,” Menedemos agreed. “He'll likely tell him everything he's seen of Rhodes, too.”

“I hadn't thought of that.” Sostratos’ eyes went to the moles protecting the great harbor from the sea, and to the walls and towers fortifying them. “Maybe we shouldn't take him.”

“I think it's all right,” his cousin said. “Our works aren't exactly secret. Antigonos is bound to know about them about as well as our generals do.”

That made more sense than Sostratos wanted to admit, “I don't much care for the side trip, though.”

Menedemos laughed at him. “Of course you don't, my dear. It means you take a day or two longer to get to Athens. Believe me, nobody in Miletos will steal the gryphon's skull.”

And Sostratos couldn't very well argue with that, either. Back before the Persians came, the polis was a hotbed of philosophy; Herodotos said Thales of Miletos had been the first man to predict an eclipse of the sun, an eclipse that also awed the warring Lydians and Medes to make peace with each other. Having seen an eclipse himself the year before, Sostratos understood how one might awe men into almost anything. But these past couple of hundred years, Miletos had been just another city.

Since he couldn't directly disagree, he shifted his ground: “Aren't you curious to see what the philosophers will make of the skull and what they'll be able to learn about gryphons from it?”

“Oh, a little,” Menedemos answered. “What I'm really curious about, though, is how much they'll pay us, and if they'll pay us.”

“The only way to find out is to get to Athens,” Sostratos said. “Not Kos. Not Miletos. Athens.”

“We're sailing tomorrow. Can you be patient that long?”

“I've been patient long enough. I want to know.”

“You sound like me when I'm chasing a pretty girl.”

“That's ridic—” Sostratos broke off. It wasn't ridiculous. It was, when you got down to it, a pretty fair comparison. He did chase knowledge as ardently as his cousin chased women. “Philosophy doesn't have a husband to shove a radish up my arse if he catches me in bed with her.”

“Philosophy won't suck you off, either,” Menedemos retorted. Sostratos' cheeks got hot. He couldn't even complain, not when he'd been crude first. Menedemos laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don't you worry about a thing, my dear. We really do sail tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Sostratos echoed dreamily.

“And believe me,” his cousin added, “I'm as glad to be going as you are.” Sostratos heard the truth in his voice. For the life of him, though, he couldn't figure out why it was there.

If it wouldn't have made people talk, Menedemos would have spent his last night in Rhodes wrapped in his himation on the Aphrodite's poop deck. He would, indeed, have spent most of his nights thus. But someone might have figured out why he was doing so, and gossip with truth behind it was the last thing he wanted.

And so, when he went downstairs before dawn to head for Sostratos' house next door and then down to the harbor, he found Baukis already in the courtyard with some bread and a cup of wine from the kitchen. “Hail,” he said. He couldn't ignore her. She would complain to his father—and she'd have reason—which would only touch off more trouble.

“Hail,” she answered gravely. “A safe trip to you. Come back as soon as you can, and with plenty of silver.”

“Thanks.” Menedemos turned toward the kitchen himself. “I'm going to get some breakfast, too, to eat on the way down to the ship.”

She dipped her head. Everything she did, it seemed, was serious to the point of solemnity. What would she be like, kindled and wanton? Menedemos wondered. Would she burn all the hotter because she's so quiet the rest of the time? He all but fled into the kitchen, running from his own thoughts.

He would have stayed in there, too, hoping she would go back upstairs, but the Aphrodite wouldn't wait. And if he didn't go get Sostratos, Sostratos would come get him. Out he went, a chunk of bread in his hand.

Baukis remained, still busy with her own breakfast. “Be careful,” she told Menedemos. “All the things we talked about before—they all look like they're coming true. And they're all bad for Rhodes, and they're all bad for trade.”

“I know.” Menedemos tore into the bread, eating as fast as he could. His mouth full, he went on, “But I'll come back. I have to. If I didn't, Father wouldn't have anyone to yell at.”

Baukis drew in a sharp breath. Menedemos realized he hadn't criticized his father where she could hear before. When he'd complained about Philodemos, it had always been to Sostratos ... till now. And complaining about a man to the man's wife was not the ideal way to enlist her sympathy.

She said, “He wants the most for you, from you. Anything less makes him angry.”

And he picks the worst possible ways to try to get it, Menedemos thought. But he didn't say that to Baukis. He stuffed the last of the bread into his mouth, chewed quickly, and swallowed. It scraped down his throat like a boulder. “I'd better go,” he said.

Baukis dipped her head. “Safe journey,” she repeated. “Swift journey, too.”

She got to her feet. He might have hugged her. She was his stepmother. Oh, yes, he jeered at himself. And what would you do if Father came downstairs and saw that? You'd need to sail away and never come home. He'd never had such attacks of nerves pursuing other men's wives in other towns. He headed for the doorway at something close to a run. Whenever he went away from Baukis, he felt as if he'd just been routed.

Getting out into the street was a relief. Getting out onto the open sea a thousand stadia from Rhodes would be a bigger one. He closed the door behind him, then turned to go next door and gather up Sostratos. He took a step—and almost ran into his cousin.

“Hail,” Sostratos said. “You don't need to jump like that. I was just coming to get you.”

“I was just going to get you,” Menedemos answered, “I didn't hear your footsteps.” That wasn't surprising; neither of them wore shoes. Menedemos went on, “Now that we've got each other, let's head down to the ship. What do you bet that Euxenides fellow will be waiting on the quay?”

“I have better things to do than waste my money,” Sostratos said. “Have you got the emeralds?”

Menedemos tapped a little leather sack dangling from the belt that confined his tunic at the waist. “They're here, all but the one Father bought for his new wife.” He kept his voice down, not wanting his words to travel back to Baukis; the stone was still at the jeweler's.

“Pity he decided to do that. It's one fewer we can sell.” Sostratos spread his hands. “What can you do, though?”

“Not much,” Menedemos answered. Sostratos didn't know he was the one who'd suggested giving the emerald to his father, and he wasn't about to tell him. “Come on. Let's go.”

Mnesipolis was already banging away when they walked by the smithy. He waved, hammer in hand. They were as familiar to him as he was to them.

“Give him a limp and he'd make a good Hephaistos,” Menedemos remarked.

“Why, so he would,” Sostratos said. “There's a game: who of the people we know best matches the Olympians?” He eyed Menedemos. “Eh, wingfooted Hermes?”

Menedemos strutted with pride for a few paces. He was a formidable sprinter, even if he hadn't been quite fast enough to go to the Olympic Games to run for Rhodes. He hadn't thought of his chance remark as the start for a game, but was quick to fall in with it: “We've got Poseidon as keleustes.”

“So we do,” Sostratos said. “And Aristeidas will do for all-seeing Argos.”

They went past Agathippos the banker's still playing the game. Menedemos said, “I know who gray-eyed Athene would be, too.”

“Who?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos pointed at him. “You.”

“Me? Athana?” His cousin was so surprised, the goddess' name came out in a broad Doric drawl he hardly ever used. “You're out of your mind. I've got a beard, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“It's the theater, my dear,” Menedemos said airily. “Actors play all the female roles. With your face behind a mask, no one would care, for you've got the quick-darting mind the part needs.”

“Thanks very much,” Sostratos said, and kissed him on the cheek. “I don't think anyone has ever said anything kinder about me.”

“I've never denied you have a clever mind, the cleverest I know,” Menedemos replied. But if he gave Sostratos two undiluted compliments in a row, his cousin might die from the shock, so he added, “Now if you only had the good sense the gods gave a gecko . ..”

“You're a fine one to talk,” Sostratos shot back. “You're the one who jumps out of second-story windows to get away from a husband home too soon.”

“And you're the one who's been mooning over an old skull as if it were a young hetaira,” Menedemos said. They chaffed each other all the way down to the harbor. Menedemos hurried down toward the Aphrodite. “Euxenides had better not keep us waiting. I want to get out on the open sea again.”

“So do I.I want to sail for Athens.” Sostratos pointed ahead. “Isn't that the man himself, already on the foredeck? You were right, up by our houses.”

“Dip me in dung if it's not, and so I was,” Menedemos said. “Good for him. I don't expect he got out of Phaselis and Xanthos by being late to his ship. And now he'll get out of Rhodes, too.” He started up the pitch-smeared planks of the pier that led out to the akatos, calling, “Ahoy, the Aphrodite!”

Diokles gave answer in his raspy bass: “Ahoy, skipper! Passenger's already aboard.”

“Yes, we saw him,” Menedemos said. “Do we have all the rowers?”

“All but one,” the oarmaster replied. “No sign of Teleutas yet.”

Menederaos eyed the sun, which had just climbed up out of the sea. “We'll give him a little while—half an hour, maybe. If he's not here by then, we'll hire one of the harbor loungers, and many goodbyes to him. Rhodes has plenty of men who know how to pull an oar.”

“That's how we got Teleutas a year ago,” Sostratos said. “He's a funny one. He will work if you put him to it, but to him getting paid is the only part of the job that really matters.”

“I still think he ran away in the market square in Kallipolis, too,” Menedemos said. “He came back with more sailors so fast, I couldn't really call him on it, but I think he left us in the lurch. I wouldn't be sorry to see somebody else on his bench.”

He walked down the gangplank and onto the Aphrodite's poop deck. Standing between the steering oars, even with the ship still tethered to the pier, was in its own way almost as satisfying as lying between a woman's legs.

Fishing boats made their way out of the great harbor and onto the waters of the Aegean. Gulls followed them overhead like gleaners in the fields, knowing the pickings would be good. Menedemos drummed his fingers on the steering-oar tillers and gauged the creeping shadows. If he doesn't get here soon. I will sail without him.

Teleutas came up the pier and aboard the Aphrodite just before Menedemos set about replacing him. “By the dog of Egypt, where have you been?” Menederaos snapped.

The rower flinched. “Sorry, skipper,” he said with a placating gesture. He kept his own voice low and soft. He also squinted, as if even the early-morning light was too bright to suit his eyes.

“You knew we were going out this morning,” Menederaos said. “Why did you get drunk last night?”

“I didn't mean to,” Teleutas answered. “It just sort of . . happened.” He gave Menedemos a sickly, ingratiating smile.

Menedemos wasn't about to let himself be appeased so readily. “Go to your oar,” he said. “I hope you hurt as much as you deserve all day long.” That hangdog smile still on his face, Teleutas hurried off the raised poop deck and down into the waist of the merchant galley.

“Cast off!” Diokles called. Once the lines that had moored the Aphrodite to the quay were aboard, the keleustes smote his little bronze square. “Back oars! “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The akatos slid away from the pier.

Once Menedemos had room to do so, he swung the ship about till her bow pointed out toward the mouth of the harbor. But he hadn't even passed out beyond the moles before he said, “I want everybody to do lookout duty on this voyage. It's not just pirates we have to be careful of—it's Antigonos' war fleet, and Ptolemaios', too. If you see anything, sing out. You may be saving all of our necks, including your own,”

“We're Rhodians, and neutrals,” Sostratos added. “That may help us in case of trouble, because neither side much wants to offend our polis. But some captains may not care about that. We'd rather not take the chance if we don't have to.”

As it had a few days before, the motion of the waves changed as soon as the akatos left the sheltered waters of the great harbor. Menedemos smiled. He liked the livelier feel to the ship. Sostratos looked less happy. He would have preferred the sea as quiescent as the land. Menedemos glanced toward crapulent Teleutas. The rower had already gone a delicate green. Too bad, Menedemos thought. It's his own foolish fault.

“Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” Clang! Clang! Diokles beat out the stroke. Once they were outside the harbor, Diokles cut the rowing crew down to eight men on each side. He left Teleutas at his oar. The rower sent him a look of appeal. He ignored it.

Euxenides of Phaselis made his way back to the stair that led up to the poop. “May I come up?” he asked politely. Menedemos dipped his head, and Euxenides joined him and Dioldes. The passenger said, “You've got a good crew here.”

He spoke in tones of professional appraisal. “Thanks,” Menedemos answered. “We're Rhodians, remember. We go to sea a lot.” He pointed to the mouth of the naval harbor, which lay just northwest of the great harbor. A trireme was coming out, all three banks of oars manned, each stroke enviably smooth. Not lifting his hands from the steering oars, Menedemos pointed toward it with a thrust of his chin. “Most of my men have rowed in one of those, or else in a five.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” Euxenides said. “Now that I do, though, I see that you could put together a formidable little fleet.”

“Little?” Menedemos said indignantly. But the indignation didn't last. Antigonos had all of Anatolia to draw upon, Ptolemaios the endless wealth of Egypt. Next to theirs, Rhodes' fleet would be small. Too small? Menedemos wondered. He hoped he'd never have to find out.

Sostratos stood on the Aphrodite's little raised foredeck, peering north and west as if he expected to see Cape Sounion, the headland that announced one was coming up on Athens, appear over the horizon at any moment. Part of him did. Most of him, the rational part, knew perfectly well that Athens lay some days' journey from Rhodes, and that trading on the way would further delay the akatos' arrival. But the childlike part that never quite dies in any man insisted Cape Sounion would be there because he so badly wanted it to be there. And so he kept on looking.

The wind blew hard and steady out of the northeast—if anything, a little more out of the east than usual. The sailors had swung the yard from the starboard bow back toward the portside rear to take best advantage of it. The big square sail, full of the brisk breeze, pulled the Aphrodite along. Sostratos eyed the creamy wake thrown back from the ram and the cutwater. She was going about as fast as she could by sail alone.

Euxenides of Phaselis came up to stand not far from Sostratos. The leather sack that held his food and whatever meager belongings he owned lay on the foredeck. Like any sensible passenger, he kept an eye on it.

“Hail,” he said.

“Hail,” Sostratos echoed, a bit embarrassed; he probably should have spoken first. But his mind had been elsewhere.

Euxenides pointed, “What's that island there, off to the right?” The way he said it proved to Sostratos that, even if he'd traveled by sea, he was not a naval officer,

“That's Syme,” Sostratos answered. “We stopped there our first night out of Rhodes last year. But with the breeze so steady, we'll go farther today. I don't know whether Menedemos will make for Knidos”—he pointed, too, toward the end of the long finger of mainland north of Syme—”or whether he'll put in somewhere on Telos.” He pointed again, this time toward the island dead ahead.

“I was in Knidos for a little while, three years ago I think it was, when Antigonos took Karia away from that traitor, Asandros,” Euxenides said. “Telos I don't know at all. What's there?”

“Nothing much,” Sostratos answered. “No polis. A few herders. A few farmers—not many, for it's not a well-watered island. But sometimes a quiet place where you can beach yourself and let your ship's timbers dry for a night is nothing to sneeze at.”

Euxenides drummed his fingers on the rail, “I want to get to Miletos. I need to get to Miletos.”

“I want to get to Athens,” Sostratos said with a smile. “I need to get to Athens. And I will—eventually.”

“Sometimes 'eventually' isn't fast enough,” Euxenides said.

“Well, best one, you won't get from Rhodes to Miletos any faster than you will in the Aphrodite,”“ Sostratos said.

“Yes, I found that out,” Euxenides told him. He drummed his fingers some more. He might not be able to help it, but that didn't make him happy about it. He looked due north as avidly as Sostratos looked northwest.

As usual, most of the fishing boats whose crewmen saw the Aphrodite fled from her, fearing she was a pirate. That made the rowers laugh. It made Sostratos sad. Here close to Rhodes, even, men feared sea raiders. He feared sea raiders himself, as a matter of fact; he just knew he wasn't one of their number.

Menedemos held the merchant galley steady on a westerly course, and didn't swing north toward Knidos. Sostratos walked back to the stern. “You're going to put in on Telos?” he asked.

His cousin dipped his head. “That's right. We're not heavily laden, so I'll beach her for the night. It'll be good for the planking, and Telos is about as safe a place to put in as any under the sun.”

“True enough,” Sostratos said. “It hasn't got enough people to make up a decent-sized band of robbers.”

“Just what I was thinking. And this splendid breeze is taking us straight there,” Menedemos said. “Only drawback I can see is that it'll be a longer pull to Kos tomorrow, and the men will have to do more rowing. But we're still early in the season and getting the crew beaten in, so even that won't be so bad.”

Diokles chuckled. “Easy for you to say, skipper. You're not one of the horn-handed bastards pulling an oar.”

“I know how,” Menedemos said. “Sostratos and I both know how, as a matter of fact. Our fathers made sure we do.” He took his hands off the steering-oar tillers to show their palms. “And I've got calluses of my own.”

Sostratos looked down at the palms of his own hands. They were fairly smooth and soft; he would blister if he ever had to do any rowing. The only real callus he had was one just above the first knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand: a callus showing where a pen or a stylus spent a lot of time. But Menedemos was right—he did know how.

The wind held. Telos drew near, the sun dropping down the sky towards it. The island was long and thin and curved, rather like a strigil lying in the water. Only a couple of fishing boats bobbed offshore; they were plenty to bring home opson for the inhabitants of the village near the north coast that was Telos' largest settlement.

A stretch of beach in front of the village was the most common spot for ships to put in, but Menedemos sailed past it. “Why did you do that?” Sostratos asked.

“Something one of the sailors told me while you were on the fore-deck,” his cousin answered. “Once we get past this rocky stretch here”—he waved at the forbidding coastline they were passing— “there's another good bit of beach, one where sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. They ought to make good eating. We can boil up a mess of them and have opson for the whole crew.”

“Turtle eggs, eh?” Sostratos felt the lure of the exotic. “I've never tried them. Lead on, O best one.” He patted his stomach. “It's been a long time since bread and wine back on Rhodes.”

“Hasn't it just?” Menedemos agreed.

From the bow, Aristeidas pointed ahead and to port. “There's the beach, skipper!” the sharp-eyed sailor sang out.

“Good,” Menedemos said, and then started calling out orders: “Brail the sail up to the yard! Rowers every other bench! Come on— move faster there. Do it as if you had pirates breathing down your neck.”

To Sostratos, the men seemed to be moving quite fast enough, but Menedemos drove them like the commander of a trireme. The sailors didn't grumble. They knew they would have to be able to work together without thinking if they ever did need to flee pirates or fight them.

This length of beach was considerably shorter than the one near the village. Peering toward it, Sostratos exclaimed in excitement: “That fellow was right! I just saw a turtle crawling back into the sea.”

Whistling, his cousin swung the ship so that her stern pointed toward the beach and her bow out to sea. A couple of men got into the boat she towed and rowed it ashore. “Back oars!” Diokles called. The rowers reversed their stroke. After the Aphrodite beached, pushing her into the sea again come morning would be easier bow-first.

Menedemos kept stealing glances back over his shoulder at the beach as the Aphrodite covered the last couple of plethra. Plovers scurrying along the sand took to the air when the merchant galley drew too close to suit them. “That's fine,” Menedemos said, “just fine. Keep it going and—”

A grinding, scraping noise interrupted him. “What's that?” Sostratos asked at the same time as his cousin exclaimed in surprise and dismay. “Have we struck a rock?” It didn't feel like that, and the akatos still moved backwards through the water.

“We haven't,” Menedemos answered. “But our starboard steering oar just did. Almost tore my arm out of the socket when it hit, too.” Sure enough, the steering oar was torn out of the housing that secured it to the ship. And another crackle of splintering timber said the narrow length of the tiller hadn't come through undamaged, either.

The rock missed impaling the Aphrodite's flank. A moment later, soft sand scrunched under her false keel as she beached herself as prettily as anyone could have wanted.

“Well, that's a nuisance,” Sostratos said.

“It certainly is,” Menedemos said, “I can guide the ship well enough with only one steering oar, but it's not something I want to do. If you've only got one and something goes wrong ...”

He's a sensible and cautious seaman, Sostratos thought, most of the time, anyway. Why doesn't his mind work the same way when he's on dry land?

One more crackle and the steering oar fell away from the tiller and onto the sand, leaving Menedemos holding what was left of the tiller. With an oath, he threw it down onto the poop deck, narrowly missing Sostratos’ toes. “What a miserable piece of luck,” he said. “It was only a year old, and part of the best pair we ever had.”

“You want to make repairs here, skipper, or go on up to Kos and have the shipwrights there do a proper job of it?” Diokles asked.

“I'm going to have to think about that,” Menedemos answered. “For now, let's push her farther out of the water. I'll be able to take a better look at the damage then, too.”

“Makes sense,” the oarmaster agreed. He angled the gangplank down from the deck to the beach and descended. Sostratos and Menedemos followed. Sailors in the undecked waist of the ship simply scrambled over the side and dropped to the sand.

Sostratos, Menedemos, and Diokles added their weight and strength to those of the sailors. Sostratos' hands gripped the thin lead sheathing that helped hold shipworms at bay; his toes dug into the sand. Digit by digit, the Aphrodite moved up the beach.

Euxentdes of Phaselis helped, too, and had plainly done such work before. After they'd shifted the ship far enough to suit Menedemos, the passenger asked, “Have you got woodworking tools aboard?”

“Of course we do,” Sostratos answered. “If we end up in trouble, we may not find a kind-hearted nymph like Kalypso to lend us axe and adze and drill, as resourceful Odysseus did.”

“I'm usually the one who quotes Homer,” Menedemos said, “and you're usually the one who says I shouldn't, and that it doesn't fit. What have you got to say for yourself now?”

“Quoting him does fit here,” Sostratos admitted. To keep from admitting any more, he turned back to Euxenides. “Are you a shipwright yourself, then?”

“No, no.” The passenger tossed his head. “But I make and I serve catapults. I'm a good carpenter. If I can't repair that steering oar, I can certainly make you another to match it.”

That wasn't Sostratos' choice to make. He glanced over to Menedemos. His cousin rubbed his chin. He didn't want to be beholden to Euxenides; Sostratos could see as much. “We've got men aboard who can do the same job,” Menedemos said at last.

“No doubt,” Euxenides answered, “but I can do it right”

“He has a point,” Sostratos said. “There isn't much in the way of carpentry that's more complicated than what goes into catapults.”

“That's right,” Euxenkles said. “No offense to your trade, captain, but shipbuilding is child's play beside it.”

Menedemos grimaced. Sostratos turned away so his cousin wouldn't see him smile. More often than not—almost all the time, in fact—Menedemos did the pushing. Here, he was being pushed, and he liked it no better than anyone else did. “Let's talk about it in the morning,” he said. “Nothing's going to happen till then anyhow.”

“As you say, best one,” Euxenides answered politely. Sostratos didn't think he could have phrased his own indecision as smoothly as Menedemos had done.

The Aphrodite's crew had already realized they weren't going to get anything much in the way of repairs done before sunset. Some of them were gathering brush and driftwood for fires. Others went up and down the beach, thrusting spearshafts and sticks into the sand in search of sea-turtle nests. A couple of plethra away from the akatos, one of them stooped to dig with his hands, then whooped and waved. “Found some eggs!” he called.

Sostratos trotted over. “Let me have a look at those, Pasiphon, before you throw 'em in a pot,” he said.

Pasiphon had pulled an oar on the Aphrodite the year before, and knew of Sostratos' ever-wakeful curiosity. “Sure thing,” he said, and tossed Sostratos an egg as he might have thrown him a ball.

Awkwardly, and as much by luck as anything else, Sostratos caught it without breaking it. It turned out to differ in several ways from the birds' eggs he already knew. For one thing, it was round, not pointed at one end. It can't very well roll out of an underground nest, he thought, but a round egg wouldn't be good up in a tree. Creatures were surely shaped to suit the situation in which they found themselves. He hadn't imagined that extended to eggs, but saw no reason it shouldn't. The eggshell was leather)', not hard and brittle like that of a bird's egg. He wondered why; no explanation immediately occurred to him. The egg was also larger than any bird's egg he'd seen. That did make sense—sea turtles were large creatures themselves.

A little later, just as the sun quenched itself in the waters of the Aegean, another sailor found a nest. Like the first, it held a couple of dozen eggs. Everybody could have one, to go with the barley bread, cheese, olives, and wine the Aphrodite carried to keep her sailors fed.

Euxenides proved adept at more than carpentry. He twirled a fire drill and got a blaze going from scratch as fast as anyone Sostratos had ever seen. Searching for the lushest bushes, the sailors found a spring a stadion or so inland from the beach. They filled pots with fresh water and brought them back.

When Sostratos got his boiled egg, he discovered a couple of other differences between it and a bird's egg. The white didn't coagulate to nearly the same degree as a bird's egg would have. And the yolk was a deeper, richer orange than that of any bird's egg he'd ever seen; even by firelight, he was sure of that. The egg tasted fine, though.

Menedemos and Diokles told some men to serve as sentries through the night. “I don't think anyone on Telos will bother us,” Menedemos said, “but I don't want to wake up with my throat cut and find out I was wrong.”

Sostratos was immune to such duties. He found a spot not too far from one of the fires and curled up by it. The sand wasn't so soft as a proper bed, but made a better mattress than the planking of the poop deck. The thick wool of his himation held the night chill at bay. He stared up at the stars, but not for long.

When Menedemos woke in the predawn twilight, he needed a moment to remember that the Aphrodite wouldn't be leaving Telos as soon as her crew shoved her back into the Aegean. His yawn turned into a curse. “Miserable, polluted rock,” he muttered, and got to his feet to go over and inspect the damage to the steering oar.

Most of the sailors were still snoring, but Menedemos found Euxenides of Phaselis already crouched by the oar examining it. “Hail,” he said coolly.

“Oh. Hail,” Euxenides answered. “I should be able to give you something that will serve you pretty well, if you don't mind my taking a few hours to make it. Forgive my saying so, but next to catapults this isn't very fancy work.”

“That's what you think,” Menedemos said. “If you don't get the shape of the blade exactly right, it won't cut the water the way it should. And if the weight isn't distributed the way it should be, it won't pivot properly, and the fellow steering the ship—me, I mean— will have to work a lot harder than he would otherwise.”

“Yes, yes,” Euxenides said impatiently, as to a child that kept pointing out the obvious. “I expect I can take care of all that. Only drawback of doing it right here is that I'll be working with green timber. But. ..” He raised an eyebrow. “I'll work for free, and the shipwrights on Kos surely won't.”

He was right about that. And he sounded so certain he could do what he said he could, he won Menedemos over. “All right,” Menedemos said. “We'll see what you come up with.” If Euxenides proved more wind than work, his crewmen would be able to improvise something that would serve till they got to Kos.

But Euxenides quickly showed he knew what he was doing. After bread and wine for breakfast, he used one of the ship's hatchets to knock down a pine whose trunk was about the right size to shape into a steering oar. Once he'd lopped off the branches that grew from it, sailors dragged it to the beach with ropes. Using the sound steering oar as his model, Euxenides trimmed the trunk to the proper length with the hatchet, then set to work with the adze to give it the shape he wanted. Chips flew in all directions.

Perhaps halfway through the work, he looked up and remarked, “I may not be as resourceful as long-suffering Odysseus was, but by the gods I know what to do with a piece of wood.”

“So you do, best one,” Menedemos admitted. He made a tolerably good woodworker himself, good enough to recognize a master of the craft when he saw one. Euxenides shaped the pine with the same offhand brilliance a sculptor showed with marble. Watching him was an education.

Watching him kept Menedemos too interested to look out to sea. He jumped when somebody shouted, “Sail ho!” A pirate couldn't hope to do better than to descend on a merchant galley beached. How was he supposed to fight back?

“This is what happened to the Athenian fleet at the end of the Peloponnesian War,” Sostratos said. “The Spartans caught them ashore at Aigospotamoi and had their way with them.” Only after he'd finished was Menedemos sure their thoughts had gone in the same direction.

Then the cry of, “Sail ho!” changed to, “Sails ho!” Instead of getting ready to scramble back onto the Aphrodite, belt on his sword, and make what fight he could, Menedemos stared out to sea himself. He couldn't possibly hope to fight off more than one pirate ship.

The sound he made was halfway between a sigh of relief and an exhalation of awe. He wouldn't have to do any fighting. The fleet sailing west past the north coast of Telos cared no more about a beached akatos than Zeus cared about a flea on the skinny rump of a scavenger dog. Those weren't round ships out there, or even pirate pentekonters and hemioliai. They were war galleys, dozens of them: a fleet bigger and stronger all by itself than Rhodes could hope to put to sea. Triremes served as escorts for the bigger, beamier warships that formed the heart of the fleet. Were those monsters fours, fives, sixes? Did they carry even more than six rowers for each bank of oars? They were ten or fifteen stadia out to sea. Menedemos couldn't be sure.

“Whose fleet is that?” somebody asked—another good, relevant question.

Before Menedemos could reply, Euxenides of Phaselis said, “It has to be Ptolemaios'. If Antigonos had that many ships in these waters, they would be sailing toward battle with Ptolemaios over Lykia, not heading away from there.”

Sostratos added, “They look as if they're making for Kos, too, and Kos is Ptolemaios' chief stronghold in the Aegean.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “That all makes sense. For all we know, Ptolemaios is aboard one of those ships. They say he came up from Egypt himself this year, instead of giving the job to one of his admirals.”

“He did,” Euxenides said. Antigonos' officer coughed a couple of times. He turned toward Menedemos. “You've been saying you planned on stopping at Kos. If Ptolemaios' whole naval expedition is there, I don't think I want to visit the place, thank you very much. Can you put me ashore at Knidos instead? You can stop there before going on to Kos.”

“Yes, I'll do that,” Menedemos said at once. With Ptolemaios' whole great fleet and perhaps Ptolemaios himself at Kos city, he didn't want to get there with Antigonos' officer on board.

“I thank you.” Euxenides drummed his fingers on the adze handle. “I shouldn't have to pay twenty drakhmai for the trip, either, not when I'm not going to Miletos.”

Had Euxenides not gone to work on the new steering oar, Menedemos might have argued with him. But Sostratos, who was scrupulously fair, dipped his head in agreement with the officer's words. So Menedemos just said, “Ah, right. I’ll cut the price in half.”

Euxenides looked . . . half pleased. “Ten drakhmai to Knidos is as outrageous as twenty drakhmai to Miletos.” He paused. His nails clicked rhythmically on the axe handle. “It's no more outrageous, I suppose. A bargain, captain. Ten drakhmai.”

He soon finished the steering oar and set to work repairing the pivot on which it would turn. He was as swift and deft there as he had been while turning a tree trunk into something useful. The sun had just swung past noon when he set the new steering oar in its place.

Menedemos went back aboard the Aphrodite to see how the new steering oar felt. The tiller seemed strange under his palm: it was a lopped-off branch from the tree that had made the steering oar, with the bark still on it. The new steering oar was a little heavier than the old one. It would be, he thought, being made of green wood. But the balance was everything it should have been, and the makeshift only had to last to Kos. Menedemos tossed his head. No, to Knidos, if it turns out not to serve.

He dipped his head to Euxenides of Phaselis. “Many thanks. It's plenty good enough.”

Antigonos' officer seemed more embarrassed than pleased. “You're welcome, though I hate to take thanks for anything that simple. The joinery that goes into catapults . . .”

“Never mind,” Menedemos said. “I believe you. You've made me believe you.” He raised his voice and called out to the Aphrodite's crew: “Come on, boys! Let's get her back into the water.”

Half a dozen men shoved the merchant galley's boat back out into the Aegean. They made the boat fast to the Aphrodite's bow with a line. The rest of the sailors, along with Menedemos, Sostratos, and Euxenides, stationed themselves along the length of the akatos' hull and at the stern.

“Ready?” Menedemos waited a heartbeat, then raised his voice to a shout: “Push!” He put his own shoulder against the lead plates that sheathed the ship and shoved with all his might. The men in the boat rowed with all their strength, pulling the Aphrodite while everyone else pushed.

She didn't move at the first try. Menedemos hadn't expected that she would. She was more heavily built than a war galley or a piratical pentekonter, and she still carried her cargo. Had she had more of it, Menedemos would have had the crew do some unloading before trying to refloat her—or he might not have beached her at all, but left her anchored offshore instead.

“Push!” he called again. His shoulder complained as he set it against the ship. His feet dug into the sand. His grunt was one of a chorus that rose from the straining men. Telos was a barren place, nowhere anybody could possibly want to be stranded.

Sand ground under the oak of the akatos' false keel. “She's stirring!” Sostratos gasped from his place a couple of men over from Menedemos.

“That she is,” Menedemos agreed, also gasping. He paused for a couple of breaths, then managed a shout: “Put your backs into it, you lazy whoresons!” Something creaked in his own back as he shoved, but he didn't let that keep him from giving the work all he had in him.

Little by little and then, it seemed, all at once, the Aphrodite went into the Aegean. The sailors raised a cheer and waded out after the ship, scrambling aboard wet and naked and dripping, Menedemos took his place on the poop deck. His face wore a curious frown as he reached for the steering-oar tillers, one pale and sweat-stained, the other bark-brown.

Sostratos understood him perfectly. “Let's find out how that new one does now that it's really in the sea.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “Just so.” He called out to the crew: “Ten men on a side to the oars. Diokles, give us the stroke.”

“Right you are, skipper,” the oarmaster replied. He took out his mallet and square of bronze. “Come on, you lugs—pay attention to me. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

As the merchant galley slid forward over the blue, blue sea, Menedemos pulled and pushed on the steering oars, sending her now to the left, now to the right. He made sure to steer clear of the rock that had hurt the ship before. Sostratos asked, “How does she feel?”

“Fine,” Menedemos answered. “A little odd, because the two steering oars don't weigh the same, and I can tell, but the makeshift does its job.” He raised his voice: “Many, many thanks, Euxenides.”

Antigonos' officer stood on the foredeck. He gave Menedemos half a bow. “I told you, you're welcome. I didn't want to stay on Telos any longer than I had to, either.”

“I think a dead man would be bored on Telos,” Sostratos said.

“I think you're right,” Menedemos replied. He turned to Diokles. “Do you expect we'll make Knidos by nightfall?”

“If we don't, we'll be pretty close.” The keleustes gauged the breeze, which blew straight into his face. “It'll be rowing all the way, though. If you want to go north during the sailing season, that's mostly how it is.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “I know. If we were a round ship, we'd spend forever tacking back and forth, back and forth, sailing four or five stadia, maybe more, for every one we went forward.” He paused. “Of course, if we were a round ship, we wouldn't have tried beaching ourselves, and we wouldn't have lost that steering oar.” He eyed his cousin, who was peering ahead with a hand to his forehead to shield against sun glare. “What's chewing on you, Sostratos?”

“I was just wondering how big a fleet old One-Eye has in Knidos,” Sostratos answered. “If it's big enough, it might have come out against Ptolemaios'. We don't want to wander into the middle of a sea fight.”

“No, eh?” Menedemos said slyly. “Think what it would do for your history, if you ever get around to writing it.”

Sostratos raised an eyebrow. “Wandering into the middle of a sea fight is one of the best ways I can think of to make sure I don't live long enough to write a history.” Menedemos would have argued with him, but found no way to do it.

The Aphrodite came into Knidos with the sun low in the northwest and the sky streaked with red and gold. Sostratos let out a sigh of relief. He didn't mind the discomfort of a night at sea; reaching port so late, he would probably sleep on the poop deck tonight anyhow. But out on the Aegean the merchant galley was hideously vulnerable to any storm that might blow up. Better, far better, to spend the night tied up at a Knidian quay.

Knidos was sort of a double city, like Syracuse in Sicily, though the offshore island that formed a part of it lay a little farther out in the sea than did Syracuse's Ortygia. Moles improved the harbor and connected the island to the mainland. Sostratos counted about twenty ship sheds, the sort in which war galleys stayed to keep their timbers dry when they weren't on campaign. No wonder they didn't sally against Ptolemaios, he thought. He bad to have twice that many ships, maybe three times as many.

The passage of Ptolemaios' fleet hadn't gone unnoticed, and had, understandably, left Antigonos' garrison in Knidos nervous. No sooner had the Aphrodite found a berth than an officer in corselet and helmet came storming up the pier toward her, “What ship are you?” he barked. “Where are you from?”

“We're the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes,” Sostratos answered soothingly. “We spent last night on Telos.”

“Rhodes, eh?” the officer said. “Ptolemaios' catamites, are you?”

“We're a free and autonomous polis, and we're neutral,” Sostratos said, knowing he had to hold his temper.

Antigonos' officer snorted. “Probably a pack of stinking spies.”

“Hail, Aristarkhos,” Euxenides of Phaselis said. “Haven't seen you for two or three years—not since we took back Karia.”

“Euxenides?” the officer—Aristarkhos—-said uncertainly. When the Aphrodite's passenger dipped his head, Aristarkhos went on, “Zeus, Euxenides, what are you doing here?”

Getting us out of a nasty spot, went through Sostratos' mind. Euxenides answered, “Getting away from Ptolemaios, what else? I was in Phaselis when he took it, and in Xanthos when he took it. By now, he'll have Kaunos, too. The Rhodians here were taking me up to Miletos, but when Ptolemaios' fleet came by this morning T thought they'd do better to drop me off here. That way, I don't have to run the gauntlet heading north.”

“Oh,” Aristarkhos said. After the single syllable came out, a long silence followed. He looked as if he'd bitten off a big mouthful of bad fish. A large-souled man, or even an honest man, would have apologized, Aristarkhos plainly knew it, and as plainly couldn't bring himself to do it.

Sostratos prodded him a little: “You see, O marvelous one, we really are neutrals.” Making sure Antigonos' officers understood that might be important for Rhodes.

“It. . . could be,” Aristarkhos said after another pause. Sostratos decided not to push any further; that was too likely to make an enemy. Aristarkhos turned back to Euxenides: “So you saw Ptolemaios' fleet go by, too, did you?”

“I certainly did,” Euxenides replied. “We were on the north coast of Telos. They couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty stadia offshore as they went past. I counted fifty-five ships.”

How professional of you, Sostratos thought. No matter how useful Euxenides had been, he couldn't warm to the man, who struck him as almost too competent to tolerate. Aristarkhos dipped his head. “That sounds about right.” He frowned. “It must have been close to midday. Why were you still aground? Did you have trouble getting this ship back in the water?”

“It wasn't that,” Euxenides said. “We needed some repairs.”

“The steering oar and its housing,” Menedemos said. “Hurt 'em on a rock backing the akatos onto the beach, I'll tell you this, best one”—he was more polite to Aristarkhos than Sostratos had been— “if Antigonos doesn't need Euxenides, he can come to Rhodes and make a good living for himself as a ship's carpenter.”

“Euxenides the catapult man!” Aristarkhos exclaimed. Now his memory was fully jogged. “Not likely, Rhodian. Antigonos rewards men who are good at what they do, and Euxenides is one of the best.” Euxenides gave back half a bow, acknowledging the compliment.

“I believe it,” Menedemos said. Sostratos believed it, too. Whether he liked him or not, Euxenides was a consummate craftsman, an artist with adze and drill. If he was ignorant of anything having to do with woodworking, Sostratos couldn't imagine what it would be. He wondered if that made Euxenides also think he knew a great deal about matters in which he had less experience. He wouldn't have been surprised; that was the craftsman's besetting flaw, as Sokrates had pointed out in his Apology.

“I was worried about these Rhodians, too, but they treated me as well as if I were one of Ptolemaios' men,” Euxenides said, and Sostratos couldn't fault him for that. He went on, “They really did act as neutrals should, and I expect you'll show them every kindness here.” That expect held the snap of command, and told Sostratos which of Antigonos' officers owned the higher rank.

“Just as you say,” Aristarkhos answered, still sounding unhappy about it. “For now, though, come with me, why don't you? We'll send a messenger to Antigonos first thing in the morning. He’ll be pleased to know you got away.”

Euxenides picked up the leather sack that held his worldly goods. “Thank you for my passage,” he said, waving first to Sostratos and then to Menedemos as he went up the gangplank to stand on the quay beside Aristarkhos.

“Thank you for your help on Telos,” Menedemos replied. Thank you for your help here, Sostratos thought. Maybe jealousy had made him misjudge Euxenides. They could have made their own steering oar on the island, even if it wouldn't have been so perfect as the one the officer had turned out. But for Euxenides' acquaintance with Aristarkhos here in Knidos, though, things might have gone hard for them.

Aristarkhos asked, “What cargo are you carrying, Rhodians?”

“Perfume and purple dye,” Menedemos answered.

“Papyrus and ink,” Sostratos added. His cousin shot him a warning look. He realized he might have done better to keep quiet about the papyrus. It came from Egypt, Ptolemaios' stronghold. Reminding Antigonos' captain about it might cause trouble.

Aristarkhos only grunted. “Where are you bound?” he asked.

“Athens,” Sostratos and Menedemos said together. Sostratos wondered if that admission were wise. For the past eight years, Demetrios of Phaleron had ruled Athens as Kassandros' puppet, and Kassandros was no friend to Antigonos, either.

But Aristarkhos merely grunted again, remarking, “With that cargo, you would be.” He leaned forward, trying to see better as twilight thickened. “Will you stop at Kos on the way?”

Anther dangerous question. Lying might be safer, but also might be more dangerous. Sostratos decided to tell the truth, as calmly and reasonably as he could: “Of course we will, O best one. We are traders, and we are neutral. They make silk on Kos, and you can't get it anywhere else in the world. We'll buy some to take with us, and we'll sell crimson dye there,”

“When I left Rhodes bound for Miletos, they warned me ahead of time they planned to put in at Kos,” Euxenides said. “This was before we knew Ptolemaios' whole war fleet was heading that way.”

“All right, fair enough,” Aristarkhos said. His suspicions finally seemed to have dissolved. “Will you want to spend a day in the market square here before you go on?”

Sostratos and Menedemos looked at each other. Sostratos could think of nothing he wanted less. What he wanted was to get to Athens as fast as he could. But what he wanted and what was expedient were liable to be two different things. “Thank you,” he said. “That's very kind.”

He'd made the right choice. He saw that at once, by the way Aristarkhos relaxed. The officer turned to Euxenides, saying, “Come on, let's get you back to the barracks before it's too dark for us to see where we're going.” They walked down the quay together.

“Just what I want—a day in Knidos' market square,” Menedemos said. “It would take a special miracle from Zeus to make enough to pay the whole crew an extra day's wages.” He reached up and set a hand on Sostratos' shoulder. “And I'm sure you're even happier about the layover than I am.”

“Oh, of course.” Sostratos' sounded even glummer than his cousin had. But then he brightened. “You never can tell what we might find, though. Who would have thought we'd come across the gryphon's skull in Kaunos?”

“Yes, who would?” Menedemos' tone suggested he would have been just as well pleased never to have set eyes on it. He sighed. “We couldn't even hope to find the Rhodian proxenos' house without a torchbearer now. Do you feel like going to an inn, or will the poop deck do for the night?”

“The poop deck is fine, as far as I'm concerned,” Sostratos said. “Nothing but bugs and noise and thieves at an inn.”

“Not quite nothing,” his cousin observed.

“We've got wine here, and I'm not so mad for girls that I've got to have one the instant I come into a port,” Sostratos replied.

“Well, I don't have to have one, either,” Menedemos said in tones of affronted dignity. Sostratos smiled to himself. That gibe had gone home. Menedemos stripped off his chiton, crumpled it up, and set it on the deck to serve for a pillow. He wrapped himself in his himation and lay down. Sostratos did the same.

There was room on the deck for Diokles, too. But the keleustes perched on a rower's bench and leaned against the Aphrodite’s side planking, as he usually did when spending a night aboard ship. He'd got into the habit years earlier, when he still pulled an oar, and he'd never been able to get out of it.

Sostratos peered up into the night sky. Aphrodite's wandering star, brightest of them all, blazed in the west, following the sun down toward the horizon. That of Zeus, less brilliant but able to travel all around the heavenly sphere, shone low in the east. Distant music from the double flute and voices raised in song argued that more than a few people preferred revelry and wenching to this almost Lakedaimonian simplicity. To the crows with them, he thought, and fell asleep.

Menedemos was anything but enthusiastic about spending a day in Knidos' agora hawking the Aphrodite's goods. “Not your fault,” he said to Sostratos as they set up their little display of dye and perfume and papyrus and ink. “You couldn't afford to make that Aristarkhos angry at us. But even so ...”

“Even so,” Sostratos agreed mournfully. “I want to go on to Athens.”

He sounded like a small boy who wanted a sweet and was about to throw a tantrum because his pedagogue wouldn't buy one for him. Menedemos chuckled. If there were thinking-brothels like the thinking-shop Aristophanes had given Sokrates in his Clouds, nothing would have kept Sostratos aboard the Aphrodite the night before. He'd practically boasted about not caring whether he got laid, but he would have been gone like a dart from a catapult if he'd seen a chance to argue about the whichness of what.

“We'll go through the motions,” Menedemos said. “Then we can prowl the market square for a while, and then we'll head back to the ship.”

“Fair enough.” But Sostratos heaved a sigh. “We could be most of the way to Kos by now.” He exaggerated, but not by a great deal; the island lay less than half a day's journey north and west of Knidos.

Local merchants started crying the virtues of their olives and onions and drinking cups and wool cloth. And, not too far away, a couple of bearded Phoenicians in ankle-length linen robes and brim-less caps called out, “Balsam! Fine balsam! The finest incense and medicine the gods ever made!”

Hearing that, Sostratos perked up. “We ought to see what sort of bargain we can strike with them, A mina of balsam goes for two minai of silver.”

“You're right,” Menedemos said. “We'll have time to dicker, I expect. It won't move fast in a little town like this.”

But they'd hardly begun singing the praises of their own goods before a man with the careful, forward-leaning walk of the shortsighted came up to them and said, “You'd be the Rhodians who got in last night?”

“That's right, best one,” Menedemos answered. “What can we do for you?”

“Papyrus,” the fellow answered. That surprised Menedemos. The man went on, “Aristarkhos said you had papyrus.”

That surprised Menedemos even more. This fellow looked about as much like a soldier as a black Ethiopian looked like a fair-haired Kelt. “That's right,” Menedemos repeated cautiously. “Who are you?”

“I'm Diodoros son of Diophantos,” the nearsighted man said, leaning closer to Menedemos for a better look at him. Then he explained himself: “I'm Antigonos' paymaster hereabouts.”

“Ah.” Menedemos dipped his head. That made Diodoros a customer, all right. “Yes, best one, we do have papyrus. Quite a bit of it, as a matter of fact.”

“Gods be praised!” Diodoros exclaimed. “My dear fellow, do you have any idea how difficult it is to keep proper records when your commander is at war with Egypt? I've been writing on leather; on boards; even on potsherds, the way they did in the old days when they decided whom to ostracize.” He spoke Attic Greek; Athens was the home of ostracism.

“We can probably help you,” Menedemos said. Diodoros might be the paymaster, but he was too excited to make much of a bargainer. Menedemos asked Sostratos, “How much papyrus have we got left? I know you sold some in Kaunos.”

“Oh, dear!” Diodoros sounded horrified at the thought of any of the stuff slipping through his fingers.

“We still have seventy-one rolls left,” Sostratos answered; Menederaos had been sure he'd have the number at his fingertips. His cousin added, “We have some excellent ink, too.” He pointed to one of the little round pots that held it.

Diodoros dipped his head. “Ink is all very well, but I can make my own at a pinch. I wish I could make my own papyrus. How much do you want per roll?”

How hard can I bit him? Menedemos wondered. It was a nice calculation. True, Diodoros was a paymaster, and knew how much things cost. But he'd also made it plain he badly needed what Menedemos had for sale. Still, if Menedemos asked too high a price, Antigonos' officer was liable to set soldiers on him and simply take what he wanted. Yes, a nice calculation indeed.

Menedemos made it between one breath and the next. “Six drakhmai,” he replied. “You said it yourself, sir: there's a war on. Once I sell what we've got, who knows when I'll see more?”

“You're a Rhodian, Dealing with Egypt, that gives you an advantage,” Diodoros said. He could remember business, at least to some degree. Sostratos chose that moment to take a roll of papyrus out of a sack and examine the smooth, creamy writing surface. Without saying a word, he smiled and put it back, Diodoros' eyes followed it as if it were a beautiful hetaira closing a door behind her. He sighed. “Necessity is the master of us all. I'll give you four drakhmai a roll for fifty rolls.”

Even that was above the going rate. The dicker that followed didn't last long. They settled on five drakhmai, two oboloi per roll. After some thought, Diodoros decided to buy sixty rolls, not fifty, Menedemos felt like jumping for joy. As the paymaster went off to get the silver and a sailor hurried back to the ship for the requisite rolls of papyrus, he turned to Sostratos and said, “We made a profit here! Who would have believed it?”

“They were wild for papyrus in Syracuse last year, too, after the Carthaginian siege cut them off from it,” Sostratos answered. “If you're going to keep records, you really can't do without it. More people are reading and writing these days, too. It's a good thing for us to carry.”

“I can't tell you you're wrong,” Menedemos said. “And Diodoros was right—we do have the inside track on bringing it out of Egypt. A round ship hauling grain could carry plenty for us to resell without even noticing the burden.”

His cousin dipped his head. “True enough. And now, shall we see what those barbarians want for their balsam?”

“Certainly,” Menedemos said. He and Sostratos walked over to the Phoenicians, one of whom was tall—almost as tall as Sostratos— and thin, the other short and even thinner. Menedemos bowed. “Hail.” He named himself and his cousin.

“Hail,” the shorter Phoenician replied. As he bowed, he touched his forehead, lips, and heart in turn. “I am Abibaalos son of Gisgon. Here with me, you see my brother, Abimilkios.” He spoke good if guttural Greek, and even gave the foreign names endings a Hellene might have used. “How may we serve you, my masters?”

No free Hellene would have called another man master. As far as Menedemos was concerned, the Phoenicians carried flowery politeness too far. He said, “You have balsam, do you?”

“Ah, balsam! Indeed we do.” Abibaalos bowed again. “We have the finest fragrant balsam from the garden of Engedi, clear and yellow as fine honey from Hymettos”—he really did know Hellenes well, to come up with that comparison—”burning with a sweet smoke, and also useful in medicines of all kinds, for epilepsy, for pain, as an antidote against deadly poisons, to warm the stomach and the liver, to heal inflamed eyes, to keep wounds from going bad, and to cure pleurisy and make a man's prong rise. It is effective, if the gods will.”

That was a longer catalogue of virtues than Menedemos had bargained for, almost longer than the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad. He said, “We might be interested in some, if the price is right.”

Abimilkios spoke for the first time, in a hollow, rumbling bass: “The price is two of silver for one of balsam, by weight.” His Greek was less fluent than his brother's, but he sounded more determined. And that was indeed the going rate for balsam.

“We are traders, too,” Menedemos said.

Abibaalos and Abimilkios both smiled. Menedemos had seen that smile on Phoenicians before; it said Hellenes couldn't be traders, or at least not good ones. He leaned forward, responding to the silent challenge. He'd won some dickers from the men of the east. If he'd lost some, too, he chose not to dwell on those. Abibaalos said, “We heard you calling out your wares. You have perfume and dye and papyrus and ink, Is it not so?”

“Only a little papyrus now,” Sostratos answered. “We just sold most of it to an officer here.”

“You would have got a good price for it, too, with Ptolemaios and Antigonos at war,” Abibaalos remarked. He was no fool. He went on, “Crimson dye I can lay my hands on straight from the source. Perfume, now . . . These are the roses of Rhodes?”

Menedemos dipped his head. “Just so, best one. Even more fragrant than balsam.”

“But less rare,” Abimilkios put in,

“More people want perfume than balsam,” Sostratos said.

“More people can afford it,” Abibaalos replied. “In what size jars is the perfume?”

“Each one holds two kyathoi,” Menedemos answered. The jars weren't very big.

“The standard size,” Abibaalos said, nodding as barbarians often did. “One of those jars for each drakhma's weight of balsam, then.”

“Outrageous!” Menedemos cried, though he wasn't particularly outraged. “We ought to get three drakhmai by weight, at least.” After half an hour of insults and howls, he and his adversary settled on two drakhmai and one obolos' weight of balsam per jar of perfume.

“For a Hellene, you are not a bad bargainer,” Abibaalos remarked as they clasped hands.

“From a Phoenician, that is high praise,” Menedemos said. He and Abibaalos both smiled the same sort of smile, which meant they both thought they'd won the dicker.