The Gryphon's Skull

5

As the Aphrodite made her way north and west, the rowers taking turns at the oars when the wind faltered, Menedemos waited for the trouble he was sure he would have. He'd guessed it would come before the end of their first day out of Kos, and his guess proved a good one. Not long after noon, Sostratos ascended to the poop deck. He peered off to starboard at the island of Kalymnos, then ahead toward the smaller, more distant island of Lebinthos, where they'd probably pass the night. He coughed a couple of times.

“I know what you're going to say,” Menedemos told him. “The answer is no.”

His cousin jerked in surprise. “How do you know what I'm going to ask you?”

“Because, O best one, you're transparent as air,” Menedemos answered. “You're going to say something like, 'We could stop in Athens on the way up to Khalkis. It wouldn't take long, and we could get rid of the gryphon's skull.' Aren't you?”

Sostratos turned red as a roof tile. “Well, what if I am?” he muttered. His voice gained strength: “It's true.”

“So it is,” Menedemos said. “But we've got forty minai waiting for us in Kos. How much do you suppose that precious skull will bring?”

“If we're lucky, something on the order of six minai,” Sostratos answered.

“Lucky? That'd take a miracle from the gods,” Menedemos said. “Who'd be mad enough to pay such money for an old bone?”

What he meant was, No one would pay such money for an old bone. Sostratos understood him perfectly well, too. But he said, “You're not always as smart as you think you are. Damonax son of Polydoros offered me that much back on Rhodes.”

Menedemos stared. “And you told him no? You must have told him no.” Sostratos dipped his head. Still astonished, Menedemos asked, “But why? You can't think we'll get more than that in Athens.

“I don't,” his cousin admitted. “But I took the skull to show it to him, not to sell. I don't want it gathering dust in a rich man's andron, or on display at drinking parties like Kleiteles' jackdaw with the little bronze shield. I want men who truly love wisdom to study it.”

“You must,” Menedemos said, and then, “I'm glad no mosquito bite ever gave me the itch for philosophy.” He gathered himself. “But even if we got ten minai for the gryphon's skull, that'd only be a quarter part of forty. We can pick up Polemaios, bring him back to Kos, and then we can head for Athens. Am I right or am I wrong?”

With a longing sigh, Sostratos said, “Oh, you're right, I suppose. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.” Scuffing his feet on the planking, he descended from the poop deck into the waist of the merchant galley.

“Did I hear right, skipper?” Diokles asked in a low voice. “Six minai of silver for that silly skull, and he turned it down? Who's crazier, that other fellow for saying he'd pay it, or your cousin for telling him no?”

“To the crows with me if I know,” Menedemos answered, also quietly, and the oarmaster laughed. But Menedemos went on, “He really does chase philosophy the way I chase girls, doesn't he?” In an odd sort of way, the way he would have admired a boy who declined an expensive gift from a suitor he didn't fancy, he found himself admiring Sostratos for rejecting Damonax's enormous offer.

“You have more fun,” Diokles said.

That made Menedemos chuckle. “Well, I think so, too,” he said. “But if Sostratos doesn't, who am I to tell him he's wrong?”

Diokles grunted. ''I can think of a good many hetairai who'd be happy if a fellow gave 'em half a dozen minai. Fact is, I can't think of any so grand that they wouldn't be.” Menedemos only shrugged. Maybe Thai's, who'd talked Alexander the Great into burning Persepolis. But maybe not, too.

The Aphrodite neared Lebinthos as the sun neared the Aegean Sea to the west. Menedemos steered the akatos toward a nice little harbor on the southern coast of the island. Both steering oars felt alike in his hands again; with seasoned timber at their disposal, Ptolemaios' carpenters hadn't needed long to replace the makeshift Euxenides of Phaselis had made. But even they'd praised it as they took it off the pivot.

“Aristeidas, go forward,” Menedemos called. “If a pirate's lurking in that bay, you'd be the first to spot him.”

“Not likely, skipper,” Diokles said as Aristeidas went. “No water to speak of on Lebintnos. If it's got more than a family of fisherman living on it, I'd be amazed.”

“So would I,” Menedemos answered. “But I don't want any nasty surprises.” The keleustes could hardly argue with that, and didn't.

But the small, sheltered bay was empty save for shore birds, which flew up in white-winged clouds as the Aphrodite beached herself. The beach seemed so deserted, Menedemos wondered if sea turtles laid their eggs here, too. I'll send out some men to probe the sand with sticks, he thought.

Sostratos came over to him. “Lebinthos,” he said, pronouncing the name of the island like a man prodding his teeth with his tongue, feeling for a bit of food that might have got stuck there. And then, being the sort of fellow he was, he found what he was looking for: “Didn't Ikaros fly past this place on his way north from Crete?”

Menedemos looked up to the sky. Stars would be coming out very soon now. “I don't know,” he answered. “If he did fly by, he probably took one look at it and pissed on it from up high,”

“Scoffer.” Sostratos laughed. He seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be angry at Menedemos, and Menedemos didn't remind him.

“It's true,” Menedemos said. “Well, it could be true, anyhow. Maybe that's why this is such a blighted little place.”

His cousin laughed again, but then turned serious. “If a few people did live on Lebinthos, they'd probably turn that into a myth to explain why more people couldn't.”

That made a certain amount of sense. But being sensible didn't make Menedemos comfortable with it. “You called me a scoffer,” he said. “I was just making a silly joke. You sound like you mean it.”

“Don't you think that's how a lot of myths got started?” Sostratos asked. “As explanations for the way things are, I mean?”

“Maybe. I never worried about it much, though,” Menedemos answered. The idea of asking why about a myth, as one might to a story of how a cart broke a wheel, made him nervous. “Myths are just myths, that's all.”

“Do you really think so?” Sostratos said. Even at sunset and the beginning of twilight, his eyes gleamed. Ob, dear, Menedemos thought. I've found an argument that interests him. Will I get any sleep tonight? Sostratos went on, “How do you know that till you've examined them?”

Trying to head him off, Menedemos chuckled and said, “You sound like you come straight out of Sokrates' thinking-shop in the Clouds.”

That didn't work. He should have known it wouldn't. Sostratos said, “You know what I think of Aristophanes for that.”

They'd argued over the play before. With a small sigh, Menedemos dipped his head. “Yes, I do.” He tried again, this time by pointing into the eastern sky; “There's Zeus' wandering star,” He poked his cousin in the ribs with an elbow. “And what else could it possibly be but Zeus' wandering star?”

“I don't know,” Sostratos admitted, “but we can't get close enough to examine it, so how can we be sure?” He sent Menedemos a sly look. “Maybe Ikaros could have given you a better answer.”

“The same as he would have about the sun? Look what he got for flying too close to that.” Menedemos mimed falling from a great height, then toppled onto the sand in lieu of splashing into the sea.

“You're impossible.” But Sostratos was laughing in spite of himself.

A sailor with a pole in his hand came up to Menedemos and said, “Doesn't seem like there are any turtle eggs on this beach.”

“Oh, well.” Menedemos shrugged. “We've got enough bread and oil and olives and cheese for sitos and a sort of opson, and enough water to mix with the wine. For one night ashore here, that'll do well enough.” Up the beach from the Aphrodite, the men fed bits of dry shrubs to a couple of fires they'd got going. Menedemos didn't think the night would be very cold, but fires always made a place more comfortable. And then someone with a bronze hook and a line hauled a fish out of the sea. Before long, it was cooking over one of those fires.

Back home on Rhodes, Menedemos would have turned up his nose at such a meager supper. Out on a trading journey, he ate with good appetite. He was spitting an olive pit onto the sand when Sostratos came up to him and asked, “Where will we head for tomorrow?”

“Naxos, I think,” Menedemos answered. “I don't know whether we'll get there—that's got to be something like five hundred stadia— but we can put in there the next morning if we don't.”

“Have we got enough water aboard for another day at sea?” he asked.

Menedemos dipped his head. “For one more day, yes. For two . . . I wouldn't want to push it. But we can fill up when we get into port there. Naxos is the best watered of the Kyklades.”

“That's true,” Sostratos agreed. “It's certainly not a dried-up husk like Lebinthos here.”

With a shrug, Menedemos said, “If this place had a couple of springs, it would just be another pirates' roost. It's out in the sea by itself, but close enough to the other islands to hunt from. The way things are, though, the bastards can't linger here.”

Sostratos sighed. “I suppose you're right, my dear. Too bad we have to worry about things like that.”

“I didn't say it wasn't,” Menedemos replied. “Now I'm going to finish eating and then go to sleep.”

He wondered if he would have to be blunter than that; Sostratos didn't always take a hint. But his cousin said, “All right,” and found his own place on the sand to lie down. Menedemos wrapped himself in his himation: the day's warmth was seeping out of the air faster than he'd expected. Next thing he knew, morning twilight brightened the eastern sky.

A brisk breeze from out of the northeast sent the Aphrodite bounding across the waves. Even before noon, Sostratos said, “I think we will make Naxos by nightfall.”

“If this wind holds, we will,” Menedemos agreed. The wind tousled his hair—and Sostratos’, too. It thrummed in the rigging and filled the sail. The rowers rested at their oars. A breeze like this pushed the merchant galley along as well as they could have.

Sostratos finally had his sea legs. The Aphrodite's pitching and rolling had left him queasy at the start of the sailing season. Now he didn't even notice them till he realized he would have noticed them before. He wondered if that realization would bring back the queasiness, but it didn't. He was over it for another year.

Naxos crawled up over the western horizon, central mountain first and then the rest of the island. Its polis lay in the northwest, beyond the northernmost headland. The Aphrodite rounded the headland and dropped down toward the port with the sun at least an hour away from setting. Menedemos took his hands off the steering oars long enough to clap them together. “That's one of the nicest day's runs I've ever made,” he said.

“Euge, O best one,” Sostratos said agreeably. “And now here we are, in a place where all sorts of interesting things used to happen.”

His cousin raised a quizzical eyebrow. “ 'Used to happen?” he echoed.

“I suppose everyone knows this is where Theseus abandoned Ariadne,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. Sostratos went on, “This is also one of the places where the Hellenes first rebelled against the Persians. A generation later, the Naxians sent four ships to fight for Xerxes the Great King at Salamis—but they went over to the Hellenes instead. And a few years after that, the Athenians laid siege to Naxos and took it because it tried to secede from the Delian League. Nobody knew it then, but that was one of the first steps on the road that led to the Peloponnesian War.”

Menedemos only grunted. He was intent on getting the Aphrodite a berth in Naxos' little harbor. Diokles gave Sostratos a curious look. “You don't mind my asking, young sir,” he said, “but how do you know all that?”

With a shrug, Sostratos answered, “Well, you know about Theseus and Ariadne yourself, don't you?”

“I suppose I'd heard it,” the keleustes said, “but I can't say I remembered it. And as for the rest. . .”

“That's in the writings of Herodotos and Thoukydides,” Sostratos said. “I just put it all together, like a man making a table from the top and the legs.”

Diokles scratched his head. “With a carpenter, you can see the pieces beforehand. The way you go on, it's like you're grabbing them out of the air.”

“Sostratos collects funny facts the way a carpenter collects fancy pieces of wood,” Menedemos said. “And a carpenter can only use a piece of wood in one table or chair, but Sostratos gets to use his facts over and over again.” He grinned at Sostratos. It was a half mocking grin, or more than half, but the figure was so apt, Sostratos just grinned back.

If that disappointed Menedemos, he didn't show it. He went back to steering the merchant galley. A fishing boat that spotted the Aphrodite later than it should have lowered—all but dropped—its sail from the yard and did its best to get away from what it thought to be a pirate ship. Had the akatos really been a pentekonter, it would have run down the tubby little fishing boat inside a couple of stadia. Some of the rowers jeered at the fleeing fishermen.

“They're running now,” Teleutas said, “but when they tell about it in a tavern tonight, they'll all be heroes.” That made the Aphrodite's crewmen laugh and send more jokes after the fishing boat. Sostratos laughed, too, but he eyed Teleutas thoughtfully. He sounds like a man who knows what he's talking about, went through his mind.

No sooner had the merchant galley tied up at a Naxian quay than an officer came up and started asking questions. Naxos favored Antigonos; it belonged to the Island League he'd started in the Kyklades a few years before. “Out of Kos, eh?” the officer said suspiciously. “What were you doing there?”

“Buying silk,” Sostratos answered, doing his best to sound impatient rather than nervous. “We're bound for Athens. Always a good market for silk in Athens.”

Athens was as much a thing of Kassandros' as Naxos was of Antigonos'; still, the lie seemed far better than saying they were going to Euboia to get Antigonos' unloved and unloving nephew. And the officer didn't pursue it. He had other things on his mind: nervously licking his lips, he asked, “Is it true? Has Ptolemaios really come to Kos?”

Sostratos dipped his head. “It's true.” He made his voice deep and solemn.

“With a fleet? With a big fleet?”

“That's true, too.” This time, Menedemos beat Sostratos to the punch. He, by contrast, sounded amused. With a big fleet, Ptolemaios could sweep the Island League off the face of the earth. Menedemos knew it. Sostratos knew it. The officer talking with them knew it, too. He looked very unhappy.

“Do you know what his plans are?” he asked after a pause.

“Oh, of course.” Now Sostratos sounded sardonic. “Ptolemaios invited us to breakfast so we could talk things over.” Sometimes—often—the truth served up with irony made the most effective lie.

Antigonos' officer turned red. “All right. All right,” he said roughly. Sure enough, he didn't believe the truth, where doubtless he would have accepted any number of falsehoods. Sostratos wondered what Sokrates would have had to say had someone wondered about this while he was close by. Something worth hearing, the “Rhodian was sure. The officer went on, “Will you trade here tomorrow?”

Now Sostratos hesitated. Ptolemaios would want Polemaios back on Kos as soon as possible. But Naxos was a big enough polis that passing up a chance to do business here would make people like this fellow wonder why. While Sostratos weighed advantages and risks, Menedemos cut through them as Alexander was supposed to have cut through the Gordian knot, saying, “We'll spend the morning here, anyhow, best one, while we fill our water jugs. After that. . . Well, we want to get to Athens as fast as we can.”

As irony had, glibness satisfied the officer. He walked back down the pier, “Can we make Mykonos in half a day?” Sostratos asked.

“From here? I expect so,” Menedemos answered. “And who knows? Maybe we really will sell some silk in the agora tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” Sostratos didn't believe it, but he didn't argue. They'd already been surprised a couple of times this sailing season. He did point north and ask, “If we leave tomorrow a bit after noon, are you really sure we can get up to Mykonos by sunset?” Haze-purple in the distance, the other island heaved itself over the sea-smooth horizon, with tiny, holy Delos and the altogether mundane Rheneia off to its left.

“I told you once that I think so,” his cousin answered. With a grin, Menedemos went on, “Remember what a hard time we had last year convincing the people there that we weren't a pack of pirates?”

“I sure do,” Sostratos said. “We almost had trouble with pirates ourselves in those waters. I could do without that.”

“A lot of bald men on Mykonos.” Menedemos ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I could do without that.”

Laughing, Sostratos said, “Be careful, my dear, or your beauty will make me swoon. How can I possibly lie down on the poop deck beside you tonight and hope to go to sleep?”

That made Menedemos laugh, too. It also made him preen a little. He was a handsome man, and had had more than his share of suitors as a youth. For a while, a good many walls in Rhodes had had BEAUTIFUL MENEDEMOS and other such endearments scrawled on them. He'd basked in his popularity, too. Tall and plain and gawky, Sostratos had hidden jealousy behind a mask of indifference. Eventually, the mask became the thing itself, but it took a while.

With Aphrodite's wandering star already glowing in the west, it was too late to go looking for the Rhodian proxenos here. They did sleep on the poop deck, with the stars and mosquitoes for company. In the morning, Menedemos sent a party of sailors into the polis with water jars. With a chuckle, he said, “You boys can surprise the women who gossip around whatever fountain you find.”

“Now you've done it,” Sostratos said, watching the rowers straighten up and start to primp. “We'll be lucky if they don't jump ship.”

“They'd better not,” his cousin said. “Anybody who's not aboard by noon gets left behind. That means they won't be able to get away from her husband or her father or her brothers.” He spoke like a man with considerable experience in such matters. Sostratos knew he was.

More sailors carried silk and dye and balsam and perfume and papyrus and ink behind Sostratos and Menedemos as they made their way to the Naxian market square. Sostratos had to give a local an obolos for directions; Naxos was an old town, with streets running every which way. Men in the agora shouted about their garlic and cheeses, their barley and wool, their olives and olive oil, their raisins and the local wines. “Just another small-town market,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos chuckled. “We'll take care of that, by the gods.” As soon as they'd found a place that would stay shady all morning long and the sailors had set up the goods they'd brought along, he sang out, “Koan silk! Rhodian perfume! Crimson dye from Byblos! Balsam from Engedi, finest in the world!”

For a moment, everybody else in the market square stopped and gaped. Menedemos went right on crying his wares. He liked being the center of attention; he liked few things better, in fact. Having all the people within earshot crane their heads his way was sitos and opson and unwatered wine to him,

“Papyrus from Egypt!” Sostratos added for good measure. “It's been going fast—get it while we've still got some left. Best quality ink!”

“Silk! Perfume! Crimson! Balsam!”

Before long, they had quite a crowd around their little display: people eager to feel and to sniff and to gawk. The Naxians were Ionians, and dropped their rough breathings: “ 'Ere, be careful! Get off my foot!” “ 'E meant you!” “No, 'e didn't. 'E meant you!” “Watch where you put your 'ands, pal!” “You've got nutting wort' watching, lady.”

People did plenty of looking, yes. They were less eager to part with their silver, though a physician did buy a couple of drakhmai's worth of balsam. “Good to see it here,” he said gravely. “I find it very useful, but I seldom have a chance to buy any.”

“You should get more, then,” Sostratos said.

“So I should.” The fellow smiled a sweet, sad smile. “Trouble is, I can't afford to. Necessity is master of us all.” He took the little bit of balsam he had bought and went on his way.

Sostratos also sold a pot of ink, and Menedemos sold a couple of jars of perfume. But business was slow. When Aristeidas made his way into the market square to report that the water jars were filled, Sostratos and his cousin breathed identical sighs of relief.

Menedemos glanced at the sun. “Not quite noon yet, but close enough. Let's pack up and head back to the ship.” Sostratos said not a word in protest.

Before long, the Aphrodite glided north over the waves. Diokles called out the stroke for the rowers. They were heading straight into the wind, so they went by oars alone, with the sail brailed up to the yard. Sostratos said, “We'll have an easier time bringing Polemaios back to Kos.”

His cousin gave him an odd look. “As far as wind and weather go, yes,” Menedemos said after a brief pause. Sostratos' ears burned. A lot of other things besides wind and weather might be involved.

At Panormos on the north coast of Mykonos, the Aphrodite got mistaken for a pirate ship again. That amused Menedemos and saddened him at the same time. He needed all his persuasive talent to keep the townsfolk there from either fleeing into the interior of the island or else attacking his ship. “Good thing we don't want anything more than an anchorage for the night,” he told Sostratos after the locals calmed down.

“I know,” his cousin answered. “I hope we don't run into any of the real sea-raiders as we head up towards Euboia.”

“May it not come to pass!” Menedemos exclaimed, and spat into the bosom of his tunic to turn aside the evil omen. So did Sostratos. Menedemos smiled. For all of Sostratos' philosophy, he could act as superstitious as any other seaman.

Sostratos coughed and looked faintly embarrassed. Though he had a sailor's superstitions, he didn't wear them comfortably, as most sailors did. He seemed to be looking for a way to change the subject: “Another night aboard ship.”

Panormos had no Rhodian proxenos. To Menedemos' way of thinking, the place barely counted as a polis. “We're probably better off here than we would be on dry land,” he said.

“I should think so.” Sostratos sent Menedemos a sly look. “No girls aboard the Aphrodite, though.”

“Any girls in a backwater place like Panormos would likely be ugly anyhow,” Menedemos replied. He spread out his himation on the poop deck, lay down on it and wrapped it around himself, and fell asleep.

When he woke up, Sostratos was snoring beside him. He got to his feet and pissed into the sea. The sky was lightening toward dawn. Diokles was awake, too. He looked back over his shoulder from the bench on which he'd been resting and waved to Menedemos, who dipped his head in return.

He let those sailors who could sleep till the sun followed rosy-fingered Aurora up over the horizon. Then the men who'd already wakened roused those who'd stayed asleep. They ate bread and oil and olives and onions. With Diokles beating out the stroke, they headed north and west toward Euboia.

A year before, the Aphrodite had sailed past Delos on her way toward Cape Tainaron. Now she left the sacred island and its ordinary neighbor behind, pushing up toward Tenos and Andros. The ship hadn't even come close to Tenos, one of the larger of the Kyklades, before Menedemos told Diokles, “Stop us for a bit.”

“All right, skipper,” the oarmaster said, and called out, “Oöp!” to the crew. The eight men on the oars on each side rested. They and the rest of the sailors looked back expectantly at Menedemos.

“Time to serve out weapons,” he said. “I just don't like the way things feel. If we're ready for trouble, maybe we can hold it away from us.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Diokles said. Men put on sword belts and leaned pikes and javelins by their benches or in other spots where they could grab them in a hurry. Menedemos set his bow and a full quiver of arrows on the poop deck behind him. He could string the bow and start shooting in the space of a couple of heartbeats.

“Aristeidas, go forward,” he called. “I want the best lookout we've got up there.” The sharp-eyed sailor waved and hurried to the fore-deck. Menedemos dipped his head to Diokles. “All right. We can get going again.”

“Rhyppapai!” the keleustes sang out. “Rhyppapai!” The oars bit into the blue water of the Aegean. The merchant galley slid forward again.

Sostratos came back to the raised poop. He had a sword on his hip and contrived to look foolish with it, like an actor in a role he hadn't rehearsed. “In Athens,” he said, “they talk about nervous men who see every distant headland as a pirate ship.”

Menedemos declined to get ruffled, “In Athens, from what I hear, they don't do much of anything bat talk,” he said. “Tell me, best one, how many islands in the Kyklades?”

“Some say twelve, others fifteen,” his cousin answered.

“That's about what I've heard,” Menedemos agreed. “But when they make that count, do they reckon in rocks like the one ahead?” He pointed to an islet just big enough to support a handful of bushes.

“Certainly not,” Sostratos said, as if making a rejoinder in a philosophical discussion.

But this was property, not philosophy; freedom or slavery, not words. “Could pirates hide behind that nasty rock and come charging out when they see a merchantman go by?” Menedemos asked.

“Yes, without a doubt.” Sostratos laughed. “I sound like one of Sokrates' foils, don't I?”

“I was thinking the same thing, as a matter of fact,” Menedemos said. “You'd know better than I would, though—I'm sure of that. But it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you take my point.”

Sostratos set a hand on his swordhilt. He still didn't look very warlike, but he said, “Would I be wearing this if I didn't?”

No hemiolia or pentekonter emerged from behind the rock. But another rock lay ahead, only fifteen or twenty stadia away. Beyond that one was the bulk of Tenos, whose jagged west coast offered raiders countless lairs. The polis of Tenos, like Panormos, hardly rated the name. It had no fleet to speak of, and didn't even try to keep pirates down. Andros, the next island to the north and west, might have been Tenos' twin. And a pirate ship based on Syros, off to the west toward Attica, might spot the Aphrodite coming by and dash out to try to seize her.

“It's not just Aristeidas up by the stempost,” Menedemos said. “We all have to keep our eyes open, because we'll all pay for it if we don't.”

“Well, certainly,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos frowned. “You say 'certainly' now. A moment ago, you were talking about nervous Athenians and what they think they see.”

“What if I was?” his cousin said. “You're neither nervous nor an Athenian, so what's that got to do with you?” After a moment's thought, Menedemos decided he meant it. Maybe I was looking for an argument where there wasn't one to find, he thought. Maybe. He still had trouble believing it. More likely, Sostratos was just finding smoother ways to get under his skin.

The akatos slid past the city of Tenos, the great temple to Poseidon a few stadia to the west, and the hills rising up behind. She found no trouble. A few fishing boats fled from her; Menedemos had grown used to that. They might spread the word that a pirate galley was brazenly cruising in the neighborhood. He shrugged. The more ships that run from us, the fewer ships we have to run from.

Having passed Tenos town, Menedemos looked up into the bright blue bowl of the sky and drummed his fingers on the steering-oar tillers. They both felt the same again, and he was still getting used to that. He drummed some more. He didn't think the merchant galley would get all the way up to Andros' polis by nightfall. That meant finding an anchorage somewhere short of the city. Plenty of promontories, without a doubt. Making sure he found one no raiders were already using . . . His fingers went up and down, up and down.

Sostratos pointed west toward the headland of Attica, clearly visible though misty with sea haze. Sighing, Menedemos' cousin said, “We could be heading there. We should be heading there.”

“And we will be heading there, my dear,” Menedemos said. “We have to pick up Polemaios and bring him back to Kos. Then we come back to Athens.” He drummed on the steering-oar tillers yet again. “We get to come through the Kyklades twice. I could live without that.”

Before Sostratos could answer, Aristeidas and several other sailors shouted, “Ship ho!” and “Ship to starboard!” and “Pirate coming at us!” Others added curses that would have sunk the hemiolia sprinting out from behind a spit of land if only the gods were listening.

“All men to the oars!” Menedemos called, and the crew scrambled to obey. As soon as every oar was manned, he turned to Diokles and barked, “Give us the stroke, keleustes—the best we can do.”

“Right you are, skipper. . . . . Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The oarmaster struck urgent notes from die bronze square. The rowers, grunting with effort, pulled hard. And the Aphrodite , which had been ambling over the wine-dark Aegean, seemed to gather herself and then leap forward.

Since they'd been going against the wind, the sail was already brailed up to the yard. Menedemos glanced over toward the onrushing pirate ship. Her crew had taken down her mast and stowed it before sallying forth. And, however fast the akatos was going, the hemiolia, by the nature of things, had a better turn of speed. The Aphrodite needed to carry cargo as well as rowers, and was beamier than the lean predator knifing through the water propelled by its two banks of oars.

Menedemos' smile went wolfish. Relative speeds would have mattered more had he been trying to run away. But that wasn't what he intended. He yanked hard on the steering-oar tillers, swinging the Aphrodite straight toward the pirate ship.

“Going to ram, eh?” Sostratos said.

“If those bastards don't sheer off, I will,” Menedemos answered. He'd played this game before. Pirate galleys weren't warships—they wouldn't strike home without counting the cost. They wanted easy victims, not fights. Show them you were ready to give them all they could handle and they weren't so likely to want anything to do with you.

That was the theory on which Menedemos operated, anyhow. It had worked for him more than once. This time . . . This time, his ship and the piratical hemiolia closed with each other at a truly frightening clip. The wind of the Aphrodite's passage blew against his face and ruffled his hair. The hemiolia showed no signs of backing away. She swelled with each stroke of the merchant galley's oars, with each stroke of her own. She had archers on the foredeck, and a black-bearded ruffian at the steering oars bawling orders to his crew.

Archers ... Menedemos said, “Sostratos, duck under me here, grab my bow and arrows, and go forward. You're a decent shot, and you're not rowing or steering.”

“Certainly,” his cousin answered, and did it. He fumbled a little as he strung the bow, but he was ready to shoot by the time he got to the Aphrodite's foredeck. Menedemos knew he was a better archer than Sostratos, but he was also the akatos' best ship-handler, and that counted for more.

Only a couple of stadia separated the two galleys now: less every heartbeat. The rowers, gasping and drenched with sweat, couldn't see that, but Menedemos could. He bit his lip till he tasted blood. Had he outsmarted himself? The hemiolia carried more men than his akatos. If it came to that kind of fight, he would likely lose.

But if I ram, or if I can scrape my hull along her side and break half her oars . . . He'd done that to a Roman trireme the summer before— an astonishing victory for an akatos. But those Italians had been amateurs on the sea. By the way she was rowed, by the way she steered, the hemiolia had a solid crew. Now, who's got more nerve? Menedemos wondered. Me, or that son of a whore over there?

“They're shooting,” Diokles said. The rhythm of mallet on bronze never faltered.

“I see 'em,” Menedemos answered grimly. The arrows splashed into the sea, ahead of the Aphrodite 'sram. Archers always started too soon. Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: “Give 'em a couple, Sostratos! Show 'em we've got teeth, too.”

His cousin waved, drew the bow back to his ear, and let 0y. To Menedemos' astonished delight, one of the bowmen on the pirate ship clutched at his shoulder. His howl of pain came loud and clear across the water. Sostratos whooped joyfully and shot again. He had no luck that time, or none Menedemos could see.

And then, instead of going on to make a ramming attack against the Aphrodite, the hemiolia heeled sharply to starboard. The pirates' oarmaster screamed at his men, to get the last little bit of speed from them and make sure the merchant galley couldn't ram their ship. The black-bearded chieftain lifted a hand from the steering oars to shake a fist at Menedemos. Menedemos lifted his hand, too, to blow the pirates a kiss.

That hemiolia was faster than the Aphrodite. Even had Menedemos wanted to pursue the pirates, which he didn't, he couldn't have caught them. “Let the men ease off, Diokles,” he said, thinking, If I were the captain of a trireme, I would go after those bastards. But even a trireme, as swift a naval vessel as there was, couldn't always keep up with a hemiolia. Menedemos scowled, wishing there were a ship that could scour swift pirate galleys from the seas.

But his scowl didn't last. The rowers raised a panting cheer. And Diokles said, “That was nicely done, skipper. Most of those abandoned catamites haven't got the stomach for a real fight.”

“That's what I was counting on,” Menedemos answered. “The son of a whore with the whiskers made me nervous, though. I wondered if he really did want to mix it up.” He raised his voice so everyone on board could hear: “Let's have a cheer for Sostratos, who shot a pirate with his first arrow.”

The rowers hadn't seen that, of course; they'd been looking back toward the stern. The cheer they gave Menedemos' cousin was louder than the one he'd got himself; they had some of their wind back. Menedemos watched with amusement as Sostratos, still up on the foredeck, gave a wave the rowers also couldn't see and stammered out, “Thank you very much.” Even when he gets a chance to shine, he doesn't know what to do with it, Menedemos thought.

Carrying the bow and quiver, Sostratos made his way back toward the stern. Menedemos greeted him with a line from the Iliad: “Hail, 'best of the Akhaioi in archery.' “

“I'm not, you know,” Sostratos answered with his usual relentless honesty. “You're a better shot than I am, though not by a lot. And hitting anything when you're shooting at a moving target from a moving ship is as much a matter of luck as anything else.”

Both those things were true. Neither of them mattered even an obolos' worth, not right now. Menedemos tossed his head. “You won't get out of it that easily, my dear. Like it or not, you're a hero.”

He would have basked in the acclaim himself. What was a man worth, unless his fellows praised him? Not much, not as far as Menedemos was concerned. But Sostratos turned as red as a handsome youth importuned for the first time by an older man. Menedemos swallowed a sigh. There were times when his cousin took modesty much too far.

The channel between Andros and Euboia had an evil reputation, but its waters were calm enough when the Aphrodite crossed it. Once Euboia lay on the ship's right hand and the coastline of Attica on the left, Sostratos allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. '“We don't have to worry about that anymore,” he remarked.

Menedemos tossed his head. “Of course we do—unless you hadn't planned on going back?” As Sostratos' cheeks heated, his cousin let him down easy: Tm not sorry to get to leeward of Euboia myself, I will say that.”

“Nor I,” Sostratos said. The long, narrow island lay like a shield to the northeast of Attica. “Khalkis tomorrow.”

“I expect so,” Menedemos answered, and began to quote from the Iliad's Catalogue of Ships;

“Old cities,” Sostratos murmured. But he looked west, toward Attica: toward the land to which he wished the Aphrodite were going. He pointed. “There's a place that's not so old, but it bears a name that will live as long as Troy: Marathon,”

His cousin cared little for history, but even he knew what that meant. “Where the Athenians gave the Persians the first lesson on what it means to tangle with free Hellenes,” he said,

Sostratos dipped his head. “That's right.” And so it was, though things weren't quite so simple. Up till the battle at Marathon, the Persians had won their fights against the Hellenes with a monotonous regularity no one cared to remember these days. Sostratos asked, “Do you know the story of Pheidippides?”

“Oh, yes,” his cousin said. “He's the fellow who ran from Marathon to Athens with news of the fight, gasped out, 'Rejoice! We conquer!'—and fell over dead.”

“That's right,” Sostratos said, “When I was in Athens, I went out to Marathon once, to see with my own eyes what the battlefield looks like. It was most of a day on the back of a mule—a long day's march for a hoplite. I don't wonder that Pheidippides dropped dead if he ran it all at once.”

“What on earth made you want to go all that way?” Menedemos asked.

“I told you—to see it for myself,” Sostratos answered.

“It's just a place,” Menedemos said. “The battle happened a long time ago.” They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension. With an amused shrug, Menedemos went on, “Well, to each his own. I think I'll put in at Rhamnous, up past Marathon on the Attic side of the strait here. That's a better anchorage than I could get on the Euboian side.”

“You're trying to drive me mad, aren't you, my dear?—either that or to tempt me to jump ship,” Sostratos said. Menedemos laughed, and Sostratos was joking. He wouldn't snatch up the gryphon's skull, tuck it under his arm, and run like Pheidippides down to the Lykeion. No, I won't, he thought, however much I want to. Not quitechanging the subject, he went on, “A little inland from the seaside village at Rhamnous, there's a temple to Nemesis, with the goddess' statue carved from a block of Parian marble the Persians had brought along for the victory monument they would set up in Athens. Some say Pheidias carved it, others his pupil Agorakritos.”

“You've seen it?” his cousin asked.

“Oh, yes; on the trip to Marathon I stopped there, too. It's very fine work. She's wearing a crown ornamented with tiny Victories and with deer. In one hand, she holds a bowl carved with figures of Ethiopians in relief, in the other an apple branch.”

“Ethiopians?” Menedemos said. “Why?”

“To the crows with me if I know,” Sostratos replied. “A priest said it was because Okeanos is Nemesis' father and the Ethiopians live alongside Okeanos, but that seems like a stretch to me. It's just as likely Pheidias felt like carving Ethiopians, and so he did.”

Rhamnous was a sleepy fishing village. The arrival of a merchant galley that looked a lot like a pirate ship created a small sensation. To explain the Aphrodite's presence in those waters, Menedemos displayed some of the most transparent silk he'd got from Pixodaros and said, “We're bringing it up to Khalkis for Polemaios' favorite hetaira. If I told you how much he's paying, you'd never believe me.”

“Let him waste his money,” somebody said, to which there was a general mutter of agreement. Sostratos hadn't expected anything else. Polemaios had broken with Kassandros, whose puppet ruled Athens and Attica. Demetrios of Phaleron was a popular leader, too; if he and Polemaios didn't get along, the people of Attica wouldn't have much use for Antigonos' nephew.

“A good story,” Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. “No one will go hotfooting it back to Athens to let Demetrios know we're on our way up to Khalkis to see Polemaios.”

“No, not for some silk,” his cousin agreed, stowing the filmy fabric once more. “I wonder how fancy the hetairai in Khalkis are.”

“Of course you do,” Sostratos said. Menedemos clapped both hands over his chest and staggered, as if Sostratos had hit him with an arrow as he'd hit the pirate in the hemiolia. Sostratos laughed; he couldn't help himself. “You're Impossible.”

“Thank you,” Menedemos said, which set them both laughing all over again.

Menedemos got the Aphrodite out of Rhamnous not long after sunrise; the akatos neared Khalkis not long after noon. A wooden bridge spanned the Euripos, the narrow channel separating Euboia from the mainland of Hellas. The fortress of Kanethos on the mainland protected the bridge, and was reckoned part of the city of Khalkis.

Putting in at Khalkis proved a good deal harder than getting to it had been. A strong current flowed south through the Euripos; the rowers had to pull hard to hold the merchant galley in place, let alone make headway against the rushing water. “You couldn't even get near this place from the south in an ordinary round ship,” Menedemos said.

“Be patient, best one,” Sostratos told him.

Sure enough, after something less than an hour, the current abruptly reversed itself and began flowing north. It almost carried the Aphrodite past Khalkis. Only some smart rowing let her ease her way alongside a pier. “By the dog of Egypt, I'd heard of that, but I wasn't sure I believed it,” Menedemos said. He raised his voice to call out to the sailors: “Make sure she's securely moored. We don't want her swept away.”

“Now you see it's true,” Sostratos said as the men checked the lines and the knots. “The current In the Euripos changes direction six or seven times a day. Sometimes more—sometimes even twice that.”

“Why would it do such a mad thing?” his cousin asked.

“I haven't the faintest idea, and I don't think anyone else has, either,” Sostratos replied.

“One of your philosopher friends ought to look into it,” Menedemos said. “Either it's something natural, in which case he'll figure it out, or it's a god putting his finger in there, in which case a philosopher won't do anybody much good.”

“A cause could be natural without being easy to understand,” Sostratos said.

His cousin didn't rise to the argument. Instead, Menedemos said, “Get that letter from Ptolemaios and come on. We've got to find Polemaios.”

The winding streets of Khalkis were full of soldiers who followed Antigonos' rebellious nephew. They all had swords or spears. Quite a few of them had taken on too much wine. Ordinary Khalkidians mostly stayed indoors. Seeing how quarrelsome the soldiers were, Sostratos couldn't blame the locals. One of the soldiers, though, directed him and Menedemos to a house not far from the market square.

As at Ptolemaios' residence back on Kos, sentries stood guard in front of this one. One of them—an immense man, three or four digits taller even than Sostratos—rumbled, “Yes, he's here. Why should he want to see you people, though?”

“I have a letter for him.” Sostratos showed it to the sentry. “He'll have some kind of answer to give us, I expect.”

“Give me the letter,” the big guard said. “I'll take it to him. You wait here.” He held out his hand. That was, plainly, the best offer Sostratos would get. He handed the fellow the letter. The big man went into the house. The remaining guard set a hand on his sword-hilt, as if expecting Sostratos and Menedemos to try to leap on him and beat him into submission.

Polemaios, Sostratos reflected, had burned two bridges in rapid succession. Maybe it was no wonder that his men seemed jumpy. Antigonos and Kassandros both wanted their commander dead. How could they be sure a couple of Rhodians weren't a couple of hired murderers? That was simple: they couldn't. And Polemaios himself had to feel more hunted than any of his soldiers.

That thought had hardly crossed his mind before the door opened again. Out came the bodyguard, followed by a man bigger still by a digit or two. “Hail,” the newcomer said. “I'm Polemaios. You're the Rhodians, eh?”

“That's right,” Sostratos said. He'd heard that Antigonos and his sons, Demetrios and Philippos, were big men; it evidently ran in the family. Demetrios was supposed to be very handsome. Polemaios wasn't. He had a broken nose and what looked to be a permanent worried expression. He was, Sostratos judged, getting close to forty.

“You'd better come in,” he said now. “I think we've got some things to talk about.” Like Ptolemaios, he spoke an Attic Greek with a faint undercurrent of his half barbarous northern homeland.

He'd been drinking wine in the andron. At his gesture, a slave poured cups for Sostratos and Menedemos, then left the room in a hurry. Polomaios picked up his cup and took a long pull, After pouring a small libation, Sostratos drank, too. The wine was sweet and thick and strong and quite unmixed with water. After a small sip, he set down the cup. He also shot Menedemos a warning glance—Polemaios seemed to live up to, or down to, stories about Macedonian drinking habits.

He didn't seem drunk, though, as he leaned toward the two Rhodians and said, “So Ptolemaios will take me in, will he?”

“That's right, sir,” Sostratos said.

Something glinted in Polemaios' eyes. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was even fiercer. “He wants to use me,” he said in tones that brooked no contradiction. “My uncle thought he'd use me. Kassandros thought he'd use me, too.” Sostratos judged he was bound to be right about Ptolemaios, even if the word he chose for use was the one that described what a man did with a boy.

Menedemos spoke quickly: “Ptolemaios spoke to us of an alliance between the two of you.” He sounded more solicitous than usual. Sostratos didn't need long to figure out why—if Polemaios decided not to go back to Kos on the Aphrodite, that threw forty minai of silver into the sea.

“Only goes to show he knows how to tell lies, too,” Antigonos' nephew said with a bitter laugh, “But I'll tell you something, Rhodians.” His intent, solemn stare showed the effects of the neat wine. So did his being rash enough to jab his thumb at his chest and speak his mind to strangers: “I'm all done with being used. I'm no wide-arsed slave boy, not me. From now on, I do the using.”

Ptolemaios wants this fellow around? Sostratos thought, doing his best to hold his face steady. Me, I'd sooner pet a shark.

His cousin still had his eye on the ruler of Egypt's fee, “O best one, will you sail with us?” he asked,

“Oh, yes,” Polemaios replied. “Oh, yes, indeed. I'm squeezed here. I won't be squeezed . . . over there.”

He'd paused there, quite noticeably. What was he going to say till he changed it? Sostratos wondered. “I won't be squeezed, once I hold Egypt?” Something like that, or I miss my guess. And Ptolemaios asked him to come to Kos? The man must be raving mad.

Menedemos' mind was elsewhere: on the practical details of getting Polemaios out of Khalkis and across the Aegean. “Come to our akatos a little before dawn,” he told Antigonos' nephew. “We'll have you out past Attica before Demetrios of Phaleron is any the wiser, and you can make whatever arrangements suit you best to have your men follow you to Kos.”

“Good enough,” Polemaios rumbled. “You're a little chap, but you get things done.”

Even with his passage worth a talent of silver, Polemaios was asking for trouble by calling Menedemos a little chap. Before Menedemos could lose his temper—or, at least, before he could show he'd lost it—Sostratos said, “We'll have you out past Attica provided the Euripos cooperates, that is. If the current is flowing north, we'll just have to wait till it turns around.”

“A pestilence!” His cousin snapped his fingers in annoyance. “I'd forgotten that.” He eyed Polemaios. “I don't suppose you'd like to go north around Euboia?”

Antigonos' nephew tossed his head. “Not likely! I'd be heading straight up toward Kassandros if I did, and I want to get away from him. I'd sooner wait till the Euripos turns around.”

“All right,” Menedemos said mildly—so mildly, Sostratos shot him a sharp look. Had he been thinking something like, If Polemaios is worth a talent to Ptolemaios, how much is he worth to Kassandros? No way to prove it.

Something else occurred to Sostratos. He spoke with as much diplomacy as he had in him: “You do know, sir, we'll be sailing through the Kyklades on our way back to Kos?”

“And through my gods-detested uncle's polluted Island League.” Polemaios might have been harsh and crude, but he wasn't stupid. He went on, “Don't you worry about that. I won't travel under my right name.” He looked from Sostratos to Menedemos and back again. “And I will bring some bodyguards with me.”

“Of course, best one.” The two Rhodians spoke together. If they hadn't promptly agreed to that, Sostratos doubted they would have got back to the Aphrodite alive.

As things were, Polemaios said, “I'll see you in the morning, early,” and called for the slave. At his brusque gesture, the fellow led Sostratos and Menedemos out of the house and all but slammed the door in their faces.

Outside, the big bodyguard barked, “You find out what you needed to know?” Sostratos dipped his head. The guard said, “Why don't you get lost, then?” He set a hand on his swordhilt to let them know it wasn't a suggestion. They left in a hurry.

“What a charming fellow,” Menedemos said once they were around a corner and out of earshot.

“Who?” Sostratos asked. “The man himself, or his comrade?” In a polis full of Polemaios' soldiers, he didn't name Antigonos' nephew,

“I had the man himself in mind,” Menedemos answered. “But his comrade's just as delightful, isn't he?”

“Every bit.” Sostratos walked on for a few paces, then turned to his cousin. “I wonder just how many friends the man himself will bring to the symposion.”

He didn't mention bodyguards or the merchant galley, either, but Menedemos had no trouble following him. “What an interesting question,” he said brightly. “Not so many that they get in the way of the slaves, I hope.”

“So do I,” Sostratos said. “This gets more and more complicated, doesn't it?”

His cousin flashed him a smile. “Well, my dear, have you ever heard of anything that didn't?”

Menedemos had a knack for waking up whenever he told himself to do so, as if somewhere in the back of his mind there were a klepsydra like the one used to time speeches in the Athenian law courts. It was still dark when his eyes came open the next morning. A glance at the stars and the moon told him dawn wasn't far away, though. He peered into Khalkis. No sign of Polemaios yet.

Sostratos lay on his back on the poop deck, snoring like a stonecutter's saw working its way through a block of marble. Menedemos shook him. The snores rose in pitch but didn't stop. Menedemos gave another shake. His cousin's eyes opened. “What in the name of the—?” Sostratos spluttered.

“Good day,” Menedemos said cheerfully. “We're waiting for a friend, remember?”

“Oh. That's right.” Sostratos yawned till the hinges of his jaw creaked. “No sign of him yet?”

“You don't see him, do you?” Menedemos said. He paused to gauge the feel of the water under the Aphrodite. “I wish he'd get here, too, because the Euripos is going our way right now. If it switches back to the north, we'll be stuck here for hours.”

“That's true,” Sostratos said around another yawn, this one not quite so enormous. He got to his feet and, as Menedemos had done a moment before, stared into Khalkis. The town was dark and quiet. An owl hooted, A baby wailed. A dog barked—three individual, widely spaced sounds against the background of silence. “Where is he? I hope he hasn't changed his mind.”

“He'd better not!” Menedemos exclaimed in horror; the elemental, entirely understandable horror of losing forty minai of silver.

“Cheer up,” Sostratos said. “If he does, we can just drop down to Athens and go on about our business.”

“You don't care about business. All you care about is that miserable old skull we got in Kaunos. I'm beginning to wish I'd never set eyes on the stinking thing. It won't make up for what Polemaios will cost us if he doesn't come—and nothing else will, either.”

Instead of answering, Sostratos pointed into the sleeping polls. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Menedemos had been eyeing the gray starting to seep up into the eastern sky.

“Light, moving. Look—there it is again.”

“You're right,” Excitement filled Menedemos' voice. “That's torchlight on walls, sure as sure—we just can't see the torches themselves yet.” And then, a moment later, as the men carrying them rounded a corner, he could: a dozen, at least. They flickered like bright stars on a cold night, and they were, without a doubt, heading for the Aphrodite.

From one of the rowers' benches, Diokles spoke up: “Looks like we're in business, skipper. And the current's flowing our way, too.”

Menedemos smiled. “I might have known you'd be awake, too,” he told the keleustes. “Let's get the men up and get ready to go.”

They were waking sailors when feet thudded on the planks of the quay. “Ahoy, the Aphrodite!” Polemaios called. He towered over all the men with him except that one big bodyguard. He had ten soldiers in full hoplite's gear, plus a couple of torchbearers who were probably servants and, Menedemos saw with surprise, one woman, veiled against the prying eyes of men.

After a moment, the surprise evaporated. He is of an age to have a wife, Menedemos said to himself. Aloud, he answered, “Hail, best one. You're in good time, and the Euripos is with us.”

“Then let's be off,” Polemaios said. He spoke to his men in a low voice. They threw their torches into the sea. The torches hissed as they were quenched. Polemaios’ followers came down the gangplank and into the Aphrodite. Antigonos' nephew followed them. As he stepped down onto the poop deck, he murmured, “Better glory than length of days.”

Akhilleus might have said the same thing, camped by the beached ship on the windy plain of Troy. And Alexander might have said the same thing, too, Menedemos realized. Polemaios is old enough to have gone east with him, if just barely. Even fourteen years dead, Alexander still cast an enormous shadow across the Hellenic world.

“Cast off!” Menedemos called. A couple of his sailors scrambled up onto the pier, undid the lines securing the merchant galley, and came back down again. They stowed the gangplank as they did so. Menedemos glanced up the length of the ship. Polemaios had done a good job of herding his men—and the one woman—well forward, as much out of the rowers' way as possible. Menedemos caught Diokles' eye and dipped his head.

“Back oars!” the oarmaster bellowed, beating out the stroke with mallet and bronze. “Back hard, you lazy bastards! It's like getting away from a pier on a river,”

It put Menedemos in mind of escaping the quay at Pompaia, on the Sarnos, the summer before. This was even more nerve-wracking, though, for the Euripos flowed harder than the river had—and because the channel between Euboia and the mainland had a couple of rocky islets right in the middle of it. Menedemos kept looking back over his shoulder as he handled the steering oars.

“Ready, boys?” Diokles called. The rowers' heads came up. To them, the world held nothing but their oars and the keleustes' voice. “Are you ready?” Diokles repeated. “Then . . . normal stroke!”

The men went from backing oars to pulling the Aphrodite forward as smoothly as if they'd been doing it for years. And, indeed, almost all of them had been doing it for years, aboard one ship or another. Menedemos pulled in on one steering oar and pushed out on the other, bringing the akatos' bow around so she aligned with the way the water was racing.

“Very neat,” Sostratos said. “A little lucky, to have the Euripos flowing in the direction we needed, but very neat.”

“The wind's with us, too,” Menedemos said. “In a little while, I'll have the men lower the sail from the yard. What with oars and wind and current, we'll be practically flying along.”

“We still won't get clear of Euboia by nightfall,” Sostratos said,

“Well, no,” Menedemos admitted, “but we might make it all the way down to Karystos, at the south end of the island. No one could hope to get from there to Khalkis and back by the time we're away the next morning—or from there to Athens and back, either.”

“Karystos,” his cousin said musingly. “There's a marble quarry nearby, I know that. And there's something else about the place, too. Something ...” He snapped his fingers in annoyance, unable to come up with it.

“They've got that strange stone there, the stuff that won't burn,” Menedemos said. “They weave from It, and when the towels get dirty, they just toss 'em in the fire.”

“Asbestos! That's right,” Sostratos said. “Thank you. I was going to be worrying at that all day, like a dog with a bone. Now I don't have to. That stuff sells well, and it's not very bulky. We might do some business.”

“We might,” Menedemos said dubiously. “Nothing to make us late back to Kos, though, especially not in country Kassandros holds.”

Sostratos looked forward, to where Polemaios was pointing something on the Euboian coast out to one of his henchmen. In a low voice, Menedemos' cousin said, “If Ptolemaios decides he wants anything to do with that fellow once he gets a good look at him, I'm a trouser-wearing Persian.”

Menedemos knew he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with Polemaios. Nevertheless, he said, “My dear, that's not your worry, or mine either. Our job is to get him there and get paid for it, and that's what I intend to do.”

Menedemos kept a wary eye on the coast himself as the Aphrodite made her way south, especially when the merchant galley neared one of the many headlands or little offshore islands. Lots of those little islands speckled the channel between Euboia and the mainland. Sheep or cattle grazed on some of them; others seemed just as the gods had made them. A piratical pentekonter or hemiolia might have used any one of them for concealment before rushing out against a merchantman.

You're getting as nervous as that Athenian Sostratos was talking about, Menedemos thought. He wouldn't have fretted so much without such a valuable passenger aboard. Polemaios' bodyguards made the Aphrodite better able to fight off marauders than she would have been otherwise, but Menedemos didn't want to have to put that to the test.

As he had when Kissidas brought his kinsfolk aboard at Kaunos, he kept trying to get as many glimpses as he could of Polemaios' wife. He had little luck there; she stayed up on the foredeck, and the crowd of armored bodyguards did a good job of shielding her from his gaze. Even if he had got a clear look, it wouldn't have told him much, not when, like any respectable woman who had to leave her house, she kept on the veil that shielded her from the gaze of lustful men. He knew as much, but kept peering her way anyhow.

Presently, Polemaios came aft and ascended to the poop deck. Antigonos' nephew towered over Menedemos; he was one of the biggest men the Rhodian had ever seen. He wasn't lean and gawky like Sostratos, either, but massively built, broad in the shoulders and thick through the chest. He made a host in himself.

He was so massively made, in fact, that Menedemos lifted a hand from a steering-oar tiller, made a brushing motion with it, and said, “Excuse me, best one, but please step to one side or the other. I do need to be able to see straight ahead.”

“Oh. Right.” Polemaios didn't apologize. Menedemos would have been surprised if he'd ever apologized to anyone. But he did move, and had the sense to move to starboard rather than to port. If trouble suddenly boiled up, it was much more likely to come from Euboia, on Menedemos' left hand, than from the Attic mainland to his right. After a couple of minutes of silence, Antigonos' nephew asked, “How big a fleet did Ptolemaios bring to Kos?”

“Close to sixty ships,” Menedemos answered.

For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Polemaios smiled. Even smiling, he remained formidable. “Plenty to give my dear uncle a kick in the balls,” he said. “Not half what he deserves, either.”

You say that now, Menedemos thought. A couple of years ago, you were your dear uncle's right-hand man. I think he's not your dear uncle anymore because he's got new right-hand men in his two sons. He said none of that. Polemaios was not the sort of man who invited such opinions.

“Do you know who any of Ptolemaios' ship-captains are?” Antigonos' nephew asked.

Menedemos tossed his head. “Sorry, sir. I'm just a trader.”

“You're not just a trader, or Ptolemaios wouldn't have sent you after me.” Polemaios' gaze was as hard and bright and predatory as an eagle's. “Did you meet any of his commanders of marines?”

“Only one, and then only in a manner of speaking,” Menedemos answered. “He was the fellow whose five stopped us on the way into the harbor at Kos. He asked the sort of questions you'd expect an officer to ask strangers.”

“Ah.” Polemaios leaned forward with a now-we're-getting-somewhere expression on his face. “What was his name? Did you bribe him to let you go on? How much silver did it take to get him to look the other way?”

“I never found out what his name was,” Menedemos said in some exasperation. “And he never came aboard, so I couldn't very well bribe him.”

Antigonos' nephew looked as if he believed not a word of that. “How did you get him to let you pass, then? Ptolemaios' officers are paid to be suspicious, just like any others. They wouldn't be much use to him if they weren't.”

“How, O marvelous one?” Menedemos' patience began to slip. He didn't like being grilled like this aboard his own ship, especially when he saw no point to Polemaios' questions. “I showed him a tiger hide, that's how. After that, he let me alone and didn't bother me anymore,”

Polemaios didn't take the hint. He did shift the aim of his questions: “Where did you get a tiger hide? Have you ever been to India? You couldn't have gone with Alexander—you're not old enough,”

Men who'd gone conquering with the great king of Macedonia were going to throw that in the younger generation's face as long as they lived. Menedemos had already heard it more often than he would have liked. He answered, “No, I haven't been to India. This hide came west. I bought it in the market square at Kaunos.”

“Oh.” Polemaios didn't bother hiding his disappointment. He turned away and went forward again. With a silent sigh of relief, Menedemos gave all his attention back to guiding the Aphrodite down the channel between Euboia and the mainland. Fishing boats fled back to Eiretria, the other prominent polls on the island, when they spotted the akatos and the armed and armored men aboard her. To Menedemos' relief, no war galleys came striding over the sea to investigate. They must figure we're just another pirate, and not worth bothering about. The thought saddened and angered him at the same time.

Dystos, south of Eiretria, lay inland, on the shore of a small, marshy lake. Its walls, shaped like some sort of polygon—Sostratos would know its name: he's the one who cares for such things, Menedemos thought—-had ten or twelve towers to help hold foes at bay. They might not have done their job any too well; though the walls hadn't been breached, Dystos seemed half—more than half— abandoned.

Presently, Sostratos came back to the poop deck. Menedemos greeted him with a smile. “By the dog of Egypt, I'm glad of your company,” he said.

“Are you?” His cousin raised an eyebrow. He set a hand on Menedemos' forehead, as if checking to see if he had a fever. “Do you feel well?”

Laughing, Menedemos said, “Better, anyhow.” He lowered his voice: “You and Polemaios both ask lots of questions, but you're friendly about it, and he's fierce.”

“What sort of questions was he giving you?” Sostratos said, also softly. “I did mean to ask you about that, as a matter of fact.” Menedemos explained. When he finished, Sostratos let out an unmusical whistle. “Isn't that interesting? Do you know what he's doing?”

“Being nosy to not much purpose,” Menedemos answered.

“Being nosy, yes, but I think he has a purpose.” Sostratos glanced forward to make sure Antigonos' nephew wasn't paying undue attention, “It sounds as though he's trying to find out whether Ptolemaios has any officers who can be corrupted.”

Menedemos' whistle was even more discordant than Sostratos'. “I think you've fit that together like a mortise joining a couple of ship's timbers. That's just what he was doing, Furies take me if it's not.”

He whistled again. “He's a piece of work, that one.”

“ 'Many are the marvels—' “ Sostratos began.

“ '—and none is more marvelous than man.' “ Menedemos finished the quotation from Sophokles for him. He clipped his head in agreement, too. “All the same, though, I've never seen anyone more eager to bite the hand that feeds him. You were clever to figure him out so fast.” He sent Sostratos a curious glance. His cousin wasn't usually so sharp a judge of people.

“He's like someone from Thoukydides come to life,” Sostratos said now: “a man who's practically nothing but plots and ambitions. An ordinary chap is much harder to make out, at least for me.”

That's because you're not an ordinary chap yourself, Menedemos thought. More often than not, he would have twitted Sostratos about it. Now, when Sostratos had solved a puzzle that baffled him, he kept quiet. His cousin had earned a respite. . . for a little while.