The Sacred Land

11

Menedemos pulled in on one 5teering-oar tiller and pushed the other one out. The Aphrodite rounded Cape Pedalion, the highland that marked the southeastern corner of Cyprus. Diokles said, “That headland is supposed to be sacred to Aphrodite, so there’s a good omen for our ship, if you like.”

“I like good omens just fine, thanks very much,” Menedemos answered. “I’ll take ‘em wherever I can find ‘em, too.”

“Why is this part of Cyprus sacred to the love goddess?” Sostratos asked. “Didn’t she rise from the sea at Paphos? Paphos isn’t near here, is it?”

“No, young sir, Paphos is way off to the west,” the oarmaster said. “I don’t know why Cape Pedalion’s sacred to her. I just know that it is.”

Sostratos still looked discontented. Menedemos shot him a glance that said, Shut up. For a wonder, his cousin got the message. Menedemos wanted the sailors to think the omens were good. The happier they were, the better they’d work. If Diokles hadn’t given him a real one, he might have invented a good omen to keep them cheerful.

The beaches west of Cape Pedalion were of fine white sand, the soil inland from them a red that promised great fertility, though fields lay fallow under the hot sun, waiting for fall and the rains that would bring them back to life. But the promontory did strange things to the wind, which went fitful and shifting, now with the merchant galley, now dead against her.

“By the gods, I’m glad I’m in an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to sail this coast in a round ship. You could spend days going nowhere at all. And if the wind did blow in one direction, like as not it’d drive you aground instead of taking you where you wanted to go.”

“You don’t want that,” Sostratos said. “You don’t want that anywhere. You especially don’t want it on a shore where nobody knows you.”

Diokles dipped his head. “No, indeed. And you really especially don’t want it on this shore, where most of the people are Phoenicians, not Hellenes at all. Kition, the next city up ahead, is a Phoenician town.”

“From what we saw in Sidon, Phoenicians aren’t any worse than Hellenes,” Sostratos said.

“I’m not saying they’re worse. I’m saying they’re foreign,” the keleustes replied. “If I were a Phoenician skipper, I’d sooner go aground here than up by Salamis, where the people are mostly Hellenes.”

“I’d sooner not go aground anywhere,” Menedemos said. “I’d sooner not, and I don’t intend to.”

He did put in at Kition the next day to buy fresh bread. It looked like a Phoenician town, with tall buildings crowding close together and with men in caps and long robes. The gutturals of Aramaic dominated over Greek’s smooth rising and falling cadences.

“I can understand what they’re saying,” Sostratos exclaimed. “When we first set out, I wouldn’t have followed even half of it, but I can understand almost all of it now.”

“You’ve been speaking the language yourself,” Menedemos said. “That’s why. I can even understand a little myself. But I expect I’ll forget it as soon as we get back to Rhodes. I won’t need to know it anymore.”

“I don’t want to forget!” Sostratos said. “I never want to forget anything.”

“I can think of a few things I’d just as soon forget,” Menedemos said, “starting with Emashtart.” He laughed and tossed his head. “I didn’t have any trouble keeping my oath on account of her. How about you, O best one? Outrage any husbands in Ioudaia? You never swore you wouldn’t.”

To his surprise-indeed, to his amazement-his cousin coughed and shuffled his feet and generally acted flustered. “How did you know?” Sostratos asked. “Were you talking with Moskhion or Teleutas? Did they blab?”

“They never said a word, my dear, and I never thought to ask them about that,” Menedemos answered. “But now I’m asking you. Who was she? Was she pretty? You wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t thought she was pretty, would you?”

“Her husband ran the inn where we stayed in Jerusalem,” Sostratos said slowly. “Her name was Zilpah.” He bared his teeth in what wasn’t quite, or wasn’t just, a smile. “While I was going after her, I thought she was the most wonderful thing in the world.”

Menedemos laughed out loud. “Oh, yes. I know all about that. I kept trying to tell you, but you didn’t want to listen.”

“I understand better now.” By the way Sostratos said it, he wished he didn’t.

Laughing still, Menedemos said, “So you finally got her, did you?”

“Yes, on the way back from Engedi.” Sostratos didn’t sound particularly proud of himself. “If she hadn’t been angry at her husband, I never would have.”

“They all say that,” Menedemos told him. “Maybe they even believe it. It gives them an excuse for doing what they want to do anyhow. Well? How was it?”

“Better than with a whore, certainly-you’re right about that,” Sostratos admitted.

“Told you so,” Menedemos said.

“You tell me all sorts of things,” Sostratos said. “Some of them turn out to be true, and some of them don’t. She started crying afterwards, though, and wished she’d never done it. Everything was fine-better than fine-up till then. As soon as we’d finished, though…” He tossed his head.

“Oh. One of those. Just your luck to run into one like that the first time you play the game,” Menedemos said sympathetically, and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “It happens, I’m afraid.”

“Obviously, since it happened to me,” Sostratos said. “And it did feel like a game. I didn’t like that.”

“Why not? What else is it?” Menedemos asked in honest puzzlement. “Best game in the world, if you ask me, but still, only a game.”

Sostratos groped for an answer: “It shouldn’t be only a game. It’s too important to be only a game. For a little while there, I was… in love, I suppose. I don’t know what else to call it.”

“That can happen,” Menedemos agreed. Sostratos hadn’t sounded happy about it. Menedemos didn’t blame him. Love was as dangerous a passion as the gods had inflicted on mankind. Menedemos went on, “I don’t suppose you can do anything halfway, can you?”

“Doesn’t seem that way, does it?” Sostratos spread his hands. “There’s my story, such as it is. I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t done before.”

“That’s not the point. The point is, it’s something you haven’t done before.”

“I know.” No, Menedemos’ cousin didn’t seem happy at all. “Now I understand the fascination of your game. I wish I didn’t.”

“Why?” Menedemos asked. “Because now you have a harder time looking down your nose at me?”

Relentlessly honest, Sostratos dipped his head. “Yes, that’s the main reason why, and I won’t tell you any different. And because I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep from doing something like that again one of these days. I hope so, but how can I know for certain?”

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Menedemos told him. “You got away. You’ll never see the woman or her husband again. Nobody got hurt. Why are you in such an uproar? You don’t need to be.”

Sostratos was relentlessly precise as well as relentlessly honest. “I wouldn’t say nobody got hurt. If you’d seen Zilpah afterwards…” His mouth tightened. He was looking back on a memory that didn’t please him at all.

But Menedemos repeated, “Don’t worry about it. Women get funny sometimes, that’s all. The day after you left the inn, she’d probably forgotten all about you.”

“I don’t think so,” Sostratos said. “I think she thought she loved me, the same way I thought I loved her. Then we lay with each other, and that made her decide her husband was really the important one. I think she- how do I put it?-blamed me for not being who, or maybe what, she thought I was.” He sighed.

“Well, what if she did?” Menedemos asked. “How is that your fault? It isn’t, my dear, and that’s all there is to it.”

“ ‘That’s all there is to it,’“ Sostratos echoed in a hollow voice. “Easy enough for you to say, O best one. Not so easy for me to persuade myself.”

Menedemos started to tell him not to be a fool. Considering how many times Sostratos had told him the same thing, he looked forward to getting some of his own back. But before the words could pass the barrier of his teeth, a sailor called out a warning from the bow: “Skipper, a soldier’s coming up the pier to look us over.”

“Thanks, Damagetos,” Menedemos answered with a sigh. Kition might have been a Phoenician town, but, like the rest of Cyprus, it lay under Ptolemaios’ rule these days. The garrison here had to prove itself alert. The Aphrodite wasn’t likely to be part of an invasion fleet ordered out by Antigonos, but at first glance she easily might have seemed a pirate. Scorching Sostratos would have to wait.

“What ship are you?” The inevitable question floated through the air as soon as the officer got within hailing distance.

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes,” Menedemos answered, resisting the impulse to yell back, Whose man are you? He’d asked it before and discovered what he should have known anyhow: cracking wise with a fellow who could cause you trouble wasn’t a good idea. Even so, the temptation remained.

“Where have you been, and what’s your cargo?” Ptolemaios’ officer asked.

“Sidon, and lately Salamis,” Menedemos answered. “We’ve got Byblian wine, crimson dye, balsam of Engedi, and a few jars of Rhodian perfume and olive oil.”

“Olive oil?” the soldier said. “You must have been daft, to carry olive oil in a scrawny little ship like that.”

Everyone who heard about that part of the cargo said the same thing. For a long time, hearing it had made Menedemos grind his teeth. Now he could smile. “You might think so, best one, but we unloaded almost all of it,” he said. “Would you care to try one of the jars we have left?”

“No, thanks,” the officer replied with a laugh. “But you’re traders, all right. Welcome to Kition.” He turned and walked back into the city.

A sharp, metallic clicking in the sky made Menedemos and a good many others look up. He stared. “What in the world are those?” he said.

“Bats,” Sostratos answered calmly.

“But I’ve seen bats before-everybody has,” Menedemos protested. “They’re little things, like dormice with wings. These aren’t little. They’ve got bodies like puppies and wings like a crow’s.”

“They’re still bats,” Sostratos said. “They’ve got noses, not beaks. They’ve got ears. They’ve got bare wings and fur, not feathers. What else would they be?”

“They’re too big to be bats,” Menedemos insisted. “If they were any bigger, they’d be like vultures, by the gods.”

“So you say big bats are impossible?” Sostratos asked. “Fine. Have it your way, my dear. They’re big birds that happen to look exactly like bats.”

Menedemos’ ears burned. To make matters worse, Sostratos spoke in Aramaic to a Phoenician longshoreman. The fellow answered volubly, pointing back into the long, rolling hills behind Kition. Sostratos bowed his thanks, exactly as a Phoenician might have done.

He turned back to Menedemos. “They are bats,” he said. “They live in caves, and they eat fruit. That’s what the fellow said, anyhow. I always thought bats ate bugs. I wish we could stay and learn more about them. May we?”

“No,” Menedemos said. “You would be the one to care more for learning about bats than for learning about women, wouldn’t you?”

Sostratos winced. “I didn’t say that.”

And so he hadn’t, but Menedemos, having been embarrassed over the bats, was delighted to take a little revenge. If he ruffled his cousin’s feathers (or, seeing that those creatures were bats, his fur), too bad.

The trouble with being angry at someone aboard an akatos, as Sostratos had long since discovered, was that you couldn’t get away from him. The ship wasn’t big enough. And so, even though he thought the crack Menedemos had made was grossly unfair, he couldn’t go off by himself and sulk. The only possible place for him to go off by himself was up on the tiny foredeck, but he didn’t have the luxury of sulking there. If he stood on the foredeck, he had to do lookout duty.

That he did, staring out at the water of the Inner Sea in lieu of looking back at his cousin. But the first thing that crossed his mind then was how, had everything gone well, Aristeidas would have stood here instead. He blamed himself because the sharp-eyed sailor wasn’t. Blaming himself, he forgot all about blaming Menedemos.

More big bats flew overhead the next evening, as the Aphrodite neared the town of Kourion. Sostratos pretended not to notice them. Menedemos didn’t say anything about them, either: a strange sort of truce, but a truce even so.

Menedemos even made an effort to be friendly, asking, “What do you know about Kourion? You know something about almost every place where we stop.”

“Not much about this one, I’m afraid,” Sostratos answered. “ King Stasanor of Kourion went over to the Persians during the Cypriot rebellion almost two hundred years ago. Thanks to his treachery, the Persians won the battle on the plains near Salamis, and the rebellion failed.”

“Sounds like something a town’d rather not be remembered for,” Menedemos remarked. “What else do you know?”

Sostratos frowned, trying to flog more bits from his memory. “Kourion is a colony sent out from Argos,” he said, “and they worship an odd Apollo here.”

Diokles dipped his head. “That’s right, young sir: Apollo Hylates.”

“Apollo of the Wood-yes! Thanks,” Sostratos said. “I couldn’t recall the details. You know more than I do here, Diokles. Go on, if you would.”

“I don’t know much more,” the oarmaster said, suddenly shy. “I’ve only been here a couple of times myself. But I do know the god has strange rites, and anyone who dares touch his altar gets thrown off those cliffs yonder.” He pointed to bluffs west of the town. As cliffs went, they weren’t very impressive; Sostratos had seen far higher and steeper ones in Lykia and in Ioudaia. Still, a man flung from the top was bound to die when he hit the bottom, which made them high enough to punish sacrilege.

Menedemos asked what struck Sostratos as a couple of eminently reasonable questions: “Why would anybody want to touch that altar, if people know what happens to those who do? And how often is anybody going to be mad enough to do it?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you, skipper,” Diokles replied. “All I know is what I remember-or what I think I remember-from when I did put in here. That was years ago now, so I may have it wrong.”

No war galleys patrolled outside Kourion, or none Sostratos saw. He hadn’t spied any around Kition, either. Ptolemaios seemed to be keeping his whole fleet at Salamis, that being the port closest to the Phoenician coastline from which Antigonos might launch an attack against Cyprus. And if the ruler of Egypt had garrisoned Kourion, as Sostratos assumed he had, the local commander was most incurious. No one asked any questions of the Aphrodite ’s crew except the longshoremen who moored the merchant galley to a quay.

“Whence come ye?” a naked man inquired in the old-fashioned Cypriot dialect as he made a line fast. “Whither be ye bound?”

As usual, Menedemos told him, “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes. We’re heading home from Sidon.” The Doric drawl Sostratos’ cousin spoke seemed all the stronger after the longshoreman’s archaic speech.

“ Rhodes, say you, good sir? And Sidon? In sooth, you’ve traveled far, and seen many things passing strange. What think you the most curious amongst ‘em?”

“I’ll answer that, if I may,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos waved for him to go on. He did: “In loudaia, inland from the Phoenician coast, there’s a lake full of water so salty, a man can’t drown in it. He’ll float on the surface with head and shoulders and feet sticking out into the air.”

“Tush! Go to!” the Cypriot exclaimed. “Think you to gull me so? You rank cozener! Why, water’s water, be it salt or fresh. An you throw a man in’t, if he swim not, he’ll sink down and drown. ‘Tis but natural that it be so. Who told you such lies?”

“No one told me,” Sostratos said. “I saw this with my own eyes, felt it with my own body. I went into this lake, I tell you, and it bore me up from the great amount of salt in it.”

Try as he would, though, he couldn’t make the longshoreman believe him. “By Apollo Hylates, I’ve met folk like you aforetimes,” the fellow said. “Always ready with a tall tale, the which no man hereabouts may check. Go to, I say again! You’ll not catch me crediting such nonsense and moonshine.”

Sostratos wanted to insist he was telling the truth. He wanted to, but he didn’t bother. He knew he would only waste his time and end up out of temper. People who often clung to the most absurd local superstitions wouldn’t trust a foreigner to tell them the truth about a distant land. The Cypriot had asked him for a strange story and then refused to believe it once he got it.

Moskhion came up onto the poop deck. “Don’t worry about it, young sir,” he said. “Some people are just natural-born fools, and you can’t do a thing about it.”

“I know,” Sostratos said. “Arguing with somebody like that is nothing but a waste of breath. He wouldn’t have believed you and Teleutas, either.”

“That’s why I kept quiet,” Moskhion said, dipping his head. “I didn’t see any point in quarreling, that’s all. It wasn’t on account of I wouldn’t back you.”

“Of course not,” Sostratos said. “I’d never think such a thing, not when we fought side by side there in the rocks north of Gamzo. We owe each other our lives. We’re not going to split apart over a foolish argument with somebody who’s probably never gone fifty stadia from Kourion in his life.”

Menedemos said, “We still have a little while before sunset. Shall we go into the agora and see what they’re selling there?”

“Well, why not?” Sostratos answered. “You never can tell. I wouldn’t bet on finding anything worth buying, but I might be wrong. And walking around in any market square will remind me I’m back among Hellenes.”

His cousin dipped his head. “Yes, I had the same thought.” He ran the gangplank from the poop deck to the quay. “Let’s go.”

Kourion wasn’t a big city, but it was an old one. Even its larger streets meandered in every direction. One of these days, Sostratos supposed, someone might rebuild the place with a neat Hippodamian grid of avenues, such as Rhodes and Kos and other newer foundations enjoyed. Meanwhile, the locals knew their way around, while strangers had to do their best. Eventually, he and Menedemos did find the agora.

Men wandered from stall to stall, examining produce and pots and leather goods and nets and carved wood and cloth and a hundred other things. Sellers praised their goods; buyers sneered. Men with trays ambled through the square, selling figs and wine and fried prawns and pastries sweetened with honey. Knots of men gathered here and there, arguing and gesticulating. It was the most ordinary scene imaginable, in any town full of Hellenes along the Inner Sea.

Tears stung Sostratos’ eyes. “By the gods, I never dreamt I could miss this so much.”

“Neither did I,” Menedemos agreed. “Let’s see what they’ve got, eh?”

“Of course, my dear,” Sostratos said. “You never know what we might find.” They strolled the agora together. Sostratos knew what he hoped to find: another gryphon’s skull. That one was most unlikely to turn up in this out-of-the way little polis bothered him not at all. He had his hopes, and would keep on having them as long as he lived.

He saw no sign of any such wonder in Kourion, though. He saw no sign of any wonders in the market square. The agora was almost staggeringly dull, at least for someone looking for cargo for a merchant galley. A local miller or farmer would surely have found it delightful.

As soon as he realized he wouldn’t see anything much he wanted to buy, he started listening to the talk in the agora. Talk, after all, was the other main reason men came to the market square. Thanks to the Cypriot dialect, he had to listen harder than he would have back in Rhodes. The more he listened, though, the more easily he followed it.

People kept talking about a gamble or a risk. They all knew what it was, and they wisely discussed this fellow’s chance of bringing it off, or that one’s, or someone else’s. They also talked about the price of failure, without saying what that was, either.

Finally, Sostratos’ curiosity got the better of him. He walked up to a local and said, “Excuse me, O best one, but may I ask you a question?”

The man from Kourion dipped his head. “Certes, stranger. Say on.”

“Thank you kindly.” As had happened before on Cyprus, the accent here made Sostratos acutely conscious of his own Doric dialect, which came out more than usual. He persisted even so: “What is this gamble I hear you all talking about?”

“Why, to touch the altar of Apollo Hylates unbeknownst to the priests serving the god, of course,” the man from Kourion replied.

Sostratos stared. “But isn’t it death to touch that altar? Don’t they throw you off the cliffs?” He pointed westward.

“In good sooth, sir, ‘tis indeed. An a man be caught, he suffereth infallibly that very fate. ‘Tis the price of failure,” the local said.

Menedemos said, “In that case, why on earth would anybody be crazy enough to want to do it?”

Shrugging, the man from Kourion replied, “It hath of late become amongst the youth of this our city a passion, a sport, to make their way to yon temple by twos and threes-the odd young men being witness to him who dareth-to lay hold of the altar, and then to get hence with all the haste in ‘em.”

“Why?” Sostratos asked, as Menedemos had before him. Again, the local only shrugged. When he saw the Rhodians had no more questions for him, he politely dipped his head again and went on his way.

Sostratos kept scratching his own head and worrying at the question like a man with a bit of squid tentacle stuck between his teeth. At last, he said, “I think I understand.”

“More than I can say,” Menedemos replied.

“Look at Athens more than a hundred years ago, when Alkibiades and some of his friends profaned the mysteries of Eleusis and mutilated the Herms in front of people’s houses,” Sostratos said. “They probably didn’t mean any real harm. They were drunk and having a good time and playing foolish games. That’s what the young men are doing here, I suppose.”

“It’s not a foolish game if the priests catch you,” Menedemos pointed out.

“I wonder what sort of watch they keep,” Sostratos said. “If it is only a game, they might look the other way most of the time… though Alkibiades came to grief when people who should have kept their mouths shut didn’t.”

“We’ll be out of here tomorrow,” Menedemos said. “We’ll never know.”

“I wish you hadn’t put it like that,” Sostratos said. “Now it will keep on bothering me for the rest of my days.”

“Not if you don’t let it,” Menedemos said. “What bothers me are the goods in this agora. I can’t see a single thing I’d want to take away from here.” He snapped his fingers. “No, I take that back-there was one very pretty boy.”

“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos told him. Boys’ beauty drew his eyes, but in the same way as a fine horse’s beauty might have. He admired without wanting to possess. When he thought about such things, he wondered if that was because he’d been so completely ignored while he was a youth. Maybe the sting of that humiliation remained with him yet.

Menedemos, by contrast, had had his name and the usual epithets- MENEDEMOS IS BEAUTIFUL or MENEDEMOS IS BEST or THE BOY MENEDEMOS IS MOST LOVELY-scrawled on walls all over Rhodes. He knew Sostratos hadn’t-he hardly could help knowing. Most of the time, as now, he was tactful: “Well, my dear, I did happen to notice him. But he’s probably got no honor-just another little wretch with a wide arsehole.”

Perversely, that made Sostratos want to defend the boy. “You don’t know the first thing about him,” he said.

“No, but I know the type,” Menedemos answered. “Some people go through their beauty like that”-he snapped his fingers again-”because they’ve nothing else to spend.”

“Heh,” Sostratos said.

“What? Do you think I’m joking?” Menedemos asked.

“No, my dear, not at all,” Sostratos answered. When they were both youths, when Menedemos was swimming in attention while he had none, Sostratos had told himself his cousin had only beauty to go through and would be worthless by the time he grew up. He’d been wrong, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t consoled himself so.

They walked back to the Aphrodite . One of those enormous bats flew overhead. Menedemos said, “It’s got a pointy nose, just like the pretty boy I saw. Do you suppose bats call one another beautiful?”

Sostratos contemplated that, then tossed his head. “What I suppose is, you’re very peculiar, to come up with a question like that.”

“Why, thank you!” Menedemos said, as if Sostratos had praised him. They both laughed.

Some of the sailors went into Kourion to get drunk. Diokles had no trouble rounding them up, though. “I didn’t figure I would,” he said when the job was done. “Nobody wants to get stuck in a miserable little place like this.”

That perfectly summarized Sostratos’ view of Kourion. He was glad when the merchant galley left the town early the next morning. Of course, she would stop for the night at some other small Cypriot city, perhaps one even less prepossessing than Kourion, but he chose not to dwell on that.

Diokles was clanging out a slow, lazy stroke for the men at the oars- there was no breeze to speak of-when a sailor pointed toward the shore a few plethra away and said, “What are they doing there?”

Sostratos looked in the direction of the bluffs west of Kourion. A procession marched along the heights. No-not everybody marched, for one man, bound, went stiffly and unwillingly, dragged toward the cliff-edge. Ice ran through Sostratos. His voice shook when he called, “Do you see, Menedemos?”

His cousin dipped his head. “I see.” He sounded thoroughly grim, continuing, “Well, now we know how seriously the priests of Apollo Hylates take the game of touching their altar.”

“Yes. Don’t we?” Sostratos watched-couldn’t stop watching, much as he wanted to turn away-the procession reach the place where land gave way to air. The akatos lay far enough out to sea that everything on the shore happened not only in miniature but also in eerie silence. Only the sound of waves slapping against the ship’s hull and the regular splash of oars going into and out of the water came to Sostratos’ ears.

What were they saying, there at the top of the bluffs? Were they cursing the bound man for profaning the god’s altar? Or were they-worse- commiserating with him, saying it was too bad he’d got caught, but now he had to pay the price? As with Thoukydides, who’d written down speeches he hadn’t heard, Sostratos had to decide what was most plausible, most appropriate to the occasion.

Then, suddenly, without Sostratos’ quite seeing how it happened, the bound man went over the cliff. For a heartbeat, the scene there ashore wasn’t silent any more. The man’s shriek of terror and despair reached the Aphrodite across a stadion of seawater. It cut off with horrid abruptness. At the foot of the cliffs, his broken body lay as still as if it had never held life. Pleased with a job well done, the men of Kourion who’d put him to death went back toward the temple to attend to whatever other important business they had that day.

Sailors muttered among themselves. Even if some of them thought the man had brought it on himself by profaning the god’s altar, watching him die wasn’t easy and couldn’t possibly have been a good omen. Diokles fingered the amulet of Herakles Alexikakos he wore to turn aside evil.

Sostratos walked back to the stern and up onto the poop deck. In a low voice, he said, “I’m glad we didn’t buy anything in the agora at Kourion,”

Menedemos had to look back over his shoulder now to see the corpse lying there under the bluffs, close by the sea. After a moment, his gaze swung toward Sostratos once more. He slowly dipped his head. “Yes,” he said. “So am I.”

Ahead of the Aphrodite , the Anatolian mainland slowly rose above the horizon. Behind her, Cyprus sank into the sea. Between the one and the other, she was alone in the midst of immensity. Menedemos had sailed for the mainland from Paphos, on the west coast of the island. That made for a longer journey over the open sea than if he’d crawled up to the north coast of Cyprus, but it also shaved several days off the journey back to Rhodes.

“Euge,” Sostratos told him. “Everything seems to be going well.” “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Menedemos said. “But I can already hear my father complaining I took a chance going this way.” He sighed. Now that they were well on the way to Rhodes, the things of home crowded forward in his mind once more. He didn’t look forward to dealing with his father. Part of him didn’t look forward to dealing with his father’s second wife, either. But part of him was eager, ever so eager, to see Baukis again. And he knew exactly which part that was, too.

Sostratos came up onto the poop deck. He pointed dead ahead. “Nicely sailed,” he said. “With the headland of Lykia there, you’ve skipped a lot of the waters that pirates haunt.”

“I wish I could have skipped them all,” Menedemos answered. “If I thought I could have got away with sailing straight across the sea from Cyprus to Rhodes, I’d have done it. Then we wouldn’t have had to worry about pirates at all.”

“Maybe not,” Sostratos said. “But if you were able to cross the open sea like that, easy as you please, don’t you think pirates would be, too?”

Menedemos hadn’t thought of that. He wished his cousin hadn’t thought of it, either. “There are times, my dear, when you make seeing both sides of the picture seem a vice, not a virtue.”

“What is the world coming to, when I can’t even tell a plain truth without getting carping criticism back?” Sostratos looked up to the heavens, as if expecting Zeus or Athena to descend and declare that he was right.

Neither Zeus nor Athena did any such thing. Maybe that proved Sostratos was wrong. Maybe it proved the gods were busy elsewhere, on some business more important than Sostratos’. Or maybe it proved nothing at… Menedemos shied away from that speculation before it fully formed. Still, he wished that just once he would see a god, any god, manifest himself on earth or openly answer a prayer. That would make his own piety, which while sincere didn’t run especially deep, much easier to maintain.

Still not quite letting that question take shape in his mind, Menedemos asked, “What was the name of the wicked fellow who said priests invented the gods to frighten people into behaving the way they should?”

“Kritias,” Sostratos answered at once. “He’s ninety years dead now, but you’re right-he was as wicked as they come, and not just on account of that.”

“He was one of Sokrates’ little pals, wasn’t he?” Menedemos said.

His cousin flinched. “He did study with Sokrates for a while, yes,” he admitted. “But they broke when he did something shameless and Sokrates called him on it in public.”

“Oh.” Menedemos hadn’t known that. He enjoyed teasing Sostratos about Sokrates, but the answer he’d just got killed his chances for the time being. He watched Sostratos eyeing him, too. His cousin knew the games he played, which meant he would be wiser not to play this one right now. Half the sport disappeared when the other fellow knew the barbs were coming.

Menedemos concentrated on sailing the Aphrodite instead. He took his hand off a steering-oar tiller to point, as Sostratos had, at the Lykian highlands that rose so steeply from the sea. “They make a lovely landmark, but I wish they weren’t there.”

“I should hope so, my dear,” Sostratos replied, understanding him perfectly. “If they weren’t, the Lykians wouldn’t be half so much trouble. Those heights hide bandits the way river mouths and little capes and promontories hide pirate ships.” His face clouded. “I’d never had trouble with bandits before this trip.”

“That’s because you never did a lot of traveling on land,” Menedemos replied. “Who does, if he can help it?”

“Travel by sea’s not safe, either,” Sostratos said. “We found that out last year, when the pirates stole the gryphon’s skull.”

“They didn’t intend to steal the skull. It just happened to be something they got away with,” Menedemos pointed out. “I know the loss pains you, but it wasn’t what they had in mind. Let me remind you what they did have in mind-stealing our money and our valuables, and killing us or selling us into slavery or holding us for ransom. Losing the gryphon’s skull is a fleabite next to what might have been.”

His cousin had the grace to look shamefaced. “Yes, that’s true, of course,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed otherwise; if I have, I’m sorry for it. But I will say it’s a fleabite that rankles.”

“I know you will-you will at any excuse, or none,” Menedemos said. “After a while, hearing about it over and over rankles, too.”

He wondered if that was too blunt. Sostratos could be sensitive and could also sulk for days after having his feathers ruffled. Now he said, “I’m so sorry, my dear. I won’t bore you with my presence anymore,” and stalked off the poop deck like an indignant Egyptian cat. Menedemos sighed. Sure enough, he’d hit too hard. Now he’d have to figure out a way to jolly Sostratos back into a good mood.

Meanwhile, he had the ship and the sea and the approaching Lykian coast to worry about, which meant his cousin got short shrift for a while. Sostratos had been right about one thing: just as no army had ever cleared brigands from the Lykian hills, no navy had ever cleared pirates from the coastline. Menedemos wished the Aphrodite were a trihemiolia. Let the Lykians beware then!

In a merchant galley, though, he was the one who went with caution. By the end of the day, the highlands had bulked their way out of the sea, tall and dark with forest. He might have tried to make a town. He might have, but he didn’t. He had enough food. He’d taken on as much water as the Aphrodite would carry in Paphos. He could afford to spend one more night at sea. He could afford to, and he did.

Not a sailor grumbled, not off this coast. Maybe the men would have put up with striking straight across from Cyprus to Rhodes after all. If the other choice was running the gauntlet of Lykian pirates… He wondered whether the akatos could have carried enough bread and cheese and olives and wine and water for so long a journey. Maybe. But maybe not. There would be risks. He chuckled under his breath. At sea, there were always risks.

As the sun went down, anchors splashed into the Inner Sea. Sailors ate their suppers and washed them down with watered wine. A waxing gibbous moon glowed in the southeastern sky. As twilight deepened, the stars came out. Zeus ’ wandering star hung low in the southwest. A little to the east of it shone Ares’ wandering star, now entering the Scorpion and thus close to its ruddy rival, Antares. Kronos’ wandering star, yellow as olive oil, beamed down from the south, a little west of the moon.

Snores began to rise in the quiet darkness. Sostratos came back from the poop deck to wrap himself in his himation and stretch out beside Menedemos. He wasn’t quite ready for sleep, though. Pointing up toward Ares’ wandering star, he spoke in a low voice: “I wonder why it’s so much dimmer now than it was this spring. Then it would have easily outshone Antares. Now…” He tossed his head.

Menedemos was sleepy. “How can we know why?” he asked, his voice grumpy. “It does what it does, that’s all. Do you expect to go up into the heavens and look?”

“If I could, I’d like to,” Sostratos said.

“Yes. If. But since you can’t, won’t you settle for going to sleep instead?”

“Oh, all right. Good night.”

“Good night,” Menedemos said.

When he woke the next morning, twilight streaked the eastern sky behind the Aphrodite . “Rosy-fingered dawn,” he murmured, and smiled. He yawned, stretched, and got to his feet. Shivering a little, he picked up the crumpled chiton he’d used for a pillow and put it back on. The day would soon warm up, but the night had been on the chilly side. He walked to the rail and pissed into the Inner Sea.

Sostratos still snored. He hardly seemed to have moved from where he’d lain down the night before. Diokles was awake; he looked back from the rower’s bench where he’d curled up for the night and dipped his head at Menedemos. As the day brightened, more and more sailors woke. Finally, just before the sun came up over the horizon, Menedemos waved to the men who’d already roused, and they set about waking the rest.

He woke Sostratos himself, stirring him with his foot. His cousin muttered something, then jerked in alarm. His eyes flew open. For a moment, they held nothing but animal fear. Then reason returned, and anger with it. “Why didn’t you just stick a spear in me?” Sostratos demanded indignantly.

“Maybe next time, my dear.” Menedemos made his voice as sunny as he could, the better to annoy his cousin. By Sostratos’ scowl, it worked.

Barley cakes and oil and more watered wine served for breakfast. Grunting with effort, sailors hauled on the capstans to bring up the anchors. They hauled them out of the sea and stowed them near the bow. Menedemos gauged the wind. It was easy to gauge: there was none to speak of. He sighed. The rowers would earn their pay today.

At his orders, Diokles put eight men a side on the oars: plenty to keep the merchant galley going, yet few enough to keep the crew fresh in case they needed everyone rowing to escape pirates or fight them off. Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert the unwelcome omen.

As often happened, fishing boats fled from the Aphrodite . They took one look at a galley centipede-striding across the waters of the Inner Sea and assumed they saw a pirate ship. That always saddened Menedemos. Still, had he skippered one of those little boats, he would have run from the Aphrodite , too. Anyone who took chances with his crew’s freedom and lives was a fool.

The wind did blow up, fitfully, as the morning wore along. Menedemos ordered the sail lowered from the yard. He wondered why he’d bothered. Now it would fill and shove the akatos forward, and then a moment later, when the breeze died again, it would hang as loose and empty as the skin on a formerly fat man’s belly after his polis was besieged and starved into surrender.

“A pestilence!” he muttered when the wind failed for the fourth time in half an hour. “Might as well be a girl who teases but doesn’t intend to put out.”

Sostratos stood close enough to hear him. “Trust you to come up with that figure of speech,” he said.

“I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you,” Menedemos said.

He would have gone on in that vein, but Moskhion, who was taking a turn as lookout, shouted from the foredeck: “Ship coming out from behind that headland! No, two ships, by the gods! Two ships off the starboard bow!” He pointed.

Menedemos’ eyes swung in the direction Moskhion gave. Even so, he needed several heartbeats to spy the ships. They were galleys, their masts down, their hulls and even their oars painted a greenish blue that made them hard to spot against sea and sky. No honest skipper painted his ship a color like that.

Sostratos saw the same thing at the same time. “Pirates,” he said, as if remarking on the weather.

“I’m afraid you’re right, my dear.” Menedemos dipped his head. He gauged the speed at which those long, lean galleys were approaching, gauged it and didn’t like it a bit. “I’m afraid we can’t very well run, either, not with the hull as soaked as it is. They’d catch us quick, and this polluted fitful breeze won’t let us sail away, either.”

“We have to fight, then,” Sostratos said.

“Yes.” Menedemos dipped his head again. “I’m afraid we do.” He shouted orders: “Raise the sail to the yard! Serve out weapons to everyone! Man all oars! Diokles, as soon as we have a rower on every bench, I’ll want you to up the stroke. We can’t outrun ‘em, but we’ll need as much speed as we can get.”

“Right you are, skipper.” The oarmaster pointed toward the approaching pirate ships, which stayed a couple of plethra apart. “They’re a little overeager, you ask me. If they’d waited a little longer before they came out of cover, we’d’ve had less time to get ready.”

“We’re a good ways out to sea; maybe they wanted to make sure we didn’t get away,” Menedemos said. “If they did make a mistake, it’s up to us to prove it.”

“They’re triakonters,” Sostratos said. “Only thirty rowers in each one, but look how many extra men they’ve packed in for boarding.”

“Bastards,” Menedemos said. “Grab my bowcase, O best one. Your archery will help us.”

“I hope so,” his cousin answered. “I can’t shoot all of them, though, however much I wish I could.”

“I know. I wish you could, too,” Menedemos said. “But the more you hit, the fewer we’ll have to worry about if they do manage to board us.” If they board us, we’re ruined, he thought. As Sostratos had, he saw how full of men the pirate ships were. The Aphrodite ’s crew might well have been able to fight off one. Both together? Not a chance. He knew as much, but he wouldn’t say so out loud. By the expression on his cousin’s face, Sostratos knew as much, too.

Up went the sail. Rowers hurried to their places. Sailors who weren’t rowing served out swords and pikes and axes and cudgels. Men stowed them where they could grab them in a hurry. Everyone’s eyes were on the pair of triakonters speeding toward the merchant galley. The men also had to know they couldn’t beat back that many boarders. But they’d been through sea fights with Menedemos before. He’d always managed to do something to keep them free and safe.

What are you going to do this time? he asked himself. He found only one answer: The best I can. Aloud, he said, “Sostratos, loose the boat from the sternpost. Then go forward to shoot. If we win, maybe we’ll come back for the boat. If we don’t…” He shrugged and turned to Diokles as his cousin obeyed. “Up the stroke some more. Don’t show them quite everything we can do, though, not yet. Let them think we’re a little slower and deeper laden than we really are.”

“I understand, skipper.” The keleustes raised his voice so even the men at the forwardmost oars could hear: “Put your backs into it, you lugs! If you want to pay the whores on Rhodes again, you do what the captain and I tell you. Come on, now! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” He beat out the rhythm with mallet and brass square, too.

The Aphrodite seemed to gather herself, then to spring across the water toward the two pirates. The akatos’ rowers couldn’t see the foe, of course; they looked back at Menedemos and Diokles. Diokles had been wise to remind them to obey orders. They relied on the oarmaster and the skipper to be their eyes and brains. They staked their freedom, maybe their lives, on that reliance. By the anxious expressions some of them wore, they were well aware of it, too.

Then Menedemos had no more time to spare for his own rowers. He steered the merchant galley at the two triakonters as they made for the Aphrodite . The eyes at the bows of the pirate ships stared balefully across the water at the merchant galley. Their rams, and the Aphrodite’s, too, gnawed through the sea, churning it to white foam. Their oars rose and fell, rose and fell, not quite so smoothly as the. Aphrodite ’s but at a remarkably quick stroke. Both ships were faster than the akatos. But not by so much as you think, Menedemos told himself. I hope.

“I’ll give you something nice, Father Poseidon,” he murmured, “if you let me come home to do it. I promise I will.” He bargained with men almost every day. Why not with the gods as well?

Things on the sea didn’t always happen swiftly. Even though the Aphrodite and the pirates were closing faster than a horse could trot, they had twenty or twenty-five stadia to cover before they met: close to half an hour. Menedemos had plenty of time to think. So did the pirate captains, no doubt. He suspected he knew what they would do: keep their distance from each other, ply the Aphrodite with arrows for a while, and then close and board from port and starboard at the same time. With numbers thus on their side, they could hardly fail.

As for what he could do to counter that… There, his thoughts remained murkier than he would have liked.

Those pirate ships swelled. Suddenly, Menedemos could hear shouts from the men aboard them, see sunlight spark from swords and spearheads. He didn’t think the shouts were Greek, not that it mattered. There had been plenty of Hellenes aboard the pirate ship that attacked the merchant galley the year before in the Aegean. They counted as pirates first.

He steered the Aphrodite straight for the nearer triakonter here: the left-hand one of the pair. No matter how she altered course-and her fellow with her, in some nice seamanship-he swung the steering-oar tillers so his bow and hers pointed at each other.

“You going to try ramming her, skipper?” Diokles asked. “You want the extra from the rowers now? I think they can still give it to you, though they’ve been working pretty hard.”

“I’ll watch what the pirates do, and that’ll tell me what I can do,” Menedemos answered. “Don’t up the stroke till I yell, no matter what.”

“All right.” The oarmaster didn’t sound doubtful, no matter what he was thinking. That left Menedemos grateful. If Diokles let worry show, it would surely infect the rowers, and that would make a bad situation even worse.

Archers aboard the closer pirate ship started shooting. Their arrows splashed into the Inner Sea well short of the Aphrodite . Menedemos dipped his head in wry amusement. Bowmen were always overeager. Before long, though, the shafts would start to bite. More arrows arched through the air. These fell short, too, but not by nearly so far.

Where time hadn’t mattered much before, suddenly now heartbeats were of the essence. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite hard to port, aiming her ram straight for the side of the second triakonter, the one he’d ignored up till now. “Everything they’ve got, Diokles!” he called.

“Right,” the oarmaster said without hesitation. He upped the stroke: “Come on, boys! You can do it! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” Not even Talos the bronze man could have held that sprint for long. Gasping, thrusting, faces gleaming with sweat and oil, the rowers gave him everything they had in them. The akatos suddenly seemed to bound forward over the sea.

Menedemos’ only advantage was that he knew what he was doing and neither of the pirate captains did. Had the skipper of the closer ship been more alert, more ready for something unexpected from the Aphrodite , he might have rammed her as she turned toward his comrade. He tried, in fact, but he waited a couple of heartbeats too long before starting his own turn-and the merchant galley’s sudden burst of speed also caught him by surprise. His triakonter passed a few cubits astern of the Aphrodite .

Two arrows hissed past Menedemos from behind. He couldn’t even look back. If he got hit, he hoped Diokles would shove him out of the way and drive home the attack on the other pirate ship. He aimed the merchant galley at a point halfway between the triakonter’s ram and where her mast would go when it was up.

The man at the steering oars on the pirate ship should have started to turn toward the Aphrodite or away from her, to make sure the akatos’ ram didn’t hit squarely. The black-bearded ruffian should have. Maybe he even would have; though taken by surprise, he probably had time to do it. But Sostratos shot three arrows at him in quick succession. Two of them missed. The other one hit him in the neck. He shrieked and clawed at himself and forgot all about steering the triakonter.

“Euge!” Menedemos roared exultantly.

Another pirate pushed the wounded helmsman aside and seized the steering oars. Too late. Much too late. Heartbeats counted now, and the men in the second ship had none to spare. Menedemos heard their screams, saw their mouths-and their eyes-open wide, wide, wide as the ram slammed home. One of them tried to use an oar to fend off the merchant galley, which did him no more good than a straw would have in fending off an angry dog.

Crunch! The impact staggered Menedemos. The ram’s three horizontal flukes stove in the triakonter’s timbers, breaking tenons, tearing mortises open, and letting the sea flood in between planks formerly watertight.

“Back oars!” Diokles shouted. The rowers, who’d known the command was coming, obeyed at once. Menedemos’ heart thudded. If the ram stuck, the pirates could swarm aboard the Aphrodite from their mortally wounded vessel and perhaps yet carry the day. But then he breathed again, for it came away cleanly. He turned the akatos toward the other pirate ship.

A rower howled as an arrow from the stricken triakonter bit. Another sailor took his place. Menedemos thanked the gods that hadn’t happened during the ramming run, or it might have thrown off his timing and made him deliver a less effective blow. He noticed yet another sailor, not a man who’d been pulling an oar, down and clutching at a shaft through his calf. That fellow must have been wounded in the attack, but Menedemos, his attention aimed wholly at his target, hadn’t noticed till now.

Archers aboard the surviving triakonter kept shooting at the Aphrodite , too. Sostratos answered as best he could. One of his shafts hissed just in front of the face of the pirate ship’s helmsman. He jerked back with a startled cry Menedemos could hear across the couple of plethra of water between the two galleys.

He also heard cries for help coming from the ship he’d rammed as she settled ever lower in the water. She wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the sea-she was, after all, made of wood. But already the oars were of little use; when her hull filled completely, they would be altogether worthless. And she was a good many stadia out to sea. Menedemos, a strong swimmer, wouldn’t have cared to try to get to shore from here by himself. And not so many men could swim at all.

The other pirate ship might take her crew off her, but that triakonter was already crowded. Besides, if she came up alongside her stricken sister, she would lie dead in the water, waiting for another ramming run from the Aphrodite .

A nice problem for her skipper, Menedemos thought. He and the other pirate captain maneuvered warily. Neither of the ships was at its best anymore; the rowers on both were worn. Still, the triakonter remained faster. Menedemos couldn’t catch up to her. After a little while, he stopped trying, for fear he would altogether exhaust his men and leave them at the pirates’ mercy.

As they sparred, the rammed ship continued to settle. Before long, pirates were bobbing in the sea clinging to oars and to anything else that would float. Their cries grew ever more pitiful-not that they would have known any pity themselves, had they rammed the merchant galley rather than the other way round.

The breeze began to rise. It made the sea rougher. The pirate ship filled faster yet. The men who’d abandoned her rose on wavecrests and slid down into troughs. Menedemos tested the wind with a wet thumb. “What do you think?” he asked Diokles. “Will it hold for a while?”

“Hope so.” The oarmaster leaned into the wind. He smacked his lips, as if tasting it, then dipped his head. “Yes, skipper, I think it will.”

“So do I.” Menedemos raised his voice: “Let down the sail from the yard. I think these polluted temple robbers have had all they want of us. If they come after us with the ship they’ve got left, we’ll make ‘em sorry all over again.”

Cheers rang out, weary but heartfelt. Diokles eased back on the stroke; now the wind was playing a larger role in pushing the merchant galley across the sea. Menedemos looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, the one triakonter hurried over to the other, taking men off her. No one aboard the sound pirate ship seemed to be paying the Aphrodite any mind. And even if the pirates were still thinking about her, a stern chase was a long chase. The extra weight of the several dozen men would make the surviving triakonter slower, too.

Sostratos came back toward the stern to help the sailor who’d been shot through the leg. He knew something about doctoring-Menedemos suspected he knew less than he thought he did, but even the best physicians could do only so much. He drew the arrow and bandaged the wound. The sailor seemed grateful for the attention, so Menedemos supposed his cousin was doing no harm.

And Sostratos had done very well indeed from the foredeck. “Euge!” Menedemos called once more. “You shot the pirate at the steering oars at just the right time there.”

“I would have shot the abandoned wretch sooner if I hadn’t missed him twice,” Sostratos said. “I could practically have spit across the sea and hit him, but the arrows went past.” He looked disgusted with himself.

“Don’t fret about it,” Menedemos said. “You did hit him, and that’s what counts. They lost enough time so they couldn’t turn into our stroke or turn away from it, either, and we hit ‘em good and square. The ram does a lot more damage that way.”

“Do you think the other one will come after us?” Sostratos asked.

“I don’t know for certain. We’ll just have to find out. I hope not,” Menedemos replied. “I promised Poseidon something nice if he brought us through. I’ll have to make good on that when we get back to Rhodes.”

“Fair enough, my dear,” his cousin said. “The god earned it. And you earned praise, too, for your seamanship.” He called out to the sailors: “Another cheer for the skipper, boys!”

“Euge!” they shouted.

Menedemos grinned and raised one hand from a steering-oar tiller to wave. Then he looked over his shoulder again. Still no sign of the other pirate ship. Not only was the triakonter not pursuing, she’d disappeared

The Sacred Land 343

below the horizon. Menedemos didn’t say anything, though, not yet. Though he couldn’t see her from his place on the poop deck, her crew might still be able to make out the Aphrodite ’s mast and sail. He was content to sail on and see what happened.

The breeze continued to freshen. At last, he took his men off the oars and went on under sail alone. He thought the pirates would have to do the same: either that or wear out their men altogether. He kept looking back in the direction from which the merchant galley had come. Still no sign of a sail.

At last, he allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. “I truly don’t think they’re coming after us,” he said.

“Euge!” the sailors yelled again.

“how does your leg feel, Kallianax?” Sostratos asked anxiously.

“It’s still sore as can be, young sir,” the sailor answered. “It’ll stay sore a while longer, too, I reckon.” His Doric drawl was thicker than most. “You don’t get shot without having it hurt. By the gods, I wish you did.”

“I understand that,” Sostratos said. “But is it hot? Is it inflamed? Is there any pus in it?”

“No, none of that there stuff,” Kallianax said. “It just hurts.”

“As long as it doesn’t swell or turn red or start oozing pus, though, it’s healing the way it should,” Sostratos told him. “You keep pouring wine on it, too.”

Kallianax made a face. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your leg. Wine makes it burn like fire.”

“Yes, I know,” Sostratos said. “But it does help make you better. Do you want to lose a long-term advantage because of some pain now? If a wound goes bad, it can kill. You’ve seen that-I know you have.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t figure this here one would,” Kallianax said.

“Please don’t take the chance,” Sostratos said. With obvious reluctance, the sailor dipped his head. Sostratos resolved to keep an eye on him to make sure he did as he was told. Some people did habitually place the short term ahead of the long. He knew that, knew it as a fact without altogether understanding it.

Menedemos laughed when he said as much. “I can think of a couple of reasons why it’s so,” his cousin said.

“Enlighten me, O best one,” Sostratos said.

That only made Menedemos laugh more. “I know you, my dear. You can’t fool me. Whenever you get too polite for your own good, that means you don’t think I can enlighten you. Some people are fools, plain and simple. They wouldn’t care about month after next if you whacked them over the head with it.”

“But are they fools by nature or only because they haven’t been educated to be anything else?” Sostratos asked.

He expected a neat either-or answer. That was how he’d been educated. But Menedemos said, “Probably some of each. Some people are fools, like I said. They’ll act like idiots whether they’re educated or not. Others-who knows? Maybe you can show some people that folly is folly.”

Sostratos grunted. His cousin’s reply wasn’t neat, but it made a good deal of sense. “Fair enough,” he said, and started to turn away.

But Menedemos said, “Hold on. I wasn’t done.”

“No?” Sostratos said. “Go on, then.”

“Thank you so much.” An ironical Menedemos was a dangerous creature indeed. Go on he did: “If the reward you get now is big enough, you won’t care about trouble later on, either. After Alexandros chose Aphrodite above Hera and Athene, he got Helen to keep his bed warm. Do you think he worried about what might happen to Troy later on account of that? Not likely!”

“There you go, making comparisons about women again,” Sostratos said. Menedemos didn’t let go of the steering-oar tillers, but he made as if to bow even so. But Sostratos, after a little thought, had to admit, “Yes, that’s probably true, too.”

“Are you enlightened, then?” Menedemos asked.

“I suppose I am.”

“Good.” Menedemos grinned. “You have any more of these little problems, just bring them to me. I’ll set you straight.”

“Go howl,” Sostratos said, which only made Menedemos laugh more.

The Aphrodite put in at several towns along the Lykian coast, not so much to do business as because the coastal cities, held by Ptolemaios’ garrisons, were the only safe halting places in that stretch of the world. If none was near when the sun went down, the merchant galley spent the night well offshore.

Another reason the Rhodians didn’t do much business in the Lykian towns was the hope they would get higher prices for their goods in the Aegean the following spring than they could hereabouts. Phoenician merchants sometimes brought their own goods this far west; few of them got to the poleis of Hellas proper.

One of Ptolemaios’ officers in Myra bought a couple of amphorai of Byblian for a symposion he was planning to put on. “This will give the boys something to drink they haven’t had before,” he said.

“I’d think so, yes,” Sostratos agreed. “How do you like being stationed here?”

“How do I like it?” The soldier made a horrible face. “My dear sir, if the world needed an enema, they’d stick the syringe in right here.” That jerked a laugh from Sostratos and Menedemos both. The officer went on, “The Lykians are jackals, nothing else but. And if you killed every single one of them, you wouldn’t do yourself any good, because these mountains would just fill up with other human jackals in no time flat. This kind of country is made for bandits.”

“And pirates,” Sostratos said, and he and Menedemos took turns telling of their fight out on the Inner Sea.

“You were lucky,” Ptolemaios’ officer said when they finished. “Oh, I don’t doubt you’re good sailors and you have a good crew, but you were lucky all the same.”

“I prefer to think we were skillful.” Menedemos had his share of faults, but modesty had never been among them.

Dryly, Sostratos said, “I prefer to think we were skillful, too, but there’s no denying we were lucky-and we caught the pirates by surprise.”

“We’re Rhodians,” Menedemos said. “If we can’t outdo a rabble like that, we hardly deserve our freedom. Our friend here”-he dipped his head to the soldier-”wishes he could scour the mountains clean. I wish we could do the same to the shore and burn every triakonter and pentekonter and hemiolia we find.”

“That would be good,” Sostratos said.

“That would be wonderful,” the officer said. “Don’t hold your breath.”

Menedemos puffed out his cheeks like a frog inflating its throat sac in springtime. Sostratos chuckled. So did the soldier who served Ptolemaios. Menedemos said, “Sadly, though, it’s no wonder most of this town is set back fifteen or twenty stadia from the sea. Everyone in these parts expects pirates, takes them for granted, and even plans cities taking them into account. And that’s wrong, don’t you see?” He spoke with unwonted earnestness.

“No, it’s right, if you want to keep your city from getting sacked,” Ptolemaios’ officer said.

“I understand what my cousin is saying,” Sostratos told him. “He means people should fight pirates instead of accepting them as part of life. I agree with him. I hate pirates.”

“Oh, I agree with him, too, about what people should do,” the officer said. “What they will do, though-that’s liable to be another story.”

Much as Sostratos would have liked to argue with him, he couldn’t.

The rest of the trip along the Lykian coast went smoothly. One triakonter came dashing out from the mouth of a stream when the Aphrodite sailed past, but thought better of tangling with her: a single pirate ship, even if she carried a large boarding party along with her rowers, was anything but certain of seizing the merchant galley.

“Cowards!” the sailors from the Aphrodite yelled as the triakonter turned about and headed back toward shore. “White-livered dogs! Spineless, stoneless eunuchs!”

To Sostratos’ enormous relief, those shouts didn’t infuriate the pirates enough to make them turn back. Later, he asked Menedemos, “Why do they yell things like that? Do they really want a fight with the polluted Lykians?”

“I don’t think so,” his cousin answered. “I certainly hope not, anyway. But wouldn’t you yell your scorn if a foe decided he didn’t care to have anything to do with you? Are you going to tell me you’ve never done anything like that in your life?”

Thinking about it, Sostratos had to toss his head. “No, I can’t do that. But I can tell you I’ll try not to do it again. It just isn’t sensible.”

“Well, maybe it isn’t,” Menedemos said. “But so what? People aren’t always sensible. They don’t always want to be sensible. You have trouble understanding that sometimes, if you want to know what I think.”

“People should want to be sensible,” Sostratos said.

“Ptolemaios’ officer had it straight, my dear: what people should want and what they do want are two different beasts.”

Rhodes lay only a day’s sail-or a bit more, if the winds were bad-west of Patara. Sostratos and Menedemos picked up a few more hams there to sell at home. Menedemos said, “I was thinking of going up to Kaunos for a last stop, but to the crows with it. I want to get back to my own polis again.”

“I won’t quarrel with you, my dear,” Sostratos answered. “We’ll have a nice profit to show, and it’ll get better still once we sell everything we’re bringing back from Phoenicia. No one can complain about what we did in the east.”

“Ha!” Menedemos said darkly. “That only shows you don’t know my father as well as you think you do.”

Sostratos had always thought Menedemos’ troubles with his father were partly his own fault. But he knew telling his cousin as much would do no good at all and would make Menedemos angry at him. So he sighed and shrugged and dipped his head, murmuring, “Maybe you’re right.”

The sailors cheered when they learned Menedemos intended to sail straight for Rhodes. They wanted to go home, too. When the northerly breeze went fitful, they clamored to take a turn at the oars. Breeze or no, the Aphrodite cut through the waters of the Inner Sea like a knife through meat boiled tender.

With his wounded leg, Kallianax still found rowing painful. Using a spearshaft as a stick, he’d taken his place on the foredeck as lookout. The merchant galley was only a couple of hours out of Patara when he called, “Sail ho! Sail ho, dead ahead!”

“Better not be another gods-cursed pirate, not so close to Rhodes,” Menedemos growled. His hands tightened on the tillers till his knuckles whitened.

That same thought had just crossed Sostratos’ mind. He stood on the poop deck, not far from Menedemos and Diokles. Like both of them, he peered toward the new ship. Having the sun at their backs helped. And… “She’s really closing the distance hand over fist, isn’t she?” Sostratos murmured a few minutes later.

“She sure is.” His cousin sounded worried. “I’ve never seen anything honest move so fast.” He shouted, “Serve out the weapons, by the gods! Whoever she is, she won’t have an easy time with us.”

But then, from the bow, Kallianax called, “She’s got a foresail, skipper!”

“Belay the weapons!” Menedemos called. Any galley big enough to carry foresail as well as mainsail was also big enough to carry a crew that could overwhelm the Aphrodite ’s without breathing hard: was, in fact, almost surely a war galley, not a pirate ship.

Shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, Sostratos said, “What’s that emblem painted on her sails? Isn’t it… isn’t it the Rhodian rose?” He hesitated for fear of being wrong.

But Menedemos, whose eyes were probably sharper than his, dipped his head. “It is, by the gods!” He shouted again, this time in joyous relief: “She’s one of our own, boys!” The sailors whooped and clapped their hands. But after a moment, in more nearly normal tones, he went on, “But which one of our own is she? She’s not a regular trireme, or you’d see marines stomping around up on her decking, and her oarbox would be fully timbered to keep arrows and catapult bolts from tearing up the rowers. But she’s too big and too fast for anything else. What in the name of the gods could she be?”

A lamp went on inside Sostratos’ head. “My dear, to the crows with me if she’s not your trihemiolia.”

“Do you think so?” Menedemos rarely sounded awed, but this, Sostratos thought, was one of those times. “Do you really think so?”

“What else could she be?” Sostratos asked. “She’s very new. Look how pale and unweathered her planking is.”

Whatever she was, she was curious about the Aphrodite . As she drew near, Sostratos saw she did indeed have three banks of oars. Her crew had stowed the rear benches of the upper, thalamite, bank so she could lower mast, yard, and mainsail in a hurry, but those hadn’t come down yet. An officer at the bow called the inevitable challenge: “What ship are you?”

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes and bound for home from Phoenicia,” Menedemos yelled back. “And what ship are you? You’re a trihemiolia, aren’t you?”

“You must be a Rhodian, or you wouldn’t know the name,” the officer answered. “Yes, we’re the Dikaiosyne.”

“ ‘Justice,’ “ Sostratos murmured. “A good name for a pirate hunter.”

The officer on the Dikaiosyne went on, “The Aphrodite , you say? Who’s your skipper there? Is that Menedemos son of Philodemos?”

“That’s me,” Menedemos said proudly.

“You’re the chap who had the idea for a ship like this, aren’t you? I heard Admiral Eudemos say so.”

“That’s me,” Menedemos repeated, even more proudly than before. He grinned at Sostratos. “And now I know how it feels to look at my baby, and I didn’t even get a slave girl pregnant.” Sostratos snorted and grinned back.