Over the Wine-Dark Sea Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Sostratos sighed. "We live in troubled times."

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

  5

  On the fourth afternoon after the brush with the pirates, the lookout at the bow called, "Land! Land dead ahead!" and Menedemos knew it had to be Cape Tainaron, the most southerly point on the mainland of Hellas. The Aphrodite had sailed through the narrow channel with Cape Maleai and Cape Onougnathos on the right hand and the little island of Kythera on the left not long before, so he'd been expecting the call, but it still sent a jolt of mixed excitement and alarm through him.

  We'll pick up some mercenaries here, he thought. We'll take them to Taras - maybe even to Syracuse, depending on what kind of news we hear when we get to Italy - and we'll rake in the silver doing it. He did his best to keep that thought uppermost, but another one kept intruding. We'll rake in the silver, provided we get away from Tainaron in one piece.

  Diokles said, "Even if the lookout hadn't seen land, all these other ships bound for the tip of Tainaron would tell us we were heading towards a fair-sized town."

  "A fair-sized town at the tip of the cape has to be supplied by sea," Menedemos answered. "You can't get much in the way of grain down there by road. You can't get much of anything down there by road - which is why the mercenaries have their camp there."

  "True enough." Diokles pointed to the rocky peninsula leading down to the sea. "A handful of men could hold off an army coming south just about forever."

  "That's why this place is where it is," Menedemos agreed. "And, since Kassandros and Polyperkhon haven't got much in the way of ships, the mercenaries can do what they want - and hire out to whomever they want." He started to say more, but Sostratos came running back toward him, excitement on his face. Menedemos wasn't sure what sort of excitement it was. He tried to forestall his cousin, asking, "All right, who spilled the perfume into the soup?"

  "No, no." Sostratos tossed his head so emphatically, a couple of locks of his hair flew loose. As he brushed them back from his eyes, he explained, "I was going to let the peahen called Helen out for a run when I found she'd laid an egg!"

  "Ahh." Visions of drakhmai danced in front of Menedemos' face. "That is good news. And if Helen has started laying eggs, the others won't be far behind her. We can sell eggs for a nice price once we get across the Ionian Sea." He scratched his chin. Bristles rasped under his fingernails. "Have we got any straw, so the birds can make nests?"

  Sostratos tossed his head again. "No, but I can get some light twigs from the dunnage without having amphorai knock together or anything like that. Those would probably be better than nothing."

  "Good. Do it," Menedemos said. Sostratos turned to go. Menedemos pointed at him. "Wait. I didn't mean you personally go and do it right this instant. It's important, but it
's not that important. Tell off a couple of sailors and have them take care of it."

  "Oh. All right." Plainly, that hadn't occurred to Sostratos. He pointed ahead. "They've got themselves a real polis here, haven't they? - and not the smallest one in Hellas, either."

  "No. Nor the worst-governed city in Hellas, probably," Menedemos said. As he'd thought it would, that made his cousin squirm. In musing tones, Menedemos went on, "This really is a polis, or something close to one. It's not just the mercenaries, not even close. They've got their wives here, and their concubines, and their brats, and their slaves - "

  "And the people who sell things to them, like us," Sostratos put in.

  "And the people who sell things to them," Menedemos agreed. "But you won't find too many merchants' shops right there in the mercenaries' encampment. Most of the traders come here by sea, too, and anchor out of bowshot from the shore."

  Diokles said, "I hope you're going to do the same thing, skipper."

  "I hope I am, too," Menedemos said, which made the keleustes laugh and Sostratos smile. Dipping his head, Menedemos went on, "I want to get away from Tainaron nice and safe myself, you know."

  "That would be good," Sostratos said. "The generals and the Italiote cities aren't the only ones recruiting here." He pointed toward a couple of low, lean craft painted blue-green. "If those aren't pirates, I'd sooner eat the peahen's egg than sell it."

  "Even without that paint job, they'd be pirates," Menedemos said. "Not much else hemioliai are good for." The galley had two banks of oars, but the upper, or thranite, bank stopped short just after the mast, to give the crew plenty of space to stow mast and yard and sail when they took them down for a ramming attack. No other variety of galley was so fast and so perfectly suited to predation.

  "I hope they aren't watching us the way we're watching them," Sostratos said.

  "They aren't," Menedemos assured him. "The fox doesn't look at the hare the way the hare looks at the fox."

  "You so relieve my mind," Sostratos murmured. Menedemos grinned.

  "We're not your ordinary hare, though," Diokles said. "We showed that triakonter we're an armored hare." He chuckled. "Aphrodite's a good name, mind, but I wouldn't mind sailing in a ship called Hoplolagos, just for the sake of surprising people."

  "No one gives ships names like that," Menedemos said. "You name them for gods, or after the sea or the waves or the foam or something like that, or you call them swift or fierce or bold - or lucky, like that five of Ptolemaios' we met. I've never heard of a ship with a silly name."

  "Does that mean there should never be one?" Sostratos asked, a certain glint in his eye. "Is the new bad merely for being new?"

  With most men, that glint would have been lust. With Sostratos, Menedemos judged it likelier to be philosophy. He tossed his head. "Save that one for the Lykeion, cousin. I'm not going to thrash my way through it now. We've got more important things to worry about, like coming away from Tainaron without getting our throats cut."

  He wondered if Sostratos would argue about that. When his cousin was feeling abstract, the real world often had a hard time making an impression on him. But Sostratos said, "That's true enough. It's so true, maybe you should have thought about it sooner, thought about it more. I tried to get you to, if you'll recall."

  "I did think about it. You know that," Menedemos said. "I decided the chance for profit picking up men to go to Italy outweighs the risk. That doesn't mean I think there's no risk."

  Diokles pointed. "There's the temple to Poseidon. It looks like the one building hereabouts that's made to last, set alongside all these huts and shacks and tents and things."

  "That's the temple with the bronze of the man on the dolphin, isn't it?" Sostratos said. "I'd like to see it if I get the chance: it's the one Arion the minstrel offered after the dolphin took him to shore when he jumped into the sea to save himself from the crew of the ship he was on."

  The keleustes gave him a quizzical look. "How do you know about that bronze? You've never been here before, have you?"

  "No, he hasn't." Menedemos spoke before his cousin could. He pointed a finger at Sostratos. "All right, own up. Whose writing talks about it?"

  "Herodotos'," Sostratos said sheepishly.

  "Ha!" Menedemos wagged that finger. "I thought as much." He turned back to Diokles. "Let them bring us a couple of plethra closer to land, but no more than that. Then we'll go ashore and see if we can hunt up some passengers. Pick some proper bruisers to man the boat, too - I don't want to come back to the beach and find it's been stolen from under our noses."

  "Right you are," the oarmaster said. "Matter of fact, if you don't think you've got to have me here aboard, I wouldn't mind taking boat duty myself."

  Menedemos looked Diokles up and down. He dipped his head. "As far as I can see, any mercenary who's stupid enough to get frisky with you deserves whatever happens to him."

  "I'm a peaceable man, captain," Diokles said. A slow smile spread over his face. "But I might - I just might, mind you - remember what to do in case somebody else didn't happen to feel peaceable."

  "Good," Menedemos said.

  "OöP!" Diokles called. The other rowers in the Aphrodite's boat rested at their oars. The boat grated on the sand. Sostratos wore only a tunic and a knife belt. As he stepped onto the beach, he wished he had on a bronze corselet and crested helm, greaves and shield, and long spear and shortsword. Armor and weapons might have made him feel safe. On the other hand, they might not have been enough.

  "This is a place with no law," he murmured to "If anyone takes it into his mind to try to kill us, what's to stop him?"

  "We are," Menedemos replied. Sostratos found that unsatisfactory. But his cousin was grinning from ear to ear and strutting a jaunty strut. Just as some men were wild for women or wine or fancy opson, so Menedemos was wild for trouble. He sometimes seemed to get into it deliberately so he could have the fun of getting himself out.

  A couple of mercenaries dressed like Sostratos and Menedemos except for wearing sandals and having swords on their belts instead of knives came up to them. "Ail," one of them said in Ionian dialect. "What are you selling, sailors?"

  "Passage to Italy," Menedemos answered. "We're bound for Taras. Always something lively going on in Great Hellas." He used the common name for the colonies the Hellenes had planted in southern Italy and Sicily.

  "That's so." The second mercenary dipped his head. "How much for the trip?" He sounded like an Athenian - his dialect wasn't far removed from Ionian, but preserved rough breathings.

  Menedemos turned to Sostratos. As toikharkhos, he set fares. "Twelve drakhmai," he said.

  Both mercenaries winced. "You won't find many who'll pay you that much," said the one who spoke Attic.

  "We can't take many," Sostratos answered. "We've got a full crew and not a lot of room for passengers. But you'll get where you're going if you travel with us. We don't have to stay in the harbor for half a month if the winds are against us, and we won't get blown to Carthage if a storm comes up at sea."

  "Even if all that's true, it's still robbery," the mercenary said.

  He looked as if he knew plenty about robbery. How many men have you murdered? Sostratos wondered. How many women and boys have you forced? He didn't let any of what he was thinking show on his face. If he had, the mercenary probably would have yanked out that sword on his belt and gone after him with it. Instead, he just shrugged. "No one says you have to pay it if you don't want to."

  Grumbling, both mercenaries walked on. Menedemos said, "Don't take such a hard line that you turn away business."

  "I won't," Sostratos answered. "I think we can get five or six passengers at twelve drakhmai, and we don't want any more than that. If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll come down a little. But I don't want to do that too soon."

  "No, I suppose not," Menedemos said. "You'd get a reputation like a girl who's easy with her virtue."

  "That's right." The comparison was apt. Several others might have been, too, but Sos
tratos wasn't surprised that that one had occurred to his cousin.

  Along with huts and tents, the mercenaries' encampment at Tainaron did boast taverns and cookshops and armorers' shops and swordsellers' establishments. Sostratos and Menedemos stopped at several of them, letting the proprietors know the Aphrodite lay offshore and where she was bound. Word would spread fast.

  When one of the taverners heard they were coming from Khios, he surprised Sostratos by asking if they carried wine, and surprised him more by paying twenty-five drakhmai an amphora for some of the Ariousian without so much as a whimper. "I'll get it back," he said. "You bet I will. Some of these fellows won't take anything but the best, and they don't care what they have to pay to get it, either."

  To celebrate the bargain, he poured cups of wine a long way from the best for Sostratos and Menedemos. Sostratos had taken one sip from his own when the ground jerked beneath his stool. The flimsy walls of the tavern rattled for a moment, then were still. "Earthquake!" he exclaimed, as a nearby dog barked. "Just a little one, though."

  "Gods be praised," the tavernkeeper said, and everybody else in the place, Sostratos and Menedemos included, dipped his head in agreement. Even though the quake had been small, Sostratos' heart still thudded in his chest. When the earth started to shudder, you couldn't tell ahead of time whether it would stop again right away - as it had here, as it did most of the time - or go on and get worse, sometimes bad enough to level a city. Everyone living around the Inner Sea knew that too well.

  Menedemos said, "Let me have another cup of wine." When the taverner gave it to him, he poured a small libation onto the dirt floor. "That's for the Earthshaker, for not shaking too hard this time." Then he drained the cup. "And that's for me."

  "It's the Spartans' curse, that's what it is," the tavernkeeper said.

  "The what?" Menedemos asked.

  Sostratos spoke before the taverner could: "A long time ago, back before the Peloponnesian War, some helots took refuge in Poseidon's temple here. The Spartans hauled them out and killed them. Not long afterwards, a big earthquake almost knocked Sparta flat. Plenty of people claimed it was Poseidon's vengeance."