Salamis, p.18
Salamis, page 18
“Let’s see if we can get back to Rhodes in one piece, and without Demetrios only half a bowshot behind us. If we manage that, you can worry about everything else later,” Menedemos said.
“You say the sweetest things,” Sostratos murmured. Menedemos laughed and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cousin’s cheek. Yes, when you laughed you could pretend for a little while that the things you laughed about didn’t really matter, and that they had no chance at all of happening.
Sostratos peered over the Aphrodite’s rail, down into the muddy, filthy water of Ptolemaios’ Harbor. The akatos had even less freeboard than usual; Ptolemaios’ workers had filled it fuller with weapons than he and Menedemos did with merchandise.
They had another new rower, as one more man who’d come down from Rhodes decided at the last minute to stay in Alexandria instead of going home again. Like a couple of the other new fellows, Okumenes was a Cretan. He took the akatos’ oars so much for granted, Sostratos wondered if he’d rowed before in a piratical pentekonter. The way his eyes darted now here, now there also suggested he was looking for the chance to lift something.
Out at the opening in the moles that separated Ptolemaios’ harbor from the larger Great Harbor, the lord of Egypt’s fours and fives were going out one by one. The Aphrodite waited with the other ships that carried men and beasts and supplies. The war galleys—there had to be well over a hundred of them—were the teeth and claws of the fleet, the rest of the ships just the tail. Like any other tail, they came last.
People on the moles cheered and waved squares of colored cloth as the war galleys rowed past them. They made a brave show, one the men in the fours and fives would forget as soon as they got out of sight.
The oared transports followed the warships out of Ptolemaios’ harbor. Sostratos took his place at the Aphrodite’s bow. Menedemos clasped the steering oars at the stern. Diokles stood in front of him on the stern platform, hammer and bronze triangle ready to give the rowers their rhythm. For the exit, every oar was manned. They wouldn’t keep that up once they got out on the Inner Sea. Several days of it would leave the rowers on the fours and fives worn and useless in battle.
When the oars on the freight-haulers just ahead of the akatos began churning the water to foam, Menedemos dipped his head to Diokles. “Come on, boys!” the keleustes said. “We may be little, but by the gods we’ll show ’em what we can do!” He smote the triangle with the hammer, at the same time calling, “Rhyppapai!” Another clang. Another “Rhyppapai!” Clang! “Rhyppapai!”
The Aphrodite’s oars dug into the dirty water, a little more raggedly than Sostratos would have liked. The rowers grunted and swore. They hadn’t worked for quite a while; they hadn’t got hardened by going from one polis to another the way they did on most trading runs.
Slowly, slowly, the akatos began to move. The bigger galleys in the fleet’s supply tail weren’t setting the sea on fire with their speed, either; the Aphrodite had no trouble keeping up. She might have left Ptolemaios’ harbor last of all, but Sostratos thought she did so in some style.
By the time she glided out through the opening between the moles, most of Ptolemaios’ cheering claque had given up and gone home. War galleys were exciting, ships laden with sheep or horses or catapult stones much less so. But one of the men still standing there pointed at the Aphrodite not just with his chin but with his index finger and shouted, “Look at the toy boat with all the big ones!”
Sostratos wasn’t about the let anyone sneer at his ship that way. He leaned out over the rail and stared at the man on the mole, widening his eyes as much as he could. As someone who did his best to stay rational, he—mostly—thought the evil eye was so much nonsense. But he knew other people (foolish people, as far as he was concerned) felt otherwise. If this fellow did ….
Sure enough, the Alexandrian noticed his gaze and flinched away from it as he would have from a clenched fist. He thrust out his own fist at Sostratos, thumb thrusting forth between index and middle fingers: a protective gesture. Sostratos just kept on staring. “Don’t you cast a spell on me! Don’t you dare!” the man cried shrilly. “By the gods, I’ll murder you if you do!”
Out into the Great Harbor glided the Aphrodite. Sostratos kept staring till he got too far from the man on the mole to see the point anymore. Then he walked back to the stern platform. As he passed Attinos, the Egyptian rower asked, “You really have the fornicating evil eye?”
“If you think I do, maybe I do,” Sostratos answered, and paused to see what Attinos made of that.
He might be a barbarian who flavored his Greek with obscenities the way a rich man’s cook flavored his cheese casseroles with pepper, but no one would ever call him a fool. With a sly little chuckle, he said, “Like that, huh?” He kept the stroke perfectly while he talked; he’d done enough rowing so he didn’t need to think about it.
“Just like that, my dear,” Sostratos answered, liking him very much in the moment.
“You had the shit-talking lardhead so scared, he futtering near fell in the water,” Attinos said, and laughed some more.
“I was hoping he would, but it didn’t quite happen.” Sostratos went on back to the stern.
“What were you talking about with the new fellow?” Menedemos asked when Sostratos took his place next to Diokles. He explained. “Oh, is that what you were up to?” his cousin said. “I saw you looking at the fellow and I saw him hopping around as though he’d just come out of a brothel full of fleas, but I didn’t know what was going on. Euge! You gave him something to remember you by.”
“If you really did have the evil eye, you should’ve aimed it at the Demetrios,” Diokles said.
“Or at some of the abandoned rogues who’ve cheated us or made us do things that might turn out bad for the polis.” Menedemos named no names, but looked ahead toward Ptolemaios’ gaudily ornamented flagship. By his expression, he wouldn’t have minded owning the evil eye himself at that moment.
More Alexandrians stood on the low, sandy island connected to the mainland by the mole called the Heptastadion: it was seven stadia long. They also cheered the departing war galleys. Because they were farther away, their cries had the strange, attenuated quality voices over water often took on.
Sostratos didn’t think he’d ever left a harbor to applause before. Of course, Rhodes remained a free and independent polis. It had no ruler who would order people to cheer him; it had no people who cared to curry favor with that kind of ruler. If the gods knew mercy, it never would.
If. Still hindmost in Ptolemaios’ fleet, the Aphrodite centipeded out of the Great Harbor and onto the rougher waters of the Inner Sea.
XI
“How are you doing?” Menedemos asked his cousin, trying to sound sympathetic rather than scornful.
“Not … too bad.” Sostratos’ greenish pallor gave his words the lie. He’d leaned over the rail and emptied himself a couple of times since the Aphrodite left Alexandria.
“You had an easier time on the trip down to Egypt,” Menedemos said. “You kept everything down then.”
“I know,” Sostratos said dolefully. “Don’t remind me. The waves were mostly with us when we sailed south, Now they’re hitting us bow-on. The motion’s different, and so ….”
Menedemos thought he’d feed the fish again, but he didn’t quite. Before too long, Sostratos would be all right again. But he’d been on land long enough to lose his sea legs, and his sea stomach. He wasn’t wrong; traveling against the waves instead of with them did change the way the akatos pitched. To Menedemos, though, the difference was only a difference, not a disaster.
At the moment, he had every other oar manned. Putting a rower on them all was for show, as when leaving the harbor at Alexandria, or for an emergency. Ptolemaios’ skippers had also eased back as soon as they got out of sight of the Alexandrians. The Aphrodite had no trouble keeping up with the lord of Egypt’s fleet, even at the relatively slow stroke Diokles was beating out.
Up ahead, in the war galleys, the rowers would be thanking their oarmasters for whatever respite they could get. When they fought Demetrios’ fleet, they’d need every bit of strength and energy they could find. Menedemos hoped—he prayed, in fact—the men on the akatos’ oars wouldn’t need to worry about battle.
The sun sank toward the western horizon. Italy and Sicily and Carthage lay in that direction. Rhodes was farther west than Cyprus, too, though not nearly that far. Menedemos wondered whether the Aphrodite could slip away from the fleet under cover of darkness and make for home instead of Cyprus.
Regretfully, he decided that was a bad idea. He didn’t want to turn Ptolemaios into a deadly enemy by deserting. That could have consequences for years to come, if not for generations. It would hurt the family firm, and might hurt the polis, too.
Of course, if one of Demetrios’ sailors happened to recognize the Aphrodite …. Menedemos didn’t want to make deadly foes of the young warlord and his fearsome father, either.
“We’re cursed no matter what we do,” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos explained. His cousin dipped his head. “All we can do is all we can do, and hope everything comes out well for us.”
“I know. And I hate having to depend on hope. It’s what came out of Pandora’s box last, remember. There’s a reason for that, too.”
Menedemos waited for Sostratos to mock the myth as, well, nothing but a myth. Sostratos often enjoyed poking at old beliefs for the fun of poking. So it seemed to Menedemos, anyhow. But his cousin just came back to where he stood and set a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Believe me, my dear, I know the feeling,” he said quietly.
As light drained from the sky, sailors in Ptolemaios’ ships set burning torches in iron sconces mounted on their sternposts. That let the vessels behind follow those ahead more easily than they might have, especially when the early hours of the night would be moonless.
Aphrodite’s wandering star blazed low in the west. That was always the brightest star in the sky. Like the love the goddess stands for, Menedemos thought. He wondered how Baukis fared and, again, whether she’d had her baby—his baby?—yet. She might be in labor right now, groaning and shrieking up in the women’s quarters, attended by the midwife and a house slave or two. Better, he supposed, to be far away than to have to listen to that for however long it went on.
The sky darkened with his mood. High in the south, Zeus’ wandering star appeared soon after Aphrodite’s. Ares’, about halfway between Zeus’ and Aphrodite’s, took longer to come out. It could rival Zeus’, but shone far fainter at the moment. So did Kronos’, which hung in the southeast.
Even though Ptolemaios’ ships had their stern lights and replaced the torches as needed, they also slowed to less than half speed as night took over. Ptolemaios sensibly rested his rowers as he could. Diokles also pulled more men off the Aphrodite’s oars.
“When will you want me to take over for you?” Sostratos asked.
“The moon should rise in an hour or so. That will do,” Menedemos said. “Keep the steering oars till it gets close to due south, then wake me. We’ll give one of the older, more sensible rowers the hammer and triangle then, too. Diokles is also flesh and blood, even if he tries to make out that he isn’t.”
“I’m doing fine, skipper—bugger me blind if I’m not,” the keleustes said.
“So am I … right now,” Menedemos said. “But we’ll all wear down to nubs if we don’t get some rest. It’ll be a lazy stroke through the night, and Sostratos can keep the rower at the right pace if he gets ahead of himself.”
“I suppose so.” Diokles didn’t sound as if he believed it. He truly trusted no man’s skill and knowledge but his own. Since he came closer with Sostratos than with most people, though, he subsided with no more than a low-voiced grumble in the back of his throat.
Up came the moon out of the sea, a fat gold daric up there in the heavens, its eastern edge gnawed away: it was a couple of days past full. “Go on, my dear. Find somewhere to curl up,” Sostratos said. “Nothing’s likely to happen while you sleep.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t.” Menedemos felt at least as leery about letting someone else do his job for him as Diokles did. And anyone who made his living by going to sea put no faith in wind and wave.
Still, only Talos the bronze man could go on and on without sleep or food. Menedemos stepped back from the steering oars and let his cousin take his place. Diokles woke a rower named Nikagoras, who’d made several voyages in the Aphrodite and hadn’t shown himself to be conspicuously stupid. When the keleustes explained what he needed, Nikagoras dipped his head and said, “I’ll take care of it.”
Diokles sat at the bench Nikagoras had vacated to go aft. As an ex-rower, he was used to leaning against the rail and falling asleep when at sea. He did it again tonight. Menedemos lay down abaft of the steering oars, where the platform narrowed toward the sternpost. He’d slept soft in Ptolemaios’ palace, but he could sleep rough, too. Closing his eyes, he proved it.
Next thing he knew, someone’s hand was on his shoulder. His eyes snapped open. His right hand darted for the knife on his belt. He found he had no belt, nor any other clothing. He remembered where he was, and who had likely shaken him awake. Sure enough, there stood Sostratos in the bright moonlight. Diokles held the steering oars for the moment, so the Aphrodite ran steady.
“Hail,” Menedemos said, and yawned. Around the yawn, he continued, “How do we fare?”
“We’re still with the Ptolemaios’ fleet.” Sostratos didn’t sound altogether happy about that, either. He went on, “Nikagoras made a good keleustes, good enough so I gave him three oboloi for duty above his station.”
“Euge!” Menedemos said, and then raised his voice so Diokles could hear: “I guess that will let us put the old stallion here out to pasture. He’s pretty long in the tooth these days.”
“Old stallion? Long in the tooth? By the gods, this old stallion’ll graze on your grave, and shit on it, too,” Diokles retorted. Then he laughed, which relieved Menedemos. He wanted to be sure the keleustes knew he was joking.
He took the steering oars from Diokles, who in turn reclaimed the keleustes’ tools from Nikagoras. The rower went up to his bench. Menedemos looked back over his right shoulder. The moon showed Sostratos had given him a little more sleep than he’d asked for.
“Grab some rest, my dear,” he told his cousin. “I’ve got the ship for now.” His mouth twisted, though in the moonlight Sostratos might not be able to see that. “I don’t exactly know what I’ll do with her, but I’ve got her.”
Sostratos’ stomach troubled him all the way north from Alexandria. He didn’t heave after the first day at sea, but often felt queasy. Hard bread and salted sprats and olives weren’t the kind of fare he would have recommended to someone with sour guts were he playing physician, but they and rough red wine were what the Aphrodite carried. He grabbed a flying fish that landed in the akatos and grilled it over the little brazier on the bow platform. It tasted better than anything else he ate on the journey to Cyprus, but it was a morsel, not a meal.
Always having Ptolemaios’ fleet on the northern horizon made this voyage different from the one between Rhodes and Alexandria. Then the Aphrodite, solitary in the middle of the Inner Sea, might have been the only ship, the only man-made object, in all the world. Sostratos had rather liked that, though it made some of the rowers anxious. Now they could have no doubt that the rest of the world was very much with them.
But, while part of the world was there, news from outside the fleet wasn’t. Sostratos wondered what Ptolemaios would do if Demetrios held all of Cyprus when this expedition arrived. Up ahead in his gaudy galley, the lord of Egypt was bound to be wondering the same thing. One could say a great many things about Ptolemaios, but he was nothing if not forethoughtful. The way he’d seized and held Egypt showed that.
Fluffy clouds glided across the sky from north to south. Every so often, one of them would pass in front of the sun and give the men on the Aphrodite a brief respite from its glare. But then the shadow would pass on. If Sostratos looked astern instead of ahead, he could watch it darken a receding stretch of ocean behind the akatos.
“Cousin!” Menedemos called from his place at the steering oars. “Come back here, will you?”
“Of course! Do you want me to spell you for a while?” Sostratos said.
“No, not yet.” Menedemos tossed his head. “We need to talk, though.”
Sostratos made his way back to the stern platform. About half the oars were in the water. The other rowers dozed or rested or played knucklebones on the benches. Up the three oaken steps Sostratos went. “What’s bothering you?” he asked.
“What do we do if things go wrong off Cyprus?” Menedemos said, and then, a heartbeat later, “Why are you laughing?”
“Because I was thinking about the same thing just a moment ago, that’s why,” Sostratos said.
“Oh, you were, were you? Well, what were you thinking? I want to know—you’re good at it.”
“What if I am? That and a few oboloi will get me enough sardines for a decent opson.”
“If the Ptolemaios thinks well of your wits, my dear, you’d best not play them down yourself,” Menedemos said. “So what brave thoughts did Athena goddess of wisdom send you?”
Sostratos didn’t think his wisdom, what there was of it, came from Athena. He thought it came from Athens, where he’d studied till his family called him back to Rhodes. But no point talking about that. “My thoughts aren’t brave. I was wondering more how we’d get away,” he said.
“I wonder why!” Menedemos took his right hand off the steering oar for a moment to wave at the akatos and then at Ptolemaios’ much bigger ships ahead. The Aphrodite had ruined a trireme once. Ptolemaios’ ships, and Demetrios’, too, dwarfed even triremes by comparison.
