Sostratos had wondered if the men would grumble at having to work harder than they would have done if they'd rowed straight for Khios. A few of them did, but it was grumbling for the sake of grumbling, not real anger. And so, on the rough sea north of Samos and Ikaria, the akatos practiced darting to the right and to the left, spinning in her own length, and suddenly bringing inboard all the oars now on one side of the ship, now on the other. They worked on that last maneuver over and over again.
"This is our best chance against a trireme, isn't it?" Sostratos said.
"It's our best chance against any galley bigger than we are - best besides running away, I mean," Menedemos answered. "It's our only chance against a trireme: if we can use our hull to break most of the oars on one side of his ship, that lets us get away. Otherwise, we haven't got a chance."
"I suppose not." Sostratos sighed. "I wish someone would keep pirates down all over the Inner Sea, the way Rhodes tries to do in the Aegean."
"While you're at it, wish navies didn't hunt merchantmen when they saw the chance, too," Menedemos said. "Here close to home, we're fairly safe, because Ptolemaios and Antigonos both care about keeping Rhodes happy. Farther west . . ." He tossed his head. Sostratos sighed again. One more thing to worry about, he thought. As if I didn't have enough already.
4
Menedemos woke in darkness, the Aphrodite tossing not too gently under him. A couple of cubits away, Sostratos lay on his back on the poop deck, snoring like a saw grinding through stone. Menedemos tried to slide straight back into sleep, but his cousin's racket and his own full bladder wouldn't let him.
Short of kicking Sostratos and waking him up, Menedemos couldn't do anything about his snoring. And Sostratos wasn't the only offender, only the nearest one; a good many rowers buzzed away, making the night anything but serene. I can ease myself, though, Menedemos thought, and got to his feet to do just that.
As he stood at the rail, the Aphrodite might have been alone on the sea, alone in all the world. Zeus' wandering star was about to set in the west, which put the hour somewhere close to midnight. The moon, a waxing crescent, had already vanished. All he could see was the star-flecked dome of the sky, and the blacker black of the night-time sea. Khios to the north, the Asian mainland to the east . . . He knew they were there, but he couldn't prove it, not by what his eyes told him.
One after another in endless succession, waves lifted the merchant galley's hull. The swell was bigger than it had been during the day. Menedemos hoped that didn't mean a storm would be blowing down out of the north. This early in the sailing season, it might.
"Bring me safe to Khios, Father Poseidon, and I'll give you something," he murmured; the sea god had a temple on the island, not far from the city. Praying for good weather was as much as he could do. Having done it, he lay down again, wrapped himself in his himation, and tried to go back to sleep. He wondered if he would succeed with Sostratos making horrible noises almost in his ear. He yawned and pulled the thick wool of the himation up over his head and aimed several unkind thoughts at his cousin.
The next thing he knew, the sun was rising over the distant mainland to the east. He rolled over to wake Sostratos, only to discover that Sostratos was already among those present - was, in fact, fixing him with a reproachful stare. "I hardly slept a wink last night, you were snoring so loud," Sostratos said.
"I was?" The injustice of that all but paralyzed Menedemos. "You're the one who kept making the horrible racket."
"Nonsense," Sostratos said. "I never snore."
"Oh, no, of course not." Menedemos savored sarcasm. "And a dog never howls at the moon, either."
"I don't," Sostratos insisted. Menedemos laughed in his face. Sostratos turned red. He waved toward Diokles, who was stretching on the rower's bench where he'd passed the night. "He'll tell us the truth. Which of us was snoring last night, O Diokles?"
"I don't know," the keleustes answered around a yawn. "Once I closed my eyes, I didn't hear a thing till I woke up at dawn."
"I did." That was Aristeidas, the sharp-eyed sailor who often served as lookout. "You get right down to it, both of you gents were pretty noisy."
Sostratos looked offended. Menedemos felt offended. Then they happened to glance toward each other. They both started to laugh. "Well, so much for that," Sostratos said.
"I'm going to sleep on the foredeck from now on," Menedemos said. "Then I can blame it on the peafowl." He peered north. No clouds gathered on the horizon, though the breeze had freshened. "I hope the weather holds till we make Khios. What do you think, Diokles?"
If anyone aboard the akatos was weatherwise, the oarmaster was the man. Menedemos watched him not just turn to the north but scan the whole horizon. He smacked his lips, tasting the air as he might have tasted fine Khian wine. At last, after due deliberation, he said, "I expect we'll be all right, skipper."
"Good." Menedemos had made the same guess, but felt better to have someone else confirm it. He grinned at the keleustes. "If you're wrong, you know I'll blame you."
Diokles shrugged. "As long as the ship comes through all right, I won't worry about it." He shrugged again. "And if she doesn't come through, if I drown, I won't worry about it then, either, will I?"
Several sailors caressed amulets or muttered charms to avert the evil omen. Sostratos, thought, looked intrigued. "So you think a man's spirit dies with him, do you?" he asked Diokles.
Menedemos recognized a question like that as an invitation to philosophical discussion. Diokles responded as matter-of-factly as he had to the query about the weather: "Well, sir, folks say a lot of things: this one says this, and that one says that. All I know is, nobody who went down with his ship ever came back to tell me what it was like."
That touched off a lively argument among the sailors as they hauled in the anchors and slung them from the catheads at the bow: one more bit of ship's business that the peafowl cages on the foredeck made more awkward. By Sostratos' expression, though, it wasn't the sort of discussion he would have heard at his precious Lykeion. A lot of the men were loudly certain they'd seen, or sometimes talked with, ghosts.
After a while, Menedemos' cousin turned to him, frustration on his face. In a low voice, Sostratos said, "I don't want to offend anyone or make anyone angry, but I don't think I've ever heard so much nonsense all at once in my whole life."
"On land, I'm sure I would agree with you," Menedemos replied. "Out here . . ." As Diokles had done, he shrugged. "Out here, half the things I'd laugh at on land feel true." His chuckle held less mirth than he would have liked. "Out here, especially after we spend the night at sea, I don't even know exactly where I am. If I can't be sure of that, how can I be sure of anything else?"
If nothing else, he'd succeeded in distracting Sostratos. His cousin pointed toward the Asian mainland in the distance. "The shape of the coastline will tell you where you are."
"Well, so it will," Menedemos admitted, "though it wouldn't mean anything to a landlubber. But we'll spend some time out of sight of land when we sail west toward Hellas, and then again when we cross the Ionian Sea to Italy. No way to tell for certain where you are then. I wish there were."
Sostratos frowned. "There ought to be."
"There ought to be all sorts of things," Menedemos said. "That doesn't mean there are." Diokles struck his bronze square with the mallet. The rowers began to pull. The Aphrodite glided north, toward Khios. With the steering oars to tend to, Menedemos didn't have to worry about splitting hairs with his cousin.