"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 Sostratos 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.