"I wish we had more freeboard," Menedemos said. "That five of Ptolemaios' can ride out seas that'd swamp us."
"That five of Ptolemaios' is back in the Aegean," Diokles answered. "The sun's probably shining on him."
"To the crows with him," Menedemos said. Diokles raised an eyebrow. Menedemos said it again, louder this time. Diokles dipped his head to show he understood. The wind was starting to howl, and to make the rigging thrum. Menedemos cocked his head to one side, gauging the notes from the forestay and backstay. They didn't sound as if they were in danger of giving way . . . yet.
Sostratos made his way up onto the poop deck. Like everyone else aboard the Aphrodite - including me, no doubt, Menedemos realized - he looked like a drowned pup. Water dripped from his nose and the end of his beard. He said something, or at least his lips moved, but Menedemos couldn't make out a word of it. Seeing as much, Sostratos bawled in his ear: "How do we fare?"
"We're floating," Menedemos shouted back. It wasn't any enormous consolation, but, as with Philippos, it was what he had to give. He shouted again: "How are the peafowl?"
"Wet," his cousin answered. "Too much moisture can affect a man's humors and give him a flux of the lungs. We have to hope that doesn't happen to the birds."
Menedemos grimaced, not because Sostratos was wrong but because he was right. When it came to the peafowl, hope was all he could do. He hated that. He wanted to be able to make things happen. As the captain of a ship at sea, he was usually able to do just that. But how could he do anything about derangement of the humors, or whatever caused sickness? He couldn't, and he knew it. The best physicians could do precious little. And so . . . he would hope.
"Are the cages lashed down well enough?" he asked. He could do something about that if he had to.
But Sostratos dipped his head. "The ship will sink before they come loose."
"Don't say such things!" Menedemos exclaimed. He thanked the gods he was the only one who could have heard it. With any luck, the wind would blow it away so even the gods couldn't hear it.
"Will we sink?" Sostratos didn't sound afraid. As he usually did, he sounded interested, curious. It might have been a philosophical discussion, not one whose answer would decide whether he lived or died.
"I don't think so," Menedemos answered. "Not if the storm doesn't get any worse than this, anyhow." But it was getting worse, the wind blowing ever harder, the lines howling ever more shrilly. He had no idea how long the storm had been going on; he couldn't gauge time without the sun's motion across the sky, and the sun had long since vanished.
He turned the Aphrodite straight into the wind. That made the pitching worse; he felt as if the ship were climbing hills and sliding down into valleys every few heartbeats. But the yawing eased, and the ram and the cutwater meant that the akatos didn't ship quite so much water.
And so the merchant galley fought her way north. A couple of big waves did crash over the stempost, but only a couple. Sostratos made his way forward. His waving hand told Menedemos the peafowl still survived. Menedemos wanted to wave back, but didn't dare take a hand off the steering oar for even an instant.
The sky grew blacker yet. At first, Menedemos feared the storm was growing worse. Then he realized it was only night coming. "Do you want me to spell you, skipper?" Diokles asked. "You've been at it a goodish while."
Until the keleustes spoke, Menedemos didn't realize how worn he was. But he'd been standing on one spot for a long time. His legs ached. So did his arms and shoulders; the steering-oar tillers sent every shock from the sea straight through him. When he started to answer, he found himself yawning instead. "Will you be all right?" he asked.
"I think so," Diokles answered. "If I feel myself wearing down, I'll get one of the rowers to handle her for a bit. We've got a double handful of men, likely more, who've spent enough time aboard ship to have put their hands to a set of steering oars now and again. All you'll want to do is keep her straight into the wind, right?"
"I don't want those waves smacking us broadside-to," Menedemos said. "We're liable to end up on our beam-ends."
Diokles rubbed his ring again. "Right you are. Get some rest then, if you can."
Menedemos doubted he'd be able to, not with the Aphrodite pitching as much as she was and the rain pouring down in sheets. He lay down on the poop deck even so. He didn't bother with a wrapping. What point, in such weather? He closed his eyes . . ..
When he opened them, it was still dark. He didn't think he'd slept till he noticed how the galley's motion had eased. It was still raining, but not so hard. "What's the hour?" he asked the man at the steering oars.
"Middle of the night sometime, captain - about the sixth hour, I'd say," the man replied - not Diokles, but a burly sailor named Hagesippos.
"How long has the oarmaster been off?" Menedemos asked.
"I've had the steering oars about an hour," Hagesippos answered. "He gave 'em to me not long after the weather started easing off a bit."
"That sounds like him." Menedemos yawned and stretched. He still felt abused, but he could return to duty. The Aphrodite was his ship. "I'll take them now, Hagesippos. Get some sleep yourself. Stretch out where I was, if you care to."
The sailor tossed his head. "All the same to you, I'll go back to my bench. That's how I'm used to sleeping when we're at sea."
"Suit yourself." Menedemos slapped the sailor's bare shoulder as Hagesippos went down into the waist of the akatos. The slap rang louder than he'd expected: his hand was wet, and so was Hagesippos' flesh.
As the rain diminished, men's snores came through it. The rowers who weren't at their oars grabbed rest as they could. Menedemos wondered how the peafowl had come through the storm. He peered up toward the bow, hoping to spot Sostratos' long, angular form silhouetted against the sky. When he didn't see his cousin, he felt miffed. He knew that was foolish - Sostratos had the right to rest, too - but he couldn't help it.
Because he was miffed, he took longer than he should have to realize he could see stars, there in the north. The rain died to spatters, and then stopped. The clouds blew past the Aphrodite. By the time rosy-fingered dawn began streaking the eastern sky, the storm might never have happened.
Diokles opened his eyes, saw Menedemos at the steering oars, and said, "Well, I might have known you'd be there. When did you take 'em back from Hagesippos?"
"Middle of the night sometime," Menedemos answered with a shrug. "That's what he told me, and how can I guess any closer?"
"You can't," the keleustes agreed. He got up, stretched as Menedemos had, and looked around. "Good weather after the storm."
"I'd sooner it were instead of, not after," Menedemos said. Diokles laughed. Easy to laugh under blue skies on a calm sea. Menedemos laughed, too.
A few at a time, the sailors woke up. So did Sostratos, who'd slept between the rows of peafowl cages. "They all seem sound," he called to Menedemos. Then he stripped off his chiton to let it dry and went around as naked as most of the sailors. That struck Menedemos as a good idea, so he did the same. Bare skin proved a lot more comfortable than soaked wool.
When the whole crew had awakened, Menedemos ordered the men not rowing to break out the several wooden buckets the Aphrodite carried and start bailing the water she'd taken on during the storm. Getting the water out a bucketful at a time was slow, hard work, but he knew no better way to do it, nor did anyone else.
Philippos the mercenary said, "Where are we at, captain? I'm all topsy-turvy on account of that horrible storm."
"We're somewhere in the Ionian Sea," Menedemos answered. Philippos looked as if he wanted a more precise answer. Menedemos wanted one, too; again, he didn't know where to get one. "I couldn't have told you any more than that if the weather'd stayed perfect. If we sail northwest, we'll raise the Italian mainland. Once we do that, I promise we'll find Taras. Fair enough?"