"Well, if your brother won't, who will?" Sostratos kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be home till spring, so you'll have plenty of chances to ask them. But now I'm going upstairs." With obvious reluctance, she dipped her head and let him go. As he headed for the stairway, she picked up the hydria and went back to watering.
He was halfway up the stairs when Threissa started down them. "Hail, young master," the redheaded slave girl said in her oddly accented Greek. "Welcome home."
"Hail. Thank you," he said, and went up another couple of steps. The Thracian slave wasn't so pretty as Maibia had been. But Maibia was back in Taras while Threissa was here - and Sostratos had gone without a long time. "Come to my room with me," he told her.
She sighed. She couldn't say no, not when she was as much property as the bed on which he intended to have her. But she said, "All right," in a way that promised she would give him as little enjoyment as she could.
He considered ways and means. "I'll let you have a couple of oboloi afterwards."
He didn't have to do that, not with a family slave. "All right," Threissa said, but this time in a different tone of voice. "Maybe even three?"
Slaves are mercenary creatures, Sostratos thought. But then they have to be. "Maybe," he answered. Threissa waited for him at the top of the stairs. They went down the hall together to his room. He closed the door behind them.
"Come on," Menedemos said as he and Sostratos made their way toward the gymnasion in the southwestern part of Rhodes, not far from the stadium and the temple dedicated to Apollo. "It'll do you good. We've been away too long."
His cousin accompanied him only reluctantly. "What you mean is, it'll do you good to show you can still outrun me and throw me when we wrestle. I don't know why you bother. We both know how that will come out."
"That's not the point," Menedemos said, which was at least partially true. "The point is, a proper Hellene doesn't let himself go to seed."
"I can think of quite a few things you do that a proper Hellene doesn't," Sostratos said tartly. "Why shouldn't I get to pick and choose, too?"
Since Menedemos knew he had no good comeback for that, he didn't bother trying to find one. Instead, he repeated, "Come on," adding, "No point in going back now. Look, you can already see the theater and the southern wall beyond it."
"And if I went back home, I could see Demeter's temple," Sostratos retorted. "Did you drag me out here to see the sights? I don't mind that so much. Going to the gymnasion is a different story."
"Quit complaining," Menedemos said, beginning to lose patience. "You can let yourself get all hunched-up and flabby, like a shoemaker stuck at his bench all the time or a barbarian who doesn't care what he looks like because he never takes off his clothes, or else you can try to be as much of a kalos k'agathos as you can."
"I have much more control over whether I'm good than I do over whether I'm good-looking," Sostratos said. Despite his grumbles, he accompanied Menedemos into the gymnasion. They stripped off their chitons - being seamen, they didn't bother with sandals - and gave an attendant an abolos to keep an eye on the clothes while they went out and exercised.
Some of the men running on the track or grappling with one another in the sandy wrestling pits plainly didn't get to the gymnasion often enough. But others . . . Menedemos pointed. "There's a pretty boy, fourteen or fifteen, and handsome enough to have his name scrawled on the walls." His own name had gone up on more than a few walls when he was that age; Sostratos', he remembered rather too late, hadn't.
All his cousin said now, though, was, "Yes, and doesn't he know it? If he sticks his nose any higher in the air, he'll get a crick in the neck."
"When you look like that, you can get away with a few airs," Menedemos said. Sostratos only grunted.
They ran a few sprints to loosen up. Menedemos savored the feel of the breeze against his skin, the grass at the verge of the track flying by as he strained to get every bit of speed from himself he could. He also savored leaving Sostratos in his wake, hearing his cousin's panting breath fade behind him time after time.
"You're a pentekonter, sure enough," Sostratos said. "Me, I'm just a round ship."
Menedemos' turn of speed drew the notice of a fellow a couple of years younger than he who also had the lean, muscular build of a runner. "Try yourself against me?" the younger man said. "I'm Amyntas son of Praxion."
"Pleased to meet you." Menedemos gave his own name, and introduced Sostratos, too. "I'd be pleased to run with you. My cousin will call the start."
"Good enough," Amyntas said. "Would you care to put a drakhma on the race, just to make it interesting?"
"Interesting, eh?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow. "All right, if it pleases you. Sostratos, turn us loose." He took his position on the track beside Amyntas.
"Ready?" Sostratos called. "Set." Both runners tensed. "Go!"
Amyntas went off like an arrow from a bow. Menedemos stayed shoulder to shoulder with him till they were within twenty-five or thirty cubits of the end of the stadion course, but Amyntas pulled away and won by five cubits or so. "I can do better than that," Menedemos said. "Try it again, double the stake to the winner?"
"Why not?" Amyntas said, not quite hiding a predatory smile as they walked back to the beginning of the course. Several men gathered to watch them now. Menedemos wondered if Sostratos would give him a fishy stare for gambling on his legs. But his cousin only shrugged and called the start again. He's probably glad not to be running himself, Menedemos thought, leaning forward to get the best start he could.
"Go!" Sostratos said, and Menedemos and Amyntas shot away once more. Again, Menedemos stayed close to the younger man till the race was almost over. Again, he couldn't quite keep up at the end. Again, he kicked at the dirt in frustration.
"That's two drakhmai you owe me," Amyntas said, not bothering to hide his grin now that he'd won.
"Let's double it one more time." Menedemos sounded like a man determined to win his way back to prosperity no matter how long it took - and no matter if it broke him first.
"Just as you say, best one," Amyntas replied as they walked back toward the starting line.
"Give us a start one more time," Menedemos called to Sostratos. "I'm going to whip this fellow yet, and I've doubled the bet to prove it." Some of the men who stood at the side of the track watching murmured among themselves. Amyntas' grin got wider; he had witnesses, in case Menedemos didn't feel like paying up.
They took their marks. "Ready?" Sostratos said. "Set . . . Go!"
Amyntas and Menedemos flew down the track side by side. As before, Menedemos hung at the younger man's shoulder till they were about thirty cubits from the end of the course. Then Amyntas, leaning forward for his final sprint, let out a startled grunt. Menedemos went past him as if his feet were suddenly nailed to the dirt, and won by three or four cubits.
"That's four drakhmai you owe me," he said cheerfully. "Or would you like to double the bet again?"
"Oh, no." Amyntas tossed his head. "I know what I just saw. You held back the first two runs to draw me in, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Menedemos' voice was arch. "Besides, how can I be sure you weren't trying to fool me there?" But he knew. Amyntas had been running flat out, and he hadn't been good enough. Menedemos chuckled. If he'd been fast enough to go to Olympia a couple of years before, Amyntas would have remembered his name. Nobody recalled the also-rans, but a man nearly fast enough to represent his polis at the Olympic Games was plenty fast to beat a fellow who picked up a little extra silver betting on his legs now and then.
"Why haven't I seen you round the gymnasion more?" Amyntas asked sadly. "I would have known better than to take you on."