Where time hadn’t mattered much before, suddenly now heartbeats were of the essence. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite hard to port, aiming her ram straight for the side of the second triakonter, the one he’d ignored up till now. “Everything they’ve got, Diokles!” he called.
“Right,” the oarmaster said without hesitation. He upped the stroke: “Come on, boys! You can do it! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” Not even Talos the bronze man could have held that sprint for long. Gasping, thrusting, faces gleaming with sweat and oil, the rowers gave him everything they had in them. The akatos suddenly seemed to bound forward over the sea.
Menedemos’ only advantage was that he knew what he was doing and neither of the pirate captains did. Had the skipper of the closer ship been more alert, more ready for something unexpected from the Aphrodite , he might have rammed her as she turned toward his comrade. He tried, in fact, but he waited a couple of heartbeats too long before starting his own turn-and the merchant galley’s sudden burst of speed also caught him by surprise. His triakonter passed a few cubits astern of the Aphrodite .
Two arrows hissed past Menedemos from behind. He couldn’t even look back. If he got hit, he hoped Diokles would shove him out of the way and drive home the attack on the other pirate ship. He aimed the merchant galley at a point halfway between the triakonter’s ram and where her mast would go when it was up.
The man at the steering oars on the pirate ship should have started to turn toward the Aphrodite or away from her, to make sure the akatos’ ram didn’t hit squarely. The black-bearded ruffian should have. Maybe he even would have; though taken by surprise, he probably had time to do it. But Sostratos shot three arrows at him in quick succession. Two of them missed. The other one hit him in the neck. He shrieked and clawed at himself and forgot all about steering the triakonter.
“Euge!” Menedemos roared exultantly.
Another pirate pushed the wounded helmsman aside and seized the steering oars. Too late. Much too late. Heartbeats counted now, and the men in the second ship had none to spare. Menedemos heard their screams, saw their mouths-and their eyes-open wide, wide, wide as the ram slammed home. One of them tried to use an oar to fend off the merchant galley, which did him no more good than a straw would have in fending off an angry dog.
Crunch! The impact staggered Menedemos. The ram’s three horizontal flukes stove in the triakonter’s timbers, breaking tenons, tearing mortises open, and letting the sea flood in between planks formerly watertight.
“Back oars!” Diokles shouted. The rowers, who’d known the command was coming, obeyed at once. Menedemos’ heart thudded. If the ram stuck, the pirates could swarm aboard the Aphrodite from their mortally wounded vessel and perhaps yet carry the day. But then he breathed again, for it came away cleanly. He turned the akatos toward the other pirate ship.
A rower howled as an arrow from the stricken triakonter bit. Another sailor took his place. Menedemos thanked the gods that hadn’t happened during the ramming run, or it might have thrown off his timing and made him deliver a less effective blow. He noticed yet another sailor, not a man who’d been pulling an oar, down and clutching at a shaft through his calf. That fellow must have been wounded in the attack, but Menedemos, his attention aimed wholly at his target, hadn’t noticed till now.
Archers aboard the surviving triakonter kept shooting at the Aphrodite , too. Sostratos answered as best he could. One of his shafts hissed just in front of the face of the pirate ship’s helmsman. He jerked back with a startled cry Menedemos could hear across the couple of plethra of water between the two galleys.
He also heard cries for help coming from the ship he’d rammed as she settled ever lower in the water. She wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the sea-she was, after all, made of wood. But already the oars were of little use; when her hull filled completely, they would be altogether worthless. And she was a good many stadia out to sea. Menedemos, a strong swimmer, wouldn’t have cared to try to get to shore from here by himself. And not so many men could swim at all.
The other pirate ship might take her crew off her, but that triakonter was already crowded. Besides, if she came up alongside her stricken sister, she would lie dead in the water, waiting for another ramming run from the Aphrodite .
A nice problem for her skipper, Menedemos thought. He and the other pirate captain maneuvered warily. Neither of the ships was at its best anymore; the rowers on both were worn. Still, the triakonter remained faster. Menedemos couldn’t catch up to her. After a little while, he stopped trying, for fear he would altogether exhaust his men and leave them at the pirates’ mercy.
As they sparred, the rammed ship continued to settle. Before long, pirates were bobbing in the sea clinging to oars and to anything else that would float. Their cries grew ever more pitiful-not that they would have known any pity themselves, had they rammed the merchant galley rather than the other way round.
The breeze began to rise. It made the sea rougher. The pirate ship filled faster yet. The men who’d abandoned her rose on wavecrests and slid down into troughs. Menedemos tested the wind with a wet thumb. “What do you think?” he asked Diokles. “Will it hold for a while?”
“Hope so.” The oarmaster leaned into the wind. He smacked his lips, as if tasting it, then dipped his head. “Yes, skipper, I think it will.”
“So do I.” Menedemos raised his voice: “Let down the sail from the yard. I think these polluted temple robbers have had all they want of us. If they come after us with the ship they’ve got left, we’ll make ‘em sorry all over again.”
Cheers rang out, weary but heartfelt. Diokles eased back on the stroke; now the wind was playing a larger role in pushing the merchant galley across the sea. Menedemos looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, the one triakonter hurried over to the other, taking men off her. No one aboard the sound pirate ship seemed to be paying the Aphrodite any mind. And even if the pirates were still thinking about her, a stern chase was a long chase. The extra weight of the several dozen men would make the surviving triakonter slower, too.
Sostratos came back toward the stern to help the sailor who’d been shot through the leg. He knew something about doctoring-Menedemos suspected he knew less than he thought he did, but even the best physicians could do only so much. He drew the arrow and bandaged the wound. The sailor seemed grateful for the attention, so Menedemos supposed his cousin was doing no harm.
And Sostratos had done very well indeed from the foredeck. “Euge!” Menedemos called once more. “You shot the pirate at the steering oars at just the right time there.”
“I would have shot the abandoned wretch sooner if I hadn’t missed him twice,” Sostratos said. “I could practically have spit across the sea and hit him, but the arrows went past.” He looked disgusted with himself.
“Don’t fret about it,” Menedemos said. “You did hit him, and that’s what counts. They lost enough time so they couldn’t turn into our stroke or turn away from it, either, and we hit ‘em good and square. The ram does a lot more damage that way.”
“Do you think the other one will come after us?” Sostratos asked.
“I don’t know for certain. We’ll just have to find out. I hope not,” Menedemos replied. “I promised Poseidon something nice if he brought us through. I’ll have to make good on that when we get back to Rhodes.”