The Gryphon's Skull

Sostratos stood on the Aphrodite's little raised foredeck, peering north and west as if he expected to see Cape Sounion, the headland that announced one was coming up on Athens, appear over the horizon at any moment. Part of him did. Most of him, the rational part, knew perfectly well that Athens lay some days' journey from Rhodes, and that trading on the way would further delay the akatos' arrival. But the childlike part that never quite dies in any man insisted Cape Sounion would be there because he so badly wanted it to be there. And so he kept on looking.

The wind blew hard and steady out of the northeast—if anything, a little more out of the east than usual. The sailors had swung the yard from the starboard bow back toward the portside rear to take best advantage of it. The big square sail, full of the brisk breeze, pulled the Aphrodite along. Sostratos eyed the creamy wake thrown back from the ram and the cutwater. She was going about as fast as she could by sail alone.

Euxenides of Phaselis came up to stand not far from Sostratos. The leather sack that held his food and whatever meager belongings he owned lay on the foredeck. Like any sensible passenger, he kept an eye on it.

“Hail,” he said.

“Hail,” Sostratos echoed, a bit embarrassed; he probably should have spoken first. But his mind had been elsewhere.

Euxenides pointed, “What's that island there, off to the right?” The way he said it proved to Sostratos that, even if he'd traveled by sea, he was not a naval officer,

“That's Syme,” Sostratos answered. “We stopped there our first night out of Rhodes last year. But with the breeze so steady, we'll go farther today. I don't know whether Menedemos will make for Knidos”—he pointed, too, toward the end of the long finger of mainland north of Syme—”or whether he'll put in somewhere on Telos.” He pointed again, this time toward the island dead ahead.

“I was in Knidos for a little while, three years ago I think it was, when Antigonos took Karia away from that traitor, Asandros,” Euxenides said. “Telos I don't know at all. What's there?”

“Nothing much,” Sostratos answered. “No polis. A few herders. A few farmers—not many, for it's not a well-watered island. But sometimes a quiet place where you can beach yourself and let your ship's timbers dry for a night is nothing to sneeze at.”

Euxenides drummed his fingers on the rail, “I want to get to Miletos. I need to get to Miletos.”

“I want to get to Athens,” Sostratos said with a smile. “I need to get to Athens. And I will—eventually.”

“Sometimes 'eventually' isn't fast enough,” Euxenides said.

“Well, best one, you won't get from Rhodes to Miletos any faster than you will in the Aphrodite,”“ Sostratos said.

“Yes, I found that out,” Euxenides told him. He drummed his fingers some more. He might not be able to help it, but that didn't make him happy about it. He looked due north as avidly as Sostratos looked northwest.

As usual, most of the fishing boats whose crewmen saw the Aphrodite fled from her, fearing she was a pirate. That made the rowers laugh. It made Sostratos sad. Here close to Rhodes, even, men feared sea raiders. He feared sea raiders himself, as a matter of fact; he just knew he wasn't one of their number.

Menedemos held the merchant galley steady on a westerly course, and didn't swing north toward Knidos. Sostratos walked back to the stern. “You're going to put in on Telos?” he asked.

His cousin dipped his head. “That's right. We're not heavily laden, so I'll beach her for the night. It'll be good for the planking, and Telos is about as safe a place to put in as any under the sun.”

“True enough,” Sostratos said. “It hasn't got enough people to make up a decent-sized band of robbers.”

“Just what I was thinking. And this splendid breeze is taking us straight there,” Menedemos said. “Only drawback I can see is that it'll be a longer pull to Kos tomorrow, and the men will have to do more rowing. But we're still early in the season and getting the crew beaten in, so even that won't be so bad.”

Diokles chuckled. “Easy for you to say, skipper. You're not one of the horn-handed bastards pulling an oar.”

“I know how,” Menedemos said. “Sostratos and I both know how, as a matter of fact. Our fathers made sure we do.” He took his hands off the steering-oar tillers to show their palms. “And I've got calluses of my own.”

Sostratos looked down at the palms of his own hands. They were fairly smooth and soft; he would blister if he ever had to do any rowing. The only real callus he had was one just above the first knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand: a callus showing where a pen or a stylus spent a lot of time. But Menedemos was right—he did know how.