The Gryphon's Skull

Menedemos smiled. “I might have known you'd be awake, too,” he told the keleustes. “Let's get the men up and get ready to go.”

They were waking sailors when feet thudded on the planks of the quay. “Ahoy, the Aphrodite!” Polemaios called. He towered over all the men with him except that one big bodyguard. He had ten soldiers in full hoplite's gear, plus a couple of torchbearers who were probably servants and, Menedemos saw with surprise, one woman, veiled against the prying eyes of men.

After a moment, the surprise evaporated. He is of an age to have a wife, Menedemos said to himself. Aloud, he answered, “Hail, best one. You're in good time, and the Euripos is with us.”

“Then let's be off,” Polemaios said. He spoke to his men in a low voice. They threw their torches into the sea. The torches hissed as they were quenched. Polemaios’ followers came down the gangplank and into the Aphrodite. Antigonos' nephew followed them. As he stepped down onto the poop deck, he murmured, “Better glory than length of days.”

Akhilleus might have said the same thing, camped by the beached ship on the windy plain of Troy. And Alexander might have said the same thing, too, Menedemos realized. Polemaios is old enough to have gone east with him, if just barely. Even fourteen years dead, Alexander still cast an enormous shadow across the Hellenic world.

“Cast off!” Menedemos called. A couple of his sailors scrambled up onto the pier, undid the lines securing the merchant galley, and came back down again. They stowed the gangplank as they did so. Menedemos glanced up the length of the ship. Polemaios had done a good job of herding his men—and the one woman—well forward, as much out of the rowers' way as possible. Menedemos caught Diokles' eye and dipped his head.

“Back oars!” the oarmaster bellowed, beating out the stroke with mallet and bronze. “Back hard, you lazy bastards! It's like getting away from a pier on a river,”

It put Menedemos in mind of escaping the quay at Pompaia, on the Sarnos, the summer before. This was even more nerve-wracking, though, for the Euripos flowed harder than the river had—and because the channel between Euboia and the mainland had a couple of rocky islets right in the middle of it. Menedemos kept looking back over his shoulder as he handled the steering oars.

“Ready, boys?” Diokles called. The rowers' heads came up. To them, the world held nothing but their oars and the keleustes' voice. “Are you ready?” Diokles repeated. “Then . . . normal stroke!”

The men went from backing oars to pulling the Aphrodite forward as smoothly as if they'd been doing it for years. And, indeed, almost all of them had been doing it for years, aboard one ship or another. Menedemos pulled in on one steering oar and pushed out on the other, bringing the akatos' bow around so she aligned with the way the water was racing.

“Very neat,” Sostratos said. “A little lucky, to have the Euripos flowing in the direction we needed, but very neat.”

“The wind's with us, too,” Menedemos said. “In a little while, I'll have the men lower the sail from the yard. What with oars and wind and current, we'll be practically flying along.”

“We still won't get clear of Euboia by nightfall,” Sostratos said,

“Well, no,” Menedemos admitted, “but we might make it all the way down to Karystos, at the south end of the island. No one could hope to get from there to Khalkis and back by the time we're away the next morning—or from there to Athens and back, either.”

“Karystos,” his cousin said musingly. “There's a marble quarry nearby, I know that. And there's something else about the place, too. Something ...” He snapped his fingers in annoyance, unable to come up with it.

“They've got that strange stone there, the stuff that won't burn,” Menedemos said. “They weave from It, and when the towels get dirty, they just toss 'em in the fire.”

“Asbestos! That's right,” Sostratos said. “Thank you. I was going to be worrying at that all day, like a dog with a bone. Now I don't have to. That stuff sells well, and it's not very bulky. We might do some business.”

“We might,” Menedemos said dubiously. “Nothing to make us late back to Kos, though, especially not in country Kassandros holds.”

Sostratos looked forward, to where Polemaios was pointing something on the Euboian coast out to one of his henchmen. In a low voice, Menedemos' cousin said, “If Ptolemaios decides he wants anything to do with that fellow once he gets a good look at him, I'm a trouser-wearing Persian.”

Menedemos knew he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with Polemaios. Nevertheless, he said, “My dear, that's not your worry, or mine either. Our job is to get him there and get paid for it, and that's what I intend to do.”