The Gryphon's Skull

Polemaios and his bodyguards also roused. So did Polemaios' wife, who was no more happy about waking up aboard ship than she had been about the sleeping arrangements the Aphrodite offered. Barley rolls and raisins and olives for breakfast didn't seem to be to her taste, either, and she had some sharp things to say about the wine the akatos carried.

“It'll be hot work,” Sostratos said. The sun was just climbing over the horizon, but, with the air so still, he could feel the furnace of noontime in his mind hours before it turned real. “Have we got enough water and wine to get us to Paros? We're carrying all those extra passengers.”

“For one day, we'll be all right,” Menedemos answered. Sostratos dipped his head; that was likely true. His cousin went on, “Besides, if I water the ship here, we lose that much traveling time, and we haven't got much to spare today.”

Diokles put eight men at the oars on each side of the Aphrodite. At his orders, the oarblades bit into the sea. The galley glided out of Kythnos harbor, past the southern tip of the island, and then south and east toward Paros.

Navigating in the Kyklades was easy enough. A sailor rarely found himself out of sight of land. There was Seriphos, due south of Kythnos, and there due east lay Syros. A tiny islet between them gave a good course for Paros, and in the distance Sostratos could see clouds hovering about Mount Marpessos, Paros' central peak. Before long, the mountain itself came into view.

The sea seemed smooth as a polished piece of Parian marble. The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. Diokles gave the rowers shifts of about two hours, keeping them as fresh as he could. Polemaios' wife amused herself by complaining. His bodyguards prowled the ship like so many feral dogs on the prowl for something they could eat.

They were going to steal this and that. Sostratos knew as much. He couldn't keep his eye on all of them all the time. They couldn't steal too much, if only because they had nothing but their already-full sacks of personal goods in which to conceal their loot.

Not all of them seemed to realize that. One—the big fellow who'd been standing outside Polemaios' front door—bent down under an unoccupied rower's bench and came up holding the big leather sack that contained the gryphon's skull. Sostratos jerked as if stuck by a pin. “Put that down!” he yelped.

“Who's going to make me?” the guard demanded. His free hand went to the hilt of his sword. He hadn't doffed his armor aboard ship. Under the brim of his bronze helmet, his face twisted into a nasty grin. Sostratos wore only a wool tunic, and had nothing but a knife on his belt. He bit his lip in humiliation.

From the stern, Menedemos called, “Well, best one, if you want what you've got so much, why don't you see what it is?”

“I will.” The Macedonian undid the lashing that held the sack closed. The gryphon's skull stared out at him from empty eye sockets. Now he was the one who yelped, in surprise and superstitious fear.

“Don't you dare drop that,” Sostratos warned. This time, he managed to put a snap rather than a whine in his voice. “Put it back where you got it.” Perhaps too startled not to, the bodyguard obeyed. He didn't close the sack, but that could wait.

Once the gryphon's skull was stowed under the bench once more, the fellow managed a question of his own: “What do you want with that horrible, ugly thing?”

Sostratos smiled his most sinister smile. “Before we got the commission to bring your master back to Kos, I was going to take it up to Thessalia, to sell it to one of the witches there.” Northeastern Hellas was notorious for its witches. Sostratos didn't believe in witchcraft—not with the top part of his mind, anyhow—but to protect the precious gryphon's skull he grabbed any weapon that came to hand.

And this one worked. The big, fierce Macedonian went pale as milk. His ringers writhed in an apotropaic gesture. He said something in Macedonian that Sostratos couldn't understand. Once he got it out of his system, he switched to a dialect of Greek that made more sense: “I hope the witches turn you into a spider, you wide-arsed son of a whore.”

Grinning, Sostratos said, “I love you, too, my dear.” Behind the grin was a fright he wouldn't show. If the bodyguard got angry enough, or frightened enough, he would draw that sword, and Sostratos couldn't do much to fight back.

But the big man only shuddered and made another warding gesture before turning and stomping back up toward the foredeck. A couple of minutes later, Polemaios strode toward the stern. “Thessalian witchcraft?” he said.

How superstitious was he? Sostratos couldn't tell by the tone of the question. He just said, “That's right,” and waited to see what happened next.