The Gryphon's Skull

Polemaios grunted, ascended to the poop deck, and pissed into the sea. Then he too returned to his station on the foredeck. He and his bodyguard got into a shouting match. To Sostratos' frustration, it was in Macedonian. The bodyguard wasn't shy about saying whatever was on his mind, waving his hands in Polemaios' face and bunching them into fists. Polemaios showed no more restraint.

“A charming people, the Macedonians,” Sostratos remarked in a low voice as he went up to stand near his cousin.

“Aren't they, though?” Menedemos rolled his eyes.

“And they rule almost the entire civilized world,” Sostratos said mournfully. He drew himself up with more than a little pride. “But not Rhodes.”

“Gods be praised!” Menedemos exclaimed, and Sostratos dipped his head.

“OöP!” Dlokles called, and the Aphrodite's weary rowers rested at their oars. Behind them, the setting sun streaked the Aegean with blood and fire. A couple of harbor men took the lines sailors tossed them and made the akatos fast to a quay in the polis of Paros. Up at the top of Mount Marpessos, the sunlight remained a good deal brighter than it was down here on the sea.

Menedemos clapped his hands together. “Euge!” he called to the merchant galley's crew. “Very well done! It's a long haul from Kythnos to here.”

“Don't we know it!” somebody—Teleutas—said. Menedemos would have bet he'd be the one to speak up and carp, but he'd done as much as anybody else at the oars, and so he'd earned the right.

“Amorgos tomorrow,” Menedemos said. “Then Kos, and a layover. You boys will have earned it.”

Til say we will.” Again, Teleutas took it on himself to speak for the rest of the sailors, and to make agreement sound halfway like a threat.

“We won't make Kos in one day from Amorgos, not unless we get a gale out of the west,” Diokles remarked. “Not likely, although . . .” The oarmaster tasted the air, wetly smacking his lips a couple of times. “We'll have wind, I think. Tomorrow won't be a dead-calm day like this one.”

“I think you're right,” Menedemos said. The faintest ghost of a breeze brushed against his cheek, softer than a hetaira's hand. He looked north. A few clouds drifted across the sky; they didn't hang in place, as they had all through this long, hot day. “Be good to let the sail down.”

“That'll be fine, sure enough,” Diokles agreed. “Still and all, though, even Amorgos'H be a push, because we will have to spend some time filling our water jars before we sail tomorrow. Can't let ourselves go dry.”

“I know, I know.” Menedemos consoled himself as best he could: “Paros has good water, not the brackish stuff we'd have got on Kythnos.”

He stayed aboard the Aphrodite again that night. He didn't want to; he wanted to go into one of the harborside taverns, drink himself dizzy, and sleep with a serving girl or find a brothel. He hadn't had a girl since putting in at Kos. For a man in his mid-twenties, going without for several days felt like a hardship.

But somebody would ask, Say, who's that big son of a whore with those soldiers? Answering Alkimos of Epeiros

might serve. On the other hand, it might not, and he might talk too much if he got drunk. He knew himself well enough to understand that. And so he wrapped himself in his himation on the poop deck, stared up at the stars for a little while, and fell asleep.

When he woke up, only the faintest hint of gray touched the jagged eastern horizon. He felt like cheering, for a brisk northerly breeze ruffled his hair. With sail and oars together, they had a much better chance of making Amorgos by nightfall. Then he took a deep breath, and frowned a little. The air felt damp, as if it was the harbinger of rain. He shrugged. It was late in the season for a downpour, but not impossibly so.

As soon as it got light enough for colors to start returning to the black and silver world of night, he started shaking sailors and sending them into Paros with the Aphrodite's water jars. “How will we find a fountain?” Teleutas whined.

“Ask somebody,” Menedemos said unsympathetically. “Here.” He gave the grumbling sailor an obolos. “Now you can give something for an answer, and it's not even coming out of your own pay.”

Teleutas, no doubt, liked lugging a hydria no more than anybody else. But Menedemos had quashed his objections before he could make them. He popped the obolos into his mouth and went off with his comrades. Menedemos imagined the surprise at a fountain when the sailors descended on women filling their water jars for the day's cooking and washing. Then he tossed his head. As at Naxos, a lot of ships put in at Paros. The local women would be used to such visits.

Sostratos pointed north. “I wonder if we'll get some rain,” he said. “Some of those clouds look thicker and grayer than the usual run.”