The Gryphon's Skull

“Regular stroke!” Diokles bawled as soon as the akatos' bow pointed away from the islet. “Pull hard, you bastards! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

“Nine and a half cubits!” the leadsman yelled.

“Full crew to the oars,” Menedemos ordered. The sailors scrambled to obey. More oars jutted from each side of the ship with every stroke, till all forty were manned. No one fouled anybody else. They'd been beaten in well enough to perform in smooth unison even in an emergency. A trierarch aboard a Rhodian war galley might have found something about which to complain. Menedemos couldn't.

“Eleven cubits!” the leadsman called, and then, “Fourteen cubits!”

“We're going to get away,” Diokles said as the danger receded.

“Yes, it looks that way,” Menedemos agreed. “By the dog of Egypt, though, I'm glad I'm in an akatos and not a wallowing round ship. I wouldn't want to try to claw away from there without oars.”

“No, indeed, skipper.” The keleustes' scowl mirrored Menedemos'. “That wouldn't be any fun at all. A round ship might have been able to swing away to southward if somebody spotted that polluted thing soon enough. Might, I say.”

“I know.” Menedemos dipped his head. But the other side of might

was might not, as sure as the other side of the image of Apollo on a Rhodian drakhma was a rose.

Polemaios and the other passengers stayed up near the bow. Menedemos had hoped Antigonos' nephew might come back to the stern and apologize for complaining about Ansteidas' placement. The big Macedonian did no such thing. Well, to the crows with him, then, Menedemos thought as he brought the merchant galley back toward the west. I know what an ass he made of himself, whether he does or not.

* * *

Two days after almost going aground in the Kyklades, the Aphrodite came back to Kos. Sostratos watched Polemaios staring north and east across the narrow channel that separated the island from Halikarnassos on the mainland of Anatolia. Had Antigonos' war galleys in Halikarnassos known who was aboard the Aphrodite, they surely would have swarmed out to try to seize the smaller ship. But, except for those on patrol in front of the city, they stayed quiet.

As Polemaios looked toward his uncle's stronghold, his great hands folded into fists. He growled something in Macedonian. Sostratos couldn't understand it, but didn't think it any sort of praise for Antigonos or his sons.

A couple of stadia outside the polis of Kos, a five flying banners with Ptolemaios' eagle on them came striding across the sea to challenge the Aphrodite. “What ship?” shouted an officer on the war galley's deck, cupping his hands in front of his mouth to make his voice carry farther.

“We're the Aphrodite,

back from Khalkis on Euboia,” Sostratos yelled in return, hoping Ptolemaios' men had been told to expect the akatos.

“And I,” Polemaios cried in a great voice, “am Polemaios son of Polemaios, come to join in equal alliance against my polluted, accursed, gods-detested uncle with Ptolemaios son of Lagos.”

Back on Khalkis, Polemaios had remembered he wouldn't be an equal partner in an alliance. Here, he traveled in a small merchant galley with a double handful of bodyguards along for protection. Ptolemaios had his whole great fleet and the army that went with it in and around Kos. The war galley approaching the Aphrodite could have smashed her to kindling with its great three-finned ram. The archers and catapult aboard the five could have plied the akatos with darts till she looked like a hedgehog. The marines from Ptolemaios' ship could have boarded and slaughtered every man on the merchant galley. All that being so, Sostratos doubted whether, in Polemaios' place, he would have dared claim equality with the ruler of Egypt.

But, for the time being, Antigonos' renegade nephew got away with it. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome, O best and most brilliant of men!” Ptolemaios' officer exclaimed, as if he were greeting Alexander the Great or a veritable demigod like Herakles. The fellow went on, “We had not looked for you for another few days.” He waved to Sostratos, who'd spoken up first. “Congratulations on your fine sailing.”

Sostratos, in turned, waved back to Menedemos at the steering oars. “My cousin's the captain. I'm just toikharkhos.”

“Euge!” Ptolemaios' man called to Menedemos, who lifted a hand to acknowledge the praise. “Pass on into the harbor. Ptolemaios will be very pleased you've brought his ally to Kos.” He said nothing about Polemaios' being an equal ally. Sostratos noticed that. He wondered whether Polemaios did.