The Gryphon's Skull

All forty of the akatos' oars were manned fast enough to keep Menedemos from complaining. More than half of the rowers had gone west to Great Hellas and the towns of the Italian barbarians the year before. Almost all of them had pulled an oar in a Rhodian warship at one time or another. They weren't a raw crew, and wouldn't need much beating in to work well together—so Menedemos hoped, at any rate.

He glanced over to the quay to make sure no lines still secured the Aphrodite. Sure enough, they'd all been taken aboard. He knew that, but was glad he'd checked all the same. Trying to row away while still tied up? His father would never have let him live it down. Neither would anyone else.

Having satisfied himself, he dipped his head to Diokles.

“Good enough.” As always aboard ship, the oarmaster carried a little mallet with an iron head and a bronze square dangling from a chain. He used them to beat out the stroke. All eyes went to him when he raised the bronze square. He grinned at the rowers as he cocked his right arm, then brought the mallet forward. As metal clanged on metal, he began to call the stroke, too: “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. The Aphrodite glided away from the pier, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Sostratos waved back toward his father. Grudgingly, Menedemos looked back over his shoulder and lifted one hand from the steering oar to wave at Philodemos in turn. A little to his surprise, his father waved back. But is he waving because he's sorry to see me go, or because he's glad?

Rhodes boasted no fewer than five harbors, but only the great harbor and the naval harbor just northwest of it were warded from wind and weather with manmade moles. The great harbor's opening onto the Aegean was only a couple of plethra across—not even a bowshot. Menedemos steered toward the middle of the channel.

“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. He smote the bronze square again. “Rhyppapai!” He set a stately pace. What point to wearing out the rowers at the beginning of the voyage? And what point to embarrassing them by pushing them up to a quick stroke and having them make mistakes under the critical eyes of every wharf rat in Rhodes? After all, the only reason Menedemos put a full complement on the oars was for show. Once out of the harbor, the merchant galley would either sail or amble along with eight or ten rowers on a side unless she had to flee or fight.

Menedemos tasted the motion of the sea through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands on the steering oars. Here in the protected harbor, the water was almost glassy smooth. Even so, no one could ever mistake it for the staid solidity of dry land. “Almost like riding a woman, isn't it?” Menedemos said to Sostratos.

His cousin plucked at his beard. They weren't fashionable for young men these days—Menedemos and most of the sailors were clean-shaven—but Sostratos had never been one to care much for fashion. “Trust you to come up with that particular comparison,” he said at last.

“I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,” Menedemos replied with a chuckle.

Sostratos snorted. “It's plain you're no Persian, at any rate.”

“Persian? I should hope not,” Menedemos said. “What are you talking about, anyhow? You pull the strangest things out from under your hat.”

“Herodotos says Persians learn three things when they're growing up,” Sostratos said: “to ride, to shoot, and to tell the truth.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said. “Well, to the crows with you, O cousin of mine.” They both laughed. What Menedemos didn't tell Sostratos was that he was glad to be leaving Rhodes not because of what he had done this winter but because of what he hadn't—a sizable departure from his norm.

His cousin knew nothing of that. No one but Menedemos knew of the passion he'd conceived for his father's young second wife— unless Baukis herself had some inkling of it. But whatever he thought, whatever he felt, he hadn't done anything about it, and the strain of doing nothing had made living with his father even harder than it would have been otherwise.

He would have known blindfolded the instant when the Aphrodite glided out between the fortified moles that sheltered the great harbor and onto the open waters of the Aegean. The akatos' motion changed inside the space of a heartbeat. Real waves—not big ones, but waves nonetheless, driven by a brisk northerly breeze—slapped her bow and foamed over the three-finned bronze ram she carried there. She began to pitch, going up and down, up and down, under Menedemos' feet.

“Now we're really on the sea!” he said happily.

“So we are.” Sostratos sounded less delighted. The merchant galley's motion remained quite mild, but Menedemos' cousin had an uncertain stomach till he got back his sea legs at the start of each new sailing season. Menedemos thanked the gods that that affliction didn't trouble him.