Timaeus grunted. ‘Part of One-Eye’s fleet is on our beaches, blockading us.’ He rubbed his chin, eyes on the floor.
Satyrus looked down and realized that he was standing on a chart of the Inner Sea. His sandals were on the coast of Rhodos, with Helios’s rays detailed in gold, and Smyrna was two steps away. ‘The rest have vanished,’ Panther said, pointing vaguely at the coast of Asia.
‘For all I know, Demetrios took them straight into Alexandria to burn the place. He’s a bold one.’ Timaeus shook his head. ‘We put all our cruisers to sea to avoid blockade, and then they made their move, and we’re blind.’
‘Our harbour is empty, if you didn’t notice. We don’t have any more ships to send as scouts. Your lading says you are bound for Smyrna. Will you scout the coast of Palestine on your way back?’ Panther spoke urgently to Peleus. ‘Our need is great.’
Peleus looked at Satyrus. ‘It’s his call to make, gentlemen. Palestine is well off our course. And we couldn’t get the news back here.’
‘You could get word to our station on Cyprus. Peleus, we’re hard-pressed. And we’re on the same side.’ Timaeus rose from his chair.
Peleus shrugged. ‘I’m as Rhodian as the rose, Timaeus. But I serve an Alexandrian and I’m an honest servant. Last year you sent ships to serve Antigonus One-Eye.’
Panther shrugged. ‘It was expedient. You know who we prefer.’
‘Welcome to the Olympic Games of politics, boy,’ Peleus said to Satyrus.
Satyrus stepped forward. ‘Will you find a merchant to take Lord Leon’s hides across to Smyrna?’
Timaeus nodded. ‘We can do that.’ He shrugged. ‘Eventually.’
‘So we’ll pick up some luxuries to pay the oarsmen and ship empty for the Palestinian coast,’ Satyrus said.
Peleus nodded. ‘And we’ll fly.’
‘That pair of wolves will be on you as soon as you leave harbour,’ Panther said.
Peleus nodded. ‘They almost caught us when we were fully laden,’ he said. ‘Unless the gods will our doom, empty, we’ll be over the horizon before they can get in range with their infernal engines.’
Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘We need three days,’ he said. ‘The crew needs a rest.’
‘Fair enough,’ Timaeus said. ‘Perhaps one of our cruisers will come in and we won’t need you at all.’
Satyrus turned to Peleus. ‘And my sister stays aboard,’ he said.
Peleus shrugged. ‘Done,’ he said.
A day of debauch and a day of rest, and the Golden Lotus’s crew mustered on the beach, surly or smiling depending on their natures. Many of them had acquired companions, most of them temporary, and a few of them had gained or lost possessions – Satyrus could see a younger oarsman with what appeared to be a cloth-of-gold chlamys wrapped around his shoulders, standing next to an older man with his head between his knees who appeared to be completely naked. But none were late, or absent, and every man of them had his rowing cushion, whatever the state of his dress.
Peleus stood up, wearing a bronze breastplate and carrying a helmet. ‘This is a war voyage,’ he shouted. ‘Anyone want to sit it out? I have a pair of javelins for every man and I’ll add an owl to everyone’s pay. But we won’t ship much of a cargo and that means no shares.’
Kyros, the oar captain, spoke up. ‘What about captures?’
Peleus nodded. ‘Right enough. But we’re scouting an enemy coast, boys. Not much time to make a capture. If we do, shares by the custom of Rhodos.’
Kyros nodded and went back to squatting on his haunches.
Peleus turned to Satyrus. ‘That’s what passes for a council among men who use the sea,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the tide.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘Let’s use it then.’
The two wolves were aware as soon as the Golden Lotus passed the Temple of Apollo and left the inner harbour. Peleus watched them under his hand as they threw their oars aboard and then pushed their sterns down the beach. But they didn’t have the wind and their rowers were slow to respond and the Lotus drew away effortlessly.
‘Good riddance,’ Peleus said, staring under his hand. ‘Heavy metal in their bows and no mistake. I won’t be sorry to see the last of them.’
The last they saw of them were their masts slipping away under the horizon as the coast of Asia came up on the port bow.
Satyrus could see the first of the tell-tale headlands that would lead him into Xanthos. ‘I guess we’re not going into Xanthos,’ he said.
Peleus shook his head. ‘Beautiful day, crew hard as old wood. Let’s use this fine west wind while it blows and see if we can make the beaches of Pamphylia. If the weather holds,’ he said, and made a horn sign with his hand, ‘we might coast into Paphos on Cyprus, and we’ll never see those cocksuckers again.’
Kyros took a dipper of water from the butt amidships and raised an eyebrow at the helmsman. ‘I won’t mention that to the boys, I guess.’
Peleus barked a harsh laugh. ‘Maybe when the moon rises.’ He glanced at Satyrus. ‘It’d be something to tell your grandchildren, that you went from Rhodos to Paphos in a day’s rowing.’ He came and stood by Satyrus for ten strokes of the oars, and then they felt the true west wind at their backs.
Peleus gave one of his rare smiles. He turned to the deck master. ‘Hoist the mainmast, Kalos. Get the cloth on her.’
‘Mainmast and mainsail, aye,’ Kalos answered. Short, hairy and scarred, his name spoke for what he was not – beautiful. He was perhaps the ugliest man Satyrus had ever seen, Stratokles included, but he had a sense of humour, and often claimed that he had been an avatar of Aphrodite in a former life and was paying the price now.
Of course, he was also a highly skilled seaman. In less time than it took to pull an oar a hundred times, the mainmast was up and roped home, and the mainsail was drawing, taut as a board and round as a cheese.
‘Navarch,’ Peleus said gruffly, ‘if you’ll have my advice, I’d say that we could make the run to Paphos.’
Satyrus nodded a few times, considering. ‘Then carry on,’ Satyrus said.
‘It’s only that it is open water all the way. No landfalls and no refuge.’ Peleus raised a shaggy eyebrow.
‘For one day? Are we sailors or not?’ Satyrus asked rhetorically. ‘What’s the heading?’
‘Years since I did it.’ Peleus squinted at the sun and the sky. ‘South and east. No – more south. I like that. Hold that course.’ He looked at the wake for long enough that Satyrus thought he might have changed his mind. ‘Deep-water sailing is where we find out if you can mind your helm or not,’ he said. ‘No landmarks. No seamarks. Your wake is straight, or he ain’t. Hear me, lad?’
Satyrus was growing weary of a life that seemed to consist of nothing but an endless series of tests – but he bit back on his first answer and managed a grin. ‘Do my best,’ he said.
‘Notch in your wake when you talk,’ Peleus said.
When the sun was high in the sky, Melitta walked down the raised deck between the rowers. Most of them were sitting comfortably, and a dozen of them were busy rigging a long awning on the port side against the sun, while the sailors did the climbing.
Wherever she walked, silence followed, and stares, and some quiet comments. Life on shipboard had brought home to Melitta how very stupid men were. Her body was capable of ending argument, discussion, religious affirmation – really, it was a wonder that men managed to do any work at all.
Whereas, by contrast, there were naked men all around her, and none of them moved her by so much as an iota. Some had fine bodies – her brother, for instance, or old Peleus, in his way. Xenophon, if you ignored the pimples on his face, had the physique of Herakles. The marine captain was exercising naked, gleaming with oil and obviously trying to attract her attention. It was a fine body, but, as Melitta had already commented to Dorcus, there wasn’t much inside it.
She swept her Ionic chiton under her with one arm and gathered her chlamys with the other before sinking on to a bale of sheepskins that acted as the stern-seat for the helmsman’s visitors.