Sailors from the Aphrodite helped Sostratos carry the cheeses back to the akatos. One of them was Teleutas. With a sidelong glance Sostratos’ way, he said, “You’d better get us back to Rhodes in a hurry. If you don’t, we’ll eat up your profits.”
The other sailors laughed. Sostratos didn’t. He knew Teleutas better than he wanted to. “By the dog of Egypt, if even a crumb of cheese goes missing before we get home, you’ll swim back to Rhodes,” he ground out. “Do you understand me?”
“Easy, young sir,” one of the other sailors said. “He was only joking.”
Teleutas’ grin didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s right,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them.”
“It had better not,” Sostratos told him. “Because I’m not joking.”
An oppressive silence cloaked the working party till they got down to the beach. Even the men who rowed them and the cheeses back to the Aphrodite noticed it. “Somebody fart in somebody else’s face?” one of the rowers asked when no one said a word as the boat glided toward the merchant galley.
“You might say so, Moskhion,” Teleutas answered. “Yes, you just might say so.” He eyed Sostratos again, smirking slightly.
Sostratos glared back. “If we need another sailor in a hurry, I expect we can find one even in a gods-forsaken place like this,” he said.
Moskhion looked horrified. He said, “I wouldn’t maroon anybody in this miserable dump.”
“If we had a thief aboard, I’d maroon him anywhere,” Sostratos replied. Moskhion shut up and started rowing again. He’d gone with Sostratos into Ioudaia the year before. He couldn’t very well forget the gold ring Teleutas had stolen from a local there. No one had ever proved-no one had ever even claimed-Teleutas stole while aboard ship. Had that been proved, or even claimed, Teleutas wouldn’t have sailed with the Aphrodite this spring.
He gave no more smirks now. He looked out at the sea and at the akatos and said not a thing. Without a doubt, that was the best thing he could have done. Had he given Sostratos any more lip, he would have gone out of the boat and into the water of the harbor. Sostratos had no idea whether Teleutas could swim. At the moment, he was too angry to care.
When they came alongside the Aphrodite, the sailors in the boat passed chunks of cheese to the men in the merchant galley. “Here, we’ll put them in leather sacks,” Menedemos said. “We’ve got a good many left from the trip up to Athens, and they’ll keep out salt water and vermin.” He grinned. “All the vermin that don’t walk on two legs, anyhow.”
Several sailors aboard the akatos laughed. Nobody from the ship’s boat did. Teleutas looked as if he were about to, but he changed his mind even without a scowl from Sostratos. After all the cheese went onto the Aphrodite, Sostratos and the sailors scrambled up over the rail and into the low waist of the ship.
His cousin waited till the two of them were-mostly-out of earshot of the crew before asking, “What’s wrong, my dear? You look ready to bite a belaying pin in two, but I see you came back with plenty of cheese.”
“Oh, the cheese is fine. The cheese is better than I expected it to be, in fact,” Sostratos said, still seething. “But that polluted Teleutas…” The story poured out of him; he finished, “I wish he never would have come aboard the Aphrodite in the first place.”
“Well, unless he does come right out and steal, we’re stuck with him till we get back to Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. “Next year, though, tell him to go howl when he asks to go with us again.”
“By the dog, I will,” Sostratos said. “I wish I had this spring. He’s nothing but trouble. Even when he doesn’t do anything wrong, he always makes it seem he’s just about to. You have to keep an eye on him every minute.”
“Many goodbyes to him, then,” Menedemos said. “We’ll pay him off when we get home, and that’ll be the end of it. When he comes around whining for work next spring, tell him to bend over and-”
“I understand you, thanks,” Sostratos said hastily.
“Good. That’s settled, then.” Menedemos liked things neat and tidy. He liked them that way so much, he sometimes assumed they were when they weren’t. Here, though, Sostratos agreed with his cousin. Menedemos asked, “Anything else we need to do here on Kythnos?”
“I don’t think there’s anything else to do on Kythnos,” Sostratos said.
“Ha! Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. I know I don’t want their water; we’ve got enough, and I remember how nasty and brackish it was when we stopped here a couple of years ago with Polemaios aboard.” Menedemos turned to Diokles. “Everybody’s aboard and ready to row?”
“Everybody’s aboard, skipper,” the oarmaster answered. “A few of the boys are still nursing headaches from too much wine, but they can probably row.”
“Sweating’ll be good for ‘em,” Menedemos said with the airy confidence of a man who wasn’t hung over at the moment. “Let’s get out of here, then. I don’t think we can make Paros with the daylight we’ve got left, but we ought to get to Syros without much trouble.”
“Sounds about right,” Diokles agreed. He turned and started shouting at the crew. They hurried to take their places at the oars and by the lines that would lower the sail from the yard. “Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The men began to row. The Aphrodite made her way out of the harbor.
Sostratos was glad to go. To Menedemos, every trading run, every island, every town seemed a new adventure. Sostratos liked the travel for what he could learn, but there wasn’t much to learn about Kythnos. And the more he saw of other places (even Athens, and who could have imagined that?), the better Rhodes looked. Rhodes was home, and they were on their way.
Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to port. Kythnos was longer than it was wide; to go east from the island’s single town, one had to round a headland at either the northern or southern tip of the island. He’d chosen the latter. To catch the wind abeam, the sailors swung the yard from the port bow back. They’d started the motion only a heartbeat after he started the turn, and finished it at about the same time. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t even had to give an order.
“Pretty day,” Diokles remarked as they swung past the headland, and it was. The sun shone warm and bright in the blue, blue sky, though it no longer stood so high as it had at the start of summer. The Aegean was a deeper blue, or rather several deeper blues. Kythnos, on the merchant galley’s left hand, added variety: brown soil, gray rock, streaks of greenery amid sun-dried yellow.
Other islands of the Kyklades dotted the horizon: everything from black rocks with the sea foaming around them, good for nothing but tearing the bottom out of a ship that came upon them unawares, to Syros and Paros and Naxos in the east, Siphnos in the southeast, and rocky Seriphos and Melos beyond it due south.
Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, skrawking and mewing. They often attended ships; what was garbage to men was opson to them. An osprey folded its wings and plunged feet first into the sea two or three plethra from the merchant galley. It came up again a heartbeat later, flapping strongly to get back into the air. Its talons clutched a writhing fish.
“When terns dive in, gulls steal from them,” Sostratos said. “But who’s going to steal from an osprey?”
“No one in these waters, by Zeus,” Menedemos answered.
“I wonder what the fish was,” Sostratos said. “I wonder if the bird chose it because it likes that kind of fish, or just because it chanced to be swimming near enough to the surface to be seen.”