Menedemos pulled himself together with commendable speed. “I’m the skipper,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Captains’ conference aboard the Ptolemaios’ ship at the end of the first hour tomorrow morning,” the man said. “You and your toikharkhos are bidden to attend.”
“Well!” Sostratos exclaimed in glad surprise. That the invitation included him had to mean it came straight from Ptolemaios. Giving the would-be historian a chance to sit in on history in the raw, was he?
Meanwhile, Menedemos said, “Tell him we’ll be there.” The officer waved in reply. As the boat swung back toward Ptolemaios’ galley, Sostratos’ cousin elbowed him in the ribs and murmured, “Teacher’s pet!”
“Ah, to the crows with you,” Sostratos answered. Menedemos laughed—shakily, but he did. Then Sostratos added, “I hope our boat doesn’t leak.”
“That would be good,” Menedemos said. “We’ll find out, I expect.”
Lots of boats were in the water an hour after sunrise the next day. Men aboard several had to bail with dried gourds on sticks or with long-handled pots. Rather to Sostratos’ surprise, the planking on the Aphrodite’s little rowboat seemed sound.
He and Menedemos both wore their better chitons. Past that, they didn’t—they couldn’t—dress up for the occasion. Even the captains from the larger transports seemed far more glorious than they did. As for the exalted commanders of Ptolemaios’ war galleys ….
As they neared Ptolemaios’ five, Sostratos said, “I don’t think I’d want my flagship all tricked out in scarlet and gold like this. Wouldn’t every enemy galley try to sink it?”
“When you’re a warlord, you have to let people know you’re a warlord. Otherwise, why would they take orders from you?” Menedemos said. Sostratos grunted thoughtfully; the answer was more to the point than he’d looked for.
Being a five, with three decks of rowers, the flagship had more freeboard than the Aphrodite. Sostratos and Menedemos had just stepped over the rail and down into the rowboat. They couldn’t get up again the same way here. But Ptolemaios’ men had thoughtfully hung nets from the sides of the ship. Those made coming aboard easy enough.
A long fighting platform ran between the rowers’ benches, a little higher than the heads of the rowers on the upper, or thranite, row would have been. A bolt-throwing catapult was mounted near the bow. Normally, the platform would have been full of fighting men: some archers, others armed with spear and sword to board and seize enemy vessels.
Normally, but not this morning. Ptolemaios’ skippers took their place today. Sostratos’ height let him glimpse the ruler of Egypt himself. He was talking with a couple of men who, if they weren’t admirals, could have played them on the stage even without masks.
Ptolemaios kept looking toward the sun every so often. After a bit, he must have decided that the first hour had indeed ended, for he raised his voice to a roar that would have carried far across any of the many battlefields he’d fought on: “Listen to me, O best ones! Listen, curse it! Anyone who hasn’t shown up yet, a pestilence take him! He can get the word from one of you, that’s all.”
Even as he spoke, an embarrassed-looking skipper scrambled up the nets and aboard the flagship. The officers who’d come in good time laughed at the newcomer.
“So good of you to join us, Euphemides,” Ptolemaios growled. He would be one to recognize the tardy captain. After a moment to let Euphemides hang his head in shame, Ptolemaios went on, “All right, we’re on Cyprus, even if we’re a good ways west of Salamis. Last night, I sent horsemen east to let Menelaos know help is on the way.”
Sostratos wondered whether Ptolemaios’ messengers would be able to get through the siege lines around Salamis, but that wasn’t his worry. Meanwhile, Ptolemaios went on, “We’ll stay here for a few days to see how many other ships come in from the Cypriot cities the enemy doesn’t hold. Then we’ll head east to deal with the Cyclops’ mangy puppy. We’ll give him what he deserves, we’ll take back the whole island and tighten things up here, and we’ll sail home to Alexandria. Any questions?”
Several skippers said “Euge!” at the same time—almost as a chorus, in fact. No one seemed to want to ask the lord of Egypt anything. Almost before Sostratos realized he’d done it, he stuck a hand in the air. Menedemos contrived to step on his toes, but too late: Ptolemaios had already seen him.
“Who’s that?” Alexander’s marshal rumbled. “Stand aside, you men, so I can see who I’m talking to.”
There wasn’t much room on the fighting platform for the officers to stand aside, but they did their best. More than a few of them stared at Sostratos as if sure he’d lost his wits. His very plain tunic might also have inclined them to that view.
Ptolemaios continued, “Go on, tall fellow. Ask away.” A moment later, on a falling note, he added, “Oh, it’s you, son of Lysistratos. Well, what do you want to know?”
“Thank you, sir. I just wondered, are we wise to linger in Paphos?” Sostratos said. “If you can send riders to Menelaos, men who don’t like you so well can send them to Demetrios, too.”
“We won’t catch him by surprise any which way. He’ll know or guess we’re coming, and he’ll have some of his piratical friends scouting for him,” Ptolemaios said. “Fours and fives can’t outrun those cursed pentenkonters, however much I wish they could.”
Trihemioliai can, Sostratos thought. But Egypt’s navy was built for power, not speed. Ptolemaios didn’t worry about pirates nearly so much as Rhodes did.
The lord of Egypt hadn’t finished yet, either. “If any ships do come in, I’ll be glad to have them, too. From what I’ve heard, Demetrios’ fleet is bigger than mine, though he’ll need to leave some of it behind to try to keep my brother’s galleys shut up in Salamis’ harbor.” He set his hands on his hips. “Are you answered?” Every line of his body warned, You’d better be!
“Yes, sir,” Sostratos said, and not another word. He might have replied differently had Ptolemaios asked him whether he was satisfied.
“Did you really think you’d get him to change his mind?” Menedemos asked when they were safely off the flagship and in the rowboat on the way back to the Aphrodite.
“Did I think so? No. But it wasn’t impossible, not quite, so I tried,” Sostratos said.
“And now all his skippers think you’re daft,” his cousin observed.
“As if I care! They’ve forgotten what dealing with free Hellenes is like. High time they got reminded,” Sostratos said. Laughing softly, Menedemos clapped him on the back.
XII
Ptolemaios lingered at Paphos until the moon was a skinny nail-paring of a crescent, rising just before the sun came up. A few ships dribbled in from nearby poleis, but only a few. Menedemos found himself agreeing with Sostratos: the boost Ptolemaios’ forces got wasn’t worth the delay in going off to fight Demetrios.
“Maybe you should hop into the boat again, head over to the flagship, and talk some sense into him,” he told his cousin.
Sostratos looked at him. “I didn’t know you wanted me dead so badly.”
“He wouldn’t kill you. He’d just curse you up one side and down the other for wasting his time,” Menedemos said. “You might hear some things even Diokles doesn’t know.”
The keleustes was gnawing on a chunk of hard-baked bread. He looked up long enough to say, “To the crows with you, skipper,” and then went back to eating.
“When the Ptolemaios really got rolling, he’d probably fall back into Macedonian, so I wouldn’t understand him anyway,” Sostratos said.