“There is that,” Menedemos allowed. “When he and his cronies talked to each other, I couldn’t follow more than maybe one word in five.”
Not long after sunrise, a boat came out to the akatos. It was the first time the Rhodian ship had been so honored since the summons to the captains’ conference. This boat didn’t draw any too near, as if afraid the Aphrodite carried a dangerous contagious disease. We do, too, Menedemos thought. Sostratos named it—freedom.
From a safe distance, the officer in the rowboat called, “Ahoy, the trading galley! Do you hear me?”
“I’m the captain. I hear you,” Menedemos said. “What’s the word?”
“We move east at noon,” the man replied. “Make sure you’re ready to accompany us.”
Menedemos waved to him. “We’ll be along,” he said. Ptolemaios’ officer grudgingly dipped his head, then spoke to the men at the oars. They backed water, turned around, and rowed away.
Quietly, Sostratos said, “What was that Aristophanes you were spouting? Daddle—Let’s ske—Daddle—Let’s ske—”
“Much as I’d love to, we can’t right now,” Menedemos said with real regret. “Sticking with the fleet is best for Rhodes right now. Antigonos and Demetrios already have plenty of reasons to want to grab the polis. I don’t dare give the Ptolemaios a new one to leave us stranded. If you think he doesn’t have an eye on the Aphrodite, you’re daft.”
“I understand that,” Sostratos said. “But there’s a big sea-fight coming. If Ptolemaios wins, euge! for him. If he loses, we’re liable to get sunk. We’re liable to get killed. If we live, we’re liable to get enslaved.”
“If you’re going to whine about every little thing …” Menedemos said. His cousin stared at him, then burst out laughing. Menedemos laughed, too. So did Diokles, who stood on the stern platform with them. Something about the oarmaster’s face, though, said he was laughing to keep from giving way to despair. Since Menedemos felt the same way, he didn’t remark on it.
Horns blared across the harbor, ordering the fleet into motion at the appointed hour. “Noon,” Sostratos grumbled. “Why couldn’t he have picked a cooler time of day to set out? What does he think he is, a genuine Egyptian or something?”
“Not likely,” Menedemos replied. “As far as I can tell, he speaks as much Egyptian as we do, and we don’t speak any.”
Ptolemaios’ warships left the harbor before the transports and freighters, and formed up in a protective arc ahead of them: the same formation the fleet had used coming north from Alexandria. Now, though, the ships raised their masts and spread their broad sails slantwise to take advantage of the wind. They couldn’t use it when it was dead against them, but took advantage of it when it blew at the quarter.
“Our rowers will be fresher this way,” Sostratos observed.
“So they will,” Menedemos answered. “Say, did you notice the catapults all the fours and fives carry? Nothing like getting a bolt through the brisket from a couple of stadia away!”
“Back when the catapult was newer—it would have been around the time the Alexander was born, I think—someone took a bolt to Sparta. King Arkhidamos looked at it and said, ‘O Herakles! The valor of man is extinguished!’” Sostratos said.
“Did he? He wasn’t so far wrong,” Menedemos said. “If the river keeps flowing the way it runs now, one of these days we’ll have the automata Homer says Hephaistos made doing our fighting for us, and the only way anybody will ever win a battle is if something goes wrong with one of them.”
“Only half a century since Alexander was born,” his cousin said in musing tones. “He would have been younger than Ptolemaios—much younger than Antigonos. He became king of Macedonia about the time we were born. The Persian Empire was still going strong. A few changes since.”
“Just a few,” Menedemos agreed. “When we were boys, every time a ship came in to Rhodes it would bring news that he’d conquered some other place a daimon of a long way away. I’d never heard of half of them before.”
“Neither had I.” Sostratos sounded angry at his own long-ago ignorance. He hated not knowing things; Menedemos had known that as long as he’d known him. His cousin went on, “Hearing all those strange names may have been what made me want to understand how the pieces of the world fit together, one next to another and through time.”
“It made me want to go out and see some of those places,” Menedemos said. “And I have seen … well, some of them, anyhow. I don’t know that I’ll ever get to Persia or India.”
“I suppose not,” Sostratos said. “There are Hellenes in those parts now, though. Who would have dreamt of that fifty years ago?”
“Nobody. Not a soul,” Menedemos said, and then, loudly, to the sailors tending the lines, “Shorten the sail by a brail’s worth. We’ll ram one of the scows ahead of us if we don’t slow down.” He hoped his voice carried over the water to the skippers commanding Ptolemaios’ transports. They weren’t really scows, but also weren’t as sleek in the water as the Aphrodite.
Nearing Kourion, the fleet swung south to round the islet off Cyprus’ southern coast instead of trying to slide through the channel separating it from the mainland. Menedemos dipped his head in approval as the akatos followed. The channel was shallow and treacherously full of ever-shifting sandbars. Better to stay safe. Someone advising Ptolemaios really did know these waters.
Diokles must have had the same thought, for he remarked, “One of these days, that passage is going to silt up and tie the little island to Cyprus for good.”
“I’m just glad Demetrios didn’t post any scout ships this far west,” Sostratos said.
“Didn’t post any we know about, anyway,” Menedemos said. “Ptolemaios’ fours and fives wouldn’t chase a pentekonter. He said so himself, remember? That would just wear out the rowers, and they wouldn’t catch it.”
“For all we know, Demetrios has watchers on the beach, or on the high ground a little ways inland,” Diokles added. “We aren’t out of sight of land on this leg, so the land isn’t out of sight of us. And as soon as somebody spots us, he gets a leg-up onto his horse and gallops off to give Demetrios the news.”
Menedemos’ laugh was sharp as pepper, sour as vinegar. “I wonder how many horsemen, Demetrios’ and Ptolemaios’, are galloping across southern Cyprus from west to east right now. Enough to make the chariot races at the Olympic Games seem like nothing next to them, I’d bet.”
“They don’t have rowing contests at Olympia. They don’t have them at any of the great Games, not that I know of,” Sostratos said. “But we’ll see one of those contests when our fleet finally runs into Demetrios’.”
“The winners won’t get crowns of laurel leaves and fancy amphorai full of olive oil, either,” Menedemos said. “They’ll get something better yet—they’ll get to stay alive.”
Kition, near the eastern end of Cyprus’ south coast, was only a couple of hundred stadia from Salamis … if one went by land. Ptolemaios’ fleet would have to round Cape Pedalion to reach the besieged city, which would make its journey at least twice as long.
The ships paused a day at Kition to take on water and wine and bread. Ptolemaios didn’t call another council, but gossip came out to the galleys along with the supplies. One of the men handing jars of wine up to the Aphrodite told Sostratos, “ ’Tis said the Ptolemaios hath commanded his brother to send Salamis’ sixty warships hither forthwith, but that shall not come to pass, for Demetrios hath blocked the channel with his own galleys.”