Cats, he thought. I was going to bring some cats back to Rhodes. Have to do that some other year. He closed his eyes and thought no more.
Next thing he knew, a hand on his shoulder shook him awake. “Diokles has the helm,” Sostratos said. “We’re in sight of land.”
“Oh.” Menedemos sat up, knuckling sand from his eyes. He could have used another couple of days’ sleep, or at least another couple of hours’. He remembered he wasn’t the only one. Everybody aboard the Aphrodite had to be weary down to the very marrow. “Do you and the oarmaster want some rest? Nikagoras can set the stroke for a while. No one’s on our tail, gods be praised.”
“If you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. Even Diokles didn’t claim he was fine, which proved how tired he had to be.
Once more, Menedemos’ hands molded themselves around the steering-oar tillers. He wondered whether, if he lived to be an old man, they would take that curved shape of themselves. Plenty of men who did the same thing over and over for years found it marking their bodies.
His chances of living into old age seemed better now than they had when Demetrios’ war galley came after the akatos. Those big ships might carry swarms of marines, but they weren’t as fast or as agile as this one.
He’d been thinking about the news he would bring to Rhodes. Now he wondered once more what kind of news Rhodes would have for him. Did he have a half-brother, or perhaps a son? Baukis would have had the baby by now, surely. Was she all right? Remembering the fate of his own mother, his father’s first wife, he knew there was no guarantee. No guarantee the baby would survive, either. So many newborns didn’t.
How many times had he chased those fears round and round inside the cavern of his skull? More than he could count. They felt different now, more real, more urgent. Now he was almost home. Soon he wouldn’t fear anymore. Soon he would know, and knowing might be worse.
How would his father greet him, at the quay or at the family house? As a son come home safe after a dangerous but profitable voyage? Or as an adulterer who’d debauched and impregnated his stepmother? If Baukis had called out the wrong name—or rather, the right one—while in the torment of labor ….
The tragedians Sostratos loved so well wrote plays about stories like that, though theirs had gods in them. When such things happened in real life, what then? Menedemos saw only one thing. If he escaped without bloodshed, what could he do but flee Rhodes, change his name, and make a new life in some inland town that had no traffic with the sea?
Sostratos had promised Poseidon a sheep for delivering the akatos from Demetrios’ war galley. A sheep was not a small offering, but …. “Aphrodite, if you keep Baukis’ good name safe, and mine, I’ll give you a bullock,” Menedemos murmured.
For a moment, the sound of the sea seemed the sound of laughter. Menedemos imagined it was the goddess laughing at him. He wasn’t asking her to turn the future. He wanted her to change the past if that past hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to. Even if the goddess were inclined to grant such a prayer, wouldn’t the Fates prevent it?
Of course they would. If the gods started granting retrospective prayers, the past would turn into something like the wax on a writing tablet’s panel. Endlessly scribbled on, rubbed out, and then scribbled on again with something new. That wasn’t answered prayer. That was chaos.
Still holding the steering-oar tillers, Menedemos shrugged. If everything turned out all right, he’d still give Aphrodite her bullock. You didn’t want to cheat the gods, even when you’d asked one for something she couldn’t possibly give.
Four or five rowers not at their oars rested on the small bow platform. Two stretched out in slumber. The rest were sitting up, talking and looking out over the sea. Suddenly one of the loungers pointed to port and bawled, “There’s a ship out there!”
Ice ran through Menedemos, even under the hot sun. He couldn’t worry about what would happen when he came to Rhodes if he never got there. His eye followed the rower’s finger. Sure enough, there was a bump on the southern horizon.
That shout also roused Sostratos, who sat up. “What are you going to do?” he asked around a yawn.
There was the question, all right. Menedemos needed only a few heartbeats to come up with an answer. “As long as that ship doesn’t turn towards us, I’m not going to do a gods-cursed thing,” he said. “If she does come at us, either we’ll run or we’ll serve out some of the weapons the Ptolemaios saddled us with and give the whoresons the best fight we can. Or if you have a better scheme, give forth. I’d love to hear it.”
His cousin tossed his head. “Not me. Those seem about the best choices we have.”
“Good.” Menedemos meant it. Sostratos was a modern Odysseus, always full of clever plans. If he saw nothing that improved on Menedemos’ idea, chances were there was nothing to be seen.
Chances were … Menedemos worried the inside of his lower lip with his teeth, almost as if he were fretting about Baukis. The weight of command pressed on his shoulders as the weight of the world must have pressed on Atlas’. Sostratos could suggest whatever popped into his head. Menedemos had to decide, and afterwards to live with what he’d decided.
Or to die with it. That chance was what made command such a weight. Make a mistake and you might lose your ship, your freedom, or your life. So might all the men who followed your mistaken order. It wasn’t a game you played for yourself alone. Everyone aboard the Aphrodite relied on you to be right. So did your family back in Rhodes.
Thinking of his family in Rhodes brought Menedemos back to Baukis. Everything did, sooner or later. He kicked at the planking under his feet. Suppose he came home safely. Suppose she’d had her baby. Suppose it was his, and a boy. Then what?
That was one more thing he hadn’t cared to dwell on, and still didn’t. Even if everything went as well as it could for him and for the woman he loved, she’d still be his father’s wife. After she recovered from childbirth, she’d go back to his father’s bed. She wouldn’t warm his. The most they could hope for was rare, frantic couplings like the one that might have got her with child to begin with. Most of the time, they’d have to pretend they were nothing but stepmother and stepson. What kind of life was that?
No kind of life at all. The one good thing he could see about it was that it looked better than any other possibility. That didn’t seem enough, but what else was there?
Nearly everyone aboard the Aphrodite was craning his neck to port, doing his best to make out what the strange ship was. One of the rowers said, “I think it’s a gods-cursed pentekonter!”
That was the last thing Menedemos wanted to hear. A pentekonter, whether attached to Demetrios’ fleet or a pirate ship prowling alone, was fast enough to overhaul the akatos and carried enough men to overwhelm the Rhodians. His own fear grew, for the stranger was surely a galley, showing no mast or sail. Yet it had not turned toward his ship.
Sostratos had good eyes. Menedemos didn’t know how he did, since he stared at scrolls so much, but he did. “No, it’s not a pentekonter,” he said now. “Not enough oars. I think it’s another akatos, maybe bound from Paphos to Kition.”
“Gods, I hope you’re right,” Menedemos said.
“We’ll know pretty soon,” his cousin replied.
The stranger on the sea wanted no more of the Aphrodite than Menedemos wanted anything to do with her. Instead of approaching, her rowers put more distance between her and the Rhodian vessel. As she turned away, Menedemos started to laugh.