“What’s so funny?” asked Diokles, who was also awake now.
“Not a pentekonter. Not even an akatos,” Menedemos answered. “A fornicating akation, that’s all, with maybe six or eight oars on each side. Her skipper’s really got something to be scared of from us. But we …. We saw a cat walking down an alleyway in Alexandria at night, and we thought it was a lion.”
“Cats are bad enough,” Diokles said. Menedemos was glad he hadn’t talked with the keleustes about bringing some back to Rhodes. Not everybody liked them, plainly.
“Many good-byes to that cursed baby galley,” Sostratos said. “I hope her rowers all fall over dead from apoplexy. Getting a scare like that after we made it out of the sea-fight whole was too much.”
“If you think I’ll argue with you, you’re daft,” Menedemos replied. “We’ll be pissing ourselves every time we see anything on the ocean bigger than a fishing boat.”
“I wondered whether the polis has our fleet out on patrol,” Sostratos said. “Or are we keeping the triremes in the shipsheds so we don’t give Demetrios and Antigonos any excuse to fight us?”
“There’s an interesting question!” Menedemos said. “The only good thing is, Rhodians will recognize the Aphrodite when they get close. They won’t try to sink us on sight.”
“We hope they won’t. They’re going to be edgy, too. Everyone in the eastern half of the Inner Sea is edgy right now. By the gods, for all I know the Carthaginians are edgy out west, too,” Sostratos said. “We just have to pray our skippers don’t try to ram first and figure out what they’re ramming afterwards.”
“Thank you, my dear. You always know how to cheer me up,” Menedemos said.
“My pleasure, O best one,” Sostratos answered with courtesy he didn’t usually show: sardonic courtesy, if Menedemos was any judge … and, after a lifetime with his cousin, he was. “Any little thing I can do to ease your mind, you have but to ask.”
Something else occurred to Menedemos, though it was nothing that eased his mind. “I wonder what Menelaos will do back in the town of Salamis. Ptolemaios isn’t going to rescue him, or bring him reinforcements and fresh supplies.”
“The other interesting question is, what will Demetrios do to Menelaos if he takes Salamis by storm or if Menelaos has to surrender to him?” Sostratos said. “Menelaos is probably mighty interested in that question now.”
“I would be, in his sandals,” Menedemos said. War was a hard business when you lost. Victors commonly sold defeated soldiers into slavery. Alexander hadn’t done things like that when he overran Persia, and Demetrios prided himself on matching Alexander in generalship as well as looks (though Alexander was said to have been short, while Demetrios stood well above 4 cubits high—he was even taller than Sostratos). How much could Menelaos rely on his magnanimity, though?
“For all we know, the Ptolemaios is dead or captured himself,” Sostratos said. “If Demetrios and Antigonos have Ptolemaios and Menelaos, doesn’t that mean they have Egypt, too? And if they have Egypt, too, who’s going to stop them from grabbing the rest of Alexander’s domain?”
“Seleukos may,” Menedemos said. His cousin sent him a look, and he understood why. Seleukos’ strength lay far to the east. If Egypt fell to Antigonos and Demetrios, who would stop them from gobbling up Rhodes next? No one Menedemos could see.
“We have to act as though Ptolemaios is still free and running Egypt till we know for certain that he isn’t, because—” Sostratos began.
“Because if he’s not, we may as well cut our own throats now and save ourselves the trouble later,” Menedemos broke in. Sostratos was thinking along with him much too well. If Demetrios had Ptolemaios, if Demetrios and Antigonos had Egypt, the game in the eastern half of the Inner Sea was as good as over.
“What do you think the people who run things in Rhodes will do when we bring back news like this?” Sostratos asked.
“People like our fathers, you mean?” Menedemos gibed.
His cousin dipped his head. “People like them, yes, and people who can buy and sell them.”
There weren’t many people like that in Rhodes, as Menedemos knew. But there were some, and their weight in shaping the polis’ relations with the outside world was inversely proportional to their scanty numbers. Slowly, Menedemos answered, “Either they’ll stick their heads into their shells like so many tortoises and not want to come out at all or they’ll run in crazy circles, as if they were hens that met the chopper but didn’t die right away. Whichever road they choose, they won’t be happy about it.”
“No.” Sostratos left things right there, which was probably just as well. Messengers who brought bad news weren’t loved for it, and all of Rhodes had relied on Ptolemaios as a counterweight against Demetrios and his father. For the time being, at least, the counterweight was gone. Menedemos and Sostratos would have to tell that to the polis’ great men.
That wasn’t quite so terrifying a prospect as having Demetrios’ war galley chasing the Aphrodite after Ptolemaios’ line of ships got shattered, but it wasn’t far behind, either. Menedemos swore under his breath. The akatos was bringing home not only bag after bag of silver but also the military supplies Ptolemaios had commandeered her to carry. And what kind of thanks would her captain and crew get for that? Not much, not if Menedemos was any judge.
Sostratos wasn’t surprised when Menedemos put in at Kourion, well short of Paphos, on the voyage west. People in Paphos would remember the Aphrodite had stopped there with Ptolemaios’ fleet. They’d ask questions without convenient answers. Best to skirt that if at all possible.
In Kourion, they knew Ptolemaios’ fleet had sailed east to meet Demetrios’, but that was all they knew. Menedemos didn’t tell them anything more. “I sailed from Alexandria myself, a few days after the Ptolemaios left,” he said to people who called questions from the piers. “I aim to stay out of trouble, not get into it.”
“You lie like a Cretan,” Sostratos told him—quietly, so none of the locals would overhear.
“The daimon I do,” his cousin answered. “I aim to stay out of trouble, but sometimes I miss.”
Sostratos burst out laughing. When it came to bare-faced effrontery, Menedemos could play with anyone. But Menedemos wasn’t in this game alone. “How do we keep the rowers from blabbing?” Sostratos said. “I know we’re only here for the night, but—”
“Promise them an extra day’s pay if no one gets diarrhea of the mouth,” Menedemos said at once. “With silver on the line, they’ll watch each other like falcons, and we’ve got more of it than we know what to do with, almost.”
“My dear, I think you just rolled a triple six!” Sostratos sketched a salute. Then he went up the rowing benches, passing the word on to the oarsmen. The ploy worked as well as his cousin had hoped it would. The men loudly and profanely agreed to keep their mouths shut, and to pound to gravel anyone who slipped up.
With a few rowers, Sostratos went down the pier to the shops near the base. He bought fried fish and fresh bread, enough for everyone to enjoy a good supper. They brought the food back to the akatos and handed it out.
“Euge!” the sailors cried. Some of them raised cups full of rough shipboard wine in salute.
One of them went further, spilling out a small libation and calling, “This for Sostratos the beautiful!” The rest of the men whooped and cheered.
“Oh, by the gods!” Sostratos exclaimed, which only made the rowers whoop some more. His face felt on fire; he hoped they wouldn’t notice his blushes. No one had ever called him beautiful when he was a youth. He knew too well he hadn’t been beautiful—that kind of praise always went to Menedemos. To hear it now, although it wasn’t serious, flustered him more than he cared to admit, even to himself.