Sostratos’ father said, “You don’t even know if the Ptolemaios got away safe?”
“No, sir. I have no idea,” Menedemos answered. “I wish I did, but I don’t. We were back with the transports, you understand, behind the warships, and at the rear of the transports at that. When the transport skippers realized Demetrios’ war galleys had beaten Ptolemaios’, we all scattered, every ship on its own.”
“It will be as it is.” Komanos’ voice still sounded uncommonly heavy, as well it might. “Before long, we’ll find out what did happen to Ptolemaios, and we’ll go on from there.”
“Yes, sir. But if he’s sunk and drowned, or mewed up in chains on Demetrios’ flagship—” Menedemos broke off. He saw no way to go on.
Komanos did. “If we have to make the best terms we can with Demetrios and his father, then we do that, and hope the future repeats the past.”
Rhodes had briefly had a Macedonian garrison while Alexander was alive, but got free of it shortly after he died. Menedemos had been a youth then, not involved in the polis’ affairs. Things were different now.
Underscoring that, Komanos said, “As I told you, the polis is in your debt for bringing us the news as quickly as you did, and for bringing these … other things as well.” His eyes flicked to the armaments stowed under most of the rowing benches and everywhere else there was room on the ship. “We do try to remember what we owe.”
“We’re citizens, sir. We try to remember that, too,” Menedemos said. “If you’d care to tell off some men to carry the weapons to the armory ….”
“I will do that very thing.” Komanos’ voice rose as he addressed the men who’d been watching and listening. “Who’ll fetch and carry for his polis? Three oboloi to any man who bears a bundle to the armory.” A few hands went up, but only a few. Komanos chuckled. “Everything costs more than you wish it would. All right, O gentlemen of Rhodes—I’ll not play the niggard today. A drakhma for every bundle. Now who’s game?”
Doubling the wage produced many more willing workers. That surprised Menedemos not at all. Sostratos got the sailors to start handing sheaves of catapult bolts, stacks of shields, and other military gear up the gangplank to the loungers, which had the added benefit of keeping would-be thieves off the akatos. Sostratos had let Menedemos do the talking; that wasn’t his strength. But when it came to making sure things ran smoothly, he was hard to beat.
As the last of the weapons headed into the polis, Menedemos came up onto the pier and spoke to his father and Sostratos’: “We have silver aboard, too, and some other things that will want securing.”
“I hoped you might,” Philodemos said. Lysistratos dipped his head.
Sostratos spoke up then: “I’ll need some of that silver to pay off the rowers. They had easy times in Alexandria, but gods know they worked hard taking us there and back. And they all pulled like heroes when we were getting away from Demetrios’ monster of a galley.”
“True. Too true!” Menedemos said. “I felt like a sprat with a tuna after me. But we did get away.”
“Fine. I’ll get some people we can count on to bring those things back to our house and Lysistratos’,” his father said. “And Sostratos can bring the rest of the silver back with him when he finishes paying the men. I’ll send a couple of beefy fellows to walk back with him, too, so no one knocks him over the head between here and the houses.”
“Thanks, Uncle Philodemos,” Sostratos said. Menedemos wondered if his father would have done the same for him had he been the one doling out drakhmai to the rowers. Probably, he admitted to himself. The silver was important, even if his own carcass wasn’t.
He was back in Rhodes. He let himself believe it. He had a baby half-brother—or maybe a baby son. And the woman he loved, the woman with whom he might have fathered the baby, had come through the birth, and hadn’t given him away. Taken all in all, life might have been much worse in spite of what Demetrios did to Ptolemaios.
“Tonight,” he said, “I’m going to get drunk.” No one, not even his father, tried to tell him no.
The sun was setting in the west, over the far side of the polis of Rhodes. Sostratos sat on the Aphrodite’s steps leading up to the stern platform. He had a leather sack of drakhmai to his right and his notes on which man was owed how much to his left. He’d paid off the rowers one by one. Some of them grumbled a little at what they got. But he had the written records, and they didn’t. Nobody kicked up a big fuss.
Last in line came Attinos. The Egyptian who spoke profane Greek didn’t complain about his pay. Sostratos said, “I’m sorry, but I have no idea when you’ll be able to go back to Alexandria.”
“Me, neither. Ahh, futter it,” Attinos said with a shrug. “You know where maybe I find some work here?”
“Let me think.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. He switched languages to ask, “Do you speak Aramaic?”
“Little fucking bit,” Attinos said in that language. What he knew, he must have learned from the kind of people from whom he’d picked up his Greek. Or maybe he spoke Egyptian the same way, too. Some men cursed as readily as they breathed. He went on, “Talk Greek better.”
“All right. Even a little will help you,” Sostratos said. “I don’t know a whole lot myself. But there’s a Phoenician merchant named Himilkon who might take you on. His warehouses are that way, three piers down and one street inland.” He pointed. “Tell him he can ask me about you.”
Attinos grinned crookedly. “So you tell him what a big son of a whore I is?”
Sostratos laughed. “If I thought you were, I wouldn’t give you his name. It’s starting to get dark, so I don’t know if he’s still there now, but he will be in the morning.”
“I try him,” Attinos said. “Most Hellenes, they wide-arses who don’t even think Egyptians and other foreigners is people. You, you different. How come you is?”
As usual, Sostratos took the question seriously. “I don’t know. I’ve done business with Hellenes and with barbarians, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of differences. Good men and bad, honest men and thieves? Some everywhere.”
“Truth. Fornicating truth.” Attinos stowed his pay in a belt pouch. He sketched Sostratos a salute, then went up the gangplank, down the pier, and off toward Himilkon’s warehouse.
Sostratos still had a few coins in his hand. He slid them back into the leather sack from which they’d come and tied it shut with a rawhide thong. After carefully noting that he’d paid the last rower, he turned to the pair of bruisers Uncle Philodemos had hired; they were lolling on the stern platform, waiting for him to finish his business.
“Very good, best ones,” he said. “If you’ll be kind enough to escort me back to my father’s house ….”
They climbed to their feet. One was taller, the other wider. “Right you are, sir,” the wider man said. “You just come with us.”
As soon as they got off the pier, the taller one ducked into a tavern and came out with a sputtering torch. “Getting dark,” he remarked. “This’ll maybe keep us from stepping in something nasty.” He and his friend wore sandals. Sostratos, as usual, went barefoot. He held his peace.
No one did step in anything too vile. The guard’s torch was guttering by the time they got to Lysistratos’ house. When his father let him in, Sostratos brought the man a fresh light. He also gave him and his friend a couple of oboloi apiece.