At last the sailor said, “Whatever happens, I expect I can handle it.”
“Can you?” Sostratos meant the question. Once, in Italy, Teleutas might have left him and Menedemos in the lurch. He’d quickly returned to the agora in that town in Great Hellas with other sailors from the merchant galley. Maybe he’d only gone to get help. Maybe.
“I expect I can,” he said now. Was his grin as open and friendly as it seemed, or an actor’s mask to hide cowardice? Try as Sostratos would, he couldn’t tell. Teleutas went on in reasonable, rational tones, as if arguing a point at the Lykeion: “I’m not likely to light out, am I, not in a countryside full of barbarians? You may like making those funny noises in the back of your throat, but I don’t.”
Isn’t that interesting? Sostratos thought. He knows I don’t trust him, and he’s giving me a reason why I should this time. It was a good reason, too. Sure enough, why would Teleutas want to do anything but what he was paid to do when he spoke no Aramaic? He couldn’t easily disappear among strangers here, as he could in a polis full of Hellenes. Sostratos plucked at his beard, considering.
Teleutas added, “I know a thing or two that might come in handy, too, the sort of thing you probably wouldn’t.”
“Oh? Such as?” Sostratos asked.
“This and that,” the sailor answered. “You never can tell when it’d be useful, but it just might.” Plainly, he didn’t want to give details. Sostratos wondered what that meant. Had he been a bandit at one time or another? He spoke like a Rhodian, and few Rhodians needed to turn to brigandage to survive. But if, say, he’d been a mercenary and seen things go sour, who could guess what he’d had to do to keep eating? He didn’t have a soldier’s scars, but maybe he’d been lucky.
With sudden decision, Sostratos dipped his head. “All right, Teleutas. I’ll take you on. We’ll see what comes of it.”
Teleutas gave him that charming grin again. “I thank you kindly. You won’t be sorry.”
“I’d better not be,” Sostratos said. “If you make me sorry, I’ll make you sorry, too. I promise you that. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” Teleutas said. But what would he say? More than a few people took Sostratos lightly because he used his wits more readily than his fists. He’d made some of them regret it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about that with Teleutas.
When he told Menedemos he’d chosen his third escort, his cousin looked pained. “By the dog of Egypt, I wish you’d picked almost anybody else,” Menedemos said. “Can you trust Teleutas when your back is turned? I wouldn’t want to-I’ll tell you that.”
“I wouldn’t want to in Hellas. I’d be lying if I said anything else,” Sostratos replied. “But here? Yes, I think I can. He’s not going to make friends with bandits when he can’t speak their language, and he doesn’t know any Aramaic. He should be safe enough.”
“I hope so.” Menedemos didn’t sound convinced.
Since Sostratos wasn’t altogether convinced, either, he couldn’t get angry at his cousin. He said, “I think everything will be all right.”
“I hope so,” Menedemos said again, even more dubiously than before.
“What harm can he do me?” Sostratos asked. “I asked myself again and again, and I couldn’t see any.”
“I can’t see any, either,” Menedemos admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.”
“We’re on dry land now, my dear,” Sostratos said with a smile. “We don’t have to pay any attention to all our seagoing superstitions.”
Menedemos had the grace to laugh. He, at least, knew he was superstitious. Many sailors would have indignantly denied it, at the same time spitting into the bosom of their chitons to take away the bad luck in the accusation. “All right. All right,” Menedemos said. “I’ve got no real reason not to trust Teleutas. But I don’t. Remember, he was about the last one we took on a couple of years ago, and he’s still the first one I’d leave behind if I ever had to.”
“Maybe you’ll have a different idea when we come back from the land of the Ioudaioi,” Sostratos said.
“Maybe. I hope I will,” Menedemos answered. “But maybe I won’t, too. That’s what worries me.”
Sostratos judged it a good time to change the subject, at least a little: “When I leave Sidon, may I borrow your bow and arrows?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Menedemos dipped his head. “You’ll get better use out of them there than I will here. I’m sure of that. Just try to bring the bow back in one piece, if you’d be so kind.”
“What do you think I’d do to it?” Sostratos asked with as much indignation as he could muster.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. All I know is, things sometimes go wrong when you handle weapons.”
“That’s not fair!” Sostratos said. “Haven’t I shot pirates? Haven’t you compared me to Alexandros in the Iliad when I did?”
His cousin dipped his head once more. “You have. I have. All true, every word of it. But I’ve seen you at the gymnasion in Rhodes, too, and there are times when you’ve looked like you hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with a bow.”
That hurt. It hurt all the more because Sostratos knew it was true. He would never make a really fine archer. He would never be anything that required large amounts of grace and strength. Try as he would, he didn’t have them in him, not in large supply. I’ve got my wits, he told himself. Sometimes that brought him considerable consolation, for it let him look down his nose at people who were merely strong and athletic. Other times, such as today… He tried not to think about it.
Menedemos set a hand on his shoulder, as if to say he shouldn’t make too much of it. “If the gods are kind, you won’t have to worry about any of this. The only time you’ll shoot the bow is for the pot.”
“Yes, if the gods are kind,” Sostratos agreed. But Teleutas wouldn’t have any worries or any work to do if the gods were kind, either. Sostratos’ gaze slid to Menedemos. In a way, his cousin reminded him of Teleutas (though Menedemos would have been anything but pleased to hear him say so). They both wanted things to be easy and convenient. There the resemblance ended. If things weren’t easy or convenient, Teleutas, a man of no particular drive, would either withdraw or get through the difficulty or the inconvenience as best he could. Menedemos was much more likely to try to reshape whatever was going on around him so that it suited him better-and had both the energy and the charm to get what he wanted most of the time.
With a laugh, Menedemos went on, “Of course, if we could be sure the gods would be kind, you wouldn’t need to take guards along-or the bow, either, for that matter.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sostratos said. “Then you could forget about your half of our bargain.”
His cousin wagged a finger at him. “That knife has two edges, and you know it. You don’t want to travel with the sailors because they’ll keep you from poking your nose into everything under the sun.”
“It’s not your nose you want to poke into everything under the sun,” Sostratos retorted.
Menedemos laughed again, this time with a booming guffaw that made several sailors turn their heads to try to find out what was so funny. He waved them back to whatever they were doing, then said, “Ah, my dear, anyone would think you knew me.”
“I’d better, after all these years of living side by side in Rhodes and even closer than that when we go to sea,” Sostratos answered. “But how much does it matter? Not so much, I’d say, as whether you know yourself.”