The Aphrodite put in at several towns along the Lykian coast, not so much to do business as because the coastal cities, held by Ptolemaios’ garrisons, were the only safe halting places in that stretch of the world. If none was near when the sun went down, the merchant galley spent the night well offshore.
Another reason the Rhodians didn’t do much business in the Lykian towns was the hope they would get higher prices for their goods in the Aegean the following spring than they could hereabouts. Phoenician merchants sometimes brought their own goods this far west; few of them got to the poleis of Hellas proper.
One of Ptolemaios’ officers in Myra bought a couple of amphorai of Byblian for a symposion he was planning to put on. “This will give the boys something to drink they haven’t had before,” he said.
“I’d think so, yes,” Sostratos agreed. “How do you like being stationed here?”
“How do I like it?” The soldier made a horrible face. “My dear sir, if the world needed an enema, they’d stick the syringe in right here.” That jerked a laugh from Sostratos and Menedemos both. The officer went on, “The Lykians are jackals, nothing else but. And if you killed every single one of them, you wouldn’t do yourself any good, because these mountains would just fill up with other human jackals in no time flat. This kind of country is made for bandits.”
“And pirates,” Sostratos said, and he and Menedemos took turns telling of their fight out on the Inner Sea.
“You were lucky,” Ptolemaios’ officer said when they finished. “Oh, I don’t doubt you’re good sailors and you have a good crew, but you were lucky all the same.”
“I prefer to think we were skillful.” Menedemos had his share of faults, but modesty had never been among them.
Dryly, Sostratos said, “I prefer to think we were skillful, too, but there’s no denying we were lucky-and we caught the pirates by surprise.”
“We’re Rhodians,” Menedemos said. “If we can’t outdo a rabble like that, we hardly deserve our freedom. Our friend here”-he dipped his head to the soldier-”wishes he could scour the mountains clean. I wish we could do the same to the shore and burn every triakonter and pentekonter and hemiolia we find.”
“That would be good,” Sostratos said.
“That would be wonderful,” the officer said. “Don’t hold your breath.”
Menedemos puffed out his cheeks like a frog inflating its throat sac in springtime. Sostratos chuckled. So did the soldier who served Ptolemaios. Menedemos said, “Sadly, though, it’s no wonder most of this town is set back fifteen or twenty stadia from the sea. Everyone in these parts expects pirates, takes them for granted, and even plans cities taking them into account. And that’s wrong, don’t you see?” He spoke with unwonted earnestness.
“No, it’s right, if you want to keep your city from getting sacked,” Ptolemaios’ officer said.
“I understand what my cousin is saying,” Sostratos told him. “He means people should fight pirates instead of accepting them as part of life. I agree with him. I hate pirates.”
“Oh, I agree with him, too, about what people should do,” the officer said. “What they will do, though-that’s liable to be another story.”
Much as Sostratos would have liked to argue with him, he couldn’t.
The rest of the trip along the Lykian coast went smoothly. One triakonter came dashing out from the mouth of a stream when the Aphrodite sailed past, but thought better of tangling with her: a single pirate ship, even if she carried a large boarding party along with her rowers, was anything but certain of seizing the merchant galley.
“Cowards!” the sailors from the Aphrodite yelled as the triakonter turned about and headed back toward shore. “White-livered dogs! Spineless, stoneless eunuchs!”
To Sostratos’ enormous relief, those shouts didn’t infuriate the pirates enough to make them turn back. Later, he asked Menedemos, “Why do they yell things like that? Do they really want a fight with the polluted Lykians?”
“I don’t think so,” his cousin answered. “I certainly hope not, anyway. But wouldn’t you yell your scorn if a foe decided he didn’t care to have anything to do with you? Are you going to tell me you’ve never done anything like that in your life?”
Thinking about it, Sostratos had to toss his head. “No, I can’t do that. But I can tell you I’ll try not to do it again. It just isn’t sensible.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t,” Menedemos said. “But so what? People aren’t always sensible. They don’t always want to be sensible. You have trouble understanding that sometimes, if you want to know what I think.”
“People should want to be sensible,” Sostratos said.
“Ptolemaios’ officer had it straight, my dear: what people should want and what they do want are two different beasts.”
Rhodes lay only a day’s sail-or a bit more, if the winds were bad-west of Patara. Sostratos and Menedemos picked up a few more hams there to sell at home. Menedemos said, “I was thinking of going up to Kaunos for a last stop, but to the crows with it. I want to get back to my own polis again.”
“I won’t quarrel with you, my dear,” Sostratos answered. “We’ll have a nice profit to show, and it’ll get better still once we sell everything we’re bringing back from Phoenicia. No one can complain about what we did in the east.”
“Ha!” Menedemos said darkly. “That only shows you don’t know my father as well as you think you do.”
Sostratos had always thought Menedemos’ troubles with his father were partly his own fault. But he knew telling his cousin as much would do no good at all and would make Menedemos angry at him. So he sighed and shrugged and dipped his head, murmuring, “Maybe you’re right.”
The sailors cheered when they learned Menedemos intended to sail straight for Rhodes. They wanted to go home, too. When the northerly breeze went fitful, they clamored to take a turn at the oars. Breeze or no, the Aphrodite cut through the waters of the Inner Sea like a knife through meat boiled tender.
With his wounded leg, Kallianax still found rowing painful. Using a spearshaft as a stick, he’d taken his place on the foredeck as lookout. The merchant galley was only a couple of hours out of Patara when he called, “Sail ho! Sail ho, dead ahead!”
“Better not be another gods-cursed pirate, not so close to Rhodes,” Menedemos growled. His hands tightened on the tillers till his knuckles whitened.
That same thought had just crossed Sostratos’ mind. He stood on the poop deck, not far from Menedemos and Diokles. Like both of them, he peered toward the new ship. Having the sun at their backs helped. And… “She’s really closing the distance hand over fist, isn’t she?” Sostratos murmured a few minutes later.
“She sure is.” His cousin sounded worried. “I’ve never seen anything honest move so fast.” He shouted, “Serve out the weapons, by the gods! Whoever she is, she won’t have an easy time with us.”
But then, from the bow, Kallianax called, “She’s got a foresail, skipper!”
“Belay the weapons!” Menedemos called. Any galley big enough to carry foresail as well as mainsail was also big enough to carry a crew that could overwhelm the Aphrodite’s without breathing hard: was, in fact, almost surely a war galley, not a pirate ship.
Shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, Sostratos said, “What’s that emblem painted on her sails? Isn’t it… isn’t it the Rhodian rose?” He hesitated for fear of being wrong.
But Menedemos, whose eyes were probably sharper than his, dipped his head. “It is, by the gods!” He shouted again, this time in joyous relief: “She’s one of our own, boys!” The sailors whooped and clapped their hands. But after a moment, in more nearly normal tones, he went on, “But which one of our own is she? She’s not a regular trireme, or you’d see marines stomping around up on her decking, and her oarbox would be fully timbered to keep arrows and catapult bolts from tearing up the rowers. But she’s too big and too fast for anything else. What in the name of the gods could she be?”