'I'd sooner it were instead of, not after,' Menedemos said. Diokles laughed. Easy to laugh under blue skies on a calm sea. Menedemos laughed, too. A few at a time, the sailors woke up. So did Sostratos, who'd slept between the rows of peafowl cages. 'They all seem sound,' he called to Menedemos. Then he stripped off his chiton to let it dry and went around as naked as most of the sailors. That struck Menedemos as a good idea, so he did the same. Bare skin proved a lot more comfortable than soaked wool. When the whole crew had awakened, Menedemos ordered the men not rowing to break out the several wooden buckets the Aphrodite carried and start bailing the water she'd taken on during the storm. Getting the water out a bucketful at a time was slow, hard work, but he knew no better way to do it, nor did anyone else. Philippos the mercenary said, 'Where are we at, captain? I'm all topsy-turvy on account of that horrible storm.' 'We're somewhere in the Ionian Sea,' Menedemos answered. Philippos looked as if he wanted a more precise answer. Menedemos wanted one, too; again, he didn't know where to get one. 'I couldn't have told you any more than that if the weather'd stayed perfect. If we sail northwest, we'll raise the Italian mainland. Once we do that, I promise we'll find Taras. Fair enough?' 'I suppose so.' The mercenary didn't seem convinced. With a shudder, he went on, 'Wasn't that the worst blow you ever went through in all your born days?' 'Not even close.' Menedemos tossed his head. 'We didn't have to lower the yard' - he pointed up to the long spar at the head of the sail - 'let alone start throwing cargo overboard to make sure we stayed afloat. This wasn't a little storm, but there are plenty worse.' 'Zeus strike me dead if I ever set foot on another boat as long as I live,' Philippos said, and descended from the poop deck into the akatos' waist before Menedemos could dress him down for calling the ship a boat. Sostratos hadn't spent quite so much time asea as Menedemos. He was also a more thoughtful man, more in the habit of imagining things that could go wrong than was his cousin. Both those factors had made the storm seem worse to him than it had to Menedemos. For once, he almost welcomed the attention he had to give the peafowl. As long as he was busy, he didn't have to think so much. He couldn't let the birds exercise while the sailors were bailing. They wouldn't have had much room to run around, and they would have made nuisances of themselves. He didn't need to give them water, not for a while; they'd had plenty during the storm. But he could pour barley into bowls for their breakfasts, and he did. His spirits lifted when the birds ate well. That was the surest sign the storm had done them no harm. And he could check on the eggs in the peahens' cages. Being the meticulous man he was, he knew exactly how many each peahen had laid. One, to his annoyance, had broken the day it was laid, falling from the nest to the planks of the foredeck. He imagined drakhmai broken with it. How much would a rich man who couldn't get his hands on one of the peafowl pay for an egg? He didn't know, not to the last obolos, but he'd looked forward to finding out. Checking the nests was easiest when the peahens came off them to feed. Helen had five eggs in her clutch. That made sense to Sostratos. The peacock had mated with her more than with any of the others, which was how she'd got her name. 'One, two, three, four . . .' Sostratos frowned. He leaned closer to the cage, risking a
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