Over the Wine Dark Sea

  As smoothly as they had in practice farther south, the rowers brought their oars inboard. Instead of ramming the Roman trireme, the Aphrodite glided along beside her, close enough to spit from one ship to the other. And the merchant galley's hull rode over the trireme's starboard oars and broke them as a man's descending foot would break the twigs of a child's toy house.   Rowers aboard the Roman ship screamed as the butt ends of the oars, suddenly propelled by forces much greater than they could generate, belabored them. Menedemos heard two splashes in quick succession as Roman marines fell into the sea. Their armor would drag them down to a watery grave. His smile was fierce as a wolf's. He wanted to wave good-bye to them, but couldn't take his hands off the tillers.   The Aphrodite slid past the crippled trireme. 'Starboard oars -  out!' Menedemos shouted, and his ship, undamaged, pulled away from the Roman vessel. He looked east. The rest of the Roman fleet had headed up the Sarnos. He was all alone with this ship that had tried to sink him. Now he did turn and wave to the man at the trireme's steering oars. The fellow was staring back over his shoulder at the merchant galley, his eyes as wide as any man's Menedemos had ever seen.   'You can ease back on the stroke now, Diokles,' Menedemos told the oarmaster. 'Let us get a little distance between our ship and that polluted barbarian, and then . . .'   'Aye aye, skipper!' Diokles said. Menedemos had never heard so much respect in his voice. And I earned it, too, by the gods, he thought proudly.   'What are you going to do?' Sostratos asked.   'I'm going to ram that wide-arsed catamite, that's what.' Menedemos' voice was savage as a maenad's. 'Romans don't sail any too bloody well. Let's see how good they are at swimming.'   'I wish you wouldn't,' Sostratos said.   'What?' Menedemos stared. He wondered if he'd heard correctly. 'Are you out of your mind? Why not? You treat your friends well and your enemies badly, and if these bastards aren't enemies, what are they?' He tugged on the steering-oar tillers to bring the akatos' bow around to bear on the trireme. The Romans were starting to shift oars from their undamaged port side to starboard. That would eventually let them limp away, but it wouldn't let them escape a vengeful Aphrodite.   'They're enemies, all right,' Sostratos said. 'But think -  wasn't it wildest luck that we hurt them in the first place?'   'Luck and a good crew,' Menedemos growled. He still hungered for revenge.   'Agreed. Agreed ten times over,' Sostratos said. 'But now that we've been lucky once, wouldn't another run at that cursed big ship be hubris? Suppose the ram stuck fast. All those marines -  except for the ones we knocked into the drink, I mean -  and all those rowers would swarm aboard, and that would be the end of that.'   Menedemos grunted. He wanted to tell his cousin there wasn't a chance in the world of that happening. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Such mishaps were all too common; ramming could be as hard on the attacking ship as on the victim. And if that did happen here, it would be as deadly to the Aphrodite as Sostratos said. He took a deep breath and let it out, then blinked a couple of times almost in surprise, like a man suddenly lucid again after a ferocious fever broke.