He asked more questions than one man could conveniently answer. Sostratos said, 'They were Romans, all right - they all had the Roman wolf on their sails,' at the same time as Menedemos replied, 'One of their triremes chased us, and we crippled it, that's how.' 'What?' Leptines said, and he didn't mean he had trouble making sense of two voices at once. 'How could you beat a trireme with that puny little akatos of yours? I don't believe a word of it.' 'I told you so,' Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. His cousin made a horrible face at him. But the sailors wouldn't let Leptines get away with thinking Menedemos a liar. They still reckoned themselves heroes, and shouted out the details of what they'd done. If they'd been pirates and not the crew of a real, working merchant galley, it would have gone hard for the round ship's skipper and his sailors. For a moment, Sostratos wondered whether it would go hard for Leptines and his men anyway; the sailors from the Aphrodite were in no mood to be slighted. Leptines didn't need long to figure that out for himself. 'All right! All right!' he called. 'I do believe you!' By then, the two ships lay only ten or fifteen cubits apart. Had Menedemos or his crew chosen to turn pirate, the other captain could have done nothing to stop him. 'Where will you go now?' he asked Menedemos. 'I'd had in mind heading up to Neapolis,' Menedemos said. 'You know about that - I told you when we were in port together. But who knows how many Roman ships are prowling that stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea right now? Better to head back south, I figured, so that's what I'm doing.' 'You figured?' Sostratos said under his breath. This time, Menedemos didn't hear him, which might have been just as well. By the way his cousin spoke, Menedemos was convinced coming south had been his own idea and no one else's. Sostratos knew better. Or do I just remember differently? he wondered. After a moment, he tossed his head. He knew what had happened there after he talked Menedemos out of ramming the Roman trireme. But his cousin sang another song altogether. If - no, when - I write my history, how will I be able to judge which of two conflicting stories is the true one? he thought. Both men will be certain they have it right, and each will call the other a liar. How did Herodotos and Thoukydides and Xenophon decide who was right? The next time he looked at their works, he would have to think about that. Meanwhile, Leptines was saying, 'That's smart, getting out of there. Polluted barbarians are everywhere these days. They might as well be cockroaches. We Hellenes should have squashed them before they got so strong.' A few days before, he'd extolled the Pompaians. Would he remember that if Sostratos reminded him of it? Not likely, and Sostratos knew it full well. 'Pity you had to work so hard just to turn back,' Menedemos said. 'Maybe so, but I thank you for your news,' Leptines replied. 'Going forward would have been a bigger pity.' 'Have a safe trip south,' Sostratos said. Leptines waved to him. So did a couple of the round ship's sailors. He waved back. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to catch the wind once more. She began to glide over the waves. Leptines' ship wasn't nearly so handy. Sostratos looked back past the sternpost for some time before he saw the other ship also heading away from trouble instead of toward it.
Вы читаете Over the Wine Dark Sea
