A sailing ship was coming into the harbor as the akatos neared the narrow outlet between the two moles that protected it from bad weather. Menedemos tugged on the tillers to steer the Aphrodite a little to starboard and give the clumsy, beamy round ship a wider berth. Under the forward-pointing, goose-headed sternpost, the fellow at the sailing ship's steering oars lifted a hand to wave and thank him for the courtesy. 'Where are you from?' Menedemos called across a plethron of blue water. 'Paphos, in Cyprus,' the other ship's officer answered. 'I've got copper and olive oil and some shaped cedar boards. Where are you away to?' 'I'm bound for Italy, with papyrus and ink and perfume and crimson dye - and peafowl,' Menedemos added with no small pride. 'Peafowl?' the fellow on the sailing ship said. 'Good luck to you, friend. The peacocks are pretty, sure enough, but I've seen 'em - they're mean. I wouldn't have 'em on my ship, and that's the truth.' 'Well, to the crows with you,' Menedemos said, but not loud enough for the fellow on the beamy merchantman to hear. He turned to Sostratos. 'Fat lot he knows about it.' Only about three plethra separated the tips of the two moles from each other. Inside, the waters of the Great Harbor were glassy smooth. As soon as the Aphrodite passed out into the Aegean proper, the light chop made the motion of the ship change. Diokles smiled. 'Your rowing may get a little rusty over the winter,' he said, never missing a beat with the mallet, 'but you never forget how to stand when she rolls and pitches a little.' 'No,' said Menedemos, who'd made the adjustment so automatically, he hadn't even noticed he'd done it. He scratched his chin, then shot Sostratos an amused glance: his cousin's beard was a handy thing to be thoughtful with. 'I'll keep them all at the oars till we round the nose of the island. Then, if the wind holds, we'll lower the sail and let it do the work.' The keleustes dipped his head. 'That seems good to me.' Diokles paused, then asked, 'You'll want to drill them, though, on the way out, won't you? If we have to fight, the practice'll come in handy. It always does.' 'Of course.' Menedemos dipped his head. 'Yes, of course. But let's give ourselves a couple of days to shake off the cobwebs and rub oil on our blisters. There'll be time for sprints and time for ramming practice, believe me there will.' 'Good enough,' the oarmaster said. 'I just wanted to make sure it was in your mind, skipper, that's all. I think we'll have a pretty fair crew once we do shake down. A lot of the men at the oars have rowed in triremes or in fours or fives. Nothing like serving in the polis' fleet to turn out a solid rower.' As if on cue in a comic play, Aristeidas sang out from his post at the bow: 'Trireme off to starboard, captain!' Menedemos shaded his eyes from the sun with the palm of his hand. So did Diokles and Sostratos. Menedemos saw the ship first. 'There she is,' he said, pointing. The trireme, twice the length of the Aphrodite but hardly beamier, glided along southeast under sail, the rowers resting easy at the oars. As the lean, deadly shape drew nearer, he made out Rhodes' rose in red on the white linen of the sail.
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