'Can I ease the men back, skipper?' Diokles asked. 'We're not going to catch those bastards no matter how hard we pull.' 'Go ahead,' Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster slowed the rhythm of his mallet on bronze. The men sensed the relaxation at once. They let out a great cheer. Some of them took one hand off their oars to wave to Menedemos, and he took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller for a moment to wave back. 'Thanks, boys,' he called. 'I guess those villains didn't know who they were messing with when they tried to mess with us, did they?' The sailors cheered louder than ever. Menedemos grinned, basking in the praise. Sostratos wondered how he would respond if people cheered him like that. Then he wondered what he could do to make people cheer him like that. He was the one who'd noticed the pirate ship was only a triakonter. Nobody else had even thought to look. But he'd just been accurate. Menedemos was the one who'd made the bold, unexpected move, the move anybody could see had saved the ship. He got the credit. He knew how to get the credit, and he knew what to do with it once he had it. Me? Sostratos thought. I'm a good toikharkhos, is what I am. He might wish he were bold, but he wasn't. Well, the world needs reliable men, too. He'd told himself that a good many times. It was, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, true. It was also, without the tiniest fragment of doubt, small consolation. 'Did you see those polluted bastards run? Do you see those polluted bastards run?' Excitement still crackled in Menedemos' voice. He pointed ahead. Sure enough, the pirate ship seemed to shrink every moment. 'Many good-byes to them,' Sostratos said as he mounted to the poop deck. 'May they try to outrun a trireme next, or one of Ptolemaios' fives.' His cousin dipped his head. 'That would be sweet. I wouldn't mind seeing every pirate in the Inner Sea sold to the mines, or else given over to the executioner.' He reached up and slapped Sostratos on the shoulder. 'That was clever of you, seeing he wasn't so big as he wanted us to think.' 'Thanks,' Sostratos said, and then, 'Do we really have to visit Cape Tainaron? More pirates there than you'll find here in the middle of the Aegean. The only real difference between a pirate and a mercenary is that a mercenary's got someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him, while a pirate has to make his own living.' 'There's one other difference,' Menedemos said. 'A mercenary who's looking for someone to pay him his drakhma a day and feed him will pay us to take him over to Italy. I like that difference. It makes us money.' 'So it does,' Sostratos said. 'But it also makes us trouble, or it can. Those who run too hard after money often end up regretting it.' 'And those who don't run hard enough after it often end up hungry,' Menedemos replied. 'We've been through this before. I'm not going to change my mind. I say the profit is worth the risk, and we're going on to Tainaron.' He was the captain. He had the right to make such choices. Sostratos asked a rather different question: 'Suppose that pirate ship had been a pentekonter or a hemiolia, the way so many of them are. Would you still have turned toward it?' 'I don't know. I
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