loose. As he brushed them back from his eyes, he explained, 'I was going to let the peahen called Helen out for a run when I found she'd laid an egg!' 'Ahh.' Visions of drakhmai danced in front of Menedemos' face. 'That is good news. And if Helen has started laying eggs, the others won't be far behind her. We can sell eggs for a nice price once we get across the Ionian Sea.' He scratched his chin. Bristles rasped under his fingernails. 'Have we got any straw, so the birds can make nests?' Sostratos tossed his head again. 'No, but I can get some light twigs from the dunnage without having amphorai knock together or anything like that. Those would probably be better than nothing.' 'Good. Do it,' Menedemos said. Sostratos turned to go. Menedemos pointed at him. 'Wait. I didn't mean you personally go and do it right this instant. It's important, but it's not that important. Tell off a couple of sailors and have them take care of it.' 'Oh. All right.' Plainly, that hadn't occurred to Sostratos. He pointed ahead. 'They've got themselves a real polis here, haven't they? - and not the smallest one in Hellas, either.' 'No. Nor the worst-governed city in Hellas, probably,' Menedemos said. As he'd thought it would, that made his cousin squirm. In musing tones, Menedemos went on, 'This really is a polis, or something close to one. It's not just the mercenaries, not even close. They've got their wives here, and their concubines, and their brats, and their slaves - ' 'And the people who sell things to them, like us,' Sostratos put in. 'And the people who sell things to them,' Menedemos agreed. 'But you won't find too many merchants' shops right there in the mercenaries' encampment. Most of the traders come here by sea, too, and anchor out of bowshot from the shore.' Diokles said, 'I hope you're going to do the same thing, skipper.' 'I hope I am, too,' Menedemos said, which made the keleustes laugh and Sostratos smile. Dipping his head, Menedemos went on, 'I want to get away from Tainaron nice and safe myself, you know.' 'That would be good,' Sostratos said. 'The generals and the Italiote cities aren't the only ones recruiting here.' He pointed toward a couple of low, lean craft painted blue-green. 'If those aren't pirates, I'd sooner eat the peahen's egg than sell it.' 'Even without that paint job, they'd be pirates,' Menedemos said. 'Not much else hemioliai are good for.' The galley had two banks of oars, but the upper, or thranite, bank stopped short just after the mast, to give the crew plenty of space to stow mast and yard and sail when they took them down for a ramming attack. No other variety of galley was so fast and so perfectly suited to predation. 'I hope they aren't watching us the way we're watching them,' Sostratos said. 'They aren't,' Menedemos assured him. 'The fox doesn't look at the hare the way the hare looks at the fox.'
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