Ptolemaios.” That had the sailors avidly peering out to sea all the way back to Kos, but no one spied the round ship. Maybe the weather was too dirty, or maybe she'd been making for Kalymnos, not Kos. “Maybe she sank,” Sostratos said as the Aphrodite neared the port from which she'd set out early in the morning. “Too much to hope for,” Menedemos said. “I don't see any of Ptolemaios' war galleys on patrol outside the harbor. They ought to be. The weather isn't too nasty to keep Antigonos from giving him a nasty surprise if he's so inclined.” When the akatos came into the harbor itself, Sostratos exclaimed in surprise: “Where did all the ships go? There's space at half the quays, where this morning everything was tight as a—” “Pretty boy's backside,” Menedemos finished for him. That wasn't what he'd been about to say, nor anything close to it, but it did carry a similar meaning, A fellow who wore a broad-brimmed hat to keep the rain off his face came up the pier to see who the newcomers were. Sostratos asked him the same question: “What happened to all the ships?” The man pointed north and east. “They're all over there by the mainland. Ptolemaios used the cover of the storm to mount an attack on Halikarnassos.” Menedemos scowled at the Koan carpenter. “What do you mean, you can't do anything for the Aphrodite ?” he demanded, “What I said,” the Koan answered. “I usually mean what I say. We're all too busy repairing Ptolemaios' warships and transports to have any time left over to deal with a merchant galley.” “Well, what am I supposed to do till you find the time?” Menedemos said. “Hang myself?” “It's all the same to me,” the carpenter told him. The fellow picked up his mallet and drove home a treenail, joining a tenon and the plank into which it was inserted. Then he reached for another peg. Muttering, Menedemos walked away. It was either that or snatch the mallet out of the Koan's hand and brain him with it. But that wouldn't do any good, either: it wouldn't get the man to work for him, which was what he needed. In the harbor of Halikarnassos, carpenters were probably just as busy repairing Antigonos' war galleys. That also did Menedemos no good. He looked northeast, toward the city on the Karian mainland. A plume of smoke marked any city at any time; smoke was a distinctive city smell, along with baking bread and the less pleasant odors of dung and unwashed humanity. But a great cloud of black smoke rose from Halikarnassos now. Did it come from inside the place, or had the defenders managed to fire a palisade Ptolemaios' men had run up? From this distance, Menedemos couldn't tell. He hoped Halikarnassos fell, and fell quickly. His reasons were entirely selfish. If Ptolemaios' ships weren't constantly limping back to the harbor of Kos with sprung timbers or smashed stemposts or out-and-out holes from stones thrown by engines, the carpenters here wouldn't be working on them at all hours of the day—and, sometimes, by torchlight at night. They would have a chance to fix the Aphrodite . But Ptolemaios had hoped to seize the town by surprise. That hadn't worked. Now his men had to settle down to besiege it, which could take a long time. Troy took Agamemnon and Odysseus and the rest of the Akhaioi ten years, Menedemos thought, and wished he hadn't.
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