The Gryphon's Skull

Nimble as a mountain goat, another pirate leaped from the Aphrodite back to his own ship with a leather sack under his arm. He'd had all the fighting he wanted, but he'd managed to get away with some loot. Absurdly, that outraged Sostratos. “Come back here, you wide-arsed thief!” he yelled. The pirate paid no attention, and probably didn't even hear.

Then another pirate sprang back to the hemiolia, and another, and another, some with plunder, some without. “See, boys?” Menedemos roared in a great voice. “They can't lick us, and they cursed well know it. lo for the Aphrodite'.”

“Io! The Aphroditel” Sostratos' heart leaped as he took up the cry. He hadn't seen his cousin in the press of fighting, and hearing his voice was a great relief. Seeing the pirates beginning to flee the merchant galley was an even greater one.

Now the pirates were the ones who hacked and chopped at the lines tethering their ship to the akatos. Now they were the ones who pushed the hemiolia away from the Aphrodite with poles and oars. A couple of them retrieved the bows they'd left behind and started shooting into the merchant galley as the rest rowed away from a quarry that had proved tougher than they expected.

Sostratos rushed up to the Aphrodite's foredeck, which had seen almost no fighting. Menedemos' bow and the quiver of arrows lay there undisturbed. Sostratos snatched them up again and shot back at the pirates. He was rewarded when their oarmaster screamed and crumpled with an arrow in his thigh. The Rhodian aimed a couple of shafts at the man handling the hemiolia's steering oars, who he thought was the captain. They went wide, though, and the man stayed at his station.

The hemiolia limped off. Not all its oars were manned, not any more. Sostratos wondered if Menedemos would order a pursuit. But his cousin was otherwise occupied: he stooped over a fallen pirate in the waist of the Aphrodite. The pirate raised a hand for mercy. Slowly and deliberately, Menedemos drove his sword into the man's body. Blood glistened on the blade as he straightened up. “Throw this carrion into the sea,” he told the closest sailors, his voice cold as a Thracian winter.

That thrust hadn't killed the raider. He was still groaning and feebly writhing as the sailors lifted him and flung him over the side. Splash! The groans abruptly ceased.

Another pirate was already dead, his head smashed like a broken pot. The sailors threw his body out of the Aphrodite, too. Looking back toward the stern, Sostratos saw several men gathered around another body. One of them looked up and caught his eye. “It's Dorimakhos,” the fellow said, and tossed his head to add without words that the sailor wouldn't be getting up again. “Took a javelin through the throat, poor beggar.”

Menedemos made his way forward. Blood splashed his tunic and his hide, but he seemed hale. Looking down at himself, Sostratos found his own tunic similarly stained. He also found he had a cut on his calf he hadn't even noticed. Now that he knew it was there, it began to hurt.

“Hail,” Menedemos said. “You fought well.”

“We all did,” Sostratos answered. “Otherwise, we wouldn't have driven them off. Are you all right?”

His cousin shrugged. “Scratches, bruises. I'll be fine in a couple of days. This was the worst I got.” He held out his left hand, which bore a ragged, nasty wound.

“Is that a bite?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos dipped his head. “Pour wine on it,” Sostratos told him. “That's the best thing I know to keep wounds from festering, and bites are liable to. I'm no Hippokrates, but I know that much.”

“I wish we had Hippokrates aboard now, or any other physician we could get our hands on,” Menedemos said. “You probably know more than most of us—and the men will think you do even if you don't. Come help sew 'em up and bandage 'em. We've got plenty of wine to splash on our hurts, anyhow.”

Along with Menedemos and Diokles, Sostratos did what he could, suturing and bandaging arms and legs and scalps. He splashed on wine with a liberal hand. The sailors howled at the sting. The needle and thread he used were coarse ones made for sewing sailcloth, but they went through flesh well enough. “Hold still,” he told Teleutas, who had a gash just below his knee.

“You try holding still with somebody stabbing you,” Teleutas retorted.

“Do you want to keep bleeding?” Sostratos asked.

Teleutas tossed his head. “No, but I don't want to keep getting hurt, either.”

Impatiently, Sostratos said, “You don't have that choice. You can bleed, or you can let me sew up this wound and then bandage it. I won't take long, and you'll stop getting hurt any more as soon as I'm done.”