The Gryphon's Skull

“All?” Sostratos howled. More curses burst from him. Still hot as iron in the forge, he finished, “They could have taken anything else on this ship—anything, do you hear me? But no! One of those gods-detested rogues had to steal the single, solitary thing we carried that will—would—matter a hundred years from now.”

Menedemos came forward and set a hand on his shoulder. “Cheer up, my dear. It's not so bad as that.”

“No. It's worse,” Sostratos said.

His cousin tossed his head. “Not really. Just think: right this very minute, you're probably having your revenge.”

“My what?” Sostratos gaped, as if Menedemos had suddenly started speaking Phoenician. “What are you talking about?”

“I'll tell you what,” Menedemos answered. “Suppose you're a pirate. Your captain decides to go after an akatos for a change. 'It'll be a tough fight, sure enough,' he says, 'but think how rich we'll be once we take her.' You manage to board the Aphrodite. Her sailors are all fighting like lions. Somebody stabs you in the leg. Somebody else cuts off half your ear.”

He paused. “Go on,” Sostratos said, in spite of himself.

Grinning, Menedemos did: “Pretty soon, even Antigonos the One-Eyed can see you aren't going to win this scrap. You grab whatever you can—whatever's under that bench there—and you hop back aboard your hemiolia. You have to get away from those fighting madmen on the merchant galley, so you pull your oar till you're ready to drop dead. Somebody slaps a bandage on your ear and sews up your leg. And then, finally, you say, 'All right, let's see what's in this sack. It's big and heavy—it's got to have something worthwhile inside.' And you open it—and there's the gryphon's skull looking back at you, as ugly as it was in the market square in Kaunos. What would you do then?”

Slowly, Sostratos smiled. That was vengeance, of a sort.

But Diokles said, “Me, I'd fling the polluted thing straight into the sea.

That struck Sostratos as horribly likely. In his mind's eye, he could see the pirate staring at the skull. He could hear the fellow cursing, hear his mates laughing. And he could see the blue waters of the Aegean dosing over the gryphon's skull forevermore.

“Think of the knowledge wasted!” he cried.

“Think of the look on that bastard's face when he opens the sack,” Menedemos said.

It was the only consolation Sostratos had. It wasn't enough, wasn't anywhere close to enough. “Better I should have sold the skull to Damonax,” he said bitterly. “What if it sat in his house? Maybe his son or his grandson would have taken it to Athens. Now it's gone.”

“I'm sorry,” Menedemos said, though he still seemed more amused than anything else. He pointed west, toward the distant mainland of Attica. “We still might get to Cape Sounion by sundown.”

“I don't care,” Sostratos said. “What difference does It make now?” He'd hoped his name might live forever. Sostratos the Rhodian, discoverer of. . . He tossed his head. What had he discovered? Thanks to the pirate, nothing at all.

10

Menedemos brought the Aphrodite into the little harbor of the village of Sounion, which lay just to the east of the southernmost tip of the cape. He pointed inland, towards a small but handsome temple, asking, “Who is worshiped there?”

“That's one of Poseidon's shrines, I think,” Sostratos answered. “Athena's is the bigger one farther up the isthmus.”

“Ah. Thanks,” Menedemos said. “I haven't stopped here before, so I didn't remember, if I ever knew. Sounion ...” He snapped his fingers, then dipped his head, recalling some lines from the Odyssey:

“ 'But when we reached holy Sounion, the headland of Athens
There Phoibos Apollo the steersman of Menelaos
Slew, assailing him with shafts that brought painless death.
He held the steering-oar of the racing ship in his hands:
Phrontis Onetor's son, who was best of the race of men
At steering a ship whenever storm winds rushed.' “

“Not storm winds now, gods be praised,” his cousin said. “You did a good job steering the Aphrodite, though, to get us here before nightfall.”

“Thanks,” Menedemos said. “Do you suppose we could get a priest to purify the ship now, or will we have to wait here till morning?” He answered his own question: “Morning, of course, so we can get Dorimakhos' body off the ship and set him in his grave.” He lowered his voice: “And you were right, worse luck—Rhodippos has a fever I don't like, enough to put him half out of his head.”