The Sacred Land

“Oh, by the gods!” Menedemos said, thinking, No wonder he looks older. He put an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. “That’s a hard thing to do, my dear, none harder. I’m very sorry. Aristeidas was a good man.”

“Yes. It would have been hard with anyone.” Sostratos’ eye slid toward Teleutas, who fortunately didn’t notice. “With the lookout, it was doubly so. But with the wound he had, all I did was save him hours of pain.”

“See what would have happened if you’d gone alone?” Menedemos said.

“Who knows?” Sostratos answered wearily. “Maybe I would have taken a different road back to Sidon traveling alone. Maybe I would have been earlier or later on the same road and not run into the bandits at all. There’s no way to tell, not for certain. Why don’t you just let that be?”

He sounded older, too, as impatient with Menedemos as a grown man might be with a child who’d asked him to pull the moon down from the sky. “All right. Excuse me for breathing,” Menedemos said, stung. “How did the business go? Did you get to Engedi? Have you got the balsam?”

“Yes, and some other things besides,” Sostratos said. “Beeswax, embroidered cloth… I’ll show you everything, if you’ll let us get on down to the ship. Your i

“I’m not staying there anymore,” Menedemos said. “The i

“We’ll find somewhere else to put the beasts, then,” Sostratos said. “It doesn’t matter. After everything I’ve been through the past couple of days, I have trouble seeing what does matter, aside from getting home safe. To the crows with everything else.”

Menedemos started to ask him about profit. He started to, but then checked himself. Here, for once, he saw no point in making Sostratos say something he would regret later. That was all very well for a joke, but not just after a good man died. Regardless of whether Sostratos did, Aristeidas’ shade deserved more respect than that.

His cousin said, “When we got back here, I was going to surprise you: I was going to quote from the Odyssey.”

“Were you?” Menedemos said. “What, the bit where Odysseus has slain the suitors and made love to Penelope who’s stayed home all those years, and then he tells her of his adventures in about thirty lines?”

“Yes, that’s the very passage I had in mind, as a matter of fact,” Sostratos answered. “I don’t suppose I ought to be surprised you could guess.”

“I hope you shouldn’t, my dear,” Menedemos said. “And I don’t thank you for putting me in the woman’s role. I wasn’t idle here in Sidon, you know.”

“I never said you were-not that Penelope was idle in Odysseus’ palace.” Sostratos scowled. “After what happened to poor Aristeidas, though, I haven’t the heart for any sort of playfulness.”

Moskhion said, “Skipper, he’s a host in himself, your cousin is. Eight thieving Ioudaioi set upon us-eight! Sostratos shot two of ‘em dead before they could close, he wounded a third, and he went and drove off another one with rocks. If he didn’t show himself a second Teukros there, we all would’ve died amongst those boulders.”

“That’s the truth,” Teleutas agreed.

“Euge!” Menedemos stared at Sostratos as if he’d never seen him before. He’d known his cousin could shoot pretty well, but to hear him described in such terms was… startling. Sostratos was among the mildest and most inoffensive of men. Or, at least, he was most of the time. With his freedom and his life in the balance, that might be a different story. That evidently was a different story.

“I wish I’d done better,” he said now. “If I’d shot the bastard who speared Aristeidas, he’d still be with us now.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Menedemos said.

“We’ve been telling him the same thing,” Teleutas said. “He doesn’t want to listen.”

“Well, he should.” Menedemos looked straight at Sostratos. “You should. For four to drive off eight-that’s no mean feat, my dear, all by itself. You can’t expect everything to have gone perfectly.”

“Everything had, near enough, till we ran into those polluted robbers on the way back here,” Sostratos said. “Were another couple of days of luck too much to ask of the gods?”

“You can’t ask such things of me-I’ll tell you that,” Menedemos said. “Let’s get the goods off your donkey and onto the akatos. Balsam and beeswax and what all else did you tell me?”

“Embroidered cloth,” Sostratos answered. Business seemed to recall him to himself. “How did you do here?”

“Could have been worse. Could have been a lot worse, in fact,” Menedemos said. “I got rid of almost all your brother-in-law’s olive oil, and at a good price, too.”

Worn and sorrowful as Sostratos was, he sat up and took notice of that. “Did you? And what escaped madman came along to buy it?”

“Some went to the soldiers of Antigonos’ garrison here, after their gods-detested quartermaster wouldn’t pay a decent price,” Menedemos replied. “A Phoenician dealer bought the rest for the luxury trade. The books are all gone-you had a good idea there. And the Koan silk-and I got something better for it.” Just thinking of the silk he’d got from Zaker-baal set excitement bubbling inside him.

“What? More cloth?” Sostratos asked. When Menedemos dipped his head, his cousin looked dismayed. Sostratos, in fact, looked downright disgusted. He said, “What were you drinking, my dear, when the wily Phoenician convinced you of that? There is no finer cloth than Koan silk.”

“We do have some jars of Byblian wine aboard, and crimson dye, too,” Menedemos said. “But you’re wrong about the Koan silk. Before we got here, I would have said you were right, but I know better now.”

“This I have to see for myself,” Sostratos declared.

“Come aboard, then, O best one, and see you shall.” Menedemos steered Sostratos back toward the Aphrodite . He went on, “By what you and the sailors say, you were the best one with the bow. No one could have done better than you did.”

“It wasn’t good enough,” Sostratos said bleakly. “Otherwise, we all would have come back from Engedi.” As always, Sostratos looked for perfection from himself. Being only human, he didn’t always get it. And, when he didn’t, he blamed himself more fiercely than he should have for falling short.

Menedemos almost said so to his face. But then, knowing his cousin as well as he did, he thought better of it. Instead, he simply guided Sostratos down into the merchant galley, guided him along to the leather sacks storing the silk, and opened one of them to draw out a bolt.

Sostratos’ eyes widened. Menedemos had known they would. Sostratos stared at the fine, fine fabric, then reached out to feel it. He dipped his head decisively. “Well, when you’re right, you’re right. The Koans never dreamt of anything like this. Where does it come from? How is it made?” Curiosity came close to bringing him back to his usual self.

“I don’t know how it’s made,” Menedemos replied. “It’s from out of the east, Zakerbaal said-he’s the Phoenician I got it from. From somewhere beyond India, maybe north, maybe east, maybe both.”

“Like the gryphon’s skull,” Sostratos said.

“Yes, that occurred to me, too,” Menedemos agreed. “But I think we’ll see more of this silk coming west into the lands around the I

Plainly, Sostratos wanted to argue with him. Just as plainly, he couldn’t. He asked, “What did you pay for this, and how much did you get?” When Menedemos told him, he muttered to himself, then dipped his head again. “That’s not bad.”

“Thanks. I think we’re going to squeeze a pretty fair profit out of this run, though we’ll take a while to do it because so much of what we earn will depend on selling things we’ve got here back in Hellas,” Menedemos said.