“We have to fight, then,” Sostratos said.

“Yes.” Menedemos dipped his head again. “I’m afraid we do.” He shouted orders: “Raise the sail to the yard! Serve out weapons to everyone! Man all oars! Diokles, as soon as we have a rower on every bench, I’ll want you to up the stroke. We can’t outrun ‘em, but we’ll need as much speed as we can get.”

“Right you are, skipper.” The oarmaster pointed toward the approaching pirate ships, which stayed a couple of plethra apart. “They’re a little overeager, you ask me. If they’d waited a little longer before they came out of cover, we’d’ve had less time to get ready.”

“We’re a good ways out to sea; maybe they wanted to make sure we didn’t get away,” Menedemos said. “If they did make a mistake, it’s up to us to prove it.”

“They’re triakonters,” Sostratos said. “Only thirty rowers in each one, but look how many extra men they’ve packed in for boarding.”

“Bastards,” Menedemos said. “Grab my bowcase, O best one. Your archery will help us.”

“I hope so,” his cousin answered. “I can’t shoot all of them, though, however much I wish I could.”

“I know. I wish you could, too,” Menedemos said. “But the more you hit, the fewer we’ll have to worry about if they do manage to board us.” If they board us, we’re ruined, he thought. As Sostratos had, he saw how full of men the pirate ships were. The Aphrodite ’s crew might well have been able to fight off one. Both together? Not a chance. He knew as much, but he wouldn’t say so out loud. By the expression on his cousin’s face, Sostratos knew as much, too.

Up went the sail. Rowers hurried to their places. Sailors who weren’t rowing served out swords and pikes and axes and cudgels. Men stowed them where they could grab them in a hurry. Everyone’s eyes were on the pair of triakonters speeding toward the merchant galley. The men also had to know they couldn’t beat back that many boarders. But they’d been through sea fights with Menedemos before. He’d always managed to do something to keep them free and safe.

What are you going to do this time? he asked himself. He found only one answer: The best I can. Aloud, he said, “Sostratos, loose the boat from the sternpost. Then go forward to shoot. If we win, maybe we’ll come back for the boat. If we don’t…” He shrugged and turned to Diokles as his cousin obeyed. “Up the stroke some more. Don’t show them quite everything we can do, though, not yet. Let them think we’re a little slower and deeper laden than we really are.”

“I understand, skipper.” The keleustes raised his voice so even the men at the forwardmost oars could hear: “Put your backs into it, you lugs! If you want to pay the whores on Rhodes again, you do what the captain and I tell you. Come on, now! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” He beat out the rhythm with mallet and brass square, too.

The Aphrodite seemed to gather herself, then to spring across the water toward the two pirates. The akatos’ rowers couldn’t see the foe, of course; they looked back at Menedemos and Diokles. Diokles had been wise to remind them to obey orders. They relied on the oarmaster and the skipper to be their eyes and brains. They staked their freedom, maybe their lives, on that reliance. By the anxious expressions some of them wore, they were well aware of it, too.

Then Menedemos had no more time to spare for his own rowers. He steered the merchant galley at the two triakonters as they made for the Aphrodite . The eyes at the bows of the pirate ships stared balefully across the water at the merchant galley. Their rams, and the Aphrodite’s, too, gnawed through the sea, churning it to white foam. Their oars rose and fell, rose and fell, not quite so smoothly as the. Aphrodite ’s but at a remarkably quick stroke. Both ships were faster than the akatos. But not by so much as you think, Menedemos told himself. I hope.

“I’ll give you something nice, Father Poseidon,” he murmured, “if you let me come home to do it. I promise I will.” He bargained with men almost every day. Why not with the gods as well?

Things on the sea didn’t always happen swiftly. Even though the Aphrodite and the pirates were closing faster than a horse could trot, they had twenty or twenty-five stadia to cover before they met: close to half an hour. Menedemos had plenty of time to think. So did the pirate captains, no doubt. He suspected he knew what they would do: keep their distance from each other, ply the Aphrodite with arrows for a while, and then close and board from port and starboard at the same time. With numbers thus on their side, they could hardly fail.

As for what he could do to counter that… There, his thoughts remained murkier than he would have liked.

Those pirate ships swelled. Suddenly, Menedemos could hear shouts from the men aboard them, see sunlight spark from swords and spearheads. He didn’t think the shouts were Greek, not that it mattered. There had been plenty of Hellenes aboard the pirate ship that attacked the merchant galley the year before in the Aegean. They counted as pirates first.

He steered the Aphrodite straight for the nearer triakonter here: the left-hand one of the pair. No matter how she altered course-and her fellow with her, in some nice seamanship-he swung the steering-oar tillers so his bow and hers pointed at each other.

“You going to try ramming her, skipper?” Diokles asked. “You want the extra from the rowers now? I think they can still give it to you, though they’ve been working pretty hard.”

“I’ll watch what the pirates do, and that’ll tell me what I can do,” Menedemos answered. “Don’t up the stroke till I yell, no matter what.”

“All right.” The oarmaster didn’t sound doubtful, no matter what he was thinking. That left Menedemos grateful. If Diokles let worry show, it would surely infect the rowers, and that would make a bad situation even worse.

Archers aboard the closer pirate ship started shooting. Their arrows splashed into the Inner Sea well short of the Aphrodite . Menedemos dipped his head in wry amusement. Bowmen were always overeager. Before long, though, the shafts would start to bite. More arrows arched through the air. These fell short, too, but not by nearly so far.

Where time hadn’t mattered much before, suddenly now heartbeats were of the essence. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite hard to port, aiming her ram straight for the side of the second triakonter, the one he’d ignored up till now. “Everything they’ve got, Diokles!” he called.

“Right,” the oarmaster said without hesitation. He upped the stroke: “Come on, boys! You can do it! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” Not even Talos the bronze man could have held that sprint for long. Gasping, thrusting, faces gleaming with sweat and oil, the rowers gave him everything they had in them. The akatos suddenly seemed to bound forward over the sea.

Menedemos’ only advantage was that he knew what he was doing and neither of the pirate captains did. Had the skipper of the closer ship been more alert, more ready for something unexpected from the Aphrodite , he might have rammed her as she turned toward his comrade. He tried, in fact, but he waited a couple of heartbeats too long before starting his own turn-and the merchant galley’s sudden burst of speed also caught him by surprise. His triakonter passed a few cubits astern of the Aphrodite .

Two arrows hissed past Menedemos from behind. He couldn’t even look back. If he got hit, he hoped Diokles would shove him out of the way and drive home the attack on the other pirate ship. He aimed the merchant galley at a point halfway between the triakonter’s ram and where her mast would go when it was up.

The man at the steering oars on the pirate ship should have started to turn toward the Aphrodite or away from her, to make sure the akatos’ ram didn’t hit squarely. The black-bearded ruffian should have. Maybe he even would have; though taken by surprise, he probably had time to do it. But Sostratos shot three arrows at him in quick succession. Two of them missed. The other one hit him in the neck. He shrieked and clawed at himself and forgot all about steering the triakonter.