Celtika (11 page)

When he had gone, Hylas crept back on board from his hiding place and we put him ashore some days later at the mouth of the river Acheron, at his own request. After that, I don’t know what happened to him. But I missed his bright spirit and good humour.

That was later, after Argo had begun her quest. But at the dockside in Pagasae, with my own oar now finished by the same skilful youth, marked with my name and added to the wood pile ready to be loaded, I ascended the ramp to inspect the ship itself. And quickly realised that this was no ordinary vessel. There was nothing that I could identify, and I was not prepared to open my soul to a deeper understanding, but below the deck, somewhere to the fore, there was an older heart than the massive oak beam that had been shaped to form her keel.

I ducked down into the bilges, started to move forward, and was
warned away!
I could think of it in no other terms than that. Not a voice, not a vision, just the most intense feeling that I was entering a place that was not just private or out of bounds, but was
forbidden.

Mystified, thrilled, I decided to go back on to land, intending to find Argos, the shipwright who had constructed this galley, and ask him about his creation. But as if she sensed my curiosity, and had been made angry by my presence, Argo began to strain at the rope tethers. Her hull groaned, the wooden tenons holding her fast above the slipway began to pull from the hard earth, the ropes singing with the strain. The ship twisted and slid about on the mud ramp, like a throat-cut pig thrashing in its own blood. I clutched the housing for the mast with all my strength, expecting at any moment to be pitched over the side. Argo bucked and protested below my feet.

Launch me,
she seemed to be saying.
Test me in the water. Hurry!

The air was filled with a sound like Furies screaming.

Jason grabbed a double-bladed axe from one of his colleagues, called to Heracles to do the same, stepped swiftly forward and shouted: ‘The rest of you, into the water. You! Cloud navigator! Throw down the scaling nets!’

As the argonauts stripped to the skin and raced for the sea, Heracles and Jason each hacked at the retaining ropes, cutting through in unison.

Released, Argo streaked down the ramp, stern-first into the harbour water, plunging deep below the surface, almost drowning me. When she came up she shuddered, an animal refreshing itself after a cold swim. I flung down the coiled net ladders, two to a side, then went to the prow, staring down at the shouting men who swam vigorously towards us. Who they were, where they had come from, what skills they possessed, all of this was alien to me at this time, but they circled Argo, laughing, as if capturing a bull, and though the ship turned under her own control, facing each cheering hero in turn, she stayed in the circle, calmed herself, then allowed the men to haul themselves aboard.

Heracles followed them, dragging a dozen oars through the harbour waters, lifting them two at a time to the waiting hands of the crew. Six oars each side—she would be rowed by twenty on the open sea—we took the galley gently back to the harbour side, where we tethered her again and started to load supplies.

‘What a ship!’ a delighted and muddy Jason cried as he came aboard by jumping from the quay. ‘With vigour like this in her keel, we’ll make the haven at Colchis in one night’s dream! Never mind three months! The fleece is closer than we think.’

Events were to prove otherwise, of course, as I have written elsewhere.

*   *   *

Argo was not one ship, but many, and a fragment of each, even the oldest, was locked in the prow, the ship’s heart, hidden in the slender double hull. Hera had been only the latest in a long line of guardians of this Otherworldly vessel. To crouch in her prow was to feel the flow of rivers and seas that had persisted through time, to smell old wood, old leather, old ropes, shaped and stretched into vessels that had drifted, sailed, rowed and ploughed beyond the known worlds of their builders.

So much life in one cold hulk.

Now, lifetimes later, the skin was ripped from the rotting remnant of that proud and vigorous ship. In the frost-sheened, rosy dawn, and under Jason’s supervision, Lemanku tore away the planks of the hull to expose part of the hidden heart of Argo. I watched in fascination as the ship-shaped cage of branches was revealed, a tangled network of growth from the old oak that had been laid by Argos, filling the hull like veins. The growth had
split
the planking, but held it together too, in a protecting embrace.

Lemanku was stunned by what his work was uncovering. He showed me how the wood was not just of oak, but of several types of tree: elm and birch and beech, though these elements were confined towards the prow.

Jason’s instructions were clear:

‘Cut her back to within a man’s length of the block of wood that rises into the prow.’

He was pruning the Argo!

‘Lay the new keel, then build out from there; enclose the prow area at the end.’

Lemanku said, ‘This ship was constructed in a way I’ve never seen. Very primitive.’

Jason asked him what he meant, and Lemanku showed how each plank had been placed edge to edge along the hull, crudely lashed with rope, then sealed with black tar, or something similar.

‘I’m surprised this ship didn’t break up in the first storm.’

‘But she
didn’t
break up in the first storm. Nor any other storm. I sailed her along forty rivers, through water that was foaming white, sometimes so close to freezing solid that blocks of ice struck her left and right. I sailed Argo in the shadow of moving mountains, at the edge of thrashing forests, and she never failed me. How can you can build her stronger?’

‘I didn’t say I could build her stronger,’ Lemanku said evenly. ‘Just better. I can build her to carry more, and sail faster.’

Without pause, without thanks, Jason said, ‘I like the sound of that. How many men do you need?’

‘Experienced ship builders: ten. Iron workers: twenty. Charcoal burners: five…’ The list went on. ‘I can raise most of them.’

‘I’ll get the rest for you,’ Jason said, glancing at me. ‘You and I together, Antiokus? A little recruiting?’

‘We’d better get started. As dawn grows brighter by the day, this lake will be left alone for half a year. Everybody leaves.’

*   *   *

Lemanku demonstrated how the planks could be
overlapped
then nailed together with iron to create a stronger, more flexible hull. This was Jason’s first encounter with the hard metal. He watched the process of forging and tempering with fascination. The nails were made long, thick and crude, ready to be battened off, flattened out on the inner side of the hull.

Even so, he wanted rope lashing. Lemanku was puzzled, but Jason was insistent.

‘I was taught that to be secure at sea the rope that holds a ship together should weigh more than the men who sail her.’

‘Then you’ll need more ballast,’ Lemanku countered. ‘The rope will soak up water and make the ship top-heavy.’

‘Are your ropes made of sponges, then? I’ll have to trust you. The ballast will be in skin bags. We can throw it out and recruit it whenever we pass a rocky beach! But we need the ropes. They’ll hold Argo together not just in a storm, but when we
overland
her. To haul a ship like this uphill, through forest, you have to hold her in a cradle. A cradle of rope. Haul her from the front and you’ll strip the keel!’

‘I know that,’ Lemanku retorted proudly. ‘I’ve built boats all my life. I’ve hauled them over ice and over rock. I know how to brace the keel, and broaden it, and grease the log rollers with fish gut, fat and liver. It’s been my business all my life. You intend to
haul
the ship? Where?’

‘I don’t know where. But every river has its shallows, and every sea gets blocked by land. It’s a precaution. Fish guts on the rollers?’

‘Eases the passage.’

‘I believe you. Between us we’ll build a wonderful vessel. Just give me my ropes!’

Lemanku laughed out loud. The two men set out their plan for building new flesh on Argo’s bones, then Jason left the shipwright to his work.

*   *   *

While Lemanku continued to prune the wreck, Jason, Jouhkan and myself borrowed his shallow skiff and sailed steadily around the edge of the lake, in search of a new crew to row new Argo when she was complete. We had already recruited Urtha and his four companions, though there was a small price to pay: first we would row to Urtha’s homeland so that he could see his family once again, and Borovos and Cucallos could visit their own clan. This was only a short detour from the route back to Greek Land. In exchange, Urtha would lend Jason five of his
uthiin
warriors, all of whom, he was sure, would be eager for the adventure, the search for Orgetorix. Fighters, marksmen and experts in everything—like all
keltoi,
Urtha added—they would be invaluable.

Jason agreed. For the moment, though, we were short of hands.

Most of the occupants of the winter settlements had constructed crude jetties, mooring places among the reeds or stretching from the muddy shore that were now exposed as the ice melted. High fences or earth banks protected the tents and rough shelters from unwelcome visitors. Torches burned everywhere. Hounds of several breeds strained and howled at the leash.

Jason had borrowed a bronze horn from Urtha and used it to announce not just our arrival, but the fact that we wished to trade. Twice we were greeted with such hostility and distrust that we made a circumspect retreat, but five times we landed and shared the food and drink of the motley visitors to the lake of the Screaming Ship.

Our task was to recruit at least twenty men or women capable of using, or learning to use, an oar. Twenty argonauts willing to abandon their business in the north and sail blindly south again.

Jason now demonstrated his tactful way with words, his teasing way with story. He drank, joked, flattered and mocked. He was far older than most of the men around whose fires he sat, but he was so quick, so deft with a wooden blade, that in the mock challenges he often called for himself, he either won by a ruse, or lost in a flurry of limbs and a burst of laughter.

His account of Argo’s first voyage to Colchis and back was unrecognisable to someone who had been there. Rocks had crashed together a hand’s width from our stern; the fleece, once plucked from its heavily guarded sanctuary, had been pursued by warriors who grew in seconds from the scattered teeth of snakes; whole forests had pursued us on flailing roots along a great river that flowed from snow-capped mountains in a land populated by cannibal women and tree-wielding apes clad in the skins and bones of their wives’ victims.

I think he was referring to the river Daan, and the people at its headwaters had been hospitable and friendly, helping us drag Argo across the land bridge between two rivers, so that we could sail south again, to the warm seas off Liguria and its haunted islands.

But he whetted their appetites for adventure. And he read his audience better than I could ever have done; he knew instinctively, it seemed, when to win approval by insult and when by challenge.

‘One in every two of the bravest aboard Argo will die. Hold that in your heads as you decide whether to join me. Don’t come easily to me. If you do that, I’ll kill you myself!

‘I’ll say it again: one in every two of the strongest will fail at some point. One in every two of the swiftest will be run down by creatures out of our nightmares. One in every two of the wisest will be tangled in a knot of deceit and seduction that will trap them for ever. The risk is that great! I know this! I’ve taken the risk before, and on that occasion survived …

‘As then, so now! Believe me! But the reward will be greater for those of us who survive.’

And when asked what we would be seeking, he said, ‘My eldest son.’

‘And how will searching for your eldest son reward us?’

‘Because of the opportunities along the way. Until you see bright-hulled Argo you won’t understand, and she is being built at this moment, over there, where you see the glow of the forge in the night. Argo is like you or me, always looking for trouble; she has a nose—if a ship may have a nose—for the mysteries that lie concealed in the world that seems so familiar and ordinary to us. She has been to the Otherworld and back … and so have I…’

He was asked, ‘When did you lose your sons?’

‘A lifetime ago. They were taken from me by a woman who had been vomited from the mouth of Hel herself. No woman would recognise that creature as one of her own kind. No man could touch her skin and not realise she was long dead, kept alive only by hate and malice.
Medea.
Say the name and shudder.
Medea.
Killer of brothers. Killer of kings. Queen of Tricksters. But long in her tomb, now, and you should be grateful for that.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Recruitment

Torchlight flickering on the black lake signalled the arrival of the first new argonauts. Two small boats were rowed towards us through the broken ice, the moan of a horn announcing our first recruits as from the settlement of the Germanii, stocky men with flaxen hair and beards, who wore heavy cloaks of bear and wolf fur against the cold. They had been cautious of Jason, when he had told them of the adventure to come. They had not seemed impressed by his story; indeed, they had seemed indifferent to the idea of the spoils and hoards that might be taken along the way.

What intrigued them, it seemed, was that they had heard of ‘speaking caves’ which could tell men’s fates. They would journey in search of such an oracle, then (and would have no difficulty finding one: ‘speaking caves’ scattered the parched, scrubby hills of the land of Jason’s birth).

They were strong. Our three recruits were Gutthas, Erdzwulf and Gebrinagoth.

Over the nights, other new argonauts drifted in, most by boat, some by foot, one by horse.

A young pair of adventurers, Conan and Gwyrion of the Cymbrii, crossed the dangerous lake in a shallow skiff. They were subdued, thin and hungry, poorly dressed for the climate. Indeed, their clothing of colourful check-patterned trousers and cloak, and woollen shirts, was more suitable for a summer raid in the Southlands. Each had a golden-handled knife and a small round shield with the bearded, wild-haired features of Llew beaten in gold upon it.