Jason and the Argonauts (13 page)

“Yes. You’re a better tactician than I am, my dear.”

“Kings’ daughters are trained in deception, even before they become wives.”

The lidless eyes watched them depart.

E
KION

J
ASON SUMMONED US TO
a final meeting before the raid, all of us except Argos, of course, who never left the ship. Upon the night appointed, we were to climb the mountain to the shrine of the Fleece. Medea would have gone before to lead the serpent away, leaving the place unguarded. Jason and Autolycus were to enter the temple and take the Fleece. The Twins, Idas, and Rufus were to patrol the clearing and kill anyone who approached, while Daphnis and I, the noncombatants, were to station ourselves in trees to give warning if anyone came near.

We rehearsed the march by day so that we could go torchless by night. We climbed the slope, but stopped short of the temple clearing.

“I don’t want to disturb the serpent,” said Jason. “And you’re as well off not seeing it.”

“How long will your wife keep it occupied?” I asked. “Two hours, she says. Choose your tree now, so you won’t have to search for it in the dark. You, too, Daphnis.”

It was windy on the mountain that night; my tree swayed under me like a mast. I had to clench the bough with my knees as if I were riding a horse. The moon flared briefly, then flared again, as if the wind were trying to blow it out. The sky must have been full of broken clouds. I was there to keep watch, but it was hard to read the shadows.

I heard something: sliding, rustling, then wetter sounds. And a mellow bleating sound, almost like a sob. I was staring my eyes out, but the wind had blown the moon away, and I saw nothing. The sounds grew closer. The moon flared. Then I saw …

I didn’t want to believe it. It was something out of the very earliest legends—of chaos clotting into a giant life-blob that shaped itself into a giant snail. Here it was, returned, crawling out of the rubble of chaos, enormously long and thick, wearing horns. The moon rode a clear patch of sky. The thing was passing beneath, and I saw it plain. It was no snail. It was a gigantic serpent; in its jaws, half-engulfed, was a full-grown stag.

Then I did the bravest thing I had ever done: I screamed. My every impulse was to shrink so profoundly into the tree that I would become part of the bark. But I didn’t. I screamed as loudly as I could to warn the others, even though I knew the thing below would be the first to hear.

It ignored my screaming. It passed my tree and moved into the clearing.

T
HE YOUNG MEN STOOD
before the stone temple that was the shrine of the Fleece. Jason pushed at its heavy brass door; it didn’t budge. Pollux closed his iron hand into an iron fist and pulled his arm back.

“No,” said Jason. “Don’t hit it. They’ll hear the clanging in the palace.”

“Maybe we can push it down,” said Castor. “Let’s put our shoulders to it.”

But as they spoke, Autolycus had been tinkering with the bolt. The door swung open.

“Enter,” said Autolycus.

Jason followed him in. The Twins stayed outside to patrol the clearing. Inside, Jason and Autolycus knelt to the ground when they saw the Fleece. It was larger than the
Argo’s
mainsail and seemed woven of the shifting lights of dawn, casting a dim radiance through the dark chamber.

“Truly a garment of the gods,” said Jason. “Worthy of a hero’s quest.”

“We’d better roll it up,” said Autolycus. “It shines in the dark.”

Then they heard Ekion screaming.

They rushed out of the shrine and saw the serpent. It had coiled itself in a single loop around the temple and its garden. The six young men stood inside a rampart of living leather.

The monster was in no hurry. It was swallowing a stag. It had all the time there was to attend to those within its loop. The sky was clear now, and the moon was a torch. The Argonauts stood there enclosed by the monster. They heard sounds of swallowing.

“Perhaps he’ll choke on the horns,” said Jason. “I saw an anaconda do that once—on a goat’s horns. But that was only an earthworm compared to this one.”

He spoke calmly but he was scorching inside, suffocating with rage because he knew Medea had betrayed them and furious at himself for trusting her. The others felt a familiar icy calm that resembled joy. Peril had become their pastime now.

“I suppose we’d better decide what to do,” said Jason.

“We’ll kill it,” said Pollux. “What is there to decide?”

“I think you’ll have to attack it with your fists, Pollux, try to crush its head,” said Jason.

“Just what I think,” said Pollux.

“The problem is it won’t lie still and let you do it. I think that you, Castor, should try to hold its head still, and give your brother a chance to do some punching.”

“Right,” said Castor.

“Another thing to consider,” said Jason. “Its loop forms a circle, its head near its tail. And that tail is a weapon, too—a flail that can knock down trees.”

“I’ll work on that,” said Idas. “I’ll drive my spike through its tail and nail it to the ground.”

“How about me?” said Rufus. “What do I do?”

“Swing your sledge, O smith. Beat on its back. Try to crack a spool of its spine. It’s encased in triple leather, but you might make yourself felt. You, Autolycus, wield your sword, striking wherever you think best. As for me, I shall try my bow. No arrow can pierce that hide, but its palate would be vulnerable if I can shoot upward into its open mouth.

“I’m looking for work,” said a clear voice.

“Daphnis!” cried Jason. “You’re supposed to be safe among the trees.”

“Our friend is lying so that there’s a space between head and tail just big enough for me to slip through. Ekion is still out there trying to recover from his first sight of the beast.”

“Why have you come?” asked Autolycus. “You can do nothing here.”

“I feel invincible. That naiad frolic left me ready for anything. And I have an idea. If it works, we’ll be able to depart unharmed and leave the monster guarding an empty shrine.”

“Tell me your idea first.”

“I’ll sing to him. My father, Hermes, did that once. He tells a tale of loving another naiad long ago, one named Io. But she was guarded by a monster with a hundred eyes, who closed only fifty of them when it slept. So Hermes unslung his lyre and sang a sleepy song, closing those eyes one by one. The monster didn’t even wake up when Hermes cut off its head. Well, I have a sleepy song, too.”

“Start singing,” said Jason.

Daphnis touched his lyre and began to sing: a song that floated strangely on the air; it did not belong to a windy night and dark deeds. It was an afternoon song, a summer song. The drowse of cicadas was in his song, the lilt of waters, and all the multitudinous tiny sounds that linger in the hush of such an hour.

Serpents’ eyes have no lids and so cannot close. You can tell they are asleep only by a milky haze that covers the eyes like ashes sifting over a banked fire. Lightly, lightly, Jason stepped toward the serpent’s head to see if its eyes were growing hazy. He did see its jaws gaping in a great yawn. They closed. Its tail twitched gently. Jason was hoping it would uncoil.

It did. Its tail moved away from its head. The Argonauts rushed through the open space and into the grove. They hid behind trees, watching. They were waiting for the serpent to clear the entrance to the temple so that they might return for the Fleece.

It moved away from the temple and slowly coiled itself in the center of the clearing, but in a tight bundle of loops, until it was a tall cylinder of loops, with its head on top. It lay motionless. Jason darted out; the others followed. Silently they ran past the sleeping serpent, through the brass door, into the shrine. They knelt before the glowing Fleece. It did have a power, they knew, a power that bent the strong joints of their knees. They knelt there and thanked the gods for having brought them this far.

Autolycus was the first up. He sprang to the altar, snatched the Fleece from the wall, and rolled it up. They rushed out of the temple, laughing, and ran across the clearing toward the woods. But they had laughed too soon.

Medea was in those woods. She had come back with the serpent so that she might watch it do her work of vengeance. She had rejoiced when she saw the beast encircling her enemies. She had listened in disbelief as Daphnis sang his sleepy song. Oh, how she wished she had wings to match her talons and could swoop down to seize the minstrel in her claws, silencing his song forever. But she could only listen and watch, boiling with thwarted rage, as the serpent fell asleep. Now they had the Fleece, they would race to wherever their ship was hidden and sail away, leaving her to drink her own bile forever.

It could not be; it must not be. She raised her voice in one desperate falcon shriek. That wild call stabbed the night air, freezing Jason’s blood as he ran and piercing through the fog of sleep to the brain of the serpent. The beast awoke. The young men saw the moon blotted as the serpent reared above them, jaws agape.

They scattered. They were nimble. They kept dodging as the head struck at them. They merged with the shadows and flashed out, striking at the beast. But suddenly it flipped itself into the air, reshuffling its coils, feinting with its head at Jason. As he ducked away, it struck with its tail and landed a glancing blow, breaking three ribs.

Daphnis was near. He stooped to help Jason, felt a gale of foul breath, and saw the open jaws plunging down at him. They didn’t touch him. Rufus was there, swinging his sledge with all the strength of his blacksmith muscles. The heavy iron peen struck the serpent’s face and shattered. And those jaws swerved toward Rufus. Now Pollux did something that amazed even these brave men.

He hurled Rufus aside with a sweep of his arm and leaped into the jaws of the beast. He stood inside the lower jaw, left arm upraised, pressing the palm of his metal hand against the roof of the serpent’s mouth. He stood there rigid, holding those jaws propped open and swinging his right arm with enormous force, smashing the iron maul of his fist against the serpent’s teeth, knocking them out in a shower of blood and ivory.

Castor had hurled himself on the beast and had actually succeeded in looping its tail about a tree and tying a great knot. But the agonized threshing of the beast uprooted the tree, and now its flailing tail held a giant club. The tree fell on the roof of the temple, which collapsed.

Then Idas sprang in, stabbing with his spike just above the knot, stabbing so deeply that he was burying the spike up to his wrist.

Pollux, having knocked out all the teeth, began striking upward. His iron fist crashed against the roof of the serpent’s mouth—the weakest spot in its body, as Jason had said. The fist broke through the thin plate of bone, sending splinters of bone into the tiny brain. It died in a final spasm that sent Idas flying. He crashed heavily, breaking his shoulder. The same death throe had lifted Castor and smashed him to the ground, shattering his knee. Pollux staggered out of the jaws, covered with blood; particles of bone were in his hair. He swooned. Jason, pinned to the ground by the pain of broken ribs, was muttering, “Medea … Medea … let slip the beast and hunts us still.”

He pulled himself to a sitting position and looked at his friends, who lay on the grass. Every breath hurt. He couldn’t even pull himself up to see if anyone was alive. He tried to rise and swooned again.

Medea came out of the woods, flanked by spearmen, like a huntress with a pack of hounds. She shrieked again as she saw the fallen Argonauts. “Take them alive,” she said. “But guard them well.”

E
KION

I
HAD BEEN WATCHING
all this from my perch in the tree. I waited until the last clink of the patrol had died before I came down.

The serpent’s corpse made a bulky shadow. I investigated splinters of moonlight and found that they were a pile of teeth, glimmering like little ivory daggers. I stumbled on something. It was the Fleece, rolled up—dropped by Autolycus and overlooked by Medea and the soldiers.

My shipmates were gone. Jason’s wife had taken them to torture and death. Would they be hunting me also? I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t know what to think about. Too much had happened too fast; now everything had come to a stop. “Father, help me,” I whispered. My staff twitched in my hand. The wooden head spoke:

“Set blade to earth and dig beneath Planting there the serpent’s teeth.”

Why would he want me to do that? A disagreeable prospect. I picked up a sword and poked its point into the earth to make a hole. I walked across the field making a neat row of holes, then began another row, until I had a hundred and fifty holes. I went to the pile of ivory and took a handful. Slowly I went from hole to hole, planting a tooth in each, covering it, and lightly tamping the earth. By dawn I had sowed a hundred teeth.

I had no time to plant the rest. Before my astounded eyes, metal spikes pushed out of the earth. As I watched, a hundred armed men grew swiftly from the holes and stepped out on the field. Each man wore a helmet, breastplate, and shin greaves, wore a shield on his arm and a dagger at his belt, and carried a double-headed battle-ax. Huge, ferocious-looking men. They glared about suspiciously, not knowing where they were. I crouched behind a tree, watching.

They were blank-faced, boiling with energy. They prowled about, shouldering one another. They paired off and began to fence with their axes, dealing blows that would have smashed an ordinary warrior to the ground; easily parried such blows; and broke off to fight with someone else. Ax clanged on shield. Men grunted, snarled, bellowed, made every sound except speech. They used their axes and daggers, not as men use weapons, not as specialized tools, but as a bull uses its horns, a tiger its claws—with utter naturalness and complete ferocity.

Should I show myself? Would I last a second? Why wasn’t I melting into the underbrush and slithering away? I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I could not.

These men had a claim on me. Serpent seed and self-harvested they were, but it was I who had planted them and had been instructed to do so by my oracular staff. Once again I should have to imitate courage.