Jason and the Argonauts (14 page)

I stepped out from behind the tree and leaped upon a rock. “Silence!” I shouted.

All sound stopped. The men stood stock still. Every head swung toward me. The attention was total; it bristled with ferocious expectation. I understood that they had instantly, instinctively, accepted me as their leader and were awaiting orders. Their expectation robbed me of speech. No man spoke. No man moved.

“Perfect soldiers,” I thought. “Sprung from monster teeth, the ultimate weapon; planted in a battlefield, never knowing the shelter of a womb, nor the nurture of breasts, but born full-grown, untouched by tenderness. How they regard me, their eyes so fixed and blank. They are like the members of a single monstrous body and I—I—have been elected brain. They’re waiting for me, and I have nothing to say.”

They stood in shining rows, waiting. The only movement was the plumes of their helmets bending to the small wind.

“How long will they wait? I shall have to begin. Perhaps, as I hear myself speak, I’ll learn what I want to say.” I raised my voice. “Hear this. We march immediately. We go to seek the enemy wherever he may be found. We do not halt night or day but march until we find him.”

They shouted and beat their shields with their ax hafts. I raised my hand and they fell silent.

“Four of you fell saplings. Make a frame, weave it with boughs to make a litter for me. Cover it with that sheepskin. Two of you shall be litter bearers; detail to change every four hours. Move!”

The ranks broke. The men busied themselves. A group of six broke off and formed a circle about me, facing outward. I walked away. The circle moved with me.

“My bodyguards,” I thought. “They will accompany me everywhere, allow no one to approach with hostile intent—or, perhaps, any intent. Makes one feel cared for, though it might become irksome. Perhaps not.”

I mounted my litter and immediately went to sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but, awaking, knew we had come to a coastal plain.

A strong wind blew against the line of march, freighted with the smell of the sea. And the men had changed. Their regular swinging tread had become a lope. Their faces had lost their blankness, were blazing now with wild eagerness. They reminded me of a pack of hunting dogs scenting their prey.

I stood on my litter. We were moving across a great meadow. The sea glimmered in the distance. There was a brightness. I saw points of fire and heard a far sound of voices carried on the wind and a music of distant metal. Then I saw what had excited my men. An army faced them. Those were spearpoints catching the sun, armor chiming. Suddenly, with one giant voice, the men began to shout, a great clamorous yell, savage, exultant. For the first time I perceived them as human beings. For this cry was hot-blooded, spontaneous, throbbing with the terrible joy of men doing for the first time what they had been born to do.

They were killers, incredibly skilled. They fanned out, moving so swiftly that they were a blur of brass. Vastly outnumbered, they proceeded to reduce the odds. They swung out, pivoted upon themselves, cut off a forward group of the enemy, drove them into a pocket of meadow formed by an angle of bay, and hemmed them in with a hedge of iron. My men looked nothing like those they faced. Their faces were meat-red, set with eyes pale as stones; their hair was the color of brass, seeming an extension of their helmets. And they were much larger—their forearms were thicker than the Colchians’ legs.

The axes rose and fell, the heavy blades shearing through shield, helmet, skull. The Colchians screamed like cattle under the butcher’s sledge. Metal rang on metal. As soon as one group was slaughtered, the serpent-men swung out and corralled another group, and systematically slaughtered them. I was watching from my litter, unable to endure the massacre, uncertain about stopping it, and had slipped into a protective coma. Finally I roused myself.

“Stop!” I shouted.

Too late. The Colchians were a pile of corpses. My men were simply rooting among the pile, trying to find someone alive, using their knives to cut throats. They ceased at my shout and stood to attention.

I walked upon the field to see if I could find anyone alive. A figure scurried out from under a pile of bodies and began to run. He was immediately caught.

“Don’t hurt him,” I called.

He fell to his knees. “Spare my life. I was but following my leader.”

“Aye, such guiltless obedience has caused more deaths than the worst intentions. I may spare your life, but I need some information.”

“Gladly—anything I know.”

“What happened to Prince Jason and the other Argonauts?”

“I know! Yes, I do, thank the gods! They are alive, but awaiting death.”

“Do you know where they are imprisoned?”

“I can lead you right to them, merciful one.”

The men were leaning on their axes, casting tall shadows. Their hands were bloody. Blood spattered their bulging forearms. Their faces were in shadow. I raised my voice.

“Men, I thank you, and seek volunteers for a special mission: twenty of you to deliver my friends from a dungeon somewhere.”

Every man stepped forward.

“Again, my thanks. You make me proud to have been your leader. But I need only twenty and shall pick at random. This rank—number yourselves off, every second man, until you count to twenty. These shall come with me. The rest of you must go back whence you came and build a city there. Its site shall be the ring of trampled grass where the body of the serpent lies. I don’t know the source of this mandate, but a city must rise. After that, all Colchis shall be yours. And since to hold this land is to invite invasion, you shall enjoy constant warfare.”

One man shouted, “Come back and be our king!” Others took up the cry. “Come back and be our king!”

“Once more I thank you,” I said. “But I don’t think I’m meant for a throne. However, I have some regal friends—savage brawlers, too; you’d like them.”

The men beat their ax hafts against their shields and shouted, “Ekion! Ekion! Ekion!” I hadn’t realized that the syllables of my name could ring like brass.

“One by one I’m getting things I didn’t know I wanted,” I thought. And felt my heart swell with puzzled pride.

M
EDEA STOOD ON THE
beach gazing out to sea, and her eyes were pits of yellow fire. The sea—it was a barrier to her, but to her husband it was an avenue to freedom and glory. Here it was, out of an inlet on this wild shore, that his ship had slipped its mooring and sped southward bearing the Fleece. Off they had sailed, that thievish crew, taking the sacred relic that was her father’s pride and her own dowry, that fabulous booty which seven generations of pirate kings had failed to take.

But now it was she who had failed. Despite all her cunning plots, her brilliant treachery, her brutal tactics, Jason had broken out of prison with his men, fought his way to where the
Argo
was hidden, and sailed away—leaving her behind to bear his child.

She struck her swollen belly. “Child …” she muttered. “You shall be the instrument of my vengeance. If you are a boy, I shall raise you to be an assassin and aim you at your father, whom you will have been taught to hate. If you are a girl, I shall train you in witchcraft. And you shall help me brew poisons and cast spells, and together we shall torture your father, even at a distance.

“But no!” she cried, tearing at her hair. “No … no! I don’t want distance. I must close with him. Rend his face with my claws. Sink my teeth into his throat.”

She began to step in a circle, chanting:

“Wind, icy wind,

I’m as cold as you.

Wind, wind …

I am violent, too.

Wind, wind, rise for me,

Blow me over the Middle Sea
.”

A sharp breeze started, making the sand fly, stinging her face. Her black robe fluttered, her hair whipped. She laughed with joy and raised her long arms, flexing her talons as if to claw the sky.

“Wind, wind, I need to know;

Will you take me where I want to go?”

Something loomed upon the edge of the sea, black-caped, astounding. She had always been taller than men; now she had to look up, up. She heard a voice like the low howl of a hurricane just before it pounces.

“I am Boreas.”

They stood on the icy beach confronting each other. Both were clad in black. Their capes blew and billowed. His beard blew. He was cavern-eyed, a giant. Flourishing in his bleak airs, she seemed to be growing to meet him.

“Lord of tempests, mighty one, destroyer of fleets, I greet you.”

“You spoke a magic verse, calling me. There I was off another coast, preparing a fine punishment for a string of villages that had offended me—stirring up a tidal wave I was, when your song summoned me. What do you want?”

“I must cross the sea swiftly to kill my husband.”

“What have I to do with your domestic arrangements?”

“I have read certain signs that tell me you also hate the man that I hate. He is Jason the Argonaut.”

“When do you wish to leave?”

“You’ll take me?”

“Climb on my back and hold on tight.”

“Thank you, O stormy one, but I’m not quite ready yet. I need a few days to kill someone here, then I’ll be ready to go.”

“Is it Lethe, the naiad, you wish to kill?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she it is who stole Jason from you. I know … I know. I watched her doing it. I wanted her, too, but she preferred that puny thief. So my love has turned to hate also.”

“Then you will rejoice when she is dead, will you not? And that will be my fee to you for taking me across the sea.”

“I can do my own killing,” he growled. “How do you intend to catch her?”

“I have vast resources. I am a king’s daughter and Hecate’s priestess.”

“Ridiculous! You don’t have a chance of capturing her. No one takes a naiad who doesn’t want to be taken. Gods, enamored, have cast wide nets and caught only fish. A certain king of Lydia, driven mad by desire, seined all the rivers, drained the lakes, blocked up the fountains—and all he caught was a chuckle she had bequeathed the waters.”

“If you hate her, too, kill her for me.”

“I’ll kill her for myself.”

“How?”

“I haven’t decided. I can blow her lake out of its bed and roll rocks over her as she flees. Or perhaps I’ll sport with her a bit, for she is playful and bold. Offer to take her riding, invite her to step off a hill onto my shoulders as I fly past. Fly high, high, over sharp-pointed rocks, then simply shake her off. Naiads are very hard to kill, but that should do it.”

“When will this happen?”

“Soon … soon.”

“Then, when that is done, you shall take me to Iolcus so that I may dispatch my husband to his paramour in Tartarus.”

“Farewell until I return.”

The wind of his going bent the waves backward and shook the treetops.

I
T IS SAID THAT
Pelius turned purple when he heard that Jason had fought his way through chapters of monsters, had defeated the Colchian army, and was sailing home with the Fleece. His eyes bulged like grapes, his neck ballooned, all of him darkened and swelled until he simply burst. It took seven slaves working seven days and seven nights to scrub gobbets of king off the palace walls.

But there were no welcoming crowds when Jason returned to Iolcus. For the land now was stricken with drought. No rain had fallen that year, the rivers had dried, crops had withered in the field. The animals that did not die of thirst died of hunger, and people began to starve. The sea shrank back from its shore, leaving shoals of gasping fish on a sea bottom that had become loathsome beach.

Those people who did see Jason could take no hope from the sight of him. He looked as thin as any starving farmer. He walked as though in pain. His eyes glimmered like marsh water in his sunken face. But he was king now, everyone knew. He spoke very softly but with utter authority.

He did not go to the palace. He climbed to the old temple of Thundering Zeus, which was on a hill overlooking the sea. There was a stone ledge there, a kind of natural throne. Jason donned the Golden Fleece. He wore no crown, only a chaplet of roses that Lethe had woven for him and that had never died.

People were flocking to the plain now. He raised his arms and spoke to the sky.

“O great Zeus, king of the gods, whose rod is lightning, whose footfall is thunder, you who bestow and deny at your pleasure—you, O lord, turn generous again, I beseech. Send us rain to feed our crops that we may feed our children. By this pelt that was stolen from your image and that I journeyed halfway across the world to reclaim, in the sign of this Golden Fleece, I pray, lend me the power of the Ram, the power to call rain out of the dry sky.”

The people on the plain searched the sky but saw no clouds. They despaired. Strangely then, a clef of pale fire stood upon the sky, hooked down, and touched one of the temple trees with flame.

“Yes … yes … you have heard,” cried Jason. “By this burning tree, answer, answer, answer with rain!”

A faint thunder growled. The sky darkened so swiftly it was as if night had been hurled upon the earth. What fell then was not rain as they had known it, but was as if Zeus, enraged by prayer, had simply lifted a lake in each hand and hurled them down upon the earth. The very fountains of heaven were broken and spilled upon the earth.

It drank thirstily, steamed, spouted, put out green banners of joy. The rivers filled. The sea returned. Jason limped down from the hill like a drowned rat. Mobs of soaked, happy people were in the roads and the streets now, frantic to adore him. But he avoided them all and shut himself up in his chamber, giving orders that no one should be admitted.

Now that he had done what he’d had to do, he felt that he had lost everything in the doing of it. His heart was sick within him, and he didn’t know how to continue living. For Lethe was gone. The one creature he had loved on earth, the forgetful nymph, had again forgotten. She alone had been able to heal the ugly wound left by Medea. She had drained him of that foulness, taught him to breathe again, taught him to love. And then, at the moment of his greatest triumph, had vanished.