John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

north,

o starboard.

“We reached the foreland of the Khersonese,

where we met strong wind from the south. We set our

sails to it

and entered the current of the Hellespont. By dawn

we’d left

the northern sea; by nightfall the Argo was coasting

in the straits,

with the land of Ida on our right; before the next

day’s dawn,

we’d left Hellespont behind. And so we came to the land of Kyzikos, King of the Doliones.

“Kyzikos had learned,

by the sortilege of a local seer, that someday a band of adventurers would land, and if not met kindly,

would leave

his city on fire, the best of his soldiers dead. He was not a friendly man — his dark eyes snapped like embers

breaking—

a man in no mood, when we landed, to waste his

time on us.

He was newly married that day to the beautiful and

gentle Kleite,

daughter of Percosian Merops, to whom he’d paid a

dowry

fit for the child of a goddess. Nevertheless, when word of our landing came, he left his wife in the bridal

chamber,

mournfully gazing in her mirror, pouting — baffled,

no doubt,

that the man cared more for strangers’ talk than for

all her art,

all the labor of her tutors. But the young king bore in

mind

the words of his seer, and so came down, all labored

smiles,

and after he learned what our business was, he offered

his house and

servants and begged us to row in farther, moor near

town.

From his personal cellar he brought us magnificent

wine, and from

his own vast herds, fat lambs, the tenderest of

weanlings, plump

and sweet with their mothers’ milk. We went up to

dinner with him.

“I asked, as we ate with him: Tell us, Kyzikos: what

will we meet

that we ought to be ready for, north of here? What

strange peoples

live between here and Kolchis, tilling the fields, or

hunting?

‘The handsome young king thought, then said: ‘I can

tell you of all

my neighbors’ cities, and tell you of the whole

Propontic Gulf;

beyond that, nothing.’ He glanced at his seer. Tour

crew should be warned

of one rough gang especially — the people who keep Bear Mountain, as we call it here, the wooded, rocky rise at the tip of our own island. We’d’ve had hard going

with them,

living so close, if Poseidon weren’t a shield between us, father of our line. They’re a strange people, lawless,

blood-thirsty—

true barbarians; nothing at all like us, believe me! They no more understand our civilized laws of

hospitality

than cows know how to fly. Great earthborn monsters, amazing to look at. Each of the beasts is

equipped

with six great arms, two springing from his shoulders,

four below—

limbs coming out of their hairy, prodigious flanks.

They look

like spiders, in a way, but their bug-eyed heads are the

heads of men,

and their hands, except for the hair, are constructed

like human hands.

Their penises are long and double, and the cullions hang like barnacles on a ship just beached, dark tumorous

growths.

Ravenous feeding and raping are all those monsters

know.

Stay clear of them, that’s my advice. No god ever talks to that fierce crowd: no priest advises their violent hearts to gentleness, respect for what the gods love.’

“I pressed him,

asking what lay still further north. He told me all he knew. At last, thanking Kyzikos a thousand times for his kindness, we went to our beds. I saw him

speaking with his seer,

smiling happily. We were, the seer was telling him, the ones. Or so I found later.

“In the morning. I sent six men

to climb to the higher ground, in the hope of learning

more

of the waters we’d soon be crossing. I brought the

Argo round,

edging the shore of the island, heading north, to meet

them.

“We’d badly underestimated the earthborn savages. Watchful as they were, my men didn’t see them sneaking

around

from the far side of the mountain, slipping through

the trees like insects,

and then suddenly hurtling away down the slope like

pinwheels,

arm under arm crashing like boulders through the

brush.

They reached the wide harbor and, working like lightning, began to

wall up

its mouth with stones, penning my men up like cows.

Luckily,

Herakles was there with the six. He snatched out arrows, bent back his recurved bow and, fast as a man could

count,

brought down seven monsters. At once, the others

turned,

hurling their lagged rocks, a hundred at a time. He fell, and their huge rocks piled around him like a Keltic

tomb. Ankaios,

giant boy, gave a wail, a bawl like a baby’s, and ran to help. Then almost as fast as they fell, he snatched

up the rocks

that buried Herakles, and hurled them back, heaving

them wildly.

We fled in terror for the open sea as the great stones

came,

rumbling slowly like elephants driven off a cliff, making a rumbling sound as they passed us, inches from our

sails. Then Koronos,

son of Kaineos whom the centaurs could not kill, ran

down

and helped Ankaios, weaker than the boy but cooler,

saner.

And now the rest got their spirits back — the mighty

brothers

Telamon and Peleus got arrows in their bows, and Butes’ spear that never missed struck down the

monsters’

chief. The monsters charged them with all their fury,

and more

than once; but the brutes were done for, squealing like

apes gone mad,

pissing and shitting as they died. On our side, we

hadn’t lost

a man — by no means Herakles! When they rolled

the stones

from his face they found him grumbling, angry that his

tooth was chipped.

We on the Argo rowed in.

“When the long timbers for a ship

have been hewed by the woodsman’s axe and laid out

in rows on the beach

and lie there soaking till they’re ready to receive the

bolts, and the carpenters

move among them, checking them, nodding with cool

satisfaction,

dropping a comment from time to time on the beauty

of the thing,

the beauty that only a craftsman can understand—

no art,

no way of life seems finer; and so it was with us that day as we walked the beach, studying the fallen

monsters,

stretched out, roughly in rows, on the gray stone beach.

Some sprawled

in a mass, with their limbs on shore and their heads

and chests in the sea;

some lay the other way round. We observed how the

arrows had struck,

how heads had been crushed, how this one had made

the mistake of running,

how that one had stood at the wrong time, and this one,

stupidly,

had pulled the spearshaft out and had needlessly bled

to death.

Then, arm in arm, like men charged with some lofty

purpose,

proud of our art, and rightly, we boarded the ship.

Behind us

vultures settled on the corpses — came down softly,

neatly,

dropping like a hushed black snowfall out of the

ironwood trees.

“We loosed the hawsers of the ship, caught the

breeze, and forged ahead

through choppy waves. We sailed all day. At dusk,

the wind

died down, then veered against us, freshened to a gale,

and sent us

scudding back where we came from, toward our

hospitable friends

the Doliones. We came to an island in the dark and

landed,

hastily casting our hawsers around high stones. Not a