“Why do you say that?” I asked, raising one brow.
“You mean you don’t know he’s—?” he began, but before he could tell me more, we both heard Iolaus calling him and he dashed away toward the prow, where I couldn’t follow.
I was still wondering what Milo had meant to tell me when the air rang with a shout from Lynceus, our lookout at the prow: “Fire to the west! Fire and battle!”
I ran to the mast and stared at the black smoke billowing from the shore. I could just see the walls of a royal citadel on the heights above a harbor in flames. The Argo’s crew clattered their oars together as they stood at their places, eager to know what Lynceus saw. The word battle had transformed them from a well-coordinated crew of oarsmen into a jostling mob of gawkers. Herakles pushed his way forward for the best view. I caught sight of Prince Jason himself at the prow, alternately fighting for a look at what was happening ashore and yelling at his men to return to their seats at the oars.
Iolaus detached himself from the confusion and came to join me at the mast, with Hylas tagging after. Milo remained fore, in the thick of the excitement, and I envied him bitterly.
“I see fire, yes,” Iolaus said, shading his eyes. “But battle?”
“Trust Lynceus,” Hylas replied. “He sees what he sees. Glaucus, come with me. We’ve got to give back the weapons we’ve been tending, and quickly.” When I questioned him with a look, he added, “I don’t know whose battle that is, but it’s going to be ours. Have you ever known a true hero who’d turn his back on a chance to earn glory?”
“Without even knowing who’s fighting or why?” I was astounded. “How will the men know which side to take?”
Hylas flashed a quick smile. “The winning side, of course. Herakles is with us.”
He sped aft, to his master’s stored weapons, and I dashed after. Already the men were throwing back the lids of their sea chests to retrieve the swords stored within. I heard a rumble from the prow and turned in time to see great Herakles working shoulder to shoulder with Milo, trundling out the shields that had been stacked in the space that was twin to my hiding place in the stern. While Hylas readied Herakles’ weapons, I crept farther into the space under the steersman’s post and found a pile of spears. When I dragged them into the light, there were plenty of hands ready to snatch them up.
“Give me a spear, lad, and be quick!” one man barked at me. “We’ll need spears. If my ears are right, they’ve got horses.”
When the last spear had been snatched from my grasp, I crouched with one shoulder braced against the ship’s wooden wall and drew my own sword, making sure it cleared the sheath effortlessly. The familiar feel of the hilt comforted me. One blade couldn’t win a battle, but as long as it was mine, it could be used to protect me and those I loved.
Everywhere I looked, I saw wolfish grins. Hylas was right, the men were ravenous for a fight. Even Iolaus had caught the battle fever. I saw him stride aft to give Tiphys directions for bringing the Argo to the burning shore.
Once the crew had their weapons, they slammed the lids on the wooden chests and sprang back to their places at the oars. Orpheus beat a spear against the ship’s rail, marking a quick-time rowing beat for the crew to match stroke for stroke. He raised a powerful paean to Ares, god of war, filling our ears with the promise of the immortal fame that comes to the bravest of the brave, both those who live and those who die. The men answered the end of each verse with a cheer loud enough to shake snow from the peak of Olympus. The ship flew across the water, heading straight for the burning shore.
Abruptly the booming beat of wood on wood stopped. Orpheus swallowed the next line of his blood-stirring song. Without his beat to help them keep time, the overeager men lost control of their oars. The heavy blades clattered against each other loudly, then fell still. Silence rippled over the Argo as we stared at the man who’d dared to place himself between a ship of warriors and their desired war.
Prince Jason raised the spear he’d wrested from Orpheus’s hands and rammed its haft down hard on the ship’s hull. “Turn, Tiphys!” he shouted, swinging the spear’s point north. “Turn this ship back to her proper course! Have you all forgotten why we set sail? We seek the Golden Fleece, not some petty squabble between savages! We’ll waste no time and no lives on anything but our true quest.”
For a moment it looked as if that would be the end of it. Our helmsman frowned, but he began to lean against the steering oar, turning the ship away from the smoke. The other men grumbled. We were close enough to hear the first faint sounds of fighting, the clash of metal on metal, the crackling of flames.
Then Zetes spoke up: “‘Savages’?” he echoed bitterly. “Is that what you call Thracians? Or haven’t you got the brains to know where we are? I know this coastline as well as I know my own sword arm. That’s our homeland burning!” He clapped one fist to his chest. “If you turn this ship away, I swear by the deadly waters of the river Styx, the oath that binds the gods, that you’ll see the last of me, my brother, and Orpheus as well!”
Jason’s smile was thin. “Small loyalty, small loss.” I didn’t like the contemptuous way he looked at his disgruntled crewmen, as if their grievances were hardly worth his time. “I won’t risk my ship for anything less than the Fleece.”