Iolaus wasn’t in the mood for inconvenient reminders. “I’ll thank you later, if you’re alive to hear it. Now get back to the ship before something else hap—”
A fresh war cry from one of the remaining riders tore the air, loud and imperious enough to draw everyone’s attention. Spear in hand, horse dancing sideways along the tide line, the warrior shouted harsh foreign words. The unmistakable command made the others turn sharply away from battling the Argo’s crew and gallop back up the beach to where their comrades still circled that small rising column of smoke. I think there must have been thirty of them still mounted, but I had no time to count them before they were gone. They didn’t slow the horses’ pace when they leaned over to sweep dismounted fighters up behind them on their steeds. Some of the warriors who’d been unhorsed even managed to sling the bodies of their slain and wounded comrades up and across the horses’ backs before saving themselves.
Our men gave chase, as if they had any real hope of overtaking horses. A few of the riders strung their bows and fired off hissing flights of arrows to discourage pursuit. I heard yelps of pain and much cursing, and I saw several men stop short as the darts sliced their flesh. Zetes fell, clutching his thigh. Soon the riders were nothing but a retreating tumult of flying hooves, sand, and stones, and those wild, hawklike war cries.
“You’re safe. Thank the gods.” Milo appeared at my side, dripping wet, his face scratched and battered. With a shamefaced smile he added, “I fell off the ship.”
“Another one who won’t obey me?” Iolaus growled. He turned his back on us and started up the strand, falling in with the rest of the Argonauts. We followed.
As I walked, I wiped sweat from my eyes and viewed the aftermath of my first battle. Besides the warrior I’d fought and Iolaus had slain, there were seven colorfully clad bodies on the beach. The retreating riders hadn’t been able to reclaim all of their dead. We’d lost three of our own, an unexpectedly low price to pay for victory.
We soon reached the place that the riders had been circling. Now that the chaos of combat was over and the dust settled, I could see that it was an altar, a heap of blood-streaked stones crowned by a small, brightly burning fire. Five more men lay sprawled around it, shields scattered, lifeless fingers still curled around the hilts of their swords. They were none of our crew.
Behind the altar, a company of armed guards stood around an old man whose richly ornamented robes and heavy gold collar, rings, and diadem marked him for a king. He held his head unnaturally high, and kept jerking it from side to side in quick, birdlike movements. “What’s happening?” he cried fearfully. “Have they gone? Am I safe? Will they come back? I order you, tell me what’s going on!” His eyes were as white as his hair. He was blind.
Jason pushed his way to the king’s side. “Greetings, Lord,” he said. “I am Prince Jason of Iolkos. I’ve seen to it that you’re safe from those marauding horsemen.” He looked as proud as if he’d won the fight single-handed.
The king burst into cackling laughter. “Don’t you Iolkans take trophies from your fallen enemies?”
“‘Trophies’—?” Jason was confused.
“My grandfather told me that we Thracians used to take heads.” The king’s grin revealed half a mouthful of darkly yellowed teeth. “Now we just take helmets.”
Frowning, Jason signaled one of the crew to fetch a helmet from among the fallen raiders. The man raced off to obey. His cry of utter shock made the old man laugh until he wheezed. “You didn’t fight marauding horsemen, Jason of Iolkos. You didn’t fight men at all.”
That night, the fortified citadel above the harbor rang with the sound of celebration as blind Lord Phineas gave us a feast so lavish that even Herakles was satisfied. The great formal chamber in the center of his palace was a sorry, dark, smoky place compared with those I knew, but the food was good. While we ate and drank, the old Thracian king told us all about the women warriors we’d battled.
“Unnatural creatures,” he said, holding his silver goblet with both hands. “They live far north of here, on the shores of the Unfriendly Sea, but they come south on raiding parties whenever it suits them. Wild as she-wolves, and their men are worse for not making those mad females behave like proper women. They don’t let their daughters marry until after they’ve drawn a man’s blood in battle. After that, they marry anyone they like, as if they didn’t have fathers or brothers to find husbands for them! Well, at least you men saw to it that there’d be a few less of them to breed the next generation of Harpies!”
“‘Harpies’?” I whispered the unfamiliar word to Orpheus. He was seated next to me in the most shadowy part of the hall, far from my brothers. The Thracians didn’t waste time seating guests according to their rank or how much the king wanted to honor them. Lord Phineas had commanded Jason to sit to his right, Herakles to his left, and allowed the rest of us to find places that suited us.
“It means someone who snatches things away,” he replied. “The way a falcon snatches a rabbit.”
Later on, Orpheus stood beside the hearth fire in the center of the hall and sang about the day’s adventure. On his lips, the northern raiders were transformed from swift, deadly riders to winged and taloned monsters, part hawk, part woman. Because they could fly so high that spears and arrows couldn’t reach them, only men with the blood of the gods in their veins could end the havoc they caused. Luckily, a ship of heroes came ashore to rid the land of the hideous creatures. Zetes and Kalais, the sons of Boreas, had inherited the North Wind’s ability to fly and soon defeated the Harpies. They would trouble good Lord Phineas no more.