“We wanted to practice with our swords,” Hylas added. His unintended crude joke twisted my stomach with fresh embarrassment and made Herakles laugh so loudly that a crowd of the Argo’s crew took notice and started toward us from the campfires. I didn’t wait to see if my brothers were among the curious. I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I had the bulk of the Argo between me and everyone else. After a while, when the noises from shore subsided, I peeked around the ship’s prow and watched the men drift back toward their own fires.
“What do you think, Eunike?” I whispered to the starlit face of the carved Pythia looming above my head. “Do you think it’s safe for me to go back?” I calmed myself by imagining that my friend was really there to hear me. Go back, Helen, Eunike’s voice whispered through my mind. Back, but not to your own campfire, not with Herakles there. You know him, he’ll keep making those “jokes” about you and Hylas all night! If you want sleep, find your bed elsewhere.
As I walked back toward the fires on the beach, I noticed one in particular, far smaller than the others, set apart, with only one man beside it. I approached curiously and recognized the Colchian shipbuilder himself, all alone.
He hadn’t lied about those accursed keen ears of his. I thought I’d been moving cautiously beyond the firelight, with a hunter’s tread, but he looked in my direction at once and said, “Do you want to talk or do you want to stare out of the darkness like a scruffy little owl?”
“I want to sleep.” I came into the firelight. “But I wouldn’t say no to talk, or to a good story.”
“A story?” His grizzled eyebrows rose. “Don’t you get enough of those from that muscle-bound Theban?”
“I’ve had my fill of Herakles’ words for the day,” I replied, sitting down beside him. “The only tales he tells are about himself.”
“What sort of story would you rather hear?”
“Tell me about your home,” I said. “Tell me about Colchis and the Fleece.”
“Haven’t you heard all about it already? The flying ram that saved my father? The unsleeping dragon that guards the Golden Fleece? Jason spins that yarn all the time, as if it belongs to him.”
“That’s why I’d rather hear it from you, Argus,” I said. “I want the truth.”
“And you know you’ll never get that from Jason, eh? Smart…boy.” His clumsy grin winked briefly in the firelight before he began his tale. “My father and his sister, Helle, did escape a stepmother who was plotting to kill them, but solely thanks to their old nurse’s husband. He was a Phoenician merchant whose ship was called the Ram, bound for the gold trade at Aea, chief city of the Colchians. He smuggled the children aboard and that was that. Poor Helle was lost overboard in a storm, but my father arrived safely, dressed like the prince he was. He grew up to marry the king’s oldest daughter, who died when I was born.”
“So you’re a Colchian prince, Argus?” I said.
“Am I?” His face clouded. “Let’s just say that my father’s troubles with his stepmother taught him nothing. Once we reach Aea, you’ll hear rumors about how the royal women worship the dark goddess Hecate, how they’re all sorceresses, witches, and expert poisoners. Well, sly words can be poison, too. I was scarcely older than you when Father’s second wife tried to have her son inherit everything. She ripped her dress, battered herself black and blue, then yowled that I’d ravished her. My father didn’t seek proof nor let me defend myself, he just told me to be thankful he was limiting my punishment to exile.” Argus gave a humorless chuckle. “He didn’t spare my life out of fatherly love. Lord Aetes would kill him if he shed the blood of a royal grandchild.”
I gazed into Argus’s weathered face and saw nothing but remembered pain and betrayal in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
He gave me a hug so swift that it was over before I realized he’d done it. “Nonsense, friend. Keeping silent about the past won’t make it better. All you wanted to hear about was the Fleece.”
“But there is no Golden Fleece. Only the Ram, bound for gold trade. You said so.”
“No one Golden Fleece,” he responded, shaking a finger at me. “Colchis is rich in gold. It washes down in flakes out of the mountains. Men drop woolly sheepskins into the streams, and when they pull ’em out again, the fleeces glitter like little suns!”
“What about the unsleeping dragon?” I asked.
Before he could reply, we both heard the crunch of approaching footsteps and my brothers lurched into the circle of firelight. I prepared to bolt, but Polydeuces uttered a ground-shaking belch, tripped on nothing, and sprawled forward on top of me. He reeked of unwatered wine.
Castor giggled. “Now look wha’ you did,” he declared, sweeping his arms wide apart. “We heard Argus tellin’ story ’bout the Fleece, all we want’s to come listen, an’ you crush poor ol’—ol’—whoever that is. I tol’ you, you drink too—too—too mush Herakles’ wine. Here, I help you up, boy.” He took three steps and fell over Polydeuces just when I’d gotten hold of his shoulders and was shoving him away. Both of my brothers flattened me in a human landslide. Argus howled with laughter.
“What’s going on over there?” Jason’s harsh voice cut through the night. I peered through a tangle of my brothers’ limbs and saw him burst into Argus’s campsite. I disliked Jason, but he did put effort into maintaining order among the Argonauts, asea or ashore. When he grabbed Castor and hauled him off me, I could have kissed his hands with gratitude.
Polydeuces got to his feet, unaided but wobbling. “Accident,” he said. I took advantage of the moment by sidling out of the light crab-fashion, my rump just a finger-span off the ground. I kept a watchful eye on my brothers as I edged away, but my backward retreat ended with a thump as I ran into a massed barricade of legs. The Argonauts had found their evening’s entertainment.
“You again? This is what comes of letting pretty boys on board an honest ship,” Herakles bellowed. He grabbed my arm and pulled me upright. “Nephew, where are you? If you don’t know how to keep this weapons bearer of yours from sowing trouble, I might have to take him off your hands.”