monstrous self-centredness.
‘He’ll do anything, go anywhere, for fame. He’ll accept any challenge for self-aggrandisement. He ignores the gods at his whim, and argues with them all the time. He calls himself the “sower of seed and future song”. Can you believe that? He has forty sons, as many daughters, all of them bastards, and left each of them with an account of his deeds and heroisms to date, with instructions that they should spread the stories to the four quarters of the world just as soon as they can walk and talk! He’s only here to help Jason find this sacred golden fleece because some god or other whispered that this particular quest might be the best remembered beyond his days. It would be unthinkable not to be a part of it, therefore. After all, who will remember the rest of the crew?’
He fell silent. Brooding.
‘Ego … ergo, Argo, eh?’ I suggested with a smile.
Hylas laughed, the mood of desperation broken. I was surprised, indeed impressed, that he had understood the western dialect of the simple joke.
‘Something like that,’ he agreed. ‘Something like that. But I tell you, Antiokus, on my life: at the first opportunity, the first landfall, I’m making good my escape. If I seem to have deserted Jason, it will not have been through any lack of courage for the quest. Will you remember that? I feel I can trust you. This is no life I’m leading … my dreams are filled with wonders, visions, and strange speech—and I come close to understanding them all! I need to find them for myself. I am being directed. But how can I explore the world the gods have granted me when I’m roped to an ox-balled man-boar who wears nothing but a cloak made from the pelts of wildcats, and shits as he walks along because he says it saves time on his journeys?’
‘A very good question,’ I reassured Hylas. ‘A good question several times over, in fact.’
Hylas’s dreams were his gate to a broader, deeper world than that of the mountains and valleys of his own home. He had the inbuilt talent to digest strangeness and turn it into the familiar. He was a natural interpreter. And though he was by no means alone in this ability—Jason’s earlier point to me—he was unusual in being tied by the heart to a man, an adventurer, a ‘gods-favoured’—Heracles—whose deeds were beginning to be known even as far as Hyperborea.
‘I’ll assist you,’ I added. ‘Just ask me for help when you need it. But you must promise never to reveal to anyone what I do for you, or how I did it. Should I do it.’
‘On my shield!’ the youth whispered with earnest gratitude, and a little curiosity which soon faded behind a smile of relief. ‘You’ve given me some hope, Antiokus. A little courage too. Something to nurture. Good for the heart. Thank you! You’re shaving the wood too shallow, by the way. At this rate it’ll take until winter. Here, give the oar to me. I’ll do it for you.’
He ran from the ship when we moored on the Cianian coast, near Mount Arganthon, a full month later when the voyage was well under way, and I tricked Heracles into thinking his young companion had been taken and drowned by nymphs from a pool in the woods. The pool was small and sweet and the nymphs enticing, but they were wholly innocent of any murder.
They fled down to the mud when Heracles stabbed the pool with his spear a thousand times, screaming abuse. He drank a flagon of vinegar and pissed and puked into the savaged waters. He left the Argo immediately after that, to wander aimlessly for a while, ignoring the gods as usual, his heart broken.
When he had gone, Hylas crept back on board from his hiding place and we put him ashore some days later at the mouth of the river Acheron, at his own request. After that, I don’t know what happened to him. But I missed his bright spirit and good humour.
That was later, after Argo had begun her quest. But at the dockside in Pagasae, with my own oar now finished by the same
‘He’ll do anything, go anywhere, for fame. He’ll accept any challenge for self-aggrandisement. He ignores the gods at his whim, and argues with them all the time. He calls himself the “sower of seed and future song”. Can you believe that? He has forty sons, as many daughters, all of them bastards, and left each of them with an account of his deeds and heroisms to date, with instructions that they should spread the stories to the four quarters of the world just as soon as they can walk and talk! He’s only here to help Jason find this sacred golden fleece because some god or other whispered that this particular quest might be the best remembered beyond his days. It would be unthinkable not to be a part of it, therefore. After all, who will remember the rest of the crew?’
He fell silent. Brooding.
‘Ego … ergo, Argo, eh?’ I suggested with a smile.
Hylas laughed, the mood of desperation broken. I was surprised, indeed impressed, that he had understood the western dialect of the simple joke.
‘Something like that,’ he agreed. ‘Something like that. But I tell you, Antiokus, on my life: at the first opportunity, the first landfall, I’m making good my escape. If I seem to have deserted Jason, it will not have been through any lack of courage for the quest. Will you remember that? I feel I can trust you. This is no life I’m leading … my dreams are filled with wonders, visions, and strange speech—and I come close to understanding them all! I need to find them for myself. I am being directed. But how can I explore the world the gods have granted me when I’m roped to an ox-balled man-boar who wears nothing but a cloak made from the pelts of wildcats, and shits as he walks along because he says it saves time on his journeys?’
‘A very good question,’ I reassured Hylas. ‘A good question several times over, in fact.’
Hylas’s dreams were his gate to a broader, deeper world than that of the mountains and valleys of his own home. He had the inbuilt talent to digest strangeness and turn it into the familiar. He was a natural interpreter. And though he was by no means alone in this ability—Jason’s earlier point to me—he was unusual in being tied by the heart to a man, an adventurer, a ‘gods-favoured’—Heracles—whose deeds were beginning to be known even as far as Hyperborea.
‘I’ll assist you,’ I added. ‘Just ask me for help when you need it. But you must promise never to reveal to anyone what I do for you, or how I did it. Should I do it.’
‘On my shield!’ the youth whispered with earnest gratitude, and a little curiosity which soon faded behind a smile of relief. ‘You’ve given me some hope, Antiokus. A little courage too. Something to nurture. Good for the heart. Thank you! You’re shaving the wood too shallow, by the way. At this rate it’ll take until winter. Here, give the oar to me. I’ll do it for you.’
He ran from the ship when we moored on the Cianian coast, near Mount Arganthon, a full month later when the voyage was well under way, and I tricked Heracles into thinking his young companion had been taken and drowned by nymphs from a pool in the woods. The pool was small and sweet and the nymphs enticing, but they were wholly innocent of any murder.
They fled down to the mud when Heracles stabbed the pool with his spear a thousand times, screaming abuse. He drank a flagon of vinegar and pissed and puked into the savaged waters. He left the Argo immediately after that, to wander aimlessly for a while, ignoring the gods as usual, his heart broken.
When he had gone, Hylas crept back on board from his hiding place and we put him ashore some days later at the mouth of the river Acheron, at his own request. After that, I don’t know what happened to him. But I missed his bright spirit and good humour.
That was later, after Argo had begun her quest. But at the dockside in Pagasae, with my own oar now finished by the same
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