Jason and Medeia by John Gardner

steal, and leave it for him to decide what worth
    it was.
    I wouldn’t be the first great lord, God knew, who’d
    gotten his start
    marauding. I gathered my crew together, and with the
    first fair wind,
    we sailed. We were lucky. Good breezes most of the
    way, good hosts …
    â€œWe learned quickly. If men came down to us with
    open arms,
    glad to see strangers, eager to hear of our sea
    adventures,
    we made ourselves their firm friends—praised them to
    the skies,
    fought beside them if they happened to have some
    war in progress,
    drank with them, gave them our shoulders later when
    they stumbled, climbing
    to bed. And when the time for leaving came, they’d
    give us
    gifts, the finest they had—they’d load up our boat to
    the gunnels,
    throw in a barge of their own—and we’d stand on the
    shore with them, moaning,
    tears running down our cheeks, and we’d hug them,
    swearing we’d never
    forget. When we sailed away we’d wave till the haze
    of land
    was far below the horizon. They were no jokes, those
    friendships.
    Sooner than anyone thought, I’d prove how firm they
    were,
    when all at once I had need of the men I’d fought beside, sung with half the night, or tracked down women
    with—
    princes my own age, some of them, or second sons, nephews of kings, like myself, with no inheritance but nerve—courage and talent to spare—and their old
    advisors,
    sea-dog uncles, friends of their fathers, powerful fighters who’d outlived the centaur war, seen war with the
    Amazons,
    and now, like dust-dry banners in a trunk, waited, their
    glory
    dimmed.
    â€œSo it was with friends. But if, on the other hand, we landed and men came down at us with battle-axes, stones and hammers, swords, we’d repay them blow
    for blow
    till the rock shore streamed with blood—or we’d row
    for our lives, and then
    creep back when darkness came, invisible shadows
    more soft
    of foot than preying cats, and we’d split their skulls.
    We’d sack
    their towns, stampede their cattle in the vineyards till
    not one vine
    stood straight; and so we’d take by force what they
    might have made
    more profitable by hurling it into the sea before we came. Yet it wasn’t the best of bargains on either
    side.
    Both of us paid with lives, and more than once we lost a ship. Besides, the booty we snatched and hauled
    aboard
    was mediocre at best—far cry from the hand-picked
    treasures
    given with love by friends. Sometimes when the sea
    was rough
    the loot we’d loaded on the run would clatter and slide,
    and our weight
    would shift, and we’d scratch for a handhold, watching
    the sea comb in.
    â€œWe learned. We were out three years. When we
    turned at last for home,
    we had seven ships for the one we’d started with. I’d
    earned
    my keep, I thought: a house like any lord’s, at least, and some small say in my uncle’s court I figured wrong. Sour milk and rancid honey it was, in the eyes of Pelias.
    â€œThe king had gotten the solemn word of an oracle
    that he’d meet his death through the works of a man
    he’d someday see
    coming from town with one bare foot. It was soon
    confirmed.
    Just after we landed, I was fording the Anauros River,
    making
    for town and the palace beyond, when I lost one sandal
    in the mud.
    It was stuck fast, gripped as if by the hand of old Hades seizing at a pledge. The river was flooded—it was a
    time of thaw—
    so I left it there. Pelias was giving a great banquet for his father Poseidon and the other gods—or all but
    Hera—
    when I came where he sat, his lords and ladies all
    crowded around him,
    dressed to the nines, like a flock of exotic birds—long
    capes
    more brilliant than precious stones, deep blue, sharp
    yellow, scarlet—
    eating and laughing, plump as the mountainous clusters
    of grapes
    the slaves bore in. I bowed to him, dressed in