Chapter 32
Into the Mist
The viewing platform creaked as Danae flexed her legs. She stretched her eyelids, blinked, then returned her face to the crack in the rock.
The gritty beach sparkled as dawn swelled over the horizon, a gentle breeze wafting through the gap in the stone. It was calm. Too calm. As if the sea was bracing itself for what was to come.
Atalanta and the Argonaut bowmen had boarded the Argo under the cover of night.
To a man, the Dolionian soldiers had pledged to fight.
Most of them submerged themselves with the remaining Argonauts on either side of the isthmus, breathing through the dart pipes.
Dolos had insisted on testing the pipes first, to make sure there were no residual smears of phármakon inside the barrels.
The last thing they needed was for half their force to pass out underwater.
Heracles had left just before first light, and Danae had watched him scale the shallow cliff with dread in her heart. She didn’t know why she was so worried. If anyone could look after themselves in a fight, it was Heracles.
The platform wobbled, and she turned to see Hylas heaving himself onto the decking.
“I’ve been ordered to stay behind with the second wave.”
“Jason’s orders?”
Hylas shot her a weary look.
She shook her head. “The man’s a fool. You should be out there with Telamon, Ancaeus and the others. You’re one of our best men.”
Hylas looked down at the planks, his cheeks reddening as they always did when she paid him a compliment. She turned back to the crack. Still no sign of Heracles returning. He should have been back by now.
“You don’t need to worry about him. I’ve seen Heracles face far worse things than a bunch of six-armed monsters. This will be sport for him.”
“I’m not worried,” she lied. “I just hate waiting.” She shifted to peer through the crack again. “I wish you could see more of the isthmus from here.”
“May I?”
She made what room she could for Hylas to shuffle in beside her. There was barely enough space for them both on the platform, and their bodies pressed together as he leaned in.
She looked at him squinting through the crack.
The hours spent on the rowing benches had drawn out the freckles on his cheeks.
His ears, always pinker than the rest of him, poked through his chestnut curls.
She remembered how it had felt, watching him slip away under the influence of the poison dart.
She couldn’t explain why, but she felt like they were made of the same clay, like there was a grain of Naxos in him.
He didn’t even know her real name, but when she was with him, she felt like Danae.
It was comforting to know that despite everything that had happened, she was still in there somewhere.
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
He turned to her. They looked at each other, but neither spoke. The silence grew thick as honey, then suddenly he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Instinctively, she jolted back, cracking her head against the cave wall.
The color drained from Hylas’s face. “I’m sorry... I... I misunderstood.”
Danae didn’t know what to say. The platform seemed to shrink in size with each moment she couldn’t muster words.
There was a roar beyond the cave. They both lurched toward the crack, and Danae pressed her eye so hard into the gap, the rock cut into her skin.
Heracles was charging along the beach, clanging a bronze shield with his sword.
Was that blood on his blade? She couldn’t tell at this distance.
The hero was running toward the isthmus, kicking sprays of pebbles in his wake.
She waited, the breath locked in her chest, but the Earthborn did not appear.
“Why aren’t they following him?”
She leaned back to let Hylas look, sagging in disappointment. Her plan had failed.
Then Hylas tensed. “I can see them!”
She pushed against him and looked through the crack.
The Earthborn poured over the cliff in a wave, like huge rats surging from a cesspit, their coarse fur glistening like oil in the morning light.
Cyzicus hadn’t done them justice. Their faces bore the snarling snouts of bears, but that was where the similarity ended.
Their movements were grotesque, bodies jerking as they scuttled on elongated arms like spiders, their claws scoring rivets in the rock.
When they reached the beach, they transferred seamlessly onto thick, muscular legs and towered above even Heracles.
There were so many of them.
“Shit, I can’t see the isthmus,” said Danae.
The Argonauts should have leaped from the water by now. Fear began to leach out of her skin. She had to know what was happening.
“Fuck Jason,” she said as she dived across the platform and lowered herself down the ladder.
“What are you doing?” asked Hylas.
“Helping our crew. Are you coming?”
He hesitated, then climbed down after her.
They hit the ground running, slipping between the stalagmites as they raced toward the entrance.
“Stop!” Dolos called after them. “Jason hasn’t given the signal!”
But his words echoed down an empty passageway. Danae and Hylas were already clambering out of the cave.
The Argonauts and Doliones had leaped from the water, their weapons clanging as metal met claw and the sea around the isthmus ran red.
From the heaps of bristly bodies Danae could see lining the sand, it looked as though the ambush had been a success.
There were still several Earthborn on the beach, but Heracles stood as a mighty gatekeeper, felling the creatures as they surged toward their kin trapped battling the Argonauts and Doliones on the isthmus.
The hero slashed down and in one motion sliced two arms off an Earthborn that had lunged toward him. The beast howled, waving its useless stumps, as Heracles swung his sword back around and drove it deep into the creature’s gut.
He was in his element. He looked like the Heracles she’d always pictured from her mother’s stories. The hero who was unstoppable.
At that moment, a slew of arrows shot over their heads and rained down on the Earthborn left on the beach. With a swell of satisfaction, Danae saw at least a dozen fall.
“What in Tartarus is that?” said Hylas.
Danae looked up, squinting against the sunlight.
Curling around a mountain in the distance, like a snake coiling around its prey, was a tendril of dense fog.
She watched it quickly blanket the land in an opaque, gray mist. Her frown deepened.
It was moving unnaturally fast. It didn’t come from the ocean, yet it raced like it was driven by a stormy sea wind.
And it was heading straight for the beach.
Despite the heat of the rising sun, her blood ran cold.
The gods had found her.
It happened so fast. Danae could do nothing but watch as the fog enveloped the cliffs then advanced on the beach. In moments no one would be able to see who they were fighting.
There was a nauseating crack from the isthmus as an Earthborn smashed open the skull of a Doliones soldier like it was a melon, while the man was distracted by the rolling mist.
Hylas unsheathed his sword. “Fall back! Fall back!”
But it was too late. Danae looked to the end of the isthmus just in time to see Heracles, up to his sword hilt in the innards of an Earthborn, be swallowed by the fog. The rest of the men froze as the mist consumed them.
Behind her, the fighters of the second wave came pouring out of the tunnel and scrambled down the rocks.
“Stop!” Her words fell unheeded as they disappeared into the mist and Hylas plunged in after them.
“Shit.” She hesitated for a heartbeat, then followed him.
The silence hit her like a wall of stone.
The noise of battle sounded very far away, like she was underwater.
She shivered. The fog was cold with the promise of death.
It was so thick it rendered her almost blind.
She stretched out her arms. Her limbs looked ghostly, fingers fading into the mist in front of her.
Was that an Argonaut moving ahead, or an Earthborn?
She fought down the fear that threatened to choke her. She had to stop them, or the fighters would be slaughtered.
Something loomed out of the mist toward her. Realizing too late she’d forgotten a weapon, she threw her arms over her head and braced herself for the rake of an Earthborn’s claws.
“Gods’ bollocks, I nearly killed you!” Telamon stood over her, his sword barely a handspan from her arms.
Heart still palpitating, she straightened up. “Have you seen Hylas or Heracles?”
“Can’t see anything in this damned fog.” He grasped her by the shoulder. “Do you know why this is happening? Is this the gods’ doing?”
Before she could respond, a claw slashed through the mist above them.
Telamon pushed her out of the way and swung his sword to meet the Earthborn’s talons.
She rolled across the sand, losing sight of them both as they disappeared into the fog.
She came to a halt bashing into something on the ground.
At first, she thought it was a fallen Earthborn, but as she leaned over the body, she realized what she’d mistaken for its fur was Ancaeus’s bearskin.
The Argonaut’s face was slack, eyes misted as the air around him.
Danae felt something warm and wet pooling around her hand.
Part of her was transported back to the bay of Corinth and the sight of Manto’s mangled corpse.
But another part knew now was not the time for guilt.
With each battle, each death, this part of her grew louder.
She closed Ancaeus’s eyes, swiftly whispered the prayer that would send him to Elysium, then took his sword and stepped over his body.
With her vision blocked, every cry, grunt and clash of metal took on its own distinctive note. But she was listening for something else.