Free Nobody's Prize by Esther Friesner Page B

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 horse
men,
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.
    Orpheus finished his song, and the men cheered and banged their fists on the tables so loudly that it seemed like they’d bring the roof down in pieces. As for me, I kept my mouth shut and my arms folded. Orpheus noticed my frosty look when he sat back down. “You didn’t like it,” he murmured.
    “They deserved better,” I replied stiffly. “They were brave fighters.”
    “I thought I made that clear. Just look at Zetes over there, grinning ear to ear in spite of a nasty arrow wound that probably still burns like Hephaestus’s own forge-fires. It might leave him half lame for life, but he won’t mind, because in my song, he owns the