8. Underground Rockstar
"Orpheus of Thrace. That's who I am."
Silver-white hair, brushed a hundred times if it had been brushed once. A tortoise-shell lyre slung from his shoulder.
Bard of Thrace. Son of the Muse Calliope.
Status: Severe hipster. Handle with care.
I know this one. Even a guy who'd only skimmed a children's learning comic knew the name. He was the specialist you called when the mood had died completely—Greece's greatest atmosphere engineer. Put plainly, the superstar of the age.
So why is a celebrity like that standing outside my door?
Presumed to be staying in Iolcus as an invited performer for the Grand Festival of Poseidon.
He likely heard the rumors of the user's expedition and stopped by while he was at it.
"...You're the one who sang the hymn at the Poseidon Festival, right?"
"The festival... yes. A festival it was. A hymn praying for the king's prosperity in the morning, a merchants' march at noon, and by evening a lewd little ditty offered up to nobles tearing into fat pork at their drinking party... haah."
Orpheus lowered those long lashes and let out a sigh.
"I think I might vomit."
"Sorry?"
"There is no soul in it. Applause pours down, and all that rings in my ears is the clink of silver. I wanted to make art. Raw song, dripping blood! Songs from a bottom no one has ever gone down to see!"
Orpheus's eyes flickered, bright and unfocused.
"But all the world demands of me are glossy festival hymns, and deceitful tunes that package the counterfeit valor of heroes..."
What is this. A rock star with burnout?
In that instant the petty-scheming circuits in my head spun up at full throttle.
Orpheus. The highest-performance speaker of the age, commanding an audience of men, beasts, and even trees. In a world with no social media and no video sites, he was an influencer capable of going massively viral.
This is it.
If I could get that mouth to sing, across all of Greece, just how horrific and hopeless a suicide run this expedition was, the applicants would dry up to nothing. No one to pull an oar, and the ship wouldn't clear the harbor by so much as a handspan.
"Mr. Orpheus! Perfect timing! Come in, come in! How about some honey water? Wonderful for the throat."
The user is wearing that vile smile again.
Quiet. This time it's actually perfect.
You said the same thing last time.
I sat Orpheus down and launched into the performance of a lifetime.
"The real tragedy you're looking for? It's right here."
"...A tragedy, you say?"
"Yes. The Black Sea expedition? The Golden Fleece? All packaging. A trap King Pelias set to kill me!"
Orpheus's fingers froze on the lyre strings.
"I'm an unemployed nobody who's never properly held a sword in his life. Crew? Don't have any. A ship? There's a talking chunk of wood nailed into the prow. Do you know what the Black Sea is? Water black as squid ink, waves the size of houses, and every kind of monster leaping out to chew the hull apart!"
I sprayed spit and dumped out every maritime disaster I had ever scraped together from documentaries in my past life.
"The food will rot in three days and boil with maggots! Scurvy will collapse your gums, and you'll have to row while spitting blood and pus! And get this—there aren't even any oranges in the world yet!!"
"Oh..."
"Men wetting their throats with seawater because the drinking water's gone! A hellscape of sailors trapped under a sinking hull, clawing at the planks until their nails tear off! This is a suicide squad, plain and simple!"
I hauled in a breath and checked his color.
"So I'm begging you. Tell the world this gruesome truth! Just as it is, in a song! Don't let innocent young men who don't know any better get hooked and die like dogs!"
Yes. Spread it to the ends of the earth. Jason's ship is a death trap! Do not board!
Orpheus's lips trembled.
And then—
"...Ahh."
Tears welled along his lashes.
"Ruin... the refusal of dominion... death...! Rotten bread and black waves, blood bursting from the gums...! Ah, Apollo! The darkness crouched behind the brilliant light was here all along!"
"...What?"
"A raw tragedy without a single deceit...! To think you would gift me a despair this pure! Prince Jason, you are a true poet of the dark!"
Orpheus seized my hand and shook it furiously.
"I understand. I will sing it exactly as it is! So that every soul in Iolcus, every man in all Hellas, can smell the stink of ruin!"
"Yes! That's exactly what I'm saying! Make it so no one with a working mind would ever set foot on this ship!"
"Have no fear! I shall pour out my soul to the last drop!"
Orpheus didn't so much as look back. He scampered off toward the harbor at a dead run.
I was watching the fluttering hem of his chiton with deep satisfaction when pink text flickered in the corner of my vision.
A truly splendid piece of media spin.
"You saw his eyes, right? He caught the bug so hard he bolted. Now a nasty rumor is going to spread all over town—board the Argo and you die like a dog."
Do not underestimate human cognitive dissonance, or the hunger for a story. Mortals afflicted with art-sickness possess particularly dangerous neural circuitry.
"Oh, give it a rest. Either way, the rumor is going to be a bad one."
Hammers rang from the shipyard, tang, tang, but that was none of my business. However fast the ship was finished, without people it was an empty shell.
That night, for once, I stretched my legs out and lay down.
That night. On the sandbar where the Argo was beginning to show her grandeur.
Orpheus dropped to his knees in front of the ship. Sea wind tore his silver-white hair into a tangle.
My whole life, I sang other people's happiness on commission.
Wedding hymns for kings. Dedication songs for temples. Entertainment at noble banquets. Cheerful tunes to open the market.
He rasped the lyre strings.
Ding—
Not a clear chord. A dissonance that scraped the eardrums raw.
"Kings told me to sing of immortality. Warriors ordered me to sing that the blood on their blades was glory. But that man... Prince Jason alone shoved the smell of his own ruin in my face and did not hide it."
Board the ship, and you die. Your bones rot, your flesh tears, and you sink to the bottom of the sea. And knowing that, the man still meant to launch her. A lonely lead, bound for the end of the world.
"Fate... dominion... and deceit...!"
Blood threaded the whites of Orpheus's eyes.
"A true man's tragedy! An epic with no pretty varnish! The stage I have searched for all my life was here!"
With a trembling hand he lifted the lyre.
"Sing, O goddess, of the men who walk of their own feet into that black wave!"
"Abandon any hope of coming back alive!"
"The Golden Fleece is nothing but a shroud soaked in blood!"
The oak of Dodona drowsily opened its eyes.
"...What is this. Who's making a racket in the middle of the night... wait. That lyre. It's actually pretty good."
Opening external output. Audio amplification will be provided.
An unseen power seeped in along the wood-grain, and the oak threw its throat wide before it even knew what it was doing.
Wooooom—
The hull sang along with the lyre's aftertone.
Orpheus flinched and lifted his head.
"...The ship answered?"
The corner of his mouth tore all the way back to his ear.
"Even the Argo wishes me to sing her death! Ah, Muses! Behold my fingertips now!"
Chwang—!
The instant he struck the first string, thunder burst down the sacred tree's amplification line and raked the ground. A sound far past anything one lyre could make. The roar cleared the sandbar and the hills and stretched across the whole Thessalian plain.
"Let him who fears death hide behind his mother's skirts!"
"Only he who digs his own grave shall set foot upon the Argo!!"
Something like thunder rolled all night.
Zeus must have gotten caught cheating on Hera again. I stuffed my ears with the pillow and rolled over.
Only when the sun hung straight overhead did I wrench my eyes open around a jaw-splitting yawn. A maid had brought preserved figs and goat's milk, and I took my time filling my stomach.
"Ah. Peace."
Orpheus had bolted yesterday so thoroughly inspired that by now the city had to be thick with the rumor that Jason's ship was a death trap. Forget applicants—the laborers might have fled in terror too.
"Maybe I should wander out and enjoy the sight of the recruitment office shutting its doors."
I tossed the leopard pelt roughly over my shoulders and left the palace with a light step.
The air outside was wrong. Streets that ought to have been empty were a solid mass of bodies. Men were sprinting in one direction as if they'd lost their minds.
"Hurry! We'll lose the front seats!"
"This might be the last show!"
...Seats? What seats?
WAAAAAAAH!!
A roar broke from the harbor.
"...The hell. Is there another festival today?"
Direct confirmation is recommended.
Why do you sound like that. Why do you seem excited.
I swallowed the bad feeling and ran for the harbor.
The moment I reached the square in front of the shipyard—
Zing— jjjjzing— KWAAAAANG!
Distortion you would only have heard at a rock festival in my past life was shaking the square apart.
A makeshift wooden stage had been thrown up directly beneath the Argo's prow, and Orpheus on top of it was one breath from passing out. His hair was pasted to his cheeks with sweat, and his chiton was torn down to the shoulder. In that state he was lashing the lyre and roaring.
"WOOOOOOH!!"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Thousands of men packing the square threw their fists up as one and stomped the earth.
I clutched at my dropped jaw.
"...Hey."
Yes, wise captain.
Nnnnnng—!
"Why is the lyre making electric-guitar noises?"
Resonance with the oracular circuit in the oak prow has amplified the sound pressure.
Orpheus's current frequency is stimulating the testosterone of all Thessaly.
Performance duration: 14 hours elapsed. The artist's vitality is a concern.
"So that thunder last night was this?"
The user's request, "wide-area broadcast of terror," has been faithfully executed.
"I never requested that! Did I? Whatever—that is not what I meant! Shut it off! Pull the speaker cable, now!!"
The Argo has already guaranteed live-house support through the end of the performance. Trust with the artist is a heavy thing.
"Trust, my ass! Who gave you permission to sign a contract!!"
For reference, the audience response is extremely hot. Probability of riot if the show is stopped: 87.3%
The user is also advised to join the sing-along.
The square had already fallen into collective madness. Men crashed shoulders and bellowed at one another.
"You hear that!? Not a single one of them is coming back alive!"
"Kraaah! Now that's a real man's expedition!"
"What, you scared? Don't go and you're gay!"
"Hm?"
A Theban warrior beside him cocked his head.
"Isn't sharing love with your brothers-in-arms the manlier thing? Anyway, I'm boarding too!"
"...Now that you say it, he's right!"
"Which means we have to get on that ship!!"
WOOOOOOH!!
A drunk who'd spilled out of a tavern hoisted his cup of wine.
"Whoa! So you know the Argo expedition! It. Is. Brutal! They say when the waves hit, your bones get crushed!"
Run through Orpheus's mouth, every shipboard disaster I had described with such care had been laundered into an extreme challenge only a real man could attempt.
Translated, the trait read: Real-Man Trait: Boards the Argo.
"No..."
I shoved into the crowd and shouted.
"I said no, you lunatics! You will actually die! Go out there and you're all dead! Broken bones aren't badass, you morons—they just hurt like absolute hell!"
A slab of muscle blocking my way looked down at me, barked a laugh, and thumped my shoulder. I thought my collarbone had caved in.
"Kahahaha! Hera's feather! So you're the man from the song! Everyone hear that? Jason said it himself—everybody dies! What a heart-pounding warning! Only a man who doesn't fear death can spit out the truth!"
"No, I mean you literally die!? I'm scared!!"
WOOOOOOH!
"Jason! He who drinks down death!!!"
There was no talking to them. My perfectly sensible screams and pleas were being filtered, in the ears of those Greek machos, into provocation and a hymn to heroes.
In a corner of the square, bards come from other cities wiped their eyes and muttered Orpheus's lyrics under their breath, memorizing them. In a few days this insane Hymn of Death would be ringing through every square in Athens, Thebes, and Corinth.
Finished with the show, Orpheus staggered down off the stage.
"Prince Jason... I did it... All Hellas is answering your ruin! Listen—the sound of those men's blood boiling!!"
"You—! You wrecked the entire plan, so take responsibility!!"
"Yes. I understand."
"...Huh?"
"I will take responsibility to the very end, and sing until the expedition's last moment. So please—let me aboard the Argo."
"I'm not taking you! Get lost! Back underground! Go home to Thrace!!"
"Do not decline. A harrowing tragedy is always followed by a poet equal to it."
Orpheus smiled faintly, and then he simply passed out.
Laborers came running, loaded him onto a stretcher, and carried him off. I stared blankly up at the sky.
Forty-six empty berths.
Seats that should have stayed empty—I saw them in a hallucination, filling with the backsides of muscle-brained idiots pouring in from every corner of Greece.
"I'm screwed..."
The Argo expedition's name recognition in the Thessaly region has reached 98.7%.
Estimated time until propagation across all Hellas: three days.
The promise has been fulfilled. Not a single sane applicant will be coming.
A catastrophic success in noise marketing. So this was why you were supposed to go viral in moderation.
I was staggering in despair when it happened.
The seething thousands split clean to either side.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The gravel of the square began to shiver in fine little tremors. Footsteps heavy enough to crush the earth.
A man was walking in from the end of the parted road.
A height past six foot seven. Muscle beyond any measuring. A lion's pelt over his shoulders. An olive-wood club in his hand.
...Eep.
A combination I had seen perfectly clearly in the learning comics. Alarms went off in my skull until the fuse itself blew. Greece's strongest and most vicious human weapon, stampeding through the labors the gods had hurled at him like a man clearing every dojo on the circuit. The very name of an anger-management problem. The famous original berserker!
Why is Heracles here!?
The lion pelt came on in long strides and stopped in front of the leopard pelt.
"You the one who drinks death? Jason."