Staggering around the fire holding their bowls of wine, slapping and grabbing at each other, most of them naked, singing half a dozen songs at once.

Golden bodies, thickly muscled from the oars, carved hollows, each broad back cleft by a deep valley, high sided and ridges beyond, piled and piled. Round swell of shoulders and wide chests. Legs rippling, flat-sided muscle. Some lie with each other reversed and swallowing, others mount, and all are swaying. Some are wet from the sea, most have bathed in oil, slick and glistening. A vision Medea would never have imagined, would never have been allowed to see. The most beautiful forms in firelight.

They should not be used for war, she thinks. They should be used only for this. But they’ve forgotten who saved them. There is no altar for Hekate, no offerings, no sacrifice, and though Hekate may be only rumor and story and shadow and nothing that can become angry, Medea’s power is in Hekate and so all will worship her.

Hekate! she screams. Hekate!

They shrink away, all of them, stumbling from this sudden fury. She holds her arms high and chants to the goddess, takes a piece of wood and beats at the fire, pounds flame until at one end of this great pit there are only coals. Then she steps onto the coals, dances barefoot, and the heat brings her closer. She charges at the flames where they still rise, falls back, charges again, invokes all that would fill the air, leaps free and grabs Jason and pushes him to the ground, makes him kneel to this fire and to Hekate. The Argonauts follow, and those too drunk to understand she pushes to their knees, makes them bow and thank Hekate for their deliverance. She takes a firebrand from the coals and beats them with it, breaks it over one of their backs then chooses another. They will not dishonor her god.

Medea clubs them with flame and hot coals that shatter and are flung into the night like stars burning in a smaller sky. She takes an amphora, smashes it down onto rock, and the dark wine spatters them and hisses in the fire. Let them be painted the color of blood.

They whimper and cower and wait for Hekate to rain fire, while Medea beats and burns and brands them all, marked forever. Then she runs into the forest and when she’s far enough away she falls panting to the forest floor and laughs. Iolcus will be hers. She will destroy Pelias, king of the sheep-men. Then she will rule beside Jason, and he will decide nothing. The Mycenaeans, too, will learn to obey, and the Athenians, and all others in that land. All will kneel to their barbarian queen.