Rampage! (16 page)

‘More special gold?' said Rose. ‘Is that what you're looking for out here in the jungle?'

Medea nodded. ‘Gold that will produce enough magic to heal your father completely,' she replied. ‘The gold of El Dorado.'

‘El Dorado?' Rose turned the exotic-sounding words over in her mind, thinking. ‘I've heard that name before.'

She recalled her father in the days before he'd left with the expedition. El Dorado? Wasn't that the name of the chieftain he'd been talking about, the one who was supposed to have bathed himself in gold dust? No doubt he'd probably tried to tell her all about him, except that she hadn't wanted to hear it then and so she hadn't listened. El Dorado had been simply one more boring old archaeological someone or other, dull and dusty and dead, who'd take her father away from home again.

Now he was the person whose gold could bring her father back.

El Dorado …

Her mind ran on, the understanding spell turning
the Spanish words into English. ‘The Golden One,' she said out loud.

‘That's right,' smiled Medea. ‘El Dorado was the name given to each new chieftain of a long-lost tribe that lived somewhere around here. In the months leading up to each new crowning, the tribe's people spent all their time working the gold they'd sifted from the Amazon, making chains and medallions, crowns, torques and statues of caimans, anteaters, capybara, monkeys, ready for the ceremony. When the time came, the gold was piled on to a raft and the chosen chief, his skin bright with oil and gold dust, would sit amongst it, to be rowed out at midnight, over the dark water, by his priests. Then, as the tribesmen played shell-horns and drums from the shore, El Dorado would throw the gold into the water to ensure the happiness of the tribe.'

‘And that gold is still there?' said Rose, imagining the statues of animals shining like a golden zoo beneath the water.

‘Yes,' said Medea.

‘So where is it, this lagoon?'

Medea shrugged. ‘I have no idea,' she sighed. ‘So, it's lucky that I know how to find the man who does.'

She walked back to her steamer trunk and stooped to pull out the map she'd brought with her from her safe in the room beneath her London boutique. Rose watched, waiting as the sorceress gingerly unfurled the old paper, smoothing out its dusty surface and weighing down each corner with the pots and jars Rose had used in the spell.

‘He's here,' said Medea, pointing to a clearing on the far left of the map.

Rose studied the area for signs of a village, a mine or a loggers' camp, anywhere that the man might be living or working. Instead, there was nothing but a patch of cleared jungle marked by a row of crosses. Puzzled, she read the words scribbled in brown ink beneath the biggest one.

‘Wat Raleigh.'

The name meant nothing to her and she looked at the words written beneath it for a clue. ‘
Requiescat in pace
?'

She waited for the Latin to swirl into English. ‘Rest in peace?' She turned to the sorceress, feeling her skin prickle. ‘Isn't that what they usually write on graves?'

‘That's right,' smiled Medea.

XVII

I
S
T
HIS
T
HE
W
AY TO
A
RMADILLO
?

Is this the way to Armadillo?

All my fears are starting to billow

She’s scheming schemes in Armadillo

Where Medea waits with glee!

What’s that?

We don’t have time for a song? Oh, really? Only I thought my re-working of a classic might cheer things up a bit, what with everything being so worrying at the moment. But if you’re going to be like that about it, I shall stop.

See.

To be honest, Aries didn’t feel much like singing either. The clammy heat of the jungle pressed against his brow, his back and clutched at his swinging belly like invisible
and, frankly, very unwelcome fingers. Sweat ran off him like sheep dip, dribbling down his skin and over his knees, whilst prickly ferns attacked his hocks and sent showers of green beetles the size of Brussels sprouts cascading over his hoofs. Not only that, but a rather persistent pink butterfly that had flapped around his horns for several minutes had now chosen to settle near the tip of his tail, making him look rather like a hot, bald Eeyore, only much gloomier.

It was now over four hours since the funny little flying machine had set them down on the site of an abandoned gold mine – little more than a wasteland of cleared trees and dust – and buzzed off into the blue with a last twinkle of its wings. Of course, as he repeatedly tried to remind himself, glimpsing the sluggish Rio Trombetas twisting its way through the fern-swathed slopes, it was marvellous that flying here had shortened their trek by several days and brought them so much closer to Rose. And it had certainly been a relief to find that the plane-thing was a much cleverer invention than those waxy, feathery contraptions
Daedalus
hired out at his Underworld School of Flying
37
even if the flight had left his derrière so bruised that it now resembled a map of Greece and all her islands.

But that still didn’t stop his mind from fizzing with suspicion as he pondered what exactly could have triggered the sudden change in Jason. Despite the Argonaut’s bluster back in the Underworld, Aries was sure that Jason would have been anything but keen to track down Medea. After all, he snorted, just look at the number of wretched gifts he’d insisted on bringing with them. Questions tumbled in his head. Why had he taken so long to find them? What had suddenly made him so keen to return to the quest when he arrived at the hotel? And just why was he being so nice to Alex, who Aries knew he’d seen as only a boy, a humble potter, a zoo-hand?

Up ahead, Jason was chopping down yet another thicket of prickle ferns with a bold flourish of Achilles’s sword. Aries frowned, barely recognising the let-someone-else-do-it, is-it-over-yet? knee-knocking fraud that he’d come to know and loathe over the centuries. Because ever since Jason had stepped, green-faced, from the plane, he’d thrashed through thickets like a formidable, one-man mashing machine, swishing and bragging in equal measure.

Clearly he was Up To Something. But what? And worse, thought Aries, swallowing hard, what sort of danger did that mean for him and Alex?

Aries paused, lifting up each front hoof in turn for a scatter of scorpions to scuttle over the newly hacked path, and stared as Jason ripped more broken branches out of his way.

‘I feel like
Sisyphus,’
he announced. ‘Each time I cut
down one swathe, there’s another, twice as tough behind it. Of course, he was an old man. Luckily, I’m young and fit and strong.’

‘And modest,’ muttered Aries, clomping on again hotly.

In front of him, Alex followed Jason, holding the GPS in one hand, the shield in the other. And in case you’re wondering, unlike everyone else, who was either swishing (Jason), map reading (Alex), scowling (Aries) or crumpling up her nose and moaning about the mouldering smell of the place (the Gorgon), the snakes were in their element. Clearly thrilled by what appeared to them to be an Eat-As-Much-As-You-Can-Serpent-Canteen, they lolled out blissfully, snapping up moths and fire ants, commenting like chefs judging a cookery contest.

Aries sighed.

Either side of them, trunks of tall trees festooned with lianas rose in dizzying green walls, their branches closing over their heads like a roof, as tall and shadowy as being inside the old Parthenon.

Except a lot smellier, greener and hotter.

Oh, and livelier, of course.

Having stayed up most of the night to read Hazel’s book from cover to cover, Alex was rapidly becoming something of an expert about the rainforest. He’d already pointed out a bird-eating tarantula crawling up a tree like a furry glove towards a small red finch, and a rotted tree-hollow filled with velvety fruit bats. Five minutes ago, he’d been raving about a hulking great snake, wallowing in a slick of muddy water, that looked just
like Drako’s grand-nephew but that Alex said was actually an anaconda, capable of dislocating its jaw and eating Aries whole, making the ram certain that this Amazon place was even worse than the stinky old forest back at Kolkis where his Fleece had hung in the Sacred Oak. Sure, it had been a miserable, squelching smog-bog, but at least nothing there was likely to sting, bite or wrestle you to death for looking at it the wrong way. Better still, he’d only had to endure Jason’s company for one, albeit dreadful, night there. Not like now. He grunted, feeling his heart sink faster than one of the coconuts that every so often plunged from the trees into the river below as Jason began yet another recollection.

‘Reminds me of the time I fought the bone men!’ he declared.

SWOOSH!

‘Aiming for the knees, the neck, the ribs!’

SWISH!

‘Alex!’ yelled Aries, certain that a large and rather rubbery millipede had just landed on his forehead. ‘Something’s got me!’ He jerked his horns backwards to fling it off.

Turning back, Alex waded back through the hip-high undergrowth to take a look. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said gently. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have eaten the hat I made you.’

SLICE!

‘Clatter, clatter! Exploding bones!’ cried Jason.

‘Will you make me another?’ asked Aries, glancing
at Jason swiping down another thicket of green. ‘With ear plugs?’

‘Oh, Aries,’ said Alex, rubbing the ram’s head. He reached out and broke off a nearby palm leaf and began twisting it deftly. ‘I thought you’d be pleased! Look at him – he’s really into his stride now! We could never have made this sort of progress without him, could we?’

Aries shrugged glumly as Alex dropped the cone-shaped hat between his horns and set it straight. Jason was certainly strong, he couldn’t argue with that. After all, he was made of muscles, wasn’t he? They ran down his arms, his legs, between his ears …

Alex looked Aries in the eyes.

‘I know it’s hard for you but we have to think of ourselves as a team now.’

‘A team?’ spluttered Aries. He shook his head furiously.

‘Alex, Jason doesn’t do teams!’

‘Aries!’ sighed Alex.

‘I mean it,’ said Aries, peering along the path to where the Argonaut had stopped chopping and was looking back at him. ‘I know you don’t believe anything I say about him, but he doesn’t! He only does looking after Jason.’

‘Is there a problem?’ called Jason.

Giving Aries one last exasperated look, Alex stood up, shook his head and ran back to the Argonaut. Aries watched him, feeling his spirits sink even lower as Jason slapped the boy cheerfully on the back and looked at the map with him. The sight of the boy’s dark head leaning
close to the Argonaut’s blond one as they nodded together, discussing the route, felt like a jag of glass in his side.

‘Hurry up, Aries!’ shouted Alex, disappearing behind Jason through the latest hole in the undergrowth.

Aries thumped on, unhappiness weighing him down even more than the ridiculous lyre and the thunderbolt as Jason started gabbling about yet another episode from his past.

‘“Ooh,
Atalanta
!”’ Jason’s voice floated back to him, about as welcome as a bott fly. ‘“Don’t be worrying yourself with the Stymphalian Birds,” I told her. “Let me have the arrows!” P-tow! Kerchow! Should have seen me …!’

‘Ooh, Atalanta!’ mimicked Aries, trying to cheer himself up by swinging his bottom and fluttering his eyelashes and ears for good measure. ‘You’d better fire the arrows! You know my aim is rubbish. Last time I tried, Herakles was hopping around holding his backside for a week!’

Which is when he realised that Jason had stopped and was now glaring back at him, framed by a hole in a screen of prickle figs. Sweat slicked his long hair against his neck and glistened over his face.

‘What’s that, Aries?’ He walked towards him holding out the sword teasingly. ‘Did I hear you say you wanted to take over? Only you seem a bit ragged to me. And I’m not sure that hat is doing anything for you. Perhaps you’re finding a real quest harder than that little stroll you took round Britannia back in the summer?’

‘Why?’ replied Aries, stomping up the path towards
him and feeling anger curdle in every one of his four stomachs. ‘Are you finding it harder than that pleasure cruise you took on the
Argo
?’

‘Aries!’ hissed Alex, shaking his head angrily.

The Argonaut stuck his hands on his hips. ‘That was an epic voyage!’

‘Really?’ said Aries. ‘Let’s see … An enchanted vessel made of magical wood and rowed by a crew of fifty strong Greeks. Sounds pretty cushy to me.’

‘Not now!’ growled Alex, walking back towards Aries.

Except that Aries wasn’t to be stopped. ‘Not to mention the protection of several goddesses,’ continued Aries, booting a rather large scorpion off the path. ‘Athena and Hera clucking round Olympus like a pair of mother hens. Even Aphrodite telling her little boy
Eros
to fire a love arrow into Medea’s heart so that she’d do everything for you, all topped off with big wet witchy kisses! And wasn’t she useful, eh? Stealing into the glade and––’

‘And what?’ interrupted Jason quickly. His ant-bitten face flared. ‘Your trouble is that you’re jealous. Rams don’t get to be heroes in Greece, do they? They don’t get the help of the gods, or the fame and the glory and, let me see, the statues. You know, there’s a reason for that. It’s because they’re stupid farm animals!’

‘Stop it!’ shouted Alex, wincing at the Argonaut’s florid face as Aries drew himself up to his full height, tilting his horns defiantly in the air.

Jason ignored him. ‘Just smelly old windbags that get sacrificed to celebrate the real heroes’ victories!’

‘How dare you!’ spat Aries, ready to charge as a sudden chord of music rippled through the trees and he felt a shiver chill his skin.

‘Or wh––?’

Jason stopped abruptly and listened. Around them, the forest seemed to shimmer. Now, as the music floated into the trees, the monkeys high above ceased their chattering, and the frogs’ incessant hoots, whoops and burps melted into a trembling harmony. Scarlet birds swooped from their airy reaches into the unfamiliar gloom of the forest floor, to settle on spindly branches and tilt their heads, curious at the strange and wonderful sound. For a moment, even Aries felt as though he’d been magicked to a sunny Greek meadow dotted with trees bowed down by luscious ripe olives.

‘We’re in this together!’ said Alex, immediately whisking Aries’ imagined countryside and, worst of all, olives away. He thumped past him and buckled the lyre back on to the harness. ‘And we have to start acting like one. We need to forget our differences and start to trust one another. Don’t we, Aries?’

Aries curled his lip, choosing to fix his attention on a rather dizzy-looking snake lolling from a nearby branch, its tongue dangling, clearly mesmerized by the memory of the sound. Despite being yet another creature that could probably kill him six different ways before breakfast, it still made him feel less uneasy than the prospect of ever relying on Jason.

‘Jason?’ said Alex.

The Argonaut shrugged lightly. ‘First rule of being on a quest,’ he said. ‘Stick together.’ He turned back and began to hack away at the next thicket.

‘I know it’s hard, Aries,’ whispered Alex, as the sound of toppling bamboo filled the understory. ‘But you have to try.’ Lifting the harness briefly from the ram’s back, he wiped the sweat away with one of Penelope’s embroideries and glanced through the trail of broken plants at Jason, whose sword was a silvery blur, arcing against the green. Alex’s face glowed with admiration. ‘Just think, the rate Jason’s going we should be there by this time tomorrow. Then we can get Rose to safety, help Jason deliver the statue to Medea and ––’ Suddenly, he gasped and his eyes widened in alarm. ‘Jason! No!’

Alex’s yell exploded the jungle around them as he turned and raced down the hacked path. Parrots screeched from the treetops, monkeys clattered away through the branches.