Poul Anderson

“ Eodan held onto his soul with both hands. At last he got out: "I will meet you somewhere beyond the power of both Rome and Pontus."
Flavius skinned his teeth in a grin. "Your destruction is more important to me than the dubious pleasures of single combat."
"You are afraid, then," said Eodan. "You only fight women."
Flavius clenched his free hand. His whittled face congealed, he said in a flat voice: "I cannot help but smite those women whom you forever make your shields. Now it is a Greek slave girl. How many more have you crawled behind, even before you debauched my wife?" ”

“ At day's end they passed a goatherd in a stinking wool tunic and knitted Phrygian cap. He gave them a sullen look and mumbled his own language, which they did not understand, through greasy whiskers. Eodan felt grimness. Bad enough to be entering wilds where few if any could speak with him; but this was also a land where the half-Persian warriors had made themselves hated. He thought, as darkly and coldly as the whistling twilight, that Flavius might well overhaul him tomorrow before he had any word of Phryne. He might be wholly doomed; the gods feared proud men. ”

“ The Roman nodded at Hwicca. "We spoke of this now and then, you and I. Do you remember? There was a time you gathered jasmine blossoms—"
"Be still about that or I will forget my word!" roared Eodan in the Cimbric. Hwicca huddled back and lifted an arm, as though to ward off a blow.
"As you wish," said Flavius, unruffled. "To continue—" A crash outside, and the sound of swearing and a whip, interrupted him—"I myself do not believe in any Power except chance. There are blind moieties of matter, obeying blind laws; only the idiot hand of chance keeps each cycle of centuries from being the same. ”

“ An hour afterward, when the Pontine army was only smoke on a gray horizon, he saw the dust cloud behind. It neared, until he could see the black horse that raised it, and finally he heard the drumbeat of its hoofs—and Tjorr's red beard flaunted itself in the wind.
"Whoof!" said the Alan, pulling up alongside him. "You might have waited."
Eodan cried aloud, "It was not needful. You should have stayed where your luck was."
"No—now, what luck would come to a man that forsook his oaths?" said Tjorr. "I was weary of Pontus anyhow. Now we will surely drink of my Don again." ”

“ Mithradates looked at him, with gravity falling like a veil. "I wonder if you are not too much a man to be flung back on any northward wind. Would you like to fight Rome?"
Eodan answered harshly, "There is blood of my blood on their hands. I count it defeat that I shall not meet the man Flavius again. I will set up a horse skull in the North and curse him, but it is not enough."
"Your chance could come," said Mithradates. "There will be war between Rome and Pontus. Not yet, not for some years, but it is brewing, and it will be pitiless. I shall need good officers." ”

“ But if I were a slave, he thought, with the mind beaten out of me, I might not use a sudden woman for anything but—Here is a man to fight!
It was the Libyan, with a broken nose to avenge. He came down the ladder quickly, facing forward in sailor fashion, bearing a short spear. In the shifting gloom he was not much more than another shadow. Eodan poised himself. The spear punched at his stomach. He caught the point in his wadded cloak, shoved it aside and stepped in. The Libyan howled, but was scarcely heard above the howling of the galley slaves. Eodan slid the sword into him. ”

“ And the ground underfoot was dusty where tens of thousands of folk, their horses and cattle, had tramped over ripening grain. A poplar grove nearby stood unmoving in windless gloom. Suddenly, sharp as a thrown war-dart, Eodan recalled Jutland, Cimberland—great rolling heathery hills and storm-noisy oaks, a hawk wheeling in heaven and the far bright blink of the Limfjord.
But that was fifteen years ago. His folk, angry with their gods, had wandered since then to the world's edge. And now the Cimbrian bull must meet for one last time that she-wolf they said guarded Rome. ”

“ The overseer came at a run along the catwalk. He was a big man with a smashed, hating face. He was bearing a whip with leaded thongs and a trident for prodding or killing. "Pirates!" he whooped. "Pirates!"
A beast-howl lifted from the benches. Oars clattered in their locks; the men stood up and barked, grunted, yammered. Eodan could not tell whether it was fear or wrath. And his life depended on which it was.
As the overseer reached him, Eodan crouched. The overseer stabbed. Eodan swayed his body aside, as though this were a bull's horn in the Cimbrian springtime games. ”

“ Eodan sat up. "My Lord," he said raggedly, "give weapons to us two, or our bare hands, and watch who heaven favors!"
Mithradates murmured thoughtfully: "I have heard you speak of yourself, Eodan, as a man whom the gods hate."
"For once he spoke truth, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "It would be an impiety if—if I, at least, suffered him to live."
"Would you meet him in single combat, then?" asked Mithradates.
"It is an uncouth German custom, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "It is not worthy of a civilized man." ”

“ He searched further, up over the Caucasus glaciers and then down to a sea that roared under his lash, until finally he came riding past a bloody-breasted hound, through sounding caves to the gates of hell; hoofs rang hollow as he circled hell, calling Phryne's name, but there was no answer. Though he shook his spear beneath black walls, no one stirred, no one spoke, even the echoes died. So he knew that hell was dead, it had long ago been deserted; and he rode back to the upper world feeling loneliness horrible within him. ”

“ I understood you had suffered loss when Hwicca fell. Do you think I cannot imagine it, how it would be for me, too, did the one I cared for die in my arms? I said nothing when you made a raft for her, though we needed your help even that first day; when you laid her on it with the Roman sword and her dagger, though we needed both; when you drenched it with oil that might have nourished us; when you risked your own life to launch it and set the torch to it; and when you howled while it fell burning behind. A man must obey his own inward law, or be no man at all. ”

“ No man, no woman ever has the same destiny; we are all pursued by our private Furies. Help me remember that, Eodan!"
He asked her, out of a newly reborn pain, "What happened, Phryne?"
"There was a boy in the household at Plataea," she said, still in the small voice that spoke to itself, knowing him only as a shadow under the evening star. "He was a slave too—not much older.... He walked like the sun before me. We would have had each other somehow—oh, there are families among slaves, even a slave can build a home. ”

“ On the wharfs Eodan could see Armenian mountaineers with shepherds' staffs and crooked knives, a sleek Byzantine merchant, a gaily-robed warrior of pure Gallic strain, a pair of hobnailed Macedonian mercenaries, a spear-bearing man, in fur cap and white blouse and baggy trousers tucked into his boots, whom Tjorr said delightedly was an Alanic tribesman, a graybearded Jew, a lean Arab—this was not Rome, this Sinope, but it pulled in its share of the earth's people! ”

“ It is such men who lead slave revolts. If he were mine, I would geld him and sell him to the lead mines."
"Some men were born gelded," said Phryne coldly, and left. She could almost see the crisscrossing of thin white lines on Eodan's shoulderblades. She avoided him for a while, uncertain why she did so.
And the springtime waxed. Each day the sun stood higher; each day a new bird-song sounded in the orchard. One morning fields and trees showed the finest transparent green, as if the goddess had only breathed on them in the night. ”

“ Eodan might have let out a Cimbrian howl, but he had no more wish for it. "Back!" he gasped to the Alan. "Back before they hem us in!"
Eyes were now used to the shifting twilight, the pale gray dazzle of the doorway. Eodan and Tjorr stood side by side, just in front of the rear support timber they had erected. Blood ran from their arms and painted their breasts; blood stained the sweat on them, and it was not all Roman this time. But men lay stricken before them; Eodan did not count how many. He looked across three slippery red yards of trampled earth and saw five men still on their feet. ”

“ A wolf-fight snarled by. Eodan followed it. All at once he found himself out of the dust cloud. The ground was torn underfoot, and a dead barbarian glared empty-eyed at a cloudless sky. Not many miles off gleamed Vercellae's white-washed walls. He could almost see how the townsfolk blackened them, standing and staring. If Marius fell, Vercellae would burn. High over all, floating like a dream, remote and lovely, were the snowpeaks of the Alps. ”

“ Flavius reminded her.
"But it is not many days' travel by horse to the frontier. Beyond lies Aquitania, which is free. Even I have heard how the Gauls are still in upheaval after the Cimbrian trek. We can make our own way among them. And you can return home from there."
Flavius stroked his chin. "Phryne, is it not?" he mused. "Cordelia's slave, become a most charming boy. Do you think to instruct the barbarians in Greek?"
"Enough," growled Eodan.
"I think you have breathed fever-mists," said Flavius. "Do you really believe you can make your way through all Rome and Gaul—alive?" ”

“ Indeed she was beautiful, thought Eodan. Her womanness did not flaunt itself, bursting through its clothes like Cordelia's; it waited cool among shadows for one discoverer. He grunted some apology when she glared, turned his back, and fumbled on the garments laid out for him—a gray, patched woolen tunic, scuffed sandals, a felt hat and a long wool cloak. He picked up the heavy purse, slung a sword next to his skin and put a knife in the rope belt. ”

“ A thrall from the homeland, hairy and ragged, grabbed lumberingly for a timid lass stolen out of Gaul, and got a kick and a curse from the warrior who owned them both. A man whetted an ax against tomorrow's use; beside him snored three friends, empty wine cups in their hands. Here, there, here, there, it became one great whirl for Eodan, and the voices and feet and ringing iron were like the surf he had not heard in fifteen years. ”

“ No few of the Rukh-Ansa could follow us, find new homes in the North and become great."
"Some of the younger ones might," agreed Beli.
"Might?" cried Tjorr. "Why, if I know my clans, they will be at spearheads over the right to come!"
"Not all," said Beli. "Not even most. For if you fare north you will become something else than what you are."
"That is true," said Eodan. "Yet what is it to live, than to become something else?"
"Forgive me," said Beli, "but there are men who would not follow a one-eyed king." ”

“ You needed the whole Roman army to make him yours in turn. Must we raise ancestors from Hades? Well, then, where were yours when mine fought at Salamis?"
Mithradates put on a frown. "Mine were in Persian ships," he said.
"Yet now you are called the protector of the Greeks," she answered promptly. He grinned. "Great King, who deserved better of you—the man who freed even one little Greek, or the man whose people laid Corinth waste?"
"I cannot believe you are at feud with all the gods, Eodan," said Mithradates. "At least one must love you, to send you so fair an advocate." ”

“ The gods are too just.
Flavius raised his sword and flung it above the soldiers.
Eodan felt it strike him in the head. He staggered back, suddenly blinded with his own blood. The pain seared through his skull until he stood in a world that was all great whirling flame. He thought as he toppled, This also must a king have known, what it is to be slain.
The Romans cried their victory and moved in on Tjorr. The Alan threw down his shield, picked Eodan up with one arm, and swung his hammer. Even as it hit the pillar he had raised, he leaped into the pit and the tunnel beyond. ”

“ There was much he did not like in Asia, he reflected, and this crawling before the high, in both words and flesh, was not the least. Mithradates deserved respect, yes, but a man was not a dog. Nor was a woman an animal, to be kept for breeding or pleasure alone. A few months of giggling Eastern wenches had shown Eodan how sheer tedium could drive so many men to catamites. He thought of Phryne, born a slave, less chained in her soul than the High Queen of Pontus. It is better in the North, he thought, overwhelmed by his earliest years. They are still free folk on Jutland's moors. ”

“ It is not possible forever, my friend. I think you have thrown about as many good numbers as any man in the world ever did. Soon your luck must turn. You shall be found out through some happenstance. You will then try to kill me. One way or another, we shall all die. You and Phryne and Hwicca and myself, all dead—mold in our mouths and our eye sockets empty." Flavius tossed off his wine and poured another cup. "It is inevitable."
Eodan snarled, out of a chill, dreary foreboding, "If you say more such unlucky words, I will—no, not kill you—each such word will cost you a tooth. ”

“ The Alan, shieldless, had picked up his hammer again. He smote right-handed with it, a ringing and belling and sundering, while his left wielded his Roman blade. "Ha!" he bellowed down the boarding plank. "Are you never coming? Must I do all the work here?"
His crew hung back, seeing how whetted steel flashed around those two and blood dripped into the sea. Eodan shrieked at them over the din: "If we lose this fight, you will all go to Rome!"
A man down there hefted an ax, set his teeth and ran up the plank. The others poured after him. Quintus alone remained, with a spear. ”