The Golden Slave - Poul William Anderson (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

Greek, "she spent her last wealth and risked life, freedom and honor to journey here from Sinope that she might plead the case of her comrades. And before then she had shared the perils of flight from Rome and battle at sea—and she is learned enough to instruct the children of noblemen. Therefore I say a queen's heart lies behind those fair breasts, and it shall have a queen's honor. Drink, Phryne!"

He took up his huge silver chalice and gave it to her with his own hands. A low, envious gasp sighed down the length of the table.

Phryne lifted her decorous veil to put the cup at her lips. "Ha, ha!" shouted Mithradates. "See, she is beautiful as well! Let the feast begin!"

It was no banquet at all, compared to the least meal in Sinope—little more than a roast ox and several kinds of fowl, stuffed with rice and olives. No acrobats or trained women being available, some young Gauls offered a perilous sword dance, and a Phrygian wizard showed such tricks as releasing doves from an empty box. Thus Tjorr enjoyed it better than any he had attended before; his guffaws rang between the guardsmen's shields until even Flavius had to smile a little. Eodan hardly noticed what passed his eyes and teeth; he was too aware of the Roman.

When the meal was at last over, an expectant silence fell. Mithradates leaned toward Flavius. "Your account of your adventures was ungraciously curt today," he said smiling. "Now we would hear more fully. You can be no ordinary man, who so endangered the Cimbrian."

"Your Majesty flatters me," said Flavius. "I am a most ordinary Roman."

"Then you flatter your state. Though you belittled it earlier, in contending that one man might be so great a danger to it."

"Would not Your Majesty alone be the greatest danger to us, were we so unfortunate as to lose your good will?"

"Ha! Let it not be said your race makes poor courtiers. Your compliments are only less polished than the orations in which you describe your own bluffness." Mithradates drained his chalice and set it down; at once a slave refilled it. His gaze went from Flavius to Eodan and Tjorr, and back to Phryne. "Surely there is a purpose here," he mused. "Lives are not often so entangled. I must take care to reach a decision that will accord with the will of the Most High."

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."

"You have not answered my question."

"Well ... I would meet him, Great King, if there were no better way."

Eodan sprang to his feet. "At once!" he yelled.

"Give me my hammer, and I'll take care of his following!" said Tjorr.

Phryne sat up on the couch. "No!" she gasped.

"Back!" cried Mithradates. His face was flushed with the wine; he drained a second cup in three gulps. "Back, lie down—I cannot have this. You are both my guests!"

The room grew very quiet, until only the crackling fires and the heavy breathing of men had voice. And outside the wind prowled under the walls.

"This may not be," said the king finally. "I am a civilized man, too. Let the world be sure I am no barbarian. We shall settle this dispute by reason and principle. Hear me and obey!"

"The King has spoken," came whispers from around the long room.

"These people sought my roof," said Mithradates, "and it was granted them to stay. They are under my protection."

"The hospitality of Your Majesty is known throughout the world," said Flavius. "But no guest may remain forever. Dismiss them from your presence, Great Lord, and I will wait for them outside your borders."

"You have not yet given me a reason to send them away," Mithradates told him.

"Your Majesty," said Flavius, becoming grave, "I have charged them with revolt, murder, theft and piracy. They are foes of civilization itself, and the Roman state is certain that all civilized men will recognize that fact. Let me tell the King a tale.

"At their request, the Cimbri sent an embassy to Rome while they were still in Gaul. Their terms were refused, of course—should we allow wild men within our borders?—but they were shown about the city. Has the King heard what they thought most wonderful? The feed bags on dray-horses! It is truth I tell. They could not take their eyes off; they laughed like children. They were also shown that Grecian statue called the Shepherd, which the King has surely heard is one of our greatest treasures, the image of an old man with all the tragedy and dignity of age upon him. The wondered why anyone had troubled to picture a slave so old and lame as to be worthless!"

Flavius leaned forward, gesturing, his orator's voice filling the hall with richness and warmth. "Great King, beyond our realms are the barbarians, the howling folk without law or knowledge. We have thrilled at your exploits when you broke the Scythians; there you served Rome, Your Majesty, even as Rome served Pontus on the Raudian plain. Our fore-fathers were not the same, Great King: yours were Persian shahs and mine were Latin freeholders. But the same mother bore us—Hellas—and we honor her alike." He pointed at Eodan. "There he sits—the enemy—who would stable his horses in the Parthenon and kindle a fire with Homer. It is more that I hunt than this one barbarian, O Protector of the Greeks. It is barbarism itself."

Stillness fell again. Mithradates drained another cup. Eodan crouched, waiting for he knew not what. The king looked at him. "What have you to say to that?" he asked.

Eodan thought dimly, I might play upon his honor, as Flavius did on his pride. I daresay he would allow me to remain in Pontus the rest of my life, did I show him a scar or two won in his service. But I am a Cimbrian.

He said heavily, in his rough Greek: "I ask no more than the rights of a man, My Lord."

"A barbarian is not a man!" snarled Flavius.

Mithradates shifted the weight on his elbow till he stared down at Phryne. "Well," he said, "we have one pure Hellene here. What does she think?"

"A Greekling slave!" exclaimed Flavius. "The King jests. He knows a slave is even less a person than a barbarian."

Phryne sat up and flung at him: "You were a better man's slave after Arausio. 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."

He sprawled lionlike, turning his maned head toward Flavius. "These people are still of my household," he said. "Let no man do them harm. The King has spoken."

Eodan's heart lifted, however somberly, as Flavius bent his stiff neck. "I hear and obey, Your Majesty," he mumbled.

"Well," said Mithradates, his solemnity leaping to become genial, "remain a while. Accompany us back to Sinope. There is much I would ask of you, and you shall not go home empty-handed. Now fill all flagons and drink with me!"

Phryne stared at Eodan a moment. Then her face sank into her hands.

"But what is the matter?" said the King. "You have won your cause, girl."

"Forgive me, Lord. That is why I weep."

"Come, drink of my cup. Those eyes are too beautiful to redden."

She accepted, shakily. Tjorr plucked at Eodan's sleeve. "We seem to've escaped that snare," he muttered. "Now we'll have to devise one for Flavius."

Eodan glanced across at the Roman, who was shaking in rage but somehow achieving mannered discourse with a Pontine officer. "Hm. Perhaps the King will let me pursue him when he departs.... No, I fear not, it would be an open act of war. It may be I shall have to wait until there is actual war with Rome." His fingers strained crooked upon the cushions. "Give it be otherwise!"

"Make not too free with such wishes," cautioned Tjorr. "They are often granted, in ways we mortals did not look for."

Eodan drank deep, as it was one means of easing the hate and the hurt within himself. He saw Flavius do likewise. Mithradates was in conversation with Phryne; none dared interrupt him. Eodan drifted about, playing some pachisi with one man—he played badly tonight—and talking of cavalry tactics with another. Time went.

He heard Mithradates at last, when the deep voice crashed through all the babble around: "Come with me now."

He swung about, suddenly cold. The king was standing up. Phryne had risen, too; her hands were lifted, and behind her thin veil he saw horror.

"What does My Lord mean?" she said, almost wildly.

Mithradates threw back his head and bellowed laughter. "You cannot be that much a maiden," he whooped. "They only raise them like that in Asia, for a novelty."

She sank to her knees, so that his bulk loomed up in shadow and she was only a little heap of gaily colored clothes before him. "Great King, I am not worthy," she stammered.

"What the skulls and bones is this?" muttered Tjorr at Eodan's ear. "Her luck has found her and she won't go with it!"

The Cimbrian's gaze swept the hall. Most of the court was too drunk to heed the byplay; a few watched with lickerish interest. Flavius stood under a pillar, grinning.

Truly, thought Eodan in the darkness of his head, some god had rewarded Phryne. A royal concubine was rich and honored; it was by no means impossible to become a royal wife; and Mithradates, they said, was man enough to satisfy all his harem. The Cimbrian took a step forward, feeling his skin prickle. He grew aware that his hand felt after a sword he did not have.

Phryne, huddled at the king's feet, looked sideways. Her look met Eodan's; it was black with ruin. He glided toward her, hardly knowing what he did. Phryne shook her head at him, and he jerked to a halt. O Bull of the Cimbri, what Power used his limbs tonight?

"You have shown yourself well worthy," said Mithradates on an impatient note. "Rise and come."

Perhaps only Eodan saw her lips tighten. She beat her head on the floor. "Lord, forgive your slave. The Moon forbids me."

"Oh. Oh, indeed." Mithradates stepped back, a primitive unease on his face. "You should have told me that earlier."

"I was too bedazzled by My Lord," she said. Her regained wit bespoke some resolution taken. Eodan wondered with a chill what it had been.

"Well ... rise." Mithradates stooped for her hand and pulled her up as if she were weightless. She stood trembling before him. "A week hence, my tent will be decked with kings' robes for you," he said. "In the meantime, you shall have a tent and servants of your own, and ride in the Tetrarch's litter."

"Great King," she whispered—had Eodan not been close, he would not have heard it—"if your handmaiden should in any way be displeasing to you ... should somehow wrong Her Lord ... you will not hold it the fault of her friends? They knew nothing of me save that I waited in Sinope to do the King's will, even as they wish only to do it."

"Indeed," said