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

Mithradates bellowed, as though he had been speared. He seized a lamp, broke its chains with a jerk and hurled it into the fire-pit. When his working face came under Eodan's eyes, the Cimbrian knew where he had seen such a look before—in small children, about to scream from uncontrollable rage.

"She will follow that lamp into the flames," said the Pontine. It was almost a groan.

"The Roman lies!" Eodan stalked toward Flavius, raising his hands. The worn eagle face waited for him with a smile of mastery. "I will tear out his throat!"

Remembering himself, he turned about and cried: "We do not know it was not witchcraft, Lord."

Mithradates swallowed hard. He beat a fist into his palm, walked back and forth under the twisted Celtic gods and, inch by inch, drew a cover across his wrath. Finally his giant striding halted. He searched Eodan's countenance somberly and asked, "Will you swear, by all which is holy to you, you have never known her body, and this is no work of yours?"

"I swear it, My King," said Eodan.

"A barbarian's word," jeered Flavius.

"Be still!" crashed the voice of Mithradates. "I know this man."

Then for a while longer he brooded. "Or does any man know another, or even himself?" he asked the wooden gods.

Decision hardened over the moltenness in him. "Well," he said heavily, "it seems that she went because of something in her own will, or an enchantment. In neither case is she a fit vessel for royal seed. Let the Axylon have her."

Eodan's muscles began to ease. He thought, in a remote part of himself: Flavius turned my own foolishness against me, but perhaps Phryne left her good genius here to watch. For now it has all become as she must have wished—herself riding off unpursued and no disfavor caused Tjorr or me.

"She is only another female, after all," said Mithradates. "I could send men to fetch her back and let her die an example, but it is unworthy of a civilized man."

"She would doubtless kill herself when your riders came in view, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "Unless, of course, the barbarian here were sent after her—"

"Would you truly split him from me?" croaked Mithradates. Sweat studded his face; Eodan knew suddenly what a combat the king was waging in himself. "Go, both of you!"

"At once, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "The Lord of the East is wise, knowing that if she fled in rebelliousness she will be most amply punished. A herdsman who spied her from afar would know how to stalk her and pounce unsuspected." He bowed a little toward Eodan. "If the King permits one more word from me, I should like to withdraw my hints as to treason by the barbarian. It is clear that he has abandoned the girl to the Axylon. So if ever he did conspire with her, he is now aware of his rightful duty toward his true benefactor."

The fires burned higher in the king's eyes. His tone cracked the barest trifle: "So. Let neither Cimbrian nor Alan leave the army, even for minutes, until we come home." His lips writhed upward. "It is not that I doubt your oath, Eodan—" But you do, mourned a thought through the Cimbrian's upsurging wrath, you do! Flavius knows well how to sow dragon's teeth—"merely to silence tongues."

Eodan saw Flavius waver; the hall and its grinning gods became unreal. He threw back his head to howl.

And then everything drained from him. He stood empty of anger, or hate, or even sorrow. There was only a road, with night at its end, and the knowledge that he must walk it or cease to be himself.

"Lord," he said, "let your servant depart."

Mithradates started. "What do you mean?"

"I was honored to serve the Great King, but it cannot be any more. Let me go out upon the Axylon."

Flavius caught a gasp between his teeth. Mithradates drew his knife in a hand that shook. The slaves at the room's end cowered back into shadow; some half-sensed ripple went along the lines of guardsmen, and all their eyes swung inward toward Eodan.

"I must thank the Roman," he went on. "I would have let her die out there, or worse than die. He showed me my shame. I am not certain why she is gone: it may be a spell cast on her or it may be of her own choosing, for some reason I do not understand. But she watched over me while I slept among foemen. I cannot offer her less now than my own help."

"You—would bring her back—here?" Mithradates said it with a stubbornness that dug in its heels. He would not believe anything else. "Well, perhaps so—"

"With the Alan kept hostage for his return, Your Majesty," put in Flavius.

Eodan shook his head. "Tjorr has nothing to do with this, My Lord. That is why I ask leave to depart the King's service. I do not think it likely Phryne wishes to return hither."

"And you would set her will above mine?" asked Mithradates in a stunned voice.

"What I would like," said Eodan, "is that you give her freely into my hands, so that I could bring her back here and let her do or not do whatever she wished. But I have no art of wheedling; I ask merely for a dismissal."

"You will get your head on a gatepost!" exclaimed Flavius in a blaze of victory.

Mithradates stood stooped, his breath rattling in his lungs. His head swung back and forth, as though he were a bull looking for a man to gore.

Suddenly he leaped forward, and his knife flashed. Eodan stepped aside. The knife struck a pillar, drove in and snapped off short. "Guards!" bellowed the king. "Seize this traitor!"

Eodan stood quietly. Hands fell upon him, spears touched his ribs. He glanced at Flavius. The Roman laughed aloud, bent close while Mithradates screamed and shredded his cloak, and whispered, "Did you think, you fool, he would let you go? You have all but said before his household, Phryne left because she would not be taken by him. You insulted more than the king's majesty, you insulted his manhood!"

"I knew what I said," Eodan answered.

Mithradates raged up, flung Flavius and a guardsman aside, and smote the Cimbrian's face with his hand.

Eodan shook a ringing head, licked the blood that ran from his mouth and said in Greek, "I did not know it was the custom of civilized men to strike a guest."

Mithradates fell back as though from a sword thrust.

Then for a while he paced, snarling and mewing. Flavius began to talk, but a lion roar silenced him. "Wine!" said the King at last. A slave hurried up with a flagon. Mithradates snatched it, kicked the kneeling man in the stomach, drained the cup and crumpled its heavy silver between his fingers.

"Another," he commanded.

It was brought him. He drank it with more care. He flung himself onto the high seat, slumped for a while, looked up into the darkness above the rafters and finally began to laugh. It was a raw, barking laugh, with little humor, but at the end he stood up and spoke calmly.

"Release him," he said. The guards fell back, and Eodan waited. Mithradates folded his arms. "After this," he continued, almost in a light tone, "you will not care to stay. It is a delicate question whether you are my guest, my soldier or my slave, but civilized people must be generous. Let the Cimbrian take the horse, the arms and the monies he got from me. Let him ride off wherever he wishes, so he come not back to this army." The wind piped around the hall; the fire-pits roared. "Well, begone!" cried Mithradates.

Eodan bent his knee and backed out, as though he were leaving on some royal errand. And would the Powers it were so, he thought dully, knowing a wound took hours to feel pain.

He heard Flavius say, in a voice that quivered: "Great King, will you also let this guest depart?"

As if from immensely far away, the voice of Mithradates came: "There is a destiny here. I would stand in its way if I dared—but I am only a man, even I.... Tomorrow at dawn, when we march north, you may quit the camp." An animal scream: "Now leave my eyes! All of you! Every man in here, leave the King to himself!"

They streamed out, almost running, terror written beneath the bright helmets; for the king sat at a heathen god's feet and wept.

Eodan saw Flavius stalk toward his own tent. They exchanged no words. He went to his place, clapped for a groom and donned his Persian war-garb. A saddled gray stallion was led forth. Eodan sprang upon it and trotted quickly from camp.

He would follow the highway south, hoping for a sign.

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."

"Since gossip brought you the tale so swiftly," Eodan said, "you must also have heard the Romans will be after us at dawn tomorrow. They have money, and the Gauls here favor them; they'll hire guides, dogs and a string of remounts."

"I have hunted and been hunted on plains before now," replied Tjorr. "A flock of sheep to confuse the scent, a trackless waste as soon as we leave this road—Oh, we can race them all the way to Parthia with good hope of winning."

"But that is what we may not do, and why you had best return before the King learns of your absence. I left only on Phryne's account. I shall have to find her before undertaking such a trip, and it may consume all the time between me and the pursuit."

Tjorr cocked an eye at him knowingly. Eodan felt his wind-beaten face grow hot. He said angrily, "She is my oath-sister. Did she think I would forget what that means?"

"Da," nodded the Alan, "or she would have given herself to Mithradates with no fuss." He squinted down the rutted dirt road, which wound among boulders and sere grass until it lost itself in stormy black clouds. "Now our task is to trail her, and she would have made herself hard to trail. We can only follow this, I think, till we come on someone who's seen a boyish-looking horse archer go by ... for thus I take it she equipped herself."

"So my groom told me, and he was too frightened to make up a lie. Come, then!"

They jingled through unspeaking hours.

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.

Well, if such was his destiny, he would give no god the pleasure of seeing him writhe under it.

"Ho-ah!" cried Tjorr.

Eodan looked up from his thoughts. The Alan pointed westward, where a single dirty-red streak beneath steel and smoke colors marked sunset. "A horse out there," he said. Eodan spied the beast; it was trotting wearily north over the plain.

Horror stood up in him and screamed. He clamped back