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

an answer of his own, struck spurs into his mount and left the highway. The wind snapped his cloak and tried to pull him from his seat. Once his horse stumbled on a rock, unseen in the gloom, but he kept the saddle, swaying lightly to help the animal muscles that flowed between his knees. And so he drew up to the other horse.

It was a chestnut gelding with silvered harness; a light ax was sheathed at the saddlebow—thus did the riders of Pontus equip themselves. The beast shivered in the heartless wind; its tail streamed, but the mane was sweat-plastered to a sunken neck. Worn out, it groped a way back toward the king.

Eodan felt as if the heart had been cut from him, leaving only a hollowness that bled. "Hers," he said.

"None else," said Tjorr. "A lone alien, with arms and armor worth ten years of a shepherd's work ... a sling ... and the steed bolted—" He looked down upon his useless hands. "I am sorry, my sister."

Eodan let her horse go. He began to follow the way it had come, as nearly as he could judge. He would not leave Phryne's bones to whiten on this plain. Surely the gods cared for her, if not for him. They would lead him to her and grant him the time to make a pyre and a cairn and to howl over her.

Dusk thickened. After some part of an hour, he heard a furtive scuttering in the grass. He rode after it, and a naked man squeaked forlornly and dodged from him. It was a Phrygian, wholly bare; he had not even a staff, but he clutched something to his breast as he ran. Eodan drew rein and watched him go.

"What happened to him?" asked Tjorr, clasping his hammer; for this was an uncanny thing to meet on a treeless autumnal plain at nightfall.

"I do not know," said Eodan. "Robbers—the same who killed Phryne?—or some trolldom, perhaps, for we are in no good country. We cannot speak with that man, so best we leave him alone to his weird."

They trotted on. But it grew too dark to see, and Eodan would not risk passing by his oath-sister. In the morning the kites would show him from afar where she lay. Then the Romans would come, and he would stand by her grave and fight till they slew him.

"I would like a fire," said Tjorr. He fumbled in the murk, caring for his horse. "The night-gangers would stay away."

"They will anyhow," Eodan told him. "It is not fated that we should be devoured by witch-beasts."

Tjorr said, with awe heavy in his tones: "I will believe that. You are something more than a man tonight."

"I am a man with a goal," said Eodan. "Nothing else."

"That is enough," said Tjorr. "It is more than I could bear to be. I dare not touch you before dawn."

Eodan rolled himself into the saddle blanket, put his head on his wadded cloak and lay in cold, streaming darkness. The earth felt sick, yearning for rain, and the rain was withheld. He wondered if some of the lightning Tjorr called on had indeed been locked up in the hammer. When they died tomorrow, the rain might come; or perhaps, thought Eodan, the first snow, for he is the rain but I am the winter.

I am the wind.

He lay listening to himself blow across the earth, in darkness, in darkness, with the unrestful slain Cimbri rushing through the sky behind him. He searched all these evil plains for Phryne; the whole night became his search for Phryne's ghost. There were many skulls strewn in the long dead grasses, for this land was very old. But none of them was hers, and none of them could tell him anything of her; they only gave him back his own empty whistling. 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. And centuries had passed while he was gone. It was spring again. He rode by the grave mound of a warrior named Eodan, which stood out on the edge of the world where the wind was forever blowing; and on the sheltered side he saw a little coltsfoot bloom, the first flower of spring.

Then he rested with gladness. The earth turned beneath him; he heard its cold creaking among a blaze of stars. Winter came again, and summer, and winter once more, unendingly. But he had seen a coltsfoot growing....

"There is light enough now."

Eodan opened his eyes. The gale had slackened, he saw. The air felt a little warmer, and the wind had a wet smell to it. Southward, the world was altogether murk. It must be snowing there, he thought dreamily. The wind would bring the snow here before evening. Strange that the first snow this year should come from the south. But then, perhaps the land climbed more slowly than the eye could see ... yes, surely it did, for he had heard that the Taurus Mountains lay in that direction.

"The Mountains of the Bull," he said. "It may be an omen."

"What do you mean?" Tjorr was a blocky shadow in the wan half-light, squatting with a loaf of bread in his hands.

"We must cross the Mountains of the Bull to reach Parthia."

"If we live that long," grunted the Alan. He ripped off a chunk of bread, touched it with his hammer and threw it out into the dark. Perhaps some god or sprite or whatever lived here would accept the sacrifice.

"That is uncertain," agreed Eodan. He shivered and rolled out of his blanket. "Best we be on our way. The enemy will start at sunrise."

Tjorr regarded him carefully. "You are a man again," he said. "A mortal, I mean. You are no more beyond hope, and thus not beyond the fear of losing that hope. What happened?"

"Phryne lives," said Eodan.

Tjorr reached for a leather wine bottle and poured out a sizable libation. "I would name the god this is for, if you will tell me who sent you that vision," he said.

"I do not know," said Eodan. "It might have been only myself. But I thought of Phryne, who is wise and has too much life in her to yield it up needlessly. She would have known that one Pontine soldier, on a single jaded horse, would invite a race between robbers and Romans. But who heeds a wandering Phrygian, some workless shepherd?" He laughed aloud, softly. "Do you understand? She stopped that man we saw—at arrow point, I would guess—and made him lay down all his garments. She could make her wish clear by gestures. Doubtless she flung him a coin; I remember how he held something near his heart. When he had fled, she rode on until her horse was too tired to be of use. Then she buried her archer's outfit, taking merely the bow and a knife, I suppose, and went on afoot."

Tjorr whooped. "Do you think so? Aye, aye—it must be! Well, let's saddle our nags and catch her!" He ran after his own hobbled animal. When he had brought it back, he looked at Eodan for a moment in a very curious way.

"I am not so sure the witch-power I felt last night has left you, disa," he murmured. "Or that it ever will."

"I have no arts of the mage," snapped Eodan. "I only think."

"I have a feeling that to think is a witchcraft mightier than all others. Will you remember old Tjorr when they begin to sacrifice to you?"

"You prattle like a baby. To horse!"

They moved briskly through the quickening light, Eodan ripping wolfishly at a sausage as he rode. Now Flavius was going forth to hunt. The Cimbrian would need strength this day.

The brown grass whispered; here and there a leafless bush clawed in an agony of wind. Mile after mile the sun, hidden by low-flying gray, touched the Axylon, until finally Eodan and Tjorr rode in the full great circle of the horizon. A hunter could see far in this land.

They spied a sheep flock, larger than most, but spent no time on its watchers. Phryne would be able to see at a distance, too; the need was to come within eye-range of her. Close beyond, Eodan discerned what must be the home of the owner or tenant or whoever dwelt here. It was better than usual, being not of mud, but was still only a small stone house—windowless, surely with just one room, blowing smoke from a flat sod roof. There were a couple of rude little outbuildings, also of moss-chinked boulders, and some haystacks. Nothing else broke the emptiness, and nothing moved but a half-savage dog. The women and children must be huddled terrified behind their door as the gleaming mail-coats rode by. Eodan felt a sudden hurt; it was so strange to him he had to think a while before he recognized it—yes, pity. How many human lives, throughout the boundless earth and time, were merely such a squalid desolation?

A king, he thought, was rightfully more than power. He should be law. Yes, and a bringer of all goodly arts; a just man, who tamed wild folk more with his law than his spear—though he was also the one who taught them how to make war when war was needed—so far as the jealous gods allowed, a king should be freedom.

And afterward, he thought wryly, when the king was dead, the people would bring back all the reeking past in his now holy name. But no, not quite all of it. Doubtless men slid back two steps for every three they made; nevertheless, that third step endured, and it was the king's.

Phryne could show me how, he thought.

As if in answer, he saw the little figure rise from the bush where it had lain concealed. Dwarfed by hundreds of yards, she came running in her Phrygian goatskin and rags; but Eodan's gray horse hammered those yards away, and he leaped from the saddle and caught her to him.

She held him close, weeping on his cold steel coat. "It was not what I wanted, that you should come. It was not what I wanted."

"It was what I wanted," he said. He raised her chin until he could smile down into her violet eyes. "I will hear no reproaches. Enough that I found you."

"I shall never run from you again," she said. "Where you make your home, there shall Hellas be."

Hoofs clumped at their backs. Tjorr coughed. "Uh-hm! The enemy is on his way, with hounds and remounts. And we've only two beasts. Best we flee while we can."

Eodan straightened. "No," he said. "I, too, have run far enough."

XX

They rode up to the shepherd's house. Phryne struck the dog on the nose with her staff when it flew at her throat. It ran away, and she strung her bow and nocked an arrow. Eodan stayed mounted, the German sword in his hand. Tjorr went afoot to the door and beat on it with his hammer.

"Open!" he bawled. Nothing stirred. He hefted the maul, swung it high and sent it crashing against the latch. The flimsy bolt cracked in two. Voices piped with fear in the dark hut. A shaking graybeard barred the entrance, holding a rusty old ax. Tjorr grabbed him by the tunic and threw him to the ground, not unkindly. "Out!" he said, gesturing.

They shambled forth. There was only one woman, shapeless in a sacklike gown, and a dozen children. They looked so unlike that