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

the man's anguish, Eodan smote. He struck a helmet, but the sheer force of it snapped the Roman's head down. The man went to his hands and knees and crawled away.

Eodan had been holding the other off left-handed, keeping his shield as a barrier. Now, whipping about, he slid the rim aside and then back again, so that he locked shields with his enemy and held him fast. He reached over the top with his longsword and drove the point home.

"Ho-yo-yo!" chanted Tjorr, battering till it thundered. 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. None were unwounded.

But weariness shuddered in him. His sword, nicked and blunted, had not bitten well; it was an iron bar in his hand, heavy as sorrow. He could barely hear the deep hoarse breathing of Tjorr, his own heartbeat and thirsty-throated breath were so loud.

Now that all the hunters were inside his den, it was time to destroy them.

Flavius crouched by the door. "Form a line!" he rapped. "Wall to wall! Drive them back and cut them down!"

Four Roman shields filled that narrow room, Flavius standing behind. Eodan raised his weapon and called, "Will you not try the edge of this even once, murderer?"

Flavius screamed. For one blink of time, over the advancing shields and helmets, through the wintry gloom, Eodan looked upon madness. It came to him that he should not have taunted an unbearable grief. 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.

The timber slipped sideways. The piece it had helped carry, running lengthwise, fell. The thin branches cracked, and the roof of stones came down.

Eodan heard it dimly, from far away. Now the sky has been shattered, he thought, and gods and demons die in the wreck of their war. A star whirled by me and hissed into the sea.

He lay in the tunnel, as though in a womb, while the stones buried his hunters. There followed a silence that tolled. He heard Tjorr and Phryne calling to each other in utter night. Her hands groped for him. He lay in her hands and let the pain reach full tide.

It ebbed again. Tjorr dug a few feet upward. Breaking out into the open, he reached down, hauled forth Eodan and Phryne and whistled at what he saw.

"Best I catch the horses," he said awkwardly. "You can see to him, can you not?"

She kissed her man for answer.

Eodan looked up at the sky. "Lie still," whispered Phryne. "Lie still. It is well. We are safe."

The wind blew softly, almost warm. The first snow fell on his face. "Have I been badly hurt?" he asked.

She told him plainly: "Your left eye is gone. Now I must love the right one twice as much."

"Is it no more than that?" he sighed. "I thought my debt was greater. The Powers are kind."

XXI

North of the city Tanais the Don River wound like a shining snake, like the lightning itself in a godlike calm, through rolling plains where horses pastured. In early summer the land blazed blue with cornflowers.

On the west side of the Don, from the Azov Sea as far northward as their might would take them, dwelt the Rukh-Ansa. They were a proud folk—warriors, horse breeders, and weapon makers; their women walked with long fair locks garlanded and dresses of linen wind-blown around their tall bodies; their chiefs rewarded a bard's song with golden rings.

Nonetheless, these were ill times, and, when Tjorr the Red came home, folk sacrificed bullocks in the hope that he carried better luck. From wide about the chiefs came riding, until Beli's hall rang with their iron and the ale flowed merrily. They guested Beli not only to hear what his returned son could tell them of far farings, but because there had been tales of a king whom Tjorr had brought with him. Sorely did the Rukh-Ansa need a wise king.

His was a strange band when it rode to the river's east bank and was ferried across with gifts from awed tribesmen. Tjorr himself did not lead it, though the redbeard shone in Parthian mail and glittered with Grecian silver. He was captain of the warriors, several score Alanic horsemen guarding a rich baggage train; his own wagon was full of gold, armor and three lovely concubines. When he related how all this had come to him through the luck in his hammer, many folk went on their faces; surely that hammer held lightning.

And yet Tjorr acknowledged another man his disa—a very tall man with long wheat-colored hair, a lean withdrawn face, the sun written on his brow, and one green eye. This Eodan did not dress much like a king; his mail was serviceable but unadorned; he claimed no trolldom or god-power in his weapons. Moreover, he had only one wife—a slight girl with dark hair and violet eyes who rode like a man but nursed a son in her arms and had one a year older in a carrying-cradle at her saddlebow. Eodan would not even accept the overnight loan of another woman; he smiled in his distant way, thanked his host and then returned to his Phryne.

So the Rukh-Ansa wondered at Tjorr ... wondered even if the Phryne girl were not a witch who had ensnared both him and her husband ... and then they would come to speak with Eodan, and after a while they would understand why Tjorr called him King.

Fires burned high in Beli's feasting hall. The chiefs of the Rukh-Ansa clans sat at table and raised ox horns heavy with silver and beer, to the honor of Tjorr and Tjorr's lord.

Gray Beli blinked dim eyes at his son. "Will you not tell us the whole tale of your wanderings?" he asked.

"Not in one day," said Tjorr. "There are many winter evenings' worth of telling. Let it only be said now that I was sold through Greece and Italy until I ended in a Roman galley. But then Eodan and Phryne freed me. We seized the ship and sailed eastward, until we found the court of King Mithradates."

"The same whose general hurled us back three summers ago from the Chersonese?" asked Beli.

Tjorr nodded. "Aye. I wish I had fought with you, but at that very time, as the gods willed it, I was fighting on Mithradates' behalf, down in Galatia. He was a good master to us. Why did you war on his realm?"

Beli shrugged. "It was a hungry year. We have had many hungry years of late; there are too many of us. But the raid failed, and now the Chersonese is barred to our horses."

"I will have somewhat to counsel you about that," said Eodan. He had already learned the Alanic tongue, as it was said he knew several others, besides reading and writing. Yes, a man of deep mind, with witch-powers he would not show to just anyone—yes, yes.

"Where then did you go?" asked Beli.

"We fell out with Mithradates," said Tjorr, "and for a while we were two men and a woman, alone on a cold plain. But we had killed some Romans, who had fat purses. So we bought huts and sheep from the Phrygians, to live that winter. In spring we continued through Lycaonia; it is too friendly with Rome these days, so we did not stay, simply bribed our way past. There are tribes in the Mountains of the Bull, hunters and warriors, who made us welcome. We aided them and lived there a year since my king's first son had to be born. Next spring we came to Parthia with a following of young men and offered the lord there our services, he being Rome's foe. There we had it well since the favor of nobles came to us, once they saw what a man they had in my king. We dwelt in a fine city and had only enough warlike missions on the border to keep us amused. Yet we longed to be among our own sort of men again. So this spring we got leave to go, and came up through Armenia and behind the Caucasus until we found Alans—and thus your home, My Father."

"Much have you seen," said Beli. The war-chiefs of the Rukh-Ansa clashed their ale horns under his words.

"I have seen less with two eyes than my King has with one," said Tjorr humbly. "He has learned the arts of many nations. He would teach his own people whatever of it they can use."

"Where are your folk?" asked Beli of the stranger.

"North," said Eodan. "They were the Cimbri once. Now they are any who dwell where heather blooms and beech forests blow."

"We will go north, my king and I, to rule in his land," said Tjorr. "There are not many dwelling in it. 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."

"Let them stay home, then," snorted Tjorr. "I'll pasture my horses on the edge of the world if he leads me there."

"Yes," nodded Beli. "Yes. There are such kings. But how did it happen you lost your eye, Lord?"

Eodan smiled. It was a wry smile, not ungentle, but wholly without youth. He had known too much ever to be young again. He said, "I gave it for wisdom."

EPILOGUE

It was told from olden days, and written in the books of Snorri Sturlason, that the Asa or Ansa folk came from the land of Tanais to the North. They soon became overlords; from the high hall they raised at Upsala their power spread, until even the German tribes drew chieftains and learning from them. For they were good masters, who brought their new people not only wealth but knowledge. They gave to the North crafts of both peace and war, such as the building of longships and the breeding of fine horses, the writing of runes and the mustering of armies, foreign trade and foreign travel, much leechcraft and many wise laws. By all this the folk were strengthened and helped, so that they lifted themselves from rude forest dwellers to mighty nations who finally overthrew the Roman power and peopled Europe afresh, in the time of the Wanderings. Above all did they shape the country called England, and there they kept much of the old freedom-shielding law that the Asa men first brought.

Every king in the North reckoned