The Golden Slave by Poul William Anderson (beach read book txt) 📕

the supple women came out with dessert and dropped one filmy garment after the next as they swayed about, he knew his hurts were scarring over. He would have traded all these for Hwicca—yes, all women who lived—but since she was gone and they were here....

Finally, with some decorum restored, there was general conversation. Mithradates talked impatiently to various self-important persons, dismissed them at last with plain relief and roared the length of the table: "Cimbrian! Now let us hear that tale you promised!"

Eodan followed his beckoning arm, to lie beside the king himself. Envious eyes trailed him. Not everyone listened—the whole room buzzed with talk—but he was as glad of that. He had not wished to make the Cimbrian destiny a night's idle amusement; but to this gray-eyed man, himself a warrior, it was fitting to relate what Boierik had done.

Now and again Mithradates broke in with a question. "Is it true that sky and sea run into one up there, as Pytheas has written?... How high does the sun stand at midsummer?... Do they know of any poisons? This is a self-preserving interest of mine—too many kings have died of a subtle drink. I take a little each day, so that now they cannot harm me, neither hemlock nor arsenicum nor nightshade nor—But continue."

The lamps burned low; slaves stole about filling them with fresh oil. Eodan's throat hoarsened; he drank one cup of wine after another, until his head buzzed like all summer's bees in a clover meadow in Jutland.... Mithradates matched him, goblet for goblet, though the king's was larger, and showed no sign of it.

And at last Eodan said: "Then your ship found us and brought us hither. So it may be the gods have ended their feud with me."

"That Ahriman has," corrected Mithradates, "but he is the common enemy of all men and—Could it be, I wonder, that the Bull in whose sign you wandered the world was the same that bleeds upon the altars of the Mystery? But enough." His hand cracked down on Eodan's shoulder, and he raised his cup, clashing it against the Cimbrian's. "What a journey!" he cried. "What a journey!"

"I thank Your Majesty. But it has not ended yet."

"Are you certain?" 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."

"I have not the skills, Great King," said Eodan.

"You could learn them, I think. See here. This very month I am leading an expedition against the Tectosages. Their tetrarch has been a thorn in my side since I took Galatian territory. We have had border skirmishes, and all the Gallic cantons lean toward Rome and intrigue against me. They must learn who is master. It will not be a great war—an outright conquest would alarm the Romans too much at this stage of things—only a punitive expedition. But the fighting will be brisk and the booty sufficient. I would like to have you and your Alanic friend in my following. I think you could serve me well, and you would gain in both wealth and knowledge."

"I should be honored, Great King," said Eodan. One did not refuse such an offer, and indeed it could be profitable. And to ride a war-horse again!

"So be it. We shall talk further. Now, hm, did you say your Grecian girl was a maiden and wishes to remain so? I would not stand for it! I took it for granted, till you related otherwise, that you two held her in common."

"She lifted me from slavery, Lord. It is a small thing to repay her."

"Well, as you wish. If she is indeed learned, she can tutor the younger children of palace officials." Mithradates grinned. "Meanwhile, you and the Alan have certain needs. I take it you both prefer women?" He beckoned his secretary and gave orders.

Morning was not far off when Eodan and Tjorr entered their room, none too steadily. A maidservant accompanying them woke Phryne, who came from her chamber wrapped in a mantle. Her eyes were dark in the lamp-glow. "What has happened?" she asked.

"Much," said Eodan. "It is well for us. But now you shall have a private room, and a servant of your own."

"Why—" Phryne's look turned forlorn. It fell on a couch in the corner and on the two who sat there. Long gowns and demure veils did not hide what they were.

She grew white. She stamped her foot and cried out, "You could have let your wife grow cold in death before this!"

Eodan, weary, startled by her rage, snapped back: "What good would it be for her ghost if I remained less than a man, just because you are less than a woman?"

Phryne drew her mantle over her face and departed.

Eodan stared after her, tasting his own words poisonous on his tongue. But it was too late now—was it not? The slave girl came over to him, knelt and pressed his hand to her forehead. He saw through the thin silk that she was young and fair of shape.

He said in an ashen tone, "The King is kind."

"Da," muttered Tjorr. "But I know not, I know not. All this we gained when my hammer was elsewhere. I wonder how much luck is in such gifts."

XVI

Summer had burned hot on the Asiatic uplands, but winter would be very cold. The day after he left the city Ancyra, Eodan felt the wind search through clothes and flesh toward his bones. Overhead the sky was leaden, with a dirty wrack flying beneath it. Dust smoked off harvested fields. There were not many of these; the rest was wild brown pasture, cut by tiny streams and bare hills. He was on the edge of the Axylon, the vast treeless plateau running south to Lycaonia, with little more sign of man than some sheep and goat herds.

He wrapped his cloak more tightly about him and thought of autumn gold and scarlet in Jutland, where forests roared on long ridges. Why had three Gallic tribes left such a country, nearly two hundred years ago, and wandered hither?

But so they had, conquering Cappadocians and Phrygians until a new nation stood forth around the Halys. They let the natives farm and trade as ever, save for taxes and a share in the crop. The invaders rooted their three tribes in separate parts of the country, each divided into four cantons with a chief and a judge above it; a great council imagined it guided the entirety. Mithradates had remarked once it was no mean feat to combine so carefully the worst features of a monarchy and a republic. The Gauls shunned cities, holding to fortified villages clustered around the castles of chiefs. There they practiced the skills of war, heard their bards and Druids, remained in fact—under all the proud trumpets—a wistful fragment of the North.

"Maybe the Powers were not so unkind after all," said Eodan. "It might have been worse for the Cimbri had they overcome Rome."

Tjorr shook his head, puzzled. "You are a strange one, disa," he said. "Half of what you speak these days I do not understand at all."

They trotted on southward, into the wind off the high plains. Some miles ahead lay the Pontine army, where Mithradates was getting ready to march home. The lancers who jingled after Eodan and Tjorr were a detachment sent to fetch certain hostages, who would assure the behavior of Ancyra's Phrygians as well as of the Tectosagic overlords. Eodan had recognized the commission, small though it was, as a mark of royal favor. For himself, he was chiefly pleased that the Greek he had been studying as chance offered was now good enough to serve him. He could not live in Asia without learning its universal second language.

Tjorr glanced complacently at his own outfit. Like the Cimbrian, he wore the garb of a Persian cavalry officer, though he had added thereto a treasure of golden bracelets. "This has been a good war," he said. "We have seen new lands and new folk, done some lively fighting—ha, do you remember how we attacked them at the river, drove them into its waters and fought them there? And those castles we won were stuffed with plunder!"

"I saw them," replied Eodan shortly.

He did not know why his mood should be so gray. It had indeed been a fine campaign, and he had learned more about war and leadership than he could reckon up—much of it simply from watching Mithradates, who was a noble chief to follow and often a good mirthful restless-minded friend to converse with. The battles had gone well—one could forget the unforgotten during a few clangorous hours of charge and fight and pursuit—until the Tectosages yielded the terms and indemnities demanded. He, Eodan, had been granted enough booty to pay the expenses of Sinope's court; now his own star could follow that of Mithradates until both, perhaps, lit all the Orient sky.

Nevertheless, winter lay in his soul, and he rode to his King without gladness.

Tjorr went on, eagerly: "The best of it is, we've not to garrison here in winter. Back to Sinope! Or Trapezus? There's a city! Do you remember how we stopped there?" It had been politic to march eastward first, entering Galatia through the country of the Trocmi, who had already been subdued; for Rome watched jealously the stump of independent Paphlagonia that lay between Sinope and Ancyra.

Eodan smiled one-sidedly. "I remember how you hired a bawdyhouse just for yourself."

"Oh, I invited my friends, of course. A pity the King wished to talk geography or astronomy or whatever it was with you that night. Still, we've picked up some nice wenches here and there, not so?" Tjorr sighed in reminiscence. "Ah, Satalu! She was as sweet and bouncy as a stack of new-mown clover. Not that I say anything against my concubine in Sinope, though I may buy another one or two for variety." He rubbed the hammer at his side. "There's luck in this old maul, I tell you. Maybe even something of the lightning."

Eodan's thoughts drifted pastward. Perhaps his forebodings were no more than a recollection—now, when he was not too hurried to consider it—of how the captured Galatians had stumbled in clanking lines, north to the slave markets of Pontus.

Or it might be a certain aloneness. Phryne had not understood—maybe no woman could understand—how a man was driven to one after another, by the ruthless force of the Bull, merely so that he could sleep afterward ... when the only one he truly wanted had dwindled to a small burning star on a windy sea. Wherefore Phryne had coldly avoided him. In the bustle of an army that made ready to go, he had found no chance to seek her out and gain back a friendship he missed; there was little privacy in an Eastern palace. He contented himself with making certain she would have an honorable, paid position in the household.

Could I write, he thought, my words would have reached her during these months. But since I lack that great witchcraft, I was only able to make sacrifices, hoping the gods would bring her a dream of me.

He had offered to many powerful gods: Cimberland's Bull, who was also in some way Moon and Sun, and Hertha the Earth Mother, whom they called Cybele down here; even Jupiter and the fork-tongued thunder-snake that Tjorr invoked. He would have given Mithras precedence, that being the favored god of Pontus,