Arpad listened more closely, interested. He heard the redbeard: "But Eodan, disa, they'll flay us!"
"Then thus the Powers will it," said the tall one in a dead voice.
The girl, Phryne, stamped her foot and shouted:
"I thought I followed a man! I see now it is a child! You sit like a wooden toad and will not stir a hand, even for your comrades—"
A wan wrath flickered in the cold green eyes. The one called Eodan said: "You lie. I worked my share during these past few days, to keep the ship afloat. If I did not care whether we sank or not, that is my concern."
She put her fists on her hips, glared up at him and said: "But you make it the world's concern! I understood you had suffered loss when Hwicca fell. Do you think I cannot imagine it, how it would be for me, too, did the one I cared for die in my arms? I said nothing when you made a raft for her, though we needed your help even that first day; when you laid her on it with the Roman sword and her dagger, though we needed both; when you drenched it with oil that might have nourished us; when you risked your own life to launch it and set the torch to it; and when you howled while it fell burning behind. A man must obey his own inward law, or be no man at all. But since then? I tell you, it has ceased to be your private mourning. Now you call upon the world and all the gods, by your silence and your indifference, to witness how you are suffering!
"You overgrown brat! If you want to sacrifice your comrades to her ghost, do it with your hands like a man!"
Arpad signaled his guards. "Take them out and give them food and dry garments," he said. "Bind the men and bring the girl back to me."
A hand closed on Eodan's shoulder. He pushed it off, impatiently, and made a huge stride toward the captain. His lean face was taut with fury.
"Do you dare treat a Cimbrian like a slave?" he said.