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.