"It is so told," Mithradates answered. "Is this any work of yours?"
"Of course not, Great King! I suggest—"
"He says it was not caused by him," snapped Eodan. "Yet My Master knows he was never a friend to me or mine. Nor is Rome itself a friend of Pontus. What better way to harm us all at one blow?"
Flavius looked at Mithradates, who rumbled like a beast in the arena. Then, slowly, the Roman's ruddy-brown eyes sought Eodan's, held them and would not let go. "This was your plan to strike at me, was it not?" he murmured.
"I know nothing of it!" shouted Eodan. "I only know—"
Flavius shook his head, smiling. "Cimbrian, Cimbrian, you have laid down your natural weapons and tried a womanish trick. You will gain no victory with it. There is never any luck in demeaning oneself."
Eodan sought for words, but he found only a black mist of his rage and fear. And of his shame—that he should have tried to use Phryne's plight as a dagger in a Roman back. Yes, he thought, shaken, I have called down evil upon myself and now I must somehow endure what comes.
Flavius turned back to Mithradates. He flung out speech as crisp as though to an army: "Great King, you are insulted by so clumsy an attempt at dividing me from your royal favor. Is it not likelier that this man, who knows the girl—we have only his word and hers that she is even a maiden—this man plotted with her to flee? Surely she had more chance to conspire with him and his friend than me; the caravan master who brought us here from Sinope will testify that she shunned me the whole trip, whereas she was in Eodan's tent yesterday afternoon. And would she go out into that desert with no hope of succor? Would she not assure herself of an accomplice, a captain who could ride out from the army whenever and wherever he wished—to bring her food, protection, ultimately to smuggle her back?"
Mithradates hunched his thick frame. His knuckles stood forth white on the knife hilt; he glared with three red eyes at Eodan and hawked out: "What have you to say?"
"That I serve the King and this Roman does not," answered the Cimbrian frantically.