And yet Tjorr acknowledged another man his disa—a very tall man with long wheat-colored hair, a lean withdrawn face, the sun written on his brow, and one green eye.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.