The Golden Slave

POUL ANDERSON

AVON BOOK DIVISION
The Hearst Corporation
959 Eighth Avenue
New York 19, N. Y.

An Avon Original

Copyright, 1960, by Poul Anderson

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Published by arrangement with the author

Printed in the U. S. A.

Cordelia lay on the couch before him.

Light rippled along her gown of sheerest silk, and her flesh seemed to glow through.

Beside her the table bore wine and food prepared for two.

Eodan gaped.

"Hail Cimbrian," Cordelia raised her hand and beckoned him. "Come," she said.

Eodan swayed toward her, the blood roaring in his temples.

"Will you drink with me?" she asked softly.

"Yes," he answered thickly.

Their hands touched as she poured the wine into his goblet, and he felt his flesh leap with excitement.

"My husband was wrong to set a king to work in his fields," she murmured. "Perhaps we two can reach a better understanding."

She lifted her goblet. "To our tomorrows, may they be better than our yesterdays."

They drank in turn.

Suddenly her arms went around him and her mouth was hot on his. "I meant this to be leisurely with much fine play," she whispered. "But that would be wrong with you. I see it now."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This might have happened. The Cimbri are still remembered by the old district name Himmerland. Plutarch describes the battle at Vercellae, which took place 101 B.C., and its immediate aftermath. Other classical writers, such as Tacitus and Strabo, and a treasure of archeological material enable us to guess at the Cimbri themselves. Apparently they were a Germanic tribe from Jutland, with some elements of Celtic culture; by the time they reached Italy they had grown into a formidable confederation.

King Mithradates the Great (more commonly but less correctly spelled Mithridates) is, of course, also historical. His expedition into Galatia in 100 B.C. is not mentioned by the scanty surviving records; but it is known that he had already fought with that strange kingdom and annexed some of its territory, so border trouble followed by a punitive sweep down past Ancyra is quite plausible.

At that time the area now called southern Russia was dominated by the Alanic tribes, among whom the Rukh-Ansa were prominent. They are presumably identical with the "Rhoxolani" whom Mithradates' general Diophantus defeated at the Crimea about 100 B.C.

The tradition described in the epilogue may be found in the thirteenth-century Heimskringla and, in a different form, in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus.

Otherwise my sources are the usual ancient and modern ones. I have tried to keep the framework of verifiable historical fact accurate. For whatever brutality, licentiousness and unreasonable prejudice is shown by the people concerned, I apologize, adding only that by the standards of the modern free world the era was a good deal worse than I care to describe explicitly.

For the sake of connotation, cities and other political units are generally referred to by their classical rather than contemporary names. It should be obvious from context where any particular spot lies on the map. However, the following list of geographical equivalents may be found interesting.

Ancyra: Ankara, Turkey

Aquitania: West central France

Arausio: Orange, France

Asia: In ordinary Roman usage, the modern Asia Minor plus India

Byzantium: Istanbul, Turkey

Cimberland: Himmerland, northern Jutland, Denmark

Cimmerian Bosporus: A Greek kingdom in the Crimea

Colchis: Mingrelian Georgia, U.S.S.R.

Dacia: Rumania

Galatia: Central Turkey

Gaul: France

Halys River: Kizil River, Turkey

Hellas: Greece

Hellespont: Dardanelles

Helvetia: Switzerland

Macedonia: Northern Greece

Massilia: Marseilles

Narbonensis: Provence, i.e., southern France

Noreia: Near Vienna, Austria

Parthian Empire: Iran and Iraq

Persia: Iran

Pontus: Eastern half of northern Turkish coast, and southward

Sinope: Sinop, Turkey

Tauric Chersonese: The Crimea

Trapezus: Trabzon, Turkey (medieval Trebizond)

Vercellae: Vercelli, Italy, between Turin and Milan

100 B.C.

The Cimbrian hordes galloped across the dawn of history and clashed in screaming battle against the mighty Roman legions.

Led by their chief, Boierik, and his son, Eodan, the hungry and homeless pagan tribes hurled back the Romans time after time in their desperate search for land. But for all the burning towns, the new-caught women weeping, the wine drunk, the gold lifted, the Cimbri did not find a home.

And now it was over. At Vercellae the Roman armies shattered them completely. Only a few survived—and for them death would have been more merciful.

Eodan, the proud young chieftain, had been caught and sold into slavery, his infant son murdered and his beautiful wife, Hwicca, taken as a concubine.

But whips and slave chains could not break the spirit of this fiery pagan giant who fought, seduced and connived his way to a perilous freedom to rescue the woman he loved.

CONTENTS

The Golden Slave

[I]

The night before the battle, there were many watchfires. As he walked from the Cimbri, out into darkness, Eodan saw the Roman camp across the miles as a tiny ring of guttering red. Now the search has ended, he thought; this earth we shall have tomorrow, or be slain.

He thought, while his blood beat swiftly, I do not await my death.

Only the ghostliest edge of a moon was up, and the stars seemed blurred after the mountain sky. He felt Italy's air as thick. And the ground underfoot was dusty where tens of thousands of folk, their horses and cattle, had tramped over ripening grain. A poplar grove nearby stood unmoving in windless gloom. Suddenly, sharp as a thrown war-dart, Eodan recalled Jutland, Cimberland—great rolling heathery hills and storm-noisy oaks, a hawk wheeling in heaven and the far bright blink of the Limfjord.

But that was fifteen years ago. His folk, angry with their gods, had wandered since then to the world's edge. And now the Cimbrian bull must meet for one last time that she-wolf they said guarded Rome. It was unlucky to call up forsaken places in your head.

Besides, thought Eodan, this was good land here. He could make it a pastureland of horses ... yes, he might well take his share of Italy on the Raudian plain, beneath the high Alps.

The night was hot. He rested his spear in the crook of an arm while he took off his wolfskin cloak. Under it he wore the legginged coarse breeches of any Cimbrian warrior; but his shirt was red silk, made for him by Hwicca from a looted bolt of cloth. The twining leaves and leaping stags of the North looked harsh across its shimmer. He wore a golden torque around his neck, gold rings on his arms and a tooled-leather belt heavy with silver god-masks. The dagger it held bore a new hilt of ivory on the old iron blade. The Cimbri had reaved from many folk, until their wagons were stuffed with wealth. Yet it was only land they sought.

There was not much more air to be found beyond the watchfires than within the camp. And it was hardly less full of noise here: the cattle lowed enormously outside the wagons, one great clotted mass of horned flesh. Eodan remembered Hwicca and turned back again.

A guard hailed him as he passed. "Hoy, there, Boierik's son, are you wise to go out alone? I would have scouts in the dark, to slice any such throat that offered itself."

Eodan grinned and said scornfully, "How many miles away would you hear a Roman, puffing and clanking on tiptoe?"

The warrior laughed. A Cimbrian of common mold, the wagons held thousands like him. A big man, with heavy bones and thews, his skin was white where sun and wind and mountain frosts had not burned it red, his eyes were snapping blue under shaggy brows. He wore his hair shoulder length, drawn into a tail at the back of the head; his beard was braided, and his face and arms showed the tattoo marks of tribe, clan, lodge or mere fancy. He bore an iron breastplate, a helmet roughly hammered into the shape of a boar's head and a painted wooden shield. His weapons were a spear and a long single-edged sword.

Eodan himself was taller even than most of the tall Cimbri. His eyes were green, set far apart over high cheekbones in a broad, straight-nosed, square-chinned face. His yellow hair was cut like everyone else's, but like most of the younger men he had taken on the Southland fashion of shaving his beard once or twice a week. His only tattoo was on his forehead, the holy triskele marking him as a son of Boierik, who led the people in wandering, war and sacrifice. The other old ties, clan or blood brotherhood, had loosened on the long trek; these wild, youthful horsemen were more fain for battle or gold or women than for the rites of their grandfathers.

"And besides, Ingwar, there is a truce until tomorrow," Eodan went on. "I thought everyone knew that. I and a few others rode with my father to the Roman camp and spoke with their chief. We agreed where and when to meet for battle. I do not think the Romans are overly eager to feed the crows. They won't attack us beforehand."

Ingwar's thick features showed a moment's uneasiness in the wavering firelight. "Is it true what I heard say, that the Teutones and Ambrones were wiped out last year by this same Roman?"

"It is true," said Eodan. "When my father and his chiefs first went to talk with Marius, to tell him we wanted land and would in turn become allies of Rome, my father said he also spoke on behalf of our comrades, those tribes which had gone to enter Italy through the western passes. Marius scoffed and said he had already given the Teutones and Ambrones their lands, which they would now hold forever. At this my father grew angry and swore they would avenge that insult when they arrived in Italy. Then Marius said, 'They are already here.' And he had the chief of the Teutones led forth in chains."

Ingwar shuddered and made a sign against trolldom. "Then we are alone," he said.

"So much the more for us, when we sack Rome and take Italy's acres," answered Eodan gaily.

"But—"

"Ingwar, Ingwar, you are older than I. I had barely seen six winters when we left Cimberland; you were already a wedded man. Must I then tell you of all we have done since? How we went through forests and rivers, over mountains, along the Danube year after year to Shar Dagh itself ... and all the tribes there could not halt us—we reaped their grain and wintered in their houses and rolled on in spring, leaving their wives heavy with our children! How we smote the Romans at Noreia twelve years ago, and again eight and four years ago—besides all the Gauls and Iberians and the Bull knows how many others that stood in our way—how we pushed one Roman army before us across the Adige, when they would bar Italy—how this is the host they can hope to raise against us, and we outnumber it perhaps three men to one!"

The victories rushed off Eodan's tongue, a river in springtime flood. He thought of one Roman tribune after the next, tied like an ox to a Cimbrian wagon, or stark on a reddened field among his unbreathing legionaries. He remembered roaring songs and the whirlwind gallop of Cimberland's young men, drunk with victory and the eyes of their dear tall girls. It did not occur to him—then—how the trek had nevertheless lasted for fifteen years, north and south, east and west, from Jutland down to the Balkan spine and back to the Belgic plains, from the orchards of Gaul to the gaunt uplands of Spain. And for all the burning towns and weeping new-caught women, all the men killed and all the gold lifted, the Cimbri had not found a home. There had been too many people, forever too many; you could not plow when the very earth spewed armed men up into your face.

"Well," said Ingwar. "Well, yes. Yes." He nodded his bushy head. "It's plain to see whose son you are. His youngest, perhaps, not counting the baseborn, but still son to Boierik. And that's something. Me, I am only a crofter, or will be when I get my bit of land, but you'll be a king or whatever they call it. So remember me, old Ingwar that bounced you on his knee back home, and let me bring my mares for your fine stallions to breed, eh?"

"Eh, indeed." Eodan slapped the broad back and went on into the camp.

The wagons were drawn up in many rings, the whole forming a circle bound together by low breastworks of earth and logs. It seethed with folk, there among the wheels. Even from his own height, Eodan could not see far across that brawl of big fair men and free-striding girls.

Here a band of boys whooped and wrestled at a campfire, while an old wife stirred a kettle of stew, naked towheaded children rolled in the dust, dogs barked and horses stamped. There a gang of men knelt about the dice, shouting as the wagers went, betting all they owned down to their very weapons—for tomorrow they would settle with Marius and own Rome herself. An aged bard, chilly even in summer, huddled into a worn bearskin and listened dumbly to the war-song of a beardless lad whose hands had already been bloodied. A youth and a maiden stole between wagons, seeking darkness; her mother shook her head after them in some bitterness, for it was not like the time when she was young—all this rootless drifting had ended the staid old ways, and no good would come of it. A thrall from the homeland, hairy and ragged, grabbed lumberingly for a timid lass stolen out of Gaul, and got a kick and a curse from the warrior who owned them both. A man whetted an ax against tomorrow's use; beside him snored three friends, empty wine cups in their hands. Here, there, here, there, it became one great whirl for Eodan, and the voices and feet and ringing iron were like the surf he had not heard in fifteen years.

He pushed his way through them all, grinning at those he knew, taking a horn of beer offered by one man and a bite of blood sausage from another, but not staying. Out there, alone in the night, he had remembered Hwicca, and it came to him that the night was not so long after all.

His own wagons stood near his father's, which were close to the god-cars. In two of these lived the hags who tended the holy fire, took omens and cast spells for luck—ugh, they looked like empty leather sacks, and it was said they rode broomsticks through the air. But another held the mightiest Cimbrian treasures, ancient lur horns and a wooden earth-god and the huge golden oath-ring. Eodan and Hwicca had laid their hands on that ring last year to be wedded. The Bull rode in the same wagon, but tonight Boierik had ordered it set in an open cart, that all might see it and be heartened. It was a heavy image, cast in bronze, with horns that seemed to threaten the stars.

They had wandered far, the Cimbri, and they had lost much of old habit and belief and belongingness. They were not even the Cimbri any longer. That was only the chief tribe of many which had joined their trek. There were other Jutes, driven from Jutland by the same succession of wild wet years when no harvest ripened and hail fell like knuckle-bones on Midsummer Eve. There were Germans gathered in along the way; Helvetians from the Alps and Basques from the Pyrenees, neighbors to the sky; even adventurous Celts, throwing in with these newcomers who so merrily ransacked all nations. They had no gods in common, nor did they care much for any gods; they had no high ancestors whose barrows must be sacrificed to; they had not even a single language.

Red Boierik and the Bull held them together. Eodan, with scant reverence for anything else, shaded his eyes in awe as he passed the green, horned bulk of it.

Then he saw his own wagon and his best horses tethered beside it. A low fire was burning, and Flavius was squatting above it, poking with a stick.

"Well," said Eodan, "are you cold? Or afraid?"

The Roman stood up, slowly and easily as a cat. He wore only a rag of a tunic, thrown him one day by his master, but he wore it like a toga in the Senate. Men had advised Eodan not to trust such a thrall—stick a spear in him, or at least beat the haughtiness out, or one day he'll put a knife in your back. Eodan had disregarded them. Now and then he would knock Flavius over with a single open-handed cuff, when the fellow spoke too sharply, but nothing worse had been needed; and he was more use than a dozen shambling Northern oafs.

"Neither," he said. "I wanted a little more light, to see the camp better. This may be my last night in it."

"Hoy!" said Eodan. "Speak no unlucky words, or I'll kick your teeth in."

He made no move against the Roman. War or the chase were one thing; beating those who could not fight back was another, a distasteful work. Eodan laid the whip on his thralls less often than most. Lately he had given Flavius the job, and the Roman had shown Roman skill at it.

"After all, master, I could have meant that tomorrow we will sleep in Vercellae, and a few nights thereafter in Rome." Flavius smiled, the odd closed-lipped smile with drooping eyelids that made Cimbrian men somehow raw along the nerves but seemed to draw Cimbrian women. In his mouth the rough, burring Northern language became something else, almost a song.

He was about ten years older than Eodan, not as tall or as broad of shoulder, but more supple. His skin was nearly as fair, though his hair curled black; his face was narrow, smooth, with wide red lips, but his jaw jutted, and his nose was curving chiseled beauty; his rust-colored eyes had lashes a woman might envy. Four years as a Cimbrian slave had put certain skills in his hands, but did not seem to have dulled his gaze or numbed his tongue.

Eodan gave him a hard stare. "If I were you, not tied to the wheel tonight and my fellows close by, I'd slip from here. You'd have a better chance of escaping now than you ever had before."

"Not a good enough chance," said Flavius. "Tomorrow you will win and I would be scourged or killed if caught. Or the Romans will win and I shall be released. I can wait. My folk are older than yours—you are a nation of children, but we are schooled in waiting."

"Which makes you less trouble to me!" laughed the Cimbrian. "You can be my overseer, when I build my garth. I'll even get you a Roman wife."

"I told you I have one. Such as she is." Flavius grimaced delicately. Eodan bristled. It meant nothing for Flavius to bed with thrall women—any man would do that if no better were to be had. The ugly, hardly understandable gossip about boys could be overlooked. But a man's wife was his wife, sworn to him in the sight of proud folk. Even if he did not get on with her, he was less than a man for speaking her name badly before others.

Well—

"What is the Roman consul's name?" went on Flavius. "Not Catulus, whom you beat at the Adige, but the new one they say has been given supreme command."

"Marius."

"Ah, so. Gaius Marius, I am sure. I have met him. A plebeian, a demagogue, a self-righteous and always angry creature who actually boasts of knowing no Greek ... indeed. His one lonely virtue is that he is a fiend of a soldier."

Flavius had murmured his remark in Latin. The Cimbric, the speech of barbarians, could not have been used to say it. Eodan followed him without much trouble; he had had Flavius teach him enough Latin for everyday use, looking forward to the day when he dealt with many Italian underlings.

Eodan said, "In my baggage cart you will find my chest of armor. Polish the helmet and breastplate. I would look my best tomorrow." He paused at the wagon. "And do not sit close to here."

Flavius chuckled. "Ah—I see what you have in mind. You are to be envied. I know all Aristotle's criteria of beauty, but you sleep with them!"

Eodan kicked at him, not very angrily. The Roman laughed, dodged and slipped off into darkness. Eodan stared after him for a little, then heard him strike up a merry melodious whistling.

It was the same air Gnaeus Valerius Flavius had been singing at Arausio in Gaul, to hearten his fellow captives. That was after the Cimbri had utterly smashed two consular armies, while Boierik was sacrificing all the prisoners and booty to the river god. Ha, but the hag-wagon had stunk of blood! Eodan had been a little sickened, as one helpless man after another went to be hanged, speared, cut open and brains dashed out—the river had been choked with the dead. He had heard Flavius singing. He did not know Latin then, but he had guessed from the kind of laughter (the Romans had laughed, waiting to be murdered!) that the words were bawdy. On an impulse he had bought Flavius from the river for a cow and calf. Later he had learned that he now owned a Roman of the equestrian class, educated in Athens, possessor of rich estates and tall ambitions, serving in the army as every wellborn Roman must.

Eodan went up two steps and drew aside the curtain in his doorway. This was a chief's wandering home, drawn by four span of oxen, walled and roofed against the rain.

"What is that?" The low woman-voice was taut. He heard her move in the dark wagon body, among his racked weapons.

"I," he said. "Only I."

"Oh—" Hwicca groped to the door. The dim light picked out her face—broad, snub-nosed, a little freckled, the mouth wide and soft, the eyes like summer heavens. Her yellow hair fell so thickly past the strong shoulders that he could hardly see her crouched body.

"Oh, Eodan, I was afraid."

Her hands felt cold, touching his. "Of a few Romans?" he asked.

"Of what could happen to you tomorrow," she whispered. "And even to Othrik.... I thought you would not come at all tonight."

His arm slipped down under the wheaten mane, across her bare back, and he kissed her with a gentleness he had never had for other women. It was not only that she was his wife and had borne his son. Surely it was not that she also came of a high Cimbrian house. But when he saw her it was like a springtime within him, a Jutland spring in lost years when the Maiden drove forth garlanded under blossoming hawthorns; and he knew that being a man was more than mere war-readiness.

"I went out to look at things," he told her, "and spoke with some men and with Flavius."

"So.... I fell asleep, waiting. I did not hear. Flavius sang me a song to make me sleep when I could not ... he had first made me laugh, too." Hwicca smiled. "He promised to bring me some of these flowers they have—roses, he calls them—"

"That is enough of Flavius!" snapped Eodan. May the wind run off with that Roman, he thought, the way he bewitches all women. I come back and the first thing I hear from my wife is how wonderful Flavius is.

Hwicca cocked her head. "Do you know," she murmured, "I think you are jealous? As if you had any reason!"

She withdrew. He followed, awkwardly taking off his clothes in the black, cramped space. He heard Hwicca go to Othrik, the small, milky wonder who would one day sit in his high seat, and draw a skin over the curled-up form. He waited on their own straw. Presently her arms found him.

[II]

The Cimbri met the joint forces of Marius and Catulus on the Raudian plain near the city Vercellae. It was on the third day before the new moon in the month Sextilis, which is now called August. The Romans numbered 52,300; no one had counted the Cimbri, but it is said each side of their army took up thirty furlongs and that they had 15,000 horses.

Eodan led a wing of these. He was not on one of the shaggy, short-legged, long-headed Northern ponies that had trotted across Europe—the tall black stallion he had found in Spain snorted and danced beneath him. He dreamed about herds of such horses, his own stock on his own land. He would raise horses like none the world had ever seen. Meanwhile he rode with silver-jingling harness to cast down Consul Marius.

His big body strained against a plate of hammered iron; his helmet carried the mask of a wolf, and plumes nodded above it; a cloak like flame blew from his shoulders; he wore gilt spurs on boots inlaid with gold. He shouted and bandied jokes—the lusty mirth of a stock-breeding people—with comrades even younger than he, shook his lance to catch the sun on its metal, put the aurochs horn to his lips and blew, till his temples hammered, for the joy of hearing it. "Hoy-ah, there, Romans, have you any word I can take to your wives? I'll see them before you do!" And the young riders galloped in and out, back and forth, till dust grayed their banners.

Boierik—huge and silent, scarred hawk face and grizzled red hair beneath a horned helmet, armed with a two-pronged spear—rode more steadily in the van of the army. And not all the Cimbri who marched after the horses owned so much as an iron head covering: there were many leather caps and arrows merely fire-hardened. Yet even some bare-legged twelve-year-old boy, wielding no more than a sling, might be wearing a plundered golden necklace.

The Romans waited, quiet under the eagles, their cuirasses and greaves, oblong shields and round helmets blinding bright in the sun. Among them waved officers' plumes and an occasional blue cloak, but they seemed as much less colorful than the barbarians as they seemed smaller—a dark short race with cropped hair and shaven chins, holding their ranks stiff as death. Even their horsemen stood rigid.

Eodan strained his eyes through the dust that was around him like a fog, kicked up by hoofs and feet. He could scarcely see his own folk; now and then he caught the iron gleam of chains by which the Cimbri had linked their front-line men together, to stand fast or die. He thought, with a moment's unease, that it aided the Romans, not to be able to see how great were the numbers they must face.... Then a war-horn screamed, and he blew his own in answer and smote spurs into his horse.

Hoofs drummed beneath him. He heard the wild, lowing du-du-du of the holy lur horns; closer now, the Romans tubas brayed brass and the Roman pipes skirled. He heard even the rattle of his own metal and the squeak of leather. But then it was all drowned in the Cimbrian shouts.

"Hau-hau-hau-hau-hoo!" shrieked Eodan into his horse's blowing mane. "Hau, hau! Hee-ee-yi!" So did we shout at Noreia, when Rome first learned who we are; so did we cry on the Alps, when we romped naked in the snow and slid down glaciers on our shields; so did we howl as we ripped up a forest to dam the Adige, break the Roman bridge and wring the eagle's neck! Hee-hoo!

It was a blink of time, and it was forever, before he saw the enemy cavalry before him. A shape sprang out of whirling gray dust, a shadow, a face. Eodan saw that the man's chin was scarred. He reached into his belt, whipped out one of his darts, and hurled it. He saw it glance off the Roman cuirass. He veered his horse to the right and shook his lance as he went by.

Around him it was all thudding and yelling. He only glimpsed the Roman charge, fragments through the dust, a helmet or a sword, once the eye of a horse. He leaned low in the saddle and reached for his second dart. The Cimbrian riders were moving slantwise across the advancing Roman front, and only those on the left actually met that charge. Eodan edged toward the fighting.

A mounted man loomed up, sudden as a thunderclap. Eodan threw the dart. It struck the Roman's horse in a nostril, and blood squirted out. The horse screamed and lunged. Eodan knew a moment of reproach; he had not meant to hurt the poor beast! Then he was upon the enemy. The fellow was too busy with his frantic mount to raise shield. Eodan drove his lance two-handed into the man's throat. He toppled from his seat, and the shaft was almost wrenched from Eodan's hands. With a single harsh movement, he freed it, nearly falling himself.

Another shape came out of the racketing dust. Eodan was able to see this one more clearly. He could have counted the iron bands of the cuirass or the iron-studded leather strips falling down the thighs above the kilt. He braced his lance in his hands and waited. The Roman came in at a trot. His shaft struck out. Eodan parried it, wood smote dully on wood. The horses snorted and circled while their riders probed. The Roman's steel hit Eodan's shield, where it hung on the Cimbrian's arm, and stuck there for a tiny moment. Eodan grabbed the lance with his left hand and shoved his own weapon forward, clumsily, with his right arm. The Roman's shield blocked him. Eodan whipped his shaft down like a club, and it hit the Roman's knee. The man yelped and dropped his shield. Eodan's iron went through his jaws. The Roman fell backward, dragging the lance with him, strangling in blood. His horse bucked, brought down a chance hoof and cracked the wood across.

Panting, Eodan drew his sword and looked about. He could dimly see that men were skirmishing through dust and heat—the Bull help us, but it was hot!—and that the battle was moving toward the Cimbrian right. Sweat runneled from him, stung his eyes and drenched his padded undergarment. He should have been crowing his victory. Two men slain for certain; it was not often you knew what a blow of yours had done. But he felt too choked in the dust.

He rode after the fight in search of an enemy. Boierik's plan had worked, to draw the Roman horse away while the Cimbrian foot struck their center. He could hear the screeches and hammering as men battled on the ground; he could not see it.

Slowly his mount gained speed. He was riding at gallop when he saw the knot of men. Two Romans ahorse were circling about four dismounted Cimbri, who stood back to back and glared. Eodan felt the heart spring in his breast. "Hee-ya-hau! Hau, hau, hau!" He whirled the great iron blade up over his head and charged.

The nearest Roman saw him and had time to face the attack. Eodan struck down, two-handed, guiding the stallion with his knees. The blow cried out on the Roman shield, and he felt it shock back into his own bones. He saw the shieldframe crumple. The Roman whitened and fell from the saddle, rolled over and sat up holding a broken arm.

The other one darted to his rescue. Eodan took a savage spear-thrust on his breastplate; it glanced down and furrowed his thigh. He reached out, hammering with his sword. It bounced on helmet and shoulder pieces, clamored against wood and steel. The lance broke across. The Roman rider sat firm, working his way in, shield upraised. Eodan hewed at his leg. The Roman caught the blow on his own sword, but the sheer force of it pushed both blades down. Eodan struck with the edge of his small shield and hit the Roman on the shoulder, knocking him from his saddle. The four dismounted Cimbri roared and rushed in.

A wolf-fight snarled by. Eodan followed it. All at once he found himself out of the dust cloud. The ground was torn underfoot, and a dead barbarian glared empty-eyed at a cloudless sky. Not many miles off gleamed Vercellae's white-washed walls. He could almost see how the townsfolk blackened them, standing and staring. If Marius fell, Vercellae would burn. High over all, floating like a dream, remote and lovely, were the snowpeaks of the Alps.

Eodan gasped air into lungs like dry fire. He grew aware that his leg bled ... and when had he been wounded in the hand? No matter. But he would sell his best ox for a cup of water!

His eyes went back to the battle. The cavalry skirmished in blindness. The Cimbrian foot raged against Catulus' legions, and Catulus buckled. Where was Marius?

Even as he watched, Eodan saw Roman standards in the dust, a gleam, a rippling steely line, and the army of Marius came from chaos and fell upon the Cimbri!

Eodan jogged back, scowling. It was not well. He could see how the barbarians were suddenly caught and chopped—and they had the sun in their eyes, and never had men fought in so much heat.... What had become of Boierik?

He entered the dust again. His tongue felt like a block of wood. Presently he found some of his young riders streaming back to the main fight. Their cloaks were tattered and their helmets stripped of feathers; one man's cheek gaped open, and his teeth grinned through.

"Hau-hau-hau!" Eodan gave the war-cry, because someone must, and hurled himself at the Roman lines. There was a whirling and a shock, and then the earth came up and struck him. His horse galloped off, a javelin in its flank.

Eodan cursed, rose to his feet and ran to the Cimbrian foot. Behind the chained first rank he saw men who were stabbing with spears, hewing with axes and swords, throwing stones and shooting arrows. They leaped into the air, howled, shook their tawny manes and rushed to do battle. The Romans stood firm, shield by shield, and worked.

Eodan reached the front-line flank of the Cimbrian host. He faced a dimly-seen foe; the sun in his brows blinded him almost as much as the dust and sweat. He heard a whistling, like the wind before rain, and felt three thumps in his shield. The Romans had launched their massed javelins.

Cimbri clawed at whetted iron in their flesh. Eodan was unhurt, but his shield was useless. What new trick was this? Only one metal pin left in the javelin head—it was bent and held fast by its crooked point; he could not wrench it free. He knew a chill. This Marius had thought of such a trick!

Casting his shield from him, Eodan joined the charge.

Elsewhere the invaders were already locked face to face with the enemy; now this part of their host met him. Eodan struck at a shield. His sword was blunted; it would not bite. A Roman blade flashed at him. He dodged it, planted his feet wide and hewed two-handed. A Roman helmet stopped his swing. He heard neckbones snap across. The man crashed to the ground. One behind him stepped into line. The legion advanced.

Gasping, Eodan retreated. It was a hailstorm of blows now—shouts, shocks, no more war-cries for lack of breath, but always the din of weapons. And the rising wildcat song of the pipes ... where were the lurs? No one blew the holy lurs? He yelled and struck out.

Backward step by step. His boot crushed something, the bones of a face. He looked down and saw it was Ingwar, with a Roman javelin in his armpit. He looked up again from the dead eyes, sobbed and hit through redness at a face above a shield. The Roman had a long thin nose like a beak. And he grinned. He grinned at Eodan.

Crash and clang and boom of iron. No more voices, except when a man hooted his pain. Eodan saw one of the linked Cimbri fall, holding his belly, trying to keep in his bowels. He died. His comrades dragged him backward. The man beside the corpse gasped—a slingstone had smashed his teeth—and sat down. A Roman took him by the hair and slashed off his head. Four Romans, close together, stepped into the gap and cut loose.

The battle banged and thundered under a white-hot sky. Italy's earth rose up in anger and stopped the nostrils of the Cimbri.

Eodan slipped and fell in a pool of blood. He looked stupidly at his hands, empty hands—where had his sword gone? Pain jagged through his skull. He looked up; the Roman line was upon him. He glimpsed the hairy knees of a man, drew his dagger and thrust weakly upward. A shield edge came down hard on his wrist. He cried out and lost the knife. The shield struck his helmet and darkness clapped down. The legionaries walked over him.

He sat up again, looking at their backs. For a little while he could not move. He could only watch them as they broke his people. There was a tuba being sounded. Was it in his head, or did it blow victory for Marius? His wrist was numb. Blood dripped slowly from a forearm gashed across.

At least he lived, he thought. The dead around him were thick. Never had he seen so many dead. And the wounded groaned until he sickened of their anguish. He sat there for a while longer. The field grew black with flies. The sun got low, a huge blood-colored shield seen through dust.

The Romans took the field, gathered themselves together and quick-marched after the fleeing.

Eodan struggled for wakefulness. He kept slipping back into night; it was like trying to climb out of a watery pit. There was something he must remember.... Was it his father? No, surely Boierik was dead; he would not outlive this day. He would fall on his own double-headed spear if he must. His mother had died two years ago, now let her ghost thank the earth Powers for that. And Hwicca—

It came to him. He reeled to his feet. "Hwicca," he croaked. "Othrik."

The Romans would take the wagon camp. They would take the camp. The Cimbri would be slaves.

Eodan lurched through nightmare across the Raudian plain. The hurt wailed at him. The gathering crows flew up as he passed and then settled down again. A riderless horse rushed past; he groped for its reins, but it was many yards away. The horizon seemed to shrink until it lay about him like bonds; then it stretched until he was the only thing that was; he heard the fever-hum of the world's brain under his feet.

When he neared the camp, miles beyond the battle, he had to rest for a while. His legs would carry him no more. He had some thought that there would be horses about; he and Hwicca and Othrik could get away. Oh, the wide cool Jutland moors! He remembered how the first snow fell in winter.

He saw the beaten Cimbri, such as lived, pouring into the camp. He got up again and stumbled among them. The Romans were already over the earthworks, briskly, like men who round up cattle.

Eodan went among them somehow. He saw the Cimbrian women stand in black clothes on their wagons, spears and swords in hand, screaming. They struck at their husbands and fathers and sons and brothers—"Coward! Whelp! You fled, you fled—" They strangled their own children, threw them under the wheels or the feet of the milling kine. Eodan passed a woman he knew who had hanged herself from the pole of a wagon, and her children were tied dangling at her heels.

Men who had thrown away their weapons, and saw the Romans gather in their folk, took what rope they could find. There were no trees here; they must tie themselves to the horns of the oxen, or by the neck to a steer's legs, to die.

The Romans worked hard, prodding prisoners into groups, stunning, binding. They took some sixty thousand alive.

Eodan paid small heed. It was happening elsewhere. He was a pair of feet and a pair of eyes, searching for Hwicca ... no more.

He found her at last. She stood beside the wagon that had been her household. She held Othrik to her breast and a knife in her hand. Eodan slipped, fell, picked himself up, fell again, crawled on hands and knees toward her. She did not see him. Her eyes were too wild. He had no voice left to call.

"Othrik," said Hwicca. Her words wavered. He could barely hear them above the noise. "Good Othrik." The hand with the dagger stroked across his fine pale-gold hair as he slept in the curve of her arm. "Be not afraid, Othrik," she said. "It is well. All is well."

A Roman squad came from beyond the god-cars. "There's a beauty!" Eodan heard one of them shout. "Get her!"

Hwicca sucked in a gasp. She laid the knife at her son's throat. The blade fell out of her fingers. Two of the Romans ran toward her. She looked at them at they neared. She picked up the baby by his ankles and dashed his head against the wagon boards.

"Othrik," she said numbly, and let the thing drop to earth.

The Romans—they were both young, hardly more than boys—stopped and gaped. One of them took a backward step. Hwicca went down on her knees and fumbled blindly after the dagger. "I am coming, I am coming," she called. "Wait for me, Othrik. You are too little to go down hellroad alone. I will come hold your hand."

The Roman squad was kicking some of Eodan's thralls toward the main slave group. Their officer looked over his shoulder at the two boys he had sent after Hwicca. "Snatch her up or she'll kill herself!" he barked. "You can't peddle dead meat!"

They broke into a run again. Hwicca's hand touched the dagger.

Flavius the slave sprang from behind the baggage cart. He put his foot on the knife. Hwicca stared like a clubbed animal up into his face. He smiled. "No," he said.

Eodan hitched himself forward another yard. She had not seen him, even yet. The two legionaries reached her, pulled her erect and hustled her off. Flavius went after them. Presently another Roman detachment came by and found Eodan.

[III]

Early the next year, only a few days after the feast of Mars had signaled the vernal equinox, they brought an injured slave to the master's house. This was on a Samnian latifundium owned by Gnaeus Valerius Flavius.

It was a raw day—low smoky clouds scudded over the fields, with a cold whistle of wind and a few rain-spatters. The rolling land lay wet and dark, its trees nearly bare save for a clump of pines. A rutted road gleamed with wind-ruffled puddles, and a few cows and goats, still winter-shaggy, huddled behind the sheds. The field slaves stamped their feet, blew on chafed hands and bent to their task; no idleness now, this was plowing and sowing time, that the flax might clothe Rome next winter. Their overseers rode up and down the lines, touching a back here and there with a skilled lash, but lightly; today the air did all the needful whipping for them.

Phryne came out of the house and felt how the wind bit. Her stola skirts streamed from her girdle, and she almost lost the blue palla before she got it on. Nevertheless, she could not have stayed another hour in the villa. Mistress Cordelia would have it hot as Ethiopia, and drown the brazier fumes in enough incense to throttle a mule!

As she walked over the sere lawn, smiling to old gardener Mopsus but hurrying on (he was a dear, and so lonely since the master sold his last grandchild—and a Greek—but how he talked), she saw two field hands approach. They were common dark men, some or other kind of barbarian, she didn't know what. But the one they supported was something else. She had not seen so big a man in a long time, and his unkempt yellow hair and beard tossed a blaze across the sunless sky.

Why ... he must be a Cimbrian ... one of the very people who had captured Master Flavius in Gaul! It was a Euripidean situation. Phryne went down the hill for a closer look. One of the dark men saw her and bobbed his head with coarse deference—a household slave, personal attendant to the mistress herself, was not common folks.

"What is the matter?" asked Phryne. "What happened?"

The Cimbrian lifted his head. He bore a strongly molded face, heavy about the jaw and brows but almost Hellenic of nose. His eyes were wide apart beneath a tattooed triskele (how had the yelping barbarians of Thule ever come on that most ancient symbol?) and a green color like winter seas. He was white about the lips. His left leg dragged.

"He got hurt by a bull," said the first of the dark slaves. "The big white stud bull broke out of the pen and come ramping down in the field. Gored one man."

"They didn't dare kill him," added the other. "He's worth too much, you see. And we couldn't lay a rope on him. Then this fellow got in, took him by the horns, threw him and held him down till help come."

Phryne felt how the blood flew into her face. "But that was wonderful!" she cried. "Another Theseus! And only hurt in the leg!"

The Cimbrian laughed, a short inhuman bark, and said: "I would not have been hurt at all—we used to throw bulls every year at the spring rites—but when those trained pigs of cowherds let him up they held the ropes too slack." His Latin was rough and ungrammatical, but it flowed quickly.

"Foreman says get him to the barracks and fix the bone," said one of those who upbore him. "Best we go."

Phryne stamped her foot. At once she realized that she had driven her small shoe into the mud. She saw the Cimbrian's eyes slide down, and a grin went like a ghost over his mouth. He looked back at her and nodded wryly. He knew.

She blurted in confusion: "Certainly not! I know what you would do, have that fool of a blacksmith splint it—and he will limp for the rest of his life. Up to the villa!"

They followed her, bashfully. No, not the Cimbrian—he jumped one-footed—but, when they entered the kitchen and put him in a chair, he sprawled as if he owned it. He was caked with mud, he had on only a sleazy gray tunic, there were shackle scars on his wrists and ankles, but he said, "Give me some wine," and the chief cook himself poured a full stoup. The Cimbrian emptied it in three long gulps, sighed, and held it out again.

Phryne went off after the house physician. He was Greek like herself, all the most valuable slaves were Greek, even as the only valuable free folk had once been—an aging man, with a knowledge of herbs and poultices to ease Cordelia, who suffered loudly and would not be without him. He came readily enough, looked at the wound, called for water and began sponging it.

"A clean break," he said. "The muscle was little torn. Stay on a crutch for a few weeks and it should heal as good as new. But first we'll hear some of those famous Cimbrian howls, for I must set it."

"Do you take me for a Southlander?" snorted the hurt man. "I am a son of Boierik."

"There are philosophers in my family," said the physician, with an edge in his voice. "Very well, then."

Phryne could not look at the leg, nor could she look away from the barbarian's face. It was a good face, she thought, it would be handsome in a wild fashion if some god would smooth off the slave-gauntness. She saw how sweat spurted out on the skin, when his bones grated, and how he bit his lip till the blood trickled.

The physician splinted and bound the leg. "I will see about a crutch," he said. "It might also be well to speak to the major-domo, or the mistress. Otherwise, if I know the chief field overseer, they'll put this man back at work before he is properly healed."

Phryne nodded. "You may go," she said to the gaping sowers. The cook bustled off on some errand. Phryne found herself alone with the barbarian.

"Rest a while," she said. She noticed his cup was empty for the second time; she risked the steward's wrath and poured him a third.

"Thank you." He nodded curtly.

"It was heroic of you," she said, more clumsy with words than she was wont.

He spat an obscenity. "The bull was something to fight."

"I see." She found a chair and sat down, elbows on knees, looking at her folded hands.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Phryne." Though it meant nothing to him, she was obscurely grateful to hear no sniggering reference to her historic namesake's profession; why did they never remember that the first Phryne had modeled for Praxiteles, and forget what else she had been?

"I am Eodan, Boierik's son. Are you a Roman?"

She started, met a smoldering in his eyes and laughed a little. "Zeus, no! I am a Greek. A slave like yourself."

"A well-tended slave," he fleered. He was drunk—not much, but enough to loosen the wariness learned in the dealers' pens. "A darling of the house."

Anger leaped in her—it stung that he should snap when she had offered only help—and she said, "Are you so brave to make war on me with your tongue?"

He checked himself. As he sat rubbing his shaggy chin, she could almost see him turning the thought over in his mind. Finally, pushed out with an effort that roughened it: "You are right. I spoke badly."

"It is nothing," she said, altogether melted. "I think I understand. You were a free man. A king, did you say?"

"We have ... we had no kings," he mumbled. "Not as you seem to mean the word here—what little I've heard. But truly I was a free man once."

A gust of rain went over the tiled roof. The hearthfire leaped and sputtered; smoke caught Phryne's eyes, and she coughed and threw back her cloak. Eodan's gaze fixed on her.

She knew that look. Every woman in the Roman world knew it, though the high-born paid it no heed. A slave girl must. It was the look of a man locked away from all women for months and years, lucky to have a rare hurried moment in a strawstack at festival time. The penalty for attacking expensive female property could be death, if her owner cared (Phryne doubted Cordelia would) ... still, a desperate hand might seize her one night. She stayed close to the villa when she was here.

She said quickly, "I have heard Master Flavius telling he was a prisoner among your folk for four years."

Eodan laughed, deep laughter from full lungs, but somehow grim. At last he answered, "Flavius was my slave."

"Oh—". A hand stole to her lips.

Still he looked at her. She was not tall, but she was lithely formed. The simple white dress fell about long slim legs, touched the curve of thigh and waist, drew over small firm breasts. Her hair was of deep bluish-black, piled on a slender neck and caught with a bone fillet. Her face did not have classic lines; perhaps that, and her quietness when Roman men were about, was why she remained a virgin at twenty. But more than one lovesick slave had tried to praise deep violet eyes, smoky-lashed under arching brows, a wide clear forehead, tilted nose and delicate chin, soft mouth and pale cheeks.

Eodan lifted his cup. "Be not afraid," he said. "I cannot leave this chair before they bring me a staff."

Phryne received his bluntness with relief. Some of the educated household men simpered about so she could vomit. She could give no better reason, in all honesty, for not taking a lover or even a husband. Cordelia had not forbidden her, and the memory of a certain boy was chilly comfort.

"I should think," she whispered, leaning close lest it be overheard, "that if you treated Flavius kindly—and he did not look much abused when he came back—he could have found something better for you than field labor. That destroys—" She stopped, appalled.

Eodan said bleakly, "Destroys men. Of course. Do you think I have not seen what a few years of it do to a man? He could have done worse, I suppose—resold me to the games I hear tell of, or as a rower on a ship. But he could never trust me running about a house, even another man's house, as freely as you do."

"Why not? You can have no more dreams of escape. You have seen crucified men along the roads."

"Some things might be worth a crucifixion," said Eodan. He made no great point of it; his tone was almost matter-of-fact, wherefore Phryne shuddered.

"Hercules help me, why?" she breathed.

Eodan said from a white face, "He took my wife."

He drained his cup.

Phryne sat very still for a while. The wind mourned about the house, wailed in the portico and rubbed leafless branches together. Another rain-burst pelted the roof.

"Well!" said Eodan at last, "Enough of that, little Greek. I should not have said anything, but for the wine, eh, and this leg feels as if there were wolves at it." The arrogance slipped from him and she looked into eyes hurt and helpless, which begged her to leave him his last rags of pride. "You will not speak of what I said?"

"I swear so," she answered.

He regarded her for a very long while. Finally he nodded. "I think I can believe that," he said.

Steps sounded on the brick floor. Phryne stood up, folding her hands before her and casting duly meek eyes downward. Eodan remained as he was, his gaze challenging those who entered. They were the major-domo and Mistress Cordelia.

The major-domo, an Illyrian grown fat and bald in his own self-importance till he could imagine nothing more than accounts and ordering other slaves about, said: "Here the Cimbrian is, I am told, my mistress. I shall call porters and have him carried back down to his barracks."

Cordelia said: "Wait. I told you I would like to speak with this bull wrestler."

Phryne raised her eyes, suddenly afraid for Eodan. He was so proud, too much so for his own good. Slaves whom the dealer failed to break inwardly, so that they let him chain their spirits as well as their hands, might sometimes rise high and even regain freedom; but they were more likely to end on a cross or in the arena. And Eodan was drunk and—O sea-born Cyprian—he was looking at his owner's wife as he had looked at her!

"You are a bold man," said Cordelia.

Eodan nodded.

She laughed. "And not overburdened with modesty," she went on. "Do not tell me we have another of these barbarian kings!"

Eodan replied: "If you are Flavius' wife, then we have your husband's one-time owner."

Phryne's heart seemed to crash to a halt. She stood for a brief space feeling blood drain from her. Now the gods would have their revenge, when a man bore his head so high.

Cordelia stepped back. For a moment she flushed.

She was a tall woman of Etruscan stock, perhaps descended from Tarquin himself and some jewel of Tarquin's harem. Thirty years old, she had the fullness of body that would turn to fat in another decade but was as yet only superb. A silken dress violated every sumptuary law the Republic had ever passed to emphasize hip and bosom, insolently. Her hair was thick, its black copper-tinged, her face curve-nosed and heavy-lipped, her eyes like southern nights. She had the taste to wear only one ornament, a massive silver bracelet.

The major-domo turned red and gobbled his indignation. Cordelia glanced at him, back at Eodan, then suddenly she laughed aloud.

"So this is what he looks like! And my husband, who has wearied Roman dinners this half a year with his stories of the Cimbri, did not bring you to show off!"

She paused, looked closely into Eodan's face—their eyes met like swords—and murmured, "But I see why."

Phryne leaned against the wall; she did not think her knees would hold her unaided. Now they were on a well-marked path; she knew what came next. The final fate of Eodan was hidden—it could be gay or gruesome, but this part of the way was mapped.

Young Perseus had entered the Gorgon's lair and come back alive.

She wondered why she felt like weeping.

[IV]

"He has deserved well of us," Cordelia said. "Let him be kept in the household, at least till he is properly healed. Give him good raiment and light work. And first of all a bath!"

Thereafter she did not hurry matters. Eodan limped about with a crutch, ate and drank and slept enormously, scoured pots or helped old Mopsus the gardener. He spent much time down at the stables, where he soon had the friendship of the head groom, a dour Cappadocian who was believed to have been hatched rather than born since not even a mother could have loved him. Phryne did not understand how a man of intelligence—and Eodan had a good mind in his rough way—could sit hour after hour talking about currycombs and fetlocks and spavins and whatever else there was; but so it went and, after all, divine Homer dwelt lovingly on horses.

Washed, shaved, his hair cut and combed, a white tunic and sandals on him, Eodan might almost have been a Homeric warrior himself—Diomedes, perhaps, or Ajax the haughty. As he grew rested and fleshed out, his manners became milder, he snarled or cuffed at men less often, his smiles were sometimes nearly warm instead of a mere wolfish baring of teeth. But he dropped his green eyes for no one, and the house slaves who shared their room with him were kept at a frosty distance.

The major-domo was afraid of him. "I would not trust that barbarian, not one inch," he told Phryne. "My dear, you should have seen his back when he first bathed. I would not even try to count all the whip scars. And many slashes were new—he got them here, in the months we have had him, the last of them perhaps only yesterday! Mark my words, it is the sign of an unruly heart. It is such men who lead slave revolts. If he were mine, I would geld him and sell him to the lead mines."

"Some men were born gelded," said Phryne coldly, and left. She could almost see the crisscrossing of thin white lines on Eodan's shoulderblades. She avoided him for a while, uncertain why she did so.

And the springtime waxed. Each day the sun stood higher; each day a new bird-song sounded in the orchard. One morning fields and trees showed the finest transparent green, as if the goddess had only breathed on them in the night. And then at once, unable to wait, the leaves themselves burst out and the orchard exploded in pale fire.

It happened Cordelia was complaining of a headache again; she must lie in a dark room and make everyone creep by. Phryne, who considered her mistress as strong as a cow, found an excuse to leave the villa. She would gather apple blossoms and arrange them for Cordelia's delight.

The morning was still wet, after a short rain. Where the sun struck the grass, it flashed white. A thrush sat on a bough and chanted of all bright hopes; a milk cow grazed in a meadow, impossibly red. When Phryne went among the gnarled little trees, they shook down raindrops upon her. She took a low branch in her arms and buried her face in its flowers.

"Poor blooms," she whispered. "My poor babies. It is wrong to take away your springtime."

The knife bit at the twigs; she filled her arms with apple blossoms.

Eodan came from the villa. He crutched along as readily as a three-legged dog, bound for the stables carrying a mended bridle. The endlessly gossiping slaves had told Phryne the barbarian was clever with his hands.

But when he saw her he halted. He had never thought much about beauty—land, workmanship, live flesh was good or bad, no more. Now, briefly, the sight of a girl's dark head and slim waist, with dew and white radiance between, went through him like a spear.

The moment passed by. He thought only as he swung about toward her that—by the Bull!—it was a new year and she was a handsome wench. "Ave," he called.

"Atque vale," said Phryne, smiling at him. His hair needed cutting again, and it was uncombed, tangled with sunlight.

"Hail and farewell? Oh, now, wait!" Eodan reached her and barred the path. "You have no haste. Come talk to me."

"My task here is finished," she said in a quick, unsure voice.

"Must they know that?" Eodan's coldest laugh snapped out. "I've learned how to stretch an hour's task into a day. You, having been a slave longer, must be even more skilled at it."

The fair planes of her cheeks turned red. She answered, "At least I have learned not to insult those who do me no harm."

"I am sorry," he said, contrite. "My people were not mannered. Is that why you have kept yourself from me?"

"I have not," she said, looking away. "It—it only happened ... I was busy—"

"Well, now you are not busy," he said. "Can we be friends?"

The gathered blossoms shivered on her breast. Finally she looked up and said, "Of course. But I really cannot stay here long. The mistress has one of her bad days."

"Hm. They say in the kitchen that's only from idleness and overeating. They say her husband sent her down here because her behavior made too much of a scandal even for Rome."

"Well—well, it was a—a rest cure...."

Ha, thought Eodan, I would like to help Mistress Cordelia rest her tired nerves! The story went that Flavius needed her family's help too much in his political striving to divorce her. And, if ever a man deserved the cuckoo sign, it was Flavius!

Eodan clamped on that thought and tried to snuff it out. He could taste its bitterness in his throat.

He said: "You have a Cimbrian habit, Phryne, which I myself was losing. You do not speak evil of folk behind their backs. But tell me, how long have you been here?"

"Not long. We came down perhaps a week before your accident." Phryne looked past a stile, over the meadow to the blue Samnian hills. Tall white clouds walked on a lazy wind. "I only wish we could stay forever, but I'm afraid we will go back to the city in a few months. We always do."

"How do you stand with the mistress?" asked Eodan. He hitched himself a little closer to the girl. "Just what is your position?"

"Oh—I have been her personal attendant for a couple of years. Not a body servant; she has enough maids."

Eodan nodded. His thoughts about Cordelia's younger maids were lickerish, and their eyes had not barred him. But so far there had been no chance. He listened to Phryne:

"I am her amanuensis. I keep her records and accounts, write her letters for her, read and sing to her when she wants such diversion. It is not a hard life. She is not cruel. Some matrons—" The girl shivered.

"You are from Greece?"

She nodded. "Plataea. My grandfather lost his freedom in the war of—No matter, it would mean nothing to you." She smiled. "How tiny our vaunted world of Greeks and Romans is, after all!"

"So you were born a slave?" he went on.

"In a good household. I was educated with care, to be a nurse for their children. But they fell on evil times two years ago and had to sell me. The dealer took me to Rome, and Mistress Cordelia bought me."

He felt a dull anger. He said, "You wear your bonds lightly."

"What would you have me do?" she replied with a flash of indignation. "I should give thanks to Artemis for a situation no worse than this—my books, at least, and a measure of respect, and an entire life's security. Do you know what commonly happens to worn-out slaves? But my mind will not wear out!"

"Well, well," he said, taken aback. "It is different for you." And then wrath broke loose, and he lifted his fist against heaven. "But I am a Cimbrian!" he shouted.

"And I am a Greek," she said, still cold to him. "Your people did not have to come under the Roman yoke. You could have stayed in the North."

"Hunger drove us out. We were too many, when the bad years came. Would you have us peaceably starve? We did not even want war with Rome, at first. We asked for land within their domains. We would have fought for them, any enemies they wished. We sent an embassy to their Senate. And they laughed at us!" Eodan dropped the bridle, leaned against his crutch and held out shaking claw-curved fingers. "I would tear down Rome, stone by stone, and flay every Roman and leave their bones for ravens to pick!"

She asked in a steel-cool tone: "Then why do you think it evil of them to do likewise to you, since the gods granted them victory?"

He felt the tide of his fury ebb. But it still moved in him; and the ocean from which it had come would always be there. He said thickly, "Oh, I do not hate them for that. I hate them for what came afterward. Not clean death, but marching in a triumph, shown like an animal, while the street-bred rabble jeered and pelted us with filth! Chained in a pen, day upon day upon day, lashed and kicked, till we finally went up on a block to be auctioned! And afterward shoveling muck, hoeing clods, sleeping in a hogpen barracks with chains on, every night! That is what I have to revenge!"

He saw how she shrank away. It came to him then that he had his own purposes for her. He forced a stiff smile. "Forgive me. I know I am uncouth."

She said with a break in her voice, "Were you put on the block? Did it only happen that Flavius bought you?"

"Actually, I was not," he admitted. "He had inquiry made for me, and bought me directly. He saw me and said with that smile of his that he wanted to be sure of my fate, so he could pay me back the right amount of both good and evil. Then I was walked down here with some other new laborers."

"And your—" She stopped. "I must go now, Eodan."

"My wife?" He heard his heart knocking, far away in a great hollowness. "He told me that he had Hwicca, too—in Rome ..."

His hands leaped out. He seized her by both arms so she cried out. The apple blossoms fell from her grasp, and his foot crushed them.

"Hau!" he roared. "By the Bull, only now do I think of it! You attend the mistress? And she still shares her husband's town house? Then you have seen Flavius in Rome this winter! You have seen her!"

"Let me go!" she shrieked.

He shook her so her teeth rattled. "How is she? You must have seen her, a tall fair girl, her name is Hwicca. What has become of her?"

Phryne set her jaws against the pain. "If you let me go, barbarian, I will tell you," she said.

His hands dropped. He saw finger marks cruelly deep on her white skin. She touched the bruises with fingers that trembled while tears ran silent down her face. She caught her lip in her teeth to hold it steady.

"I am sorry," he mumbled. "But she is my wife."

Phryne leaned against the tree. At last she looked up, still hugging herself. The violet eyes were blurred. She whispered, "It is I who must ask pardon. I did not realize it was the same—I did not know."

"How could you have known? But tell me!" He held out his empty hands like a beggar.

"Uicca ... I saw her once in a while. The Cimbrian girl, they all called her. She seems well thought of by Flavius. He keeps her in a room of her own, with her own servants. He is—often there. But no one else sees her much. We never spoke. She was always very quiet. Her servants told me she was gentle to them."

"Flavius—" Eodan covered his eyes against the unpitying day.

Phryne laid a hand on his shoulder. It shuddered beneath her palm. "The Unknown God help you," she said.

He turned around and looked upon her, then reached out and gathered her against him. He kissed her so her mouth was numb.

She writhed free, scraped down his ankle with a sandaled foot and clawed with her nails until he let her go. She was white; her loosened dark hair fell about her like a thunder-cloud.

"You slobbering pig!" she cried. "So that is all you miss of your wife!"

She spun about and ran.

"Wait!" he cried. "Wait, let me tell you—I only—"

She was gone. He stood upon the fallen blossoms and cursed. Hwicca would have understood, he thought in wrath and desolation; Hwicca is a woman, not a book-dusty prune, and knows what the needs of a man are.

He looked down, and up again, and finally north, toward Rome. Then he picked up the bridle and went on to the stables. That day he contrived to be given a task at the forge, shaping iron, and the courtyard rang with his hammerblows until dark.

The days passed. The flax was sown. They paid less heed to the ancient festivals now than formerly; once these acres had belonged to free men; now it was all one plantation staffed with slaves. But some custom still lived. The week of the Floralia was observed, not as immoderately as in Rome, but with a degree of ease and a measure of wine.

On the day before the Floralia the physician examined Eodan's leg. "It has knit," he grunted. "Give me back my crutch."

Eodan asked wearily, "Will they return me to the fields?"

"That is not my province." The physician left him.

Eodan walked slowly out of the villa into the walled flower garden behind the kitchen. His leg felt almost a stranger to him. No matter, he would be running in an hour. Running hence? They were not going to make a field hand of him again! It ground away, not only the body, but mind and pride and hope, until a mere two-legged ox remained.

Phryne was talking with one of Cordelia's maids. She saw him and said, "Enough. Come with me." The girl's eyes lingered on Eodan as she went by. He swore at Phryne; in all the time since the orchard morning, she would not speak to him—the winds take her! He considered how to get the maid alone.

"There you are! And well at last! You've been loafing too long, you lazy dog, and eating like a horse the while! Come here!"

Eodan strolled toward the major-domo. He rubbed his fist, looked at it and back at the man's nose, nodded and said: "I did not hear you. Would you repeat your wish?"

"There, there are some—heavy barrels to move," stammered the major-domo. "If you will kindly come this way ..."

Eodan was willing enough to trundle the wine casks about. It was a glory to feel his strength returned. And the villa was all in a bustle—they were hanging up garlands everywhere, the girls giggled and the men laughed, o ho ho, tonight! Eodan drew a pretty wench, a maid, into a corner, they scuffled a little, she whispered breathlessly that she would meet him in the olive grove after moonrise or as soon as she could get away....

The Roman correctness of household eased. Men helped themselves openly to wine, laughed with their overseers, drew buckets of water to pour over sweaty skin, combed the fleas from their hair and wove garlands. Eodan, rolling a great cheese from the storehouse, chanted a Cimbrian march for his friend the groom.

"High stood our helmets,

host-men gathered,

bows were blowing

bale-wind of arrows—"

But no one understood the words.

At sundown the lamps were lit with those sulfur-tipped sticks Eodan still thought a rash risk of Fire's anger. The villa glowed with a hundred small suns of its own. He stood in the garden with Mopsus. "I must go in now and help feed my fellows," he said.

"So, so. A good feed tonight. A good feed. My granddaughter used to live for Floralia night—or was it my daughter, she was a baby too, once ... I wonder, though, why Mistress hasn't asked any high-born guests. It isn't like Mistress not to have fun when she can."

Eodan shrugged. He had seen Cordelia often enough, seated on a couch or borne in a litter, but his world had been far from here, even in the house; she rarely entered the kitchen or the stables. She was only a task his little maidservant must finish before joining him under the olive trees.

He went back into the villa. At its rear were the rooms where the household's male property ate and slept. As he passed out of the kitchen toward those chambers, he saw Phryne.

The lamp that she held turned her pale skin to gold. He moved forward, smiling, a little tipsy, meaning only to explain himself to her. She lifted her hand. "Stop."

"I'm not about to touch you," he flared.

"Good!" Her mouth twisted upward. He had seldom heard so whetted a voice. "I was sent to fetch you. Come."

She turned about and walked quickly toward the atrium. He followed. "But Phryne, what is this?"

Her fist clenched. "You do not know?"

He halted and said harshly, "If I am about to be sent back to the barracks—"

She looked over her shoulder. Tears stood in her eyes. "Oh, not that," she said. "Be not afraid of that. Be glad! You are about to be honored and pleasured."

"What?"

"In fact, the highest honor and the noblest pleasure of which you are capable." She stamped her foot, caught her breath and strode on. He followed in bewilderment.

They crossed an open peristyle, where the first stars mirrored themselves shakenly in a mosaic pool. Beyond was a door inlaid with ivory, Venus twining arms about beautiful Adonis. A Nubian with a sword stood on guard. Eodan had seen him about—a huge man, cat-footed, but betrayed by his smooth cheeks and high voice.

Phryne knocked on the door. "Go in," she said. "Go on in."

Someone giggled, down in the flickering darkness of the corridor. Eodan pushed his way through, and the door swung shut behind him.

He stood in a long room, marble-floored, richly strewn with rugs and with expensive furnishings. Many lamps hung from the ceiling, till the air seemed as full of soft light as of incense. The window was trellised with climbing roses.

A table bore wine and carefully prepared food for two. But there was only one broad couch beside it.

Cordelia was stretched out on the couch. Light rippled along her gown. It was of the sheerest silk; her flesh seemed to glow through. She sat up, smiling, so that her copious breasts were thrust at him. "Hail, Cimbrian," she said.

Eodan gaped. The blood roared in his temples.

She stood up, took a big two-handled silver cup and walked across to him. Her gait was a challenge. When she stood before him he could look down the loose open front of her dress. "Will you not drink with me?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, in his own tongue, for Latin had no such simple way of agreeing. He took the goblet and hoisted it in hands that shook. He was no judge of wine, nor would he have cared tonight, but he noticed dimly that this was smooth and strong.

"I have watched you go about," said Cordelia. "I wanted to thank you for your—services—but it seemed best to let your wound heal first. And then today I saw you lift a cask I would have set two men to carry. I am very glad of that."

He handed her back the cup, still mute. "All of it?" she laughed. "But I wanted to share it with you. As a pledge of friendship. Now we must pour another."

Her thigh brushed his as she turned. He gulped for air. "Come," she said, took his hand and led him to the couch.

The flask gurgled as she poured from it. "My husband was wrong to set a king to work in his fields," she went on. "For I will not believe you were anything less than a king of your people. Perhaps we two can reach a better understanding—for a while ..." She looked up at him, slantwise. "It will depend on you, largely." She lifted the beaker again. "To our tomorrows. May they be better than our yesterdays."

They drank in turn. She sat down and drew him beside her. "I have tried and tried to pronounce that barbarous name of yours," she said. "I will give you another. Hercules? Perhaps!"

Suddenly her mouth was hot upon his.

She stood up, breathing heavily. "I meant to eat first," she said, quick slurred words through curling sweet smoke. "It would be leisurely, civilized, with much fine play. But that would be wrong with you, I see that now." She reached out her arms. "Take off your tunic. Take off my gown. Let us keep the Floralia."

Much later, when the wine and the food were gone, the lamps burned out and the first thin gray creeping into the eastern sky, she ruffled his hair and smiled sleepily. "I will surely call you Hercules."

[V]

After festival time, the latifundium went back into harness. Up in the villa there was the measured pace of days—housework, garden work, much dawdling until some overseer went by, backbiting gossip, petty intrigues for women and position, sometimes after dark a furtive Asiatic ritual of magic or mystery. A womanish world. Eodan considered himself well out of it.

But riding through the fields, where the sun and the whip blistered a hundred naked backs and all a man's dreams finally narrowed to the day's hoeing and the night's shackled sleep, Eodan wondered with a chill how he had remained himself even for those few months he served. Winter had helped—days on end where he sat idle with the others, dozing, cracking fleas, once or twice knocking a tooth out of someone who offered him loathsome consolations.... Nevertheless, he searched himself as no Cimbrian had done before and knew that his servile time had indeed touched him. He went more warily through life, slowly learning how to guard his words. He would never again live wholly in the moment's joy; he would always be thinking beyond—where would the next attack come from, or how should he himself attack?

Even when Cordelia taught him some new pleasure—and she had given her life to such arts—a part of him wondered how long this would endure. For the rest, however, it had been a good month, or whatever time had passed. He had the name of bodyguard, though only the surly Nubian was allowed to bear weapons. He accompanied her on impulsive journeys about the countryside, organized hunts in the forests for her to watch, matched himself in athletic exhibitions with the brawnier slaves from this and surrounding farms. A few times she even sent him on errands of two or three days, as to a town to arrange for certain supplies. He thought of using the chance to escape—but no, he knew too little of Italy; they would snare him and tie him up to die. Wait a little longer, make careful plans, or even win freedom for himself and Hwicca within this Roman world. It was not impossible, given patience.... Meanwhile, aloneness with a blooded horse, among hazy hills and through woods where only dryads and charcoal burners dwelt, was a gift to him, almost like being free again.

Now he was coming back from such a trip. He rode at an easy mile-eating pace, soothed by hoof-plop and saddle-squeak, the breeze in his face amid the clean summery odor of his mount. He was richly clad; his tunic, cloak, and boots were of simple cut and muted color, but he liked the sensuous fabrics. His hair fluttered in the light wind, and he sat straight as a lancer; and, when he saw the villa itself, dark against a sky turning pink and gold with sunset, he was close to letting out a Cimbrian whoop. After all—Cordelia! He checked the noise and merely grinned instead, but he set the horse to a gallop, and they came ringing and snorting into the rear courtyard.

"Hoy-ah!" Eodan jumped to the flagstones, tossed his reins at a stableboy and strode quickly toward the garden gate. The shortest way to the atrium was through the roses.

As he passed into their fragrance, he stopped. Phryne was alone between the walls, gathering a few early blooms. A great cloud of hot bronze lifted far, dizzyingly far above her head; the sky beyond it was taking on the color of her eyes.

"Hail," he said.

She straightened herself. The plain white stola fell in severe folds, but could not hide a deerlike grace. She had not Cordelia's opulence, and she barely reached to his heart; yet it came to him that he had never thought of her as boyish, nor as just a little bit of a thing.

Her face, all soft curves and a few pert, nearly rakish angles, stiffened. She turned as if to go, but resolve came back; she continued her work, ignoring him.

He did not know why, unless it was that his small journey had given certain unseen chain-galls time to heal, but he went toward her and said, "Phryne, if I have wronged you, how can I mend it unless you tell me what I did?"

Her back was turned, her head bent. Under the softly piled black hair, he saw that her nape was still almost childish. Somehow that filled him with tenderness. She said, so low he could scarcely hear it, "You have not harmed me."

"Then why have you circled so wide of me? You never answered when I greeted you in passing. You have said me no word in weeks."

Her voice rose a little but shook: "Well, some women may be glad of your pawing. I was not!"

Eodan felt himself flush, as deeply as the western sky. He responded clumsily, "Why have you given me no chance to say what I meant? It was wrong of me to—to kiss you. I ask your pardon. But I was driven; there was a Power in that place—and did I hurt you so much?"

Then she looked up at him and said in a tone heavy with unshed tears: "It was chiefly yourself you harmed."

Eodan looked away. For a moment he trod from her, up and down a graveled path that mumbled beneath his feet. The bronze cloud cooled toward newly blown roses. In the west, just above the crumbling vine-covered wall, he could see a green streak, unutterably clear. Somewhere a cow lowed; otherwise it was very quiet.

Eodan said at last, slowly, word by word, as he hammered it into shape within himself: "I understand. But you do not understand me. They say you are still a maiden. Well, you have called a curse on me for doing something of which you have no knowledge."

Phryne's fingers clenched about a rose stalk. The thorns bit. She stared at the bright blood drops, wiped them on her gown in a blind fashion and said through unfirm lips: "Perhaps it is true. I thought one thing of you. When you did something else, that is how you hurt me. But perhaps I have indeed not understood."

"I am not wont to speak of these matters," he told her, with effort. "Among the Cimbri, it was not so—so twisted together. Wives did not betray their husbands. Husbands—well—a man is otherwise than a woman. He has other needs. I was driven by the Powers of earth; the Bull was within me that day, Phryne. And more than that—Can you understand how it felt to hear you tell what has—has become of my wife, the mother of my son, whom she killed to keep him free? Can you understand how I would turn for any—what is the word?—any comfort that you could give—or anyone could—Do you see?" he pleaded, facing her with his hands outspread.

She rubbed her eyes. "I see," she whispered.

He doubled up one fist and smote it softly into the other palm, again and again. "It would help Hwicca not a bit if I let the Bull roar within me so loud I could think of nothing else," he said. "Indeed it was a new thought to me, this you bring forth—that what is between a man and his wife, for good or ill, can in any way be changed by whether he sleeps alone or not when she is gone."

"I am not so sure of that," she answered. "No man will say it is true of her!" When she lifted her face, he saw it was streaked with silent tears. "But I could be wrong. I do know little of these matters."

Eodan said, with a sad smile tugging up one corner of his mouth, "Between the time I wed Hwicca and the time a year afterward, when we came to the Raudian field, I touched no other woman. It was not that I lacked the chance, but only that none seemed worth the time I could be with her. Will you believe that?"

She nodded dumbly.

"Well, then." Eodan held out his hand, in the manner he had learned from the Romans. "Shall we be friends?"

She caught it tightly. Sunset smoldered to dusk. He could see her as little more than a paler shadow.

She said at last, in a tone gone remote from sorrow, "I would not have you think, Eodan, that I ever condemned you because of some dead philosopher's thoughts on chastity. It was that I believed your case was like mine. I have been lonely too, now and then. But I see it was a false hope. No man, no woman ever has the same destiny; we are all pursued by our private Furies. Help me remember that, Eodan!"

He asked her, out of a newly reborn pain, "What happened, Phryne?"

"There was a boy in the household at Plataea," she said, still in the small voice that spoke to itself, knowing him only as a shadow under the evening star. "He was a slave too—not much older.... He walked like the sun before me. We would have had each other somehow—oh, there are families among slaves, even a slave can build a home. But then our master's creditors closed in. Antinous went first. I saw him led off; they said he would be shipped to Egypt.... Well," she finished wearily, "that was three years ago. But sometimes at night I still wake up from a dream where he kisses me."

Eodan's thought was jagged: His ghost will not let her look on another man. And even if she did, would she wish to bear a son that might be sold in Egypt?

He said aloud, "Phryne, have you heard that the Cimbri do not lie on an oath?"

She stirred, as if awakening. "What do you want to say?"

"The oath-ring on which I was wedded must have been cast into bangles for some Roman whore," he said bitterly. "However, I shall swear anyway to lay no hand upon you, as a man does on a woman, unless you ask it yourself. And I do not expect you will."

"Why—"

"I would like you to think you had one friend to trust," he blurted. And he did not know why he had made such an offer, unless it was that his memories of Hwicca had begun to shriek again.

"I will take your oath," she whispered.

Suddenly she fled. He heard her weeping in the dark. At such times most folk would liefer be alone. He went on into the villa, heavily.

Cordelia was sitting in the atrium, lamplight glowing on her; she was a roundedness of shadow and rich highlights. She was toying with a loom, because it was fashionable still for Roman matrons to pretend they were housewives. Outside, among the white pillars of the portico, a boy-slave from Sicily was singing and playing an illegal lyre. His high clear tones were so lovely it had been decided he should always keep them.

She looked up. Her teeth flashed wet and white. "Hail, my Hercules!"

"Hail, Mistress," snapped Eodan, not able to smooth his words. He stood with folded arms, looking down upon her.

"Well! You have a face like Jupiter's wrath, my friend." Cordelia leaned back, regarding him through narrowed dark eyes. "Did you have trouble on your journey?"

"No trouble, Mistress. Here is the money I did not spend." He slipped the heavy purse from his belt and flung it on the table. The denarii crashed so loudly that she started.

She rose, in one rippling motion, and the thin silk showed him how she tautened. Her lips parted. A scream would bring the Nubian, the porter and half a dozen watchdogs to bind him and do whatever she wished. Eodan felt coldness along his backbone. He had to be more careful.

The knowledge that he, Boierik's son, must be careful of a woman tasted like vomit.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked in anger.

"I beg your pardon, Mistress." Eodan went to one knee and bowed his head stiffly. "I felt a little out of sorts."

Cordelia chuckled in her throat, left the chair and came to him. She ran her hand through his tangled hair as he knelt. "And why were you so at odds with the world ... Hercules?" she murmured.

He saw the answer. "I was parted from you," he got out. Then suddenly, because he must do something in his shame, he grasped her about the knees and pulled her to him. His face he buried in soft darkness.

"Oh," she gasped. "Oh—not here—wait—" But her hands were pressing his head close. He forced her down to the floor. She laughed without sound and tried to roll from him. He used his strength to pull her back. The frail spidery silk ripped open in his fingers. "Beast!" she said, her lips stretched wide, her eyes closed.

Outside, the boy faltered for an instant, then recollected his orders and continued the song. It dealt with a legionary in far Asia remembering his mother.

Afterward Cordelia led Eodan to her sleeping chamber. A maid brought them wine and cakes. She drooped an eye at him, her mouth quivering faintly upward, and he recalled that once she had agreed to meet him after moonrise.

"Hercules," said Cordelia, not heeding the girl at all. She snuggled herself against Eodan's side, as they lay on the bed, and nuzzled his cheek. "You big crazy Hercules."

He did not feel the stallion's contentment she had given him before. Tonight she had only left him hollow, in some fashion he did not understand. He had never felt he was betraying anyone—until now. He held his wine cup in slack fingers and asked, "Mistress, why will you not try to speak my right name?"

"Because anyone might bear it," she said, "but there is only one son of Alcmene."

He could not speak what he really felt, not if he wished to live. But he could at least shake off all canine eagerness to please. He could say bluntly, "Mistress, you have been kind to me, but it was my habit once to give kindness. It hurts to receive it, and to make no gift in return."

He wanted to roar out: I am no pet animal, no toy of yours, I am a free man with my own name my father gave me. I am not ungrateful for ease, and chains removed, and your body. But between us is merely a shallowness. On your part, an amusing few weeks; on my part, a slave's scrabbling for what he can get, a slave's sly revenge on his master, and a slave's worry about what will become of him when you grow weary. I will be no more a slave, I will go hence to my wife.

But he listened to her say, "Hercules, you have given me more than you know."

Startled, he turned to face her. He had not seen her blush before now: it rose up over breasts and throat and cheeks and brow like a tide. Her nails bit his wrist, and she did not meet his eyes. He heard the slurred, hurried tone:

"Have you ever wondered why I drink and take men and disgrace myself as well as my husband? Did you think it was simple idleness and lust? Well, it is in part; I will not say otherwise. But only in part. Flavius forsook me long before I turned on him. He gave me a few weeks, and they were sweet, but then he turned elsewhere. I was locked away to be a proper Roman matron and bear his children. Do you think you are the only slave in this room, Hercules? When I remained barren, he hardly spoke to me. For nine years, before he went off to be captured by you, he hardly said me a word. And yet it was him the gods had cursed, not me. For hear! I turned in my need to a young lad who visited our house now and again, a curly-headed boy who loved me, loved me. And by him I was quickened! It could have been Flavius' son. He could have set the child on his knee, no one had to know.... He had my baby destroyed! I could have brought the law on him—perhaps my lover might have helped—I do not know. Perhaps not. A father has so much power. I did not try. It was better to come out of the woman's world, begin to give my own banquets and have many men—many, many. I dared have no more children, especially when he was away in captivity. I possess an old slave woman, a witch from Thrace, who knows how to keep the occasional accident from ever becoming noticeable. I thought it was as well. I did not wish to carry on my own sickness in the world. Let it die with me.

"Hercules—" Her head burrowed into the crook of his arm, she shivered beneath his touch—"I found a kind of hope in you."

Eodan thought, Did earth's last happy folk leave their bones on the Raudian plain?

Blindly, he drew Cordelia to him. Her hands were cold on his skin. But the rest of her seemed ablaze.

And later, humbly, she said, "Thank you."

The night wore on. They did not sleep. But it was curious how much they talked, and how dryly, almost like two consuls mapping a campaign, when they were not kissing.

"This cannot be too open," she said. "Flavius can endure being whispered about on my account, for the sake of my father's help. An equestrian cannot rise far without some such figurehead. And a Roman wife's affairs with Romans are common enough—but not with barbarians. That would make him a laughingstock! And he would avenge his slain political ambitions more than his honor." After a moment, thoughtfully: "And even if his reputation were not harmed—I am unsure what he feels toward you, who owned him—"

"I too," said Eodan, surprised. He had imagined Flavius was grateful at first, after Arausio, and friendly later, and malicious after Vercellae. Now it grew upon him that he had only seen chance waves across a deep and secret pool. Flavius' soul was locked away from him.

"So we will keep you here, with the title of guardsman," decided Cordelia. "He seldom comes to this estate. You can arrange to be elsewhere if he should come. This may take a few months, you realize. I must work on my father and others; I must make sure that when I finally do divorce him, I will come at once under some other man's powerful protection. And, of course, that you come with me." A slow, cruel smile lifted her lips. "And that I rule my next household. Some Senator, doddering with age, and very rich.... Then you can be brought to Rome, Hercules. There will be wealth for you.... many slaves are wealthy in their own right—or you can even be freed, if you think a change of title makes any difference." She melted against him. "It does not. You already have me in freehold."

He embraced her again. As she trembled in his hands, he wondered how much of her speaking was real and how much only the she-animal of this night.

He waited until she had rested again, and drunk again, and returned to him on the bronze bed. Then, as he lay tangled in her hair, he said—it had taken less courage to charge the Roman army—"When can you get release for my wife?"

She sprang from him, spitting like a cat. "Do you dare?" she yelled.

Eodan stood up, smiling by plan, and said, "I would not forget any—friend—even her. Can she not be bought back, or released somehow?"

Cordelia paused. Her look grew narrow, as he had seen before. "Do you think of this brood-mare as merely a friend?" she asked.

Eodan swallowed. He could not answer, only nod.

"Then forget her, as you will have to forget all the Cimbri," said the woman in a cold voice. "I will not arouse Flavius' suspicions by speaking of that mop-headed sow he has been wallowing with all winter. Let him sell her to a brothel when he tires of her, as he has done with so many others."

Through a shimmering and a humming, Eodan saw how she stood crouched, ready to escape his violence and call for help. Neither of them moved—until at last she walked by him, threw herself upon the bed and beckoned him as she would a dog.

He came. There was nothing else possible, save to die.

Toward sunrise, Cordelia murmured drowsily, "I forgive you, Hercules. We will forget what was said, because of what was done."

He made his lips touch hers.

"Now good night," she laughed. "Or is it good morning?"

He waited until she slept—by the colorless, heartless false dawn she looked blowsy enough—then put on his tunic and stole from the room. He felt the need of a bath and, yes, he would borrow a horse and gallop it for some miles. He was empty with weariness, but there was no sleep in him. Not even when they bound him amidst the wagons had he felt so alone.

"Eodan."

He stopped under the garden wall. The buildings were blacknesses that shouldered among paling stars; rails and roofs gleamed with dew. Beyond the stableyard the land was still full of night. Phryne came to him. "Are you up so early?" he asked in a small wonderment.

"I could not sleep," she answered.

"Nor I," he mumbled bitterly. "Though for another reason. I never thought I could hate a woman while I embraced her."

"She must have found that interesting," said Phryne.

He heard the scorn in her voice; he did not know how much was intended for him, but he felt the whole burden of it. He said through a thickness in his lungs, "Why do I not bid them crucify me and be done? I let her call my Hwicca foul names, and then I kissed her!"

"You must live," said Phryne gently.

"Why?"

"For—well—" She stood beside him, and somehow he came to think of a certain brook, sun-speckled under airy beeches, long ago in Cimberland. "Well, for what help you can give your wife," she finished, looking straight before her, across the Samnian darkness.

"Which is none," he groaned.

Suddenly it burst within him. As if the sun had taken him full in the eyes, he gasped and cried low, "But I can!"

"What?" Fear shadowed the face that swung to him. "How?"

"Hear me, Phryne," he whispered, rapidly, shaking with the knowledge of it. "I will go hence. I know the road to Rome, I walked it the other way last year. I can find his house there, and steal Hwicca away, and—O Bull whose horns are the moon, why did you not make it clear to me before?"

"You cannot!" A muted shriek. "You do not know the land, the city ... every man who sees you will know your height and hair and—What use will it be, to die on a cross or thrown to wild beasts?"

"Why, if my ghost has any strength at all, it may try again somehow," he said. "Or if not—well, I tried once. I gave Hwicca a man for a husband to the very end." He lifted his hands to the eastern light, and in Cimberland's tongue he called upon the day and the dark, the wind and sea and all the Powers of earth to witness his promise.

Phryne flung herself to her knees. "Eodan, Eodan, you are a little child among wolves! You know not what you say!"

"I know what I have said," he replied slowly. "I have sworn an oath that is not able to be broken."

He felt the cold and the wet gloom before dawn close in on him. What had he done, indeed? he thought. It was not well to make such enormous promises without thinking carefully. He had belike pledged himself to death.

But, if so, death was his weird and would not be stayed; for he had invoked the very river of Time.

He shuddered with the awe of it, his teeth clenched together. "I will leave in a few days, as soon as I can," he said. "You will forget we ever spoke of this, will you not?"

Phryne rose again. She leaned against the wall, her cheek and palms to its rough brick, her eyes closed. It was as though she drew on her own roots of strength. At last, in a faraway voice, she answered him: "No, I shall help you."

[VI]

Not till four days afterward did Phryne stop Eodan on the portico and breathe: "I have made ready. Meet me in my chamber—do you know where it is?—after sunset, and I will try to disguise you. Can you get horses?"

His heart raced within him. He thought for a moment, standing under fluted pillars with a green lawn and broad fields before him, standing among thunders and drawn swords. At last he nodded. "There are stableboys who sleep among the animals, but it will be simple enough to frighten them, if I have any weapon. No one else will know until morning."

"Then the gates of Tartarus will be opened!" Her eyes were huge and her cheeks pale. "Let me see," she murmured. "I will have a sword for you—I know where such tools are kept—and a couple of daggers as well. You can overawe the boys, so they let themselves be bound and gagged one by one. Drop a little word here or there, as if in carelessness, to make them think you plan to flee into the mountains. That would be the expected direction, anyhow, to reach Helvetia. Where did you think to go, in truth, after Rome, Eodan?"

"I do not know," he said. "North, to some place where men are still free. I do not know what the best way is."

"There is none," she told him. "They are all beset." Quickly, leaning close so he could feel her breath upon his breast, swift and frightened: "I am not so sure your best hope lies to the north. You would have to cross too much Roman country. In the east or the south, now.... But we can speak of that later. We dare not be seen lingering like this. After dark, then—do not fail! I have contrived that the two girls who sleep with me be out tonight. My supplies would be discovered before another such chance came. So tonight!"

She went from him, almost running, the breeze fluttering her light white gown about her. Eodan could not hold himself from staring. A slave with the soul of a chief's daughter, he thought; surely some Power had sent her across his path. He would have promised sacrifices if he had known what Power it was, but the gods of this land were unknown to him, and Cimberland's too far away to have heard about his trouble.

Well—tonight!

He went on into the villa. It was hours till sundown; how would he live through them without roaring his secret to the world? He would get Cordelia's permission to go for a gallop. Yes, a good plan, thus he could spy out his road of escape....

He found her in the peristyle. Her maids twittered and giggled, a plump little scurrying bevy, wisps of cloth gay about a delicious roundedness fore and aft. They were laying out towels, clean garments, the mistress was pleased to swim in the pool. Cordelia stood aloof among them. As she saw Eodan come between the pillars, she drew her half-discarded stola about her. The dark Etruscan head lifted, and she said with an unwonted chill, "What would you? Did you not hear the household was forbidden to come here?"

"I beg pardon," said Eodan. "I was out—"

"Out! You have been out far too much. This is the place you are supposed to guard. Where were you?"

Eodan thought back. On a certain morning he had made his vow to quit this kept life. The next night she had still been exhausted, and he slept in the guards' chamber. Since she had said nothing about it, he had again slept with the guards the following darkness. The next morning he offered the cattle overseer to help bring several beasts of good stock from a neighboring plantation; they had not come back till well after sundown, and he was tired and went directly to his pallet.... Yes, by Fire itself, he had scarcely seen Cordelia in three days!

"I am sure you knew my whereabouts, Mistress," he answered her. "If you do not summon me to—to help you—." An uncontrollable giggling tinkled around the sunlit space; Cordelia frowned and thinned her lips—"I would not trouble you, Mistress," he finished.

She said slowly, "Is gratitude, then, not a barbarian habit?"

"But how have I done wrong?" he asked. He knew very well, and he could not dissemble bewilderment he did not feel. Cordelia's face darkened.

"Go, all you women!" she snapped. "Let no one in here."

They fled, with squeaks of dismay; now Mistress was angry! Cordelia walked slowly toward Eodan across gleaming mosaic. Her knuckles, where she held up the loosened ungirdled stola, were bloodlessly taut.

"If you think so little of me that you will only come on command ... that you will drive cows till midnight rather than even ask me if that is my wish—" She was close to him now, speaking through knotted jaws. "Don't think I have not seen you in corners with that Phryne! If you find me dull, you may as well go back to the fields!"

I find you not dull but a foe, he wanted to say. There is too much blood between us.

Aloud: "Mistress, I did not understand. I thought you would summon me."

Something eased within her. She laughed, low, and put her hands on his shoulders. The gown fell about her feet. It could have been one of the statues he had seen—Venus, in her aspect of hot sleepless nights—that stood before him, save that veins pulsed under this skin and sweat jeweled it in the sun. "Hercules, Hercules," she cried, "can you not get it into your thick yellow head, I want to be the one commanded?"

He stepped back, stammering, feeling the will of Venus but remembering she was Hwicca's enemy. "Mistress ... I cannot ... I am—"

"Tonight," she said eagerly. "Just at day's end. We will watch the sun go down and we shall not sleep before it rises again."

O my weird which I invoked, help me now! he thought.

It came to him what he must do. And because the day was warm, and she stood clothed only in sunlight and her loosened dark hair, and he had slept alone for three nights, and he might be a flayed corpse in a few days ... he trod forward with the Bull strong and exultant in his soul.

"Oh!" said Cornelia. "Hercules! No! Tonight, I told you!"

He grinned, pulled her to him, and held her one-handed with muscles that had wrestled horned kine to earth, while his lips bruised hers and his free hand roved up and down her body. "Well," she sighed finally, "well, just once—"

When they had rested for a time, he stood up. "Come, into the pool!" he said. She hung back. Laughing, he sprang. Water spouted, drenching her. He swam to the edge where she crouched and hauled her after him. She came up sputtering. He kissed her. She gave in and paddled about, while he snorted and churned, porpoiselike, darting in again and again, until at last it was she who urged him back onto the tiles.

Thereafter she complained that her body was sore from the hardness, so they sought her bedroom. After a while she clapped her hands and had a girl bring refreshments. And so it went till sundown.

As the first darkness came out of the east and up from the lower valley, like smoke, Cordelia drew Eodan's head down upon her bosom and held him there, with a grasp made gentle by weariness. "O Hercules," she whispered, "I thought there were no more men in the world worth caring for."

He lay with closed eyes, drained of strength, wishing he could sleep, wishing this were Hwicca.

"It is not only that you still my hunger," she murmured. Her voice was trailing off, swallowed by sleep. "It is yourself. I am not lonely under your kisses.... Be with me always, Hercules! I ask you—as a beggar—I who love you...."

Eodan waited until he was sure she slept deeply. Then he took her arms from about his neck and sat up. The room was dark and hot. He heard the night outside, noisy with crickets. It was hard to remember that he must not be contented with she who lay beside him. For a moment he cursed his own foolishness, which had laid a weird on him.

But what was said could not be unsaid. He sighed, got to his feet and fumbled about after his tunic. When he found it he stood for a little while looking down at Cordelia; but his eyes were blurred with night. Finally, not knowing why, he stooped and kissed her, not on the mouth, but the brow.

Barefooted, he slipped across marble to the small tiring room beyond. A bronze mirror caught enough light to prickle him with a thought of ghosts. Beyond stood Phryne's door. The only bar was on this side, but he knocked and waited till she opened it.

She stood with a lamp in her hand, dressed as during the day but with her hair tumbled about her shoulders. The smoky oil flame touched eyes that were too bright and lips that lacked steadiness. "So you came after all," she said.

"I agreed to, did I not?" Eodan sat down. His knees shook with exhaustion; he was unable even to feel afraid. He looked dully about the room—a mere cubicle, three pallets on the floor, a table with some combs and other things, a shelf holding many rolled-up books. Those must be hers, he thought. A window faced unshuttered on blackness.

"I hope you completed your task," spat Phryne. "It would not do to leave your owner unsatisfied before you go to your dear wife, would it?"

"Oh, be still," he said. "I had no choice. She would have had me come to her and stay all night."

"Did you enjoy your work?" jeered the whisper.

"I did," he said, flat and cold on the unmoving air. "I do not know how this concerns you. But, if you are so angry with me, I shall depart without your help."

He half stood up. She pushed down on his shoulders. "No, Eodan!" Suddenly frantic: "Zeus help us, no, it would be your death! I am sorry for what I said. It was indeed no—no c-concern of mine."

He looked up, startled. She had turned her head and was wiping her eyes with her knuckles, like a child. "Phryne," he asked, "what is the matter?"

"Nothing. Come, we are spilling time." She drew a shaky breath, squared her shoulders and went over to the table. From beneath it she dragged a small wooden box. Squatting on the floor—as he saw her by that guttering light, against monstrous unrestful shadows, he thought of a Cimbrian god-wife, but a newly initiated one, young, shy, fair, riven by the Powers she must now rein and drive—Phryne took out a bundle of harsh gray cloth, a sheathed Roman sword and two long daggers, some pots and bowls, and more.

"I have stolen enough money to fill a purse," she whispered. "And these clothes will pass for a poor smallholder's. The hat will shade your face from chance eyes. We will dye your hair black and cover that barbarous tattoo with a bandage, as though it were some injury. Here, bend over."

It was soothing to have her work upon his head, rinsing, rubbing in the dye, combing. He felt a little strength flow into him. When she was done she washed her blackened hands, cocked her head and smiled. "There! Though we must take along a razor and shave that flax stubble every day."

"We?" It grew upon him what she meant. He gaped. "But—you are coming, too?"

"Of course," she said. "It would be—Eodan, if you tried to go out alone, hardly knowing the road, not knowing Rome at all, with that atrocious Latin and—" Her words became feverish. "Oh, Eodan, Eodan, you Cimbrian mule, would you even know where to buy food? As well fall on this sword at once and save everyone trouble!"

"Phryne," he said, wholly overcome, as though he were caught in floating dreams, "your place here is good. What can I do for you? Why?"

She bit her lip and looked away. "It would be too easy to find out who had helped you. I dare not stay."

He leaned forward, taking her hands. "But what am I to you? Why should you help me at all, then?"

She jerked free, angrily. "I am a Greek," she snapped. "My grandfather was a free man. None of this concerns you!"

Eodan shook his head in wonderment. But indeed, he thought in the darkling Northern part of his soul, this was brought on when I invoked the Powers; she is a part of my weird.

He dared ask no further. There was too much awe about her. Had he indeed let a vessel of Power touch him, and lived?

"Freedom, freedom," said Phryne. "In a barbarous land, in sod huts and stinking leather clothes, with not a book or a harp for a thousand miles ... oh, truly, I shall be free!" Her laughter rattled. Eodan made the sign against trolldom.

"Well, quickly," she said. "I could not be taken for any peasant girl, so I must be a boy. There are the shears."

She crouched before him and waited. He took the long crow's-wing-colored tresses in his hands, feeling that he offended some spirit of loveliness. But—He cropped away until there were only ragged bangs falling over her brow and her ears could be seen. She looked in a mirror and sighed. "Gather them up," she said. "When we make a fire, I will offer them to Hecate."

She pointed to the clothes. "Now, put that on! Do not stand there gawping!" With a movement as of defiance, she undid her girdle, threw it on the floor and stepped from her gown. Indeed she was beautiful, thought Eodan. Her womanness did not flaunt itself, bursting through its clothes like Cordelia's; it waited cool among shadows for one discoverer. He grunted some apology when she glared, turned his back, and fumbled on the garments laid out for him—a gray, patched woolen tunic, scuffed sandals, a felt hat and a long wool cloak. He picked up the heavy purse, slung a sword next to his skin and put a knife in the rope belt.

As he took up his staff, he saw Phryne clad like him. The baggy cloth would hide the shape of her body; she must hope the dirty old cape would shield slim legs and high-arched feet. She was turning from the shelf of books. She had run her fingers over the scrolls, just once, and tears lay in her eyes.

"Come," she said. "We have only till morning; then they will start to hunt us."

[VII]

To Eodan, Rome had been two things. First was the city of the Cimbrian dream, all golden roofs above white colonnades, shimmering against a sky forever blue. Then was the avenue of the triumph, where he bent his weary head lest the hurled muck take him in the eyes, and thereafter the slave pens and finally a stumbling in chains, one dawn, out onto the Latin Way. Neither was of this earth.

Now he entered Rome herself, and he saw just a little of a city that toiled and played and sang and dickered and laughed, plotted, feasted, sacrificed, lied, swindled, and stood by friends—a city of men and women and children like any others, built by men's hands and guarded by men's bodies. He had thought Rome was walled, but he found as he trudged through hours of buildings that she eternally outgrew her walls, as though she were a snake casting skin, so that the old gates stood open in the midst of a brawling traffic. He had thought of Romans as divided into iron-sheathed rankers, piggish man-traders, and one woman who shuddered in his arms; but he saw a gang of children playing ball in the dust, a leathery smith in a clangorous tiny shop and a limping man who cried out the roasted nuts he bore for sale in panniers slung from a yoke. He saw Romans spread their wares in flimsy booths while a temple gleamed purity above them. He saw a Roman matron, in clothes no better than his, who scolded her small boy for being reckless about passing horse-carts. He saw a young girl weeping, for some reason he never knew, and he saw two young men, merry with wine, stop to rumple the ears of an itinerant dog.

It growled about him, the heavy sound of laden wheels, echoing between grimy brick walls. A haze hung in the air, smoke and dust, tinged with garlic, cooked meat, new bread, perfume, horse dung, sewage, garbage, human sweat. Folk milled about, shouting, waving their arms, chaffering, thrusting a way past the crowds, somehow, anyhow. Once Phryne was whirled from Eodan in such an eddy. He gasped with terror, knowing he was indeed lost without her. She found her way back to him, but thereafter he held her wrist.

They threaded their way toward the Esquiline Gate. "We must find an inn," Phryne said; she had to shout through the noise. "The house is on the Viminal Hill, but we could not go there clad as we are, nor before dark in any case."

Eodan nodded dumbly. He let her lead him under the portal. A distance beyond it was a shabby district of tall wooden tenements, where the streets were slimy with refuse and the landless, workless scourings of war and debt crouched in their rags waiting for the next dole. He was too tired even to feel anger at the shouts from tooth-rotten mouths. "Hail, peasant! A son of the soil, there are straws in his hair! Aha, will you not lend us that pretty boy for a while? No, he will not—they're a hard-fisted lot, these farmers. Cisalpine Gauls for certain, see the ox look about 'em. But then where are their Gaulish breeches? Ha, ha, lost their breeches, did they—now was it at dice or what?"

Phryne, gone pale with wrath, led Eodan through twisted alleys until they found an inn. The landlord sat outside, yawning and picking his teeth with a thumbnail. "We would have a room for ourselves," she said. "Half a sesterce," said the landlord. "Half a sesterce for this flea pit? One copper as!" cried Phryne. They haggled while Eodan shuffled his feet and looked about.

When at last he was alone with her, in a windowless box of a room, he said, "The night winds take you, girl, what do we care for a copper more or less? I feel a fool every place we stop, listening to you!"

"I wonder what they would have thought of two people who did not bargain?" purred Phryne. "That they were in a suspicious haste to get off the streets?"

It was too murky to read her face, but he had come to know that tone. He could almost have traced out the quirk of her mouth and the mockery of her eyes. "Oh, well, you rescued me again," he said. "I am a blundering dolt. What shall we do next, captain, sir?"

"You have a wit like a bludgeon," she said. "Be quiet and let me think." She threw herself on a pile of moldy straw and looked up at a ceiling hidden as much by grime as by dimness.

Eodan hunched among the stinks and choked down his wrath. She had saved him too often, in the days that lay behind. Her right to badger him was earned.

He could have guided the first wild gallop himself, out of the estate and down ringing dirt roads to the south. When they reached a stream, they had dismounted and led their horses several miles northerly in its channel, slipping and stumbling while the dark hours fled them; but he would have done that, too, to cover his trail. They found another road at last and went mercilessly along it toward the Latin Way; the horses were ready to fall down by sunrise. Eodan would have turned them loose then and gone ahead on foot; Phryne had made him, unwillingly, lead them into a brushy ravine and kill them. But that was not a thought Eodan might never have had—it was another trail-covering, after all, and a chance to sacrifice for luck. She had told him to offer the beasts to Hermes, whom he did not know, but he felt any god would have been pleased.

No, he thought, thus far he could have come without her. He might even have gone for many miles, sleeping by day and walking by night. But when he blundered into a sheep-fold, and the dogs flew at him and the shepherds came to club him for a thief, he could not have fobbed them off with so ready a tale as Phryne had. He could never have passed himself for a harmless man when they bought bread and wine on the way; he would have had to steal his food, with all the risks. He reckoned himself brave, but he had gone chill when she chattered merrily with a wagoner chance-met at an inn; yet it ended with two days of riding on a load of barley while the blisters on their soles eased. (He recalled seeing in the first dawn how her feet bled from the river stones; but she had said nothing.) She saved him having to answer any questions at all in his accent when she remarked calmly that her poor brother was a mute. The last two days, with houses and villages grown so thick they dared not sleep out in the grass like vagabonds, she had gotten rooms for them. (Formerly they had lain side by side, wrapped in their cloaks, looking up at a sky frosty with stars, and she had told him unbelievable things that the wise Greeks thought about heaven, until he begged her to spare his whirling head. Then she laughed very softly and said he knew the stars themselves better than she.) And now in Rome—Yes, surely she belonged to his weird, for he saw now how moonstruck had been his notion of entering Rome alone.

Nonetheless, at the few times weariness or wariness had not forbidden them to speak freely, she was apt to be curt with him. He wondered how he offended her. Once he asked, and she said for him to cease plaguing her with foolish questions.

She stirred on the straw. "I will go out and buy us better clothing," she said. "After sunset I will take you to Flavius' house. I know a way we can get in. But then it must be you who leads, for I have no more plans in me."

"I have none," he said. "I will trust in whatever gods are willing to guide us."

"If they guide us not to our doom," she said.

"That may well be. But if so, what can we do to stop it?" Eodan shrugged. "I had thought we might steal Hwicca from the house—buy boy's dress for her too, Phryne—and then if we could all get on a ship bound somewhere—"

The girl sighed and left. Eodan stretched himself out and went to sleep.

She came back with cloaks and tunics of better stuff than they wore, a lamp and a jug of hot water and a basin borrowed from the innkeeper. Once again he submitted to her razor. When she was done, she gestured curtly at a loaf of bread and a cheese. "Eat," she said. "You may need your strength."

He had been tearing at it for some time when he noticed that she sat unmoving. "Will you not have some?" he asked.

Her tone was far-off, as if she had small care for what was to happen to them. "I have no appetite."

"But you, too—"

"Let me alone!" she flared.

Presently they were out again upon the street. It was sunset time and the crowds had thinned, so they moved quickly over mucked cobbles. "It is as well to get into a better part of the city before dark," muttered Phryne. "There could be robbers out."

Eodan lifted his staff. "I would give much for a good fight," he said.

Phryne looked at him, his eyes two heads above her own. "I understand," she said. Her fingers stroked lightly over his arm. "It will not be long now, Eodan."

The tightness in his breast grew with every pace. As dusk settled over the city, he found himself climbing a wide well-paved road up the Viminal Hill, so that he could gaze down across roofs and roofs and roofs, here and there a last pale gleam of temple marble, hazy blue fading into black in the east, and many lit windows making an eldritch earthbound star-sky, farther than a man could see. Faintly to him came smoke, a sound of wheels or tired feet, a distant hail that quivered upon still air. Once a horseman went by, casting the two plebeians an incurious glance.

Hwicca, thought Eodan. Hwicca, I have not seen you for a thousand years. I am going to see you tonight.

Though all the earth stood up to bar my way, I will hold you again tonight.

The darkness thickened, until at last he heard his footfalls hollow on unseen stones, until the houses on either side were little more than black blocks. His heart beat so loudly that he could almost not hear Phryne's final words: "We have found it." But he felt with unwonted keenness how her hand clenched about his.

They stood before a sheer ten-foot wall. "The house lies within a garden," she whispered. "No one watches the rear ... guests come in at the other side ... there is a gate, but it would be locked now. If you can raise me to the top, I will tie my belt to a bough I know and you can follow."

Eodan made a cup of his hands. She stepped up, in a single flowing movement, caught at his head to steady herself and murmured, "Now." He lifted her carefully, but aware of her leg sliding along his cheek. Then she had scrambled to the top, and he felt his way past rough plaster until he found the cord she let down. He climbed it hand over hand.

"Where is your staff?" hissed Phryne. "Down below," he said. "Have the gods maddened you, to mark your own path? Back and get it!" she snapped.

When at last they stood in the garden, Eodan peered through the crooked branches of a tree. No lights showed on this side. He guessed, from remembering the villa, that kitchen and slave quarters were at this end, but there would be a separate corridor on one side that the owners used. Phryne led him to such a door. It creaked beneath her touch. She halted, and time stretched horribly while they waited.

"No one heard," she sighed. "Come."

Two hanging lamps gave just enough light for them to see down the hall. "To the atrium," whispered Phryne. "Nobody seems to be there. But the Cimbrian girl stayed here—" She stopped in front of a door and touched it with hands that shook. "Here, Eodan." He saw her mouth writhe, as if in pain. "O Eodan, the Unknown God grant she be here!"

He found himself suddenly, coldly his own master. His fingers were quite steady on the latchstring. The door opened upon darkness ... no, there was a window at the end, broader than most Italian windows; he had a glimpse of gray-blue night crossed with a flowering vine and one trembling star.

He went through. His dagger slid from its sheath. If Flavius was here, Flavius would not see morning. But, otherwise, he told himself, he must keep Hwicca from yelling in her joy. Put a hand over her mouth, if he must, or at least a kiss; silence was their only shield.

He padded over the floor, Phryne closing the door behind him. They stood in shadows.

"Hwicca?" he whispered.

It rustled by the window. He heard a single Latin word: "Here."

He glided toward it. Now he saw her, an outline; she had been seated by the window looking out. Her long loose hair and a white gown caught what light there was.

"Is it you?" she asked, uncertainly. She used the "thou" form of closeness, and it twisted him.

He reached her. "Do not speak aloud," he said, low, in the Cimbric.

He heard her breath drawn in so sharply that it seemed her lungs must rip. He dropped his knife and made one more step, to take her in his hands. She began to shiver.

"Eodan, no, you are dead," she cried, like a lost child.

"If he told you that, I shall tear his tongue out," he answered in a wrath that hammered against his skull. "I am alive—I, Eodan, your man. I have come to take you home, Hwicca."

"Let me go!" Horror rode her voice.

He caught her arms. She shook as if with fever. "Can you give us light, Phryne?" he asked in Latin. "She must see I am no nightwalker."

Hwicca did not speak again. Having risen, she stood wholly mute. Her hand brushed him, and he felt the palm had changed, had gone soft; she had ground no grain and driven no oxen for nigh to a year. Oh his poor caged darling! He let his own grasp go about her shoulders and then her waist. He raised her chin and kissed her. The lips beneath his were dead. In an overwhelming grief, that she should have been so hurt, he drew her to him and laid her head on his breast.

Long afterward Phryne found flint and steel and a lamp. A tiny glow herded immense misshapen shadows into the corners. Eodan looked upon Hwicca.

She had not altered greatly to his eyes. Her skin was white now—the sun had touched it seldom, the rain and wind never; but the same dear small freckles dusted across her nose. She had taken on weight; she was fuller about breast and hip. Her hair streamed in a loose mane past a Roman gown and a Roman girdle, thin sheer stuff broidered with gold; she wore a necklace of opals and amber. He did not like the perfume smell, but—"Hwicca, Hwicca!"

Her eyes seemed black, wrenched upward to his. They were dry and fever-bright. Her shaking had eased, until he could only feel it as a quiver beneath the skin. "I thought you were killed," she told him, tonelessly.

"No. I was sent to a farm south of here. I escaped. Now we shall go home."

"Eodan—" The cold, softened hands reached down, pulling his arms away. She went from him to the chair in which she had been seated when he came in. She sat upon it, her weight against one arm, and stared at the floor. The curve of thigh and waist and drooping head was a sharp pain to him.

"Eodan," she said at last, wonderingly. She looked up. "I killed Othrik. I killed him myself."

"I saw it," he said. "I would have done so, too."

"Flavius brought me here," she mumbled.

"That was not your wish," he answered, through a wall in his throat he had raised against tears.

"There was only one thing that gave me the strength to live," she said. "I thought you had died."

Eodan wanted to take her in one arm, lead her out, hold a torch in the other hand; he would kindle the world and dance about its flames. He went to her, instead, and sat down at her feet, so she must look at him.

"Hwicca," he said, "it was I who failed. I brought you to this land of sorrow; when we were wedded, I could have turned our wagon northward. I let myself be overcome by the Romans. I even left you my own task, of free—freeing our son. The anger of the gods is on my head, not yours."

"Do you think I care for any gods now?" she said.

Suddenly she wept, not like a woman but like a man, great coughing gulping sobs that pulled the ribs and stretched the jaws. She lifted her head and howled, the Cimbrian wolf howl when they mourn for their slain. Phryne stepped back, drawing her knife by the door, but no one came. Perhaps, thought Eodan, they were used to hearing Flavius' new concubine yell.

Hwicca reached for him with unsteady hands and brushed them across his mouth. "You kissed me," she cried. "Now see what you kissed off." He looked upon a greasy redness. "My owner likes me painted. I have tried to please him."

Eodan sat in numbness.

Hwicca fought herself to quiet. Finally she said, stammering and choking, "He brought me here. He left me alone ... for many days ... until I had used up all my tears. At last he came. He spoke kindly. He offered his protection if—if—I should have asked him for a spear in my heart. I did not, Eodan. I gave him back his kindness."

He had thought many ugly fates for her. This he had not awaited.

"Go," she said. "Go while it is still dark. I have money, I will give you what I have. Leave this place of men's deaths, go north and raise me a memory-stone if you will—Eodan, I am dead, leave the dead alone!"

She turned away, looking into night. He got up, slowly, and went to where Phryne was standing.

"Well?" said the Grecian girl. "What is the trouble?" Her tone was unexpectedly stinging, almost contemptuous; it jerked him like a whip.

He bridled with an anger at her that drained off some of the hurt Hwicca had given. "She yielded herself to Flavius."

"Did you expect otherwise?" asked Phryne, winter-cold. "It is one thing to fall on your own sword in battle's heat—another to be a captive alone, and get the first soft word spoken in weeks! Romans have long known how to harness a soul."

"Oh ... well—" Eodan shook his head, stunned. "It is not that. I looked for nothing else, I have seen too many women taken ... But she will not come with me now, Phryne!"

The Hellene stared across the room at Hwicca, who sat with her face hidden in her hair. Then she glanced about at clothes and jewels and whatever else a man was blind to. She nodded.

"Your wife told you she did not merely obey," she said to Eodan. "She tried to please Flavius. She wanted to."

He started. "Are you a witch?"

"Only a woman," said Phryne. "Eodan, think, if you are able. She believed you dead, did she not? I heard the gossip in this household last winter. And Flavius was a man, and there was life in this woman, enough life to draw you here into the she-wolf's throat to get her back! What would you have her do?"

Phryne brought down her foot so the floor thudded. Beneath the boy-cropped dark bangs she regarded Eodan with eyes that crackled. Her scorn flayed him: "She feels she has betrayed you because, for a while, she kissed Flavius willingly. She will send you off and remain here, caged, waiting for him to tire of her and sell her to a brothel and so at last to destruction and a corpse rotting in the Tiber. She will damn herself to that, for no other reason than that she remained a living woman! And you, you rutting, bawling, preening man-thing, you think you might actually go from her as she asks?"

Phryne snatched up a vase and hurled it shattering at his feet. "Well, go then," she said. "Go, and the Erinyes have you, for I am done with you!"

Eodan stared, from one to another of them, for very long. Finally he said, "What thanks I owed you before, Phryne, can be forgotten beside this."

He went to Hwicca, stood behind her, pulled her head back against him and stroked her hair. "Forgive me," he said. "There is much I do not understand. But you shall come with me, for I have always loved you."

"No," she whispered. "I will not. There is no luck in me. I will not!"

He wondered, with a deep harsh wound in the thought, how wide of the mark Phryne, too, might have been. But if they lived beyond this night—if his weird should carry him back to Jutland horizons—he would have their lifetimes to learn, and to heal.

But first it was to escape.

Boierik's son said calmly, "You are going with us, Hwicca. Let me hear no more about that."

[VIII]

But still they tarried. A new thought had come to Eodan. When he asked Phryne, she said it was good—less hopeless, at least, than most things they might attempt.

They sat in the chamber and waited. Little was spoken. Hwicca lay on the couch, after Eodan told her to rest. She stared at the ceiling; only her lungs moved. Eodan sat beside her, stroking her hair. Phryne kept her back to them.

The night grew gray. Hwicca had said Flavius was out to some banquet. Eodan began to wonder if her own slave-girls might not come in to attend her before the Roman returned. That could be a risky thing, capturing them!

The Cimbrian had not dreamed he would be glad to see Flavius again, save as an object of revenge. But when "Vale!" and laughter sounded in the hall, and a little afterward the latch went up, he drew his sword and glided to the door with more happiness than the night had yet given him.

Flavius entered. He wore a wine-stained toga and a wreath slightly askew. He saw Hwicca sitting up on the couch and raised his free arm. "Are you awake, my dear? I did not mean to be so late. It was tedious without you—"

Eodan put the sword against his back and laid a hand on his shoulder. He closed his fingers as tightly as he could, so that Flavius gasped with pain. "If you cry out, you are a dead man," said Eodan.

Phryne closed the door. Flavius turned about with great care. Lamplight gleamed on steel. For a moment the Roman's narrow, curving face was nearly fluid, as he struggled to cast off bewilderment and wine. Then it steadied. The dim light sparkled wet across his brow, but he straightened himself.

"Eodan," he said. "I did not know you at once, with your hair black."

"Not so loudly," said Phryne. She barred the door and circled about, her own dagger cocked for an underhanded stab in the way Eodan had shown her.

"But where did you find this handsome boy?" asked Flavius as if a gibe would armor him.

"No matter that," snapped the Cimbrian. He looked into the other man's rust-colored eyes. A lock of hair had fallen across one of them. Eodan thought of Hwicca's hands brushing it back, and for a moment he stood in flames.

A year ago he would have seen Flavius' heart. A few months back, he would have found some quiet place and stretched his revenge through days. But, on this night, he shuddered to stillness. His blade was almost at Flavius' throat; the Roman had backed against the wall, panting, trying to shed his clumsy toga.

Eodan skinned his teeth and said, "You owe me a heavy blood price. You can never pay it, not with all your lands. So for my honor I should kill you. But I will forego that. It is more to my honor that we three here gain our own lives back."

"I could manumit you," whispered Flavius through sandy lips.

Eodan laughed unmirthfully. "How long afterward would we live? No, you shall see us to safety. Once we are beyond Rome's reach, we can let you go. Meanwhile, you shall not be without us. This sword will be under my cloak. Do not think to trick us and call for help, because, if it even looks as if we are not going to get free, I will kill you."

Flavius nodded. "Let me past," he said. Eodan drew the blade back a few inches. Flavius walked to a table, shedding his toga. Eodan followed each step. Flavius took a wine jug and poured into a chalice; he drank with care.

Then, turning about and looking straight up at Eodan: "I would be interested to know how you escaped. It is a leak I must plug, when this affair is over."

The Cimbrian answered with relish: "Part of the road went through your wife's bed."

"Oh, so." Flavius nodded again. His wits had returned; they had never flown far. His face was almost a mask, save that the shadow of a smile played now and then across it. He moved with the wildcat ease Eodan remembered, unshaken and unhurried.

"No matter!" snapped Phryne. "I have thought what we must do." Flavius regarded her with measuring eyes. "At this season, ships leave each day for all ports. You will engage passage for a short trip—that can be done without exciting too much gossip—let us say to Massilia in Gaul. We shall all four go."

"Massilia is subject to Rome," Flavius reminded her.

"But it is not many days' travel by horse to the frontier. Beyond lies Aquitania, which is free. Even I have heard how the Gauls are still in upheaval after the Cimbrian trek. We can make our own way among them. And you can return home from there."

Flavius stroked his chin. "Phryne, is it not?" he mused. "Cordelia's slave, become a most charming boy. Do you think to instruct the barbarians in Greek?"

"Enough," growled Eodan.

"I think you have breathed fever-mists," said Flavius. "Do you really believe you can make your way through all Rome and Gaul—alive?"

"We have come thus far," said Phryne. In the earliest sky-lightening, Eodan saw how her eyes were dark-rimmed from weariness. He himself felt bowstring tense; sleep would be his enemy.

"What have we to lose?" he added to the girl's words.

Flavius looked over at Hwicca. She sat on the bed's edge, white-mouthed and red-eyed, watching them like a leashed dumb beast. "Much, my friend," said Flavius. "As runaway slaves, you should be killed, or at least whipped and branded, but I could still save you. I could say you went on a secret errand for me. I could not save you if you were caught after having taken a Roman citizen hostage."

"Would you spare us even now?" snorted Eodan. "What oath can you give me?"

"None," said Flavius. "You would have to chance my mood. But be sure I have no complaint against Hwicca—yet. If she is taken with you, though, abetting your flight and my capture, she will also die, piece by piece." He shook his head. "Eodan, Eodan, you meant to save this girl, but you will give her to death!"

"Better that than you!"

"Do you not understand?" said Flavius gently. "It would not be a quick throat-cutting. The least she could await would be the arena beasts, under the eye of all Rome. But the people have developed more refined tastes in such matters—and they are savage in their fear of slave mutiny. A servile war was ended only months ago in Sicily; I do not think she would merely face lions."

It was as though some hand closed on Eodan's heart. His wrist went slack, the sword drooped downward.

"Hwicca," he mumbled, "what have we done to the Powers?"

Flavius smiled in his own locked manner and held out his hand. "Will you give me that sword?" he asked.

Phryne whirled upon Hwicca. "You lump!" she yelled. "Is it you that he would die for?"

The Cimbrian girl shook herself. She got to her feet and moved across the floor like a sleepwalker. "No, Eodan," she said in their own tongue. "Hold fast."

There was scant life in her voice, but it tapped the wells of his inward self. Eodan drew his head up again, so that he loomed over them all, and laughter grew in his mouth. He jabbed at Flavius' throat, forcing the Roman back. "We sail today," he said in Latin. "Or else you shall be spitted on this. And I will be swift enough afterward to kill the girls and fall on the blade myself."

Flavius caught a breath as though to speak, met Eodan's green gaze and blew out again. He spread his hands and shrugged.

"Now," said Phryne, "we must have a plausible story for your sudden departure. Eodan and I are Narbonensian Gauls who have brought you an urgent message from your kinsman Septimus, who resides in Massilia."

"You kept your ears wide while you ate my salt, Phryne," said Flavius, with a sidelong glance at Hwicca.

The Grecian girl swiped the air, angrily, and went on: "You need say little more. Speak of a chance to invest money, and all will expect you to be close-mouthed. No one knows Eodan, so he will accompany you about the house; but you will stay within doors, sending your slaves out on the needful errands. When the social calls are paid you in the forenoon, your doorkeeper must turn them back on the plea that you are sick from too much wine. I shall remain here, lest I be recognized. Food will be brought to this door for Hwicca and myself, but no one is to enter save you two."

She turned to the Cimbrian as she continued: "Eodan, do you know about writing—the marks made by stylus or quill? Good. Be sure he writes nothing that I do not see him write. Also, be sure that he speaks only in Latin. If he says two words running that you do not understand, kill him!"

Flavius pursed his lips. He regarded her for a long while before he said, very softly, "And I hardly knew you existed, little one."

"Well, go!" She stamped her foot. "It will take time to find out about ships. Rouse a man now to inquire."

Eodan draped his cloak around the sword, which he carried bare under his left arm, and followed Flavius out.

The morning dragged. There was a clepsydra in the atrium. Once, when Eodan asked, Flavius told him how it counted time. Thereafter the Cimbrian sat listening to its drip, drip, drip, and shuddered under a tightly held calm; for this was trolldom, where each falling drop eked out another measure of a man's life.

This waiting was the hardest thing he had yet done. Flavius himself suggested a casual remark to be made to the porter, explaining why the Gauls had not been seen entering the house—he had heard them talk beneath his garden wall, climbed a ladder in curiosity and invited them over! He dealt smoothly enough with his stewards and errand boys. He reclined on the couch, chatting plausibly of Gallic affairs, when food was served him and Eodan. He seemed to enjoy the scandalized faces of his older retainers when they saw a Roman so familiar with a provincial. Why, it was unheard-of—they went to the privy together! But chiefly there was nothing to do but wait. Eodan stayed within a quick lunge of Flavius, never taking eyes off him. Flavius shrugged lightly, called for some books and lay on a couch reading when he did not nap. It had never before seemed to Eodan that hours on end of silence could be a torment.

Word came about noon—a small galley was to leave Ostia for Massilia next sunrise. It carried only cheap wares, glass goods made in slave factories for barbarian markets ... perhaps a chance person or two paid a few sesterces for space on deck, carrying their own food. Surely the great Master Flavius would not travel in such a tub? And with three companions! In another few days a fine trireme with ample accommodations would depart—Well, if Master Flavius insisted—Well, if he would pay that generously, the officers would turn their cabin over to his party and sleep under canvas themselves, but of course Master Flavius must not expect the cabin to be very comfortable; one would advise that he bring his own mattress....

And then it was again to wait.

Once Eodan caught himself nodding. His eyes had closed; all at once he realized it and opened them with a gasp. Flavius looked up from a scroll and chuckled. "You only slept for a heartbeat," he said. "But how long do you think you can keep awake?"

"Long enough!" spat the Cimbrian.

The household bustled, shouted, chattered, a whirl of pompous orders and acknowledgments. There would be a hive's buzzing about this, thought Eodan, his mind creaking with weariness. And some of Rome's mighty folk would hear and wonder. No matter, though. He would be at sea by that time, ahead of any messages. Once out of Massilia town, with a saddle beneath him and a string of remounts, he could race the whole Roman army to Aquitania.

They left for Ostia, in mid-afternoon, with four chariots. Flavius drove one, reckless and skilled. Eodan stood beside him and knew unsureness, as he hung onto the bumping, bouncing, rattling thing, not knowing whether he would be able to wield sword and not lose his feet. Hwicca and Phryne paced them in another. The Cimbrian girl held reins and whip; she had never driven such a wagon before, but she kept an even distance behind Flavius, and looking back Eodan saw in a glad leap of his heart that she smiled! The other two cars bore only a man apiece and the needful travel goods; also some purses, fat with auri, to see them through this land where gold had more strength than iron.

Even in these days of a dying Republic, when new wealth openly flouted old laws, this was no common faring on the Ostian Way. Wagoners, horsemen, foot travelers, porters, donkey drivers, men in tavern doors and cottage windows and haughty gates, the rich matron in a litter and all her bearers, child and laborer and aged beggar—all must stare at four galloping chariots with a Roman guiding one and a yellow-haired foreign woman the next. Well, let them talk too, thought Eodan. He wished he could give Rome a redder memory of his passage.

Though this road was broad and superbly paved, there were miles to go. Once they stopped to change teams. It was after dark when they entered the Ostian streets. Torches flared; the horses stumbled on cobblestones. Flavius looked wind-flushed at Eodan and laughed. "Thank you for a good ride, at least! Now, shall we to an inn?"

"No." It was hard to think clearly, with a skull full of sand. But every stop, every man they spoke to, was another hazard. "Let us go aboard at once."

Flavius clicked his tongue, but turned the chariot down toward the waterfront. There was just enough light, from the city and the pharos in the outer harbor, for Eodan to see a world of ships. Their spars hemmed in the sky. Many of them were lit by torch or firepot, so that slaves could continue loading. Such was the galley they sought.

It was, indeed, neither large nor beautiful. It was battered, in need of paint, reeking of tar and slavery. The small bronze figurehead was so corroded you could not tell what it had been intended to depict. Ten ports on a side showed where the oars would emerge; through them came a sound of chains and animal sleep. Phryne gagged at the smell. A line of near-naked dock workers moved up and down a gangplank, bearing cases to be stowed in the hold, while an overseer and an armed guard watched. There was also a stout, dark, bearded man with a rolling gait who came up, gave a bear's bow and said he was Demetrios, captain of this vessel. He had not been expecting his distinguished passengers yet.

"Take us to our cabin," said Flavius. "We would sleep a few hours before you leave."

"The noise, master," said the captain. "You would not sleep at all, I fear."

Eodan looked wildly about. He had not thought of this ... if the Demetrios man grew suspicious—what to do, what to do?

Flavius winked and jerked his thumb at Hwicca and Phryne. "I should not have said 'sleep,' captain."

"Oh," said Demetrios enviously. "Of course."

They went up on deck. There was a high poop, where the great steering oar was lashed; the stem-post curled up over it like a flaunting tail. The forecastle stood somewhat lower, bearing a rough tent erected for the officers. The free deckhands would bed in the open, as always. Amidships rose the single mast, with a flimsy cabin just aft where Flavius' attendants laid down his gear. A lamp showed it windowless, though crannies let in ample cold air, and bare save for a little wooden sea-god nailed to his shelf.

Demetrios bowed in the doorway. "Good night, then, noble master," he said. "I hope we'll get a pleasant voyage."

Flavius smiled graciously. "I am sure we will."

[IX]

"Well, now!" said the Roman when they sat behind a closed door. He stretched himself across one of the mattresses, boylike on his belly, and reached for a leather bottle of good wine. His grin leaped at the others. "Thus far, my friends, well done. Shall we pledge our mutual success?"

Eodan opened his cloak and let the sword slide to his knees. His left arm was stiff and pained from holding the blade pressed to his ribs, hours at a time. He looked with sullen red eyes at his enemy and said: "No. I will pledge your ghost in your own blood, nothing else."

Phryne hugged her knees and stared from a drawn small face. "It is best that Flavius not leave this cabin all the voyage," she said. "He can plead seasickness. Two of us must be with him at any time, awake."

"Oh, one will do," said Eodan. His jaws felt rusty. "At least, if the other two are here, asleep but ready to be called."

"Bind him," said Hwicca timidly.

Flavius raised his brows. "If a sailor should chance to look in upon us and saw me bound—" he murmured.

"It is true." Eodan's head drooped. He jerked it back again. "Be as wise in our behalf as you have been, Roman, and you will see Rome again."

Flavius poured himself a cup. "Do you think so?" he asked lightly. "I doubt that."

"I have promised."

"How much will your word be worth to you, once we reach a wild land where you have no further need of me for shield?" Flavius' eyes rested candidly on Hwicca, above the rim of his cup. A slow, deep flush went up her throat and cheeks. She drew herself into a corner, away from them all, but her gaze remained locked with his.

"Not that I expect us ever to get that far," went on Flavius. "Your luck has been good until now—"

"A Power has been with me," said Eodan, and touched his forehead where the holy triskele lay under a grimy cloth.

"So you may think. But what educated man can take seriously those overgrown children on Olympus?" The Roman nodded at Hwicca. "We spoke of this now and then, you and I. Do you remember? There was a time you gathered jasmine blossoms—"

"Be still about that or I will forget my word!" roared Eodan in the Cimbric. Hwicca huddled back and lifted an arm, as though to ward off a blow.

"As you wish," said Flavius, unruffled. "To continue—" A crash outside, and the sound of swearing and a whip, interrupted him—"I myself do not believe in any Power except chance. There are blind moieties of matter, obeying blind laws; only the idiot hand of chance keeps each cycle of centuries from being the same. Now it is very possible, by chance, to throw the same number at dice several times sequentially. It is not possible forever, my friend. I think you have thrown about as many good numbers as any man in the world ever did. Soon your luck must turn. You shall be found out through some happenstance. You will then try to kill me. One way or another, we shall all die. You and Phryne and Hwicca and myself, all dead—mold in our mouths and our eye sockets empty." Flavius tossed off his wine and poured another cup. "It is inevitable."

Eodan snarled, out of a chill, dreary foreboding, "If you say more such unlucky words, I will—no, not kill you—each such word will cost you a tooth. Now hold your mouth!"

Flavius shrugged gracefully. Phryne closed her eyes. Beneath the booming and the voices on deck, there was silence.

Finally Eodan turned to his wife. She would not meet his look. When he took her hand, it lay slack on his palm.

"Hwicca," he said, burred Cimbric low and unsure in his throat. "Pay him no heed. We shall be free."

"Yes," she said, so he could scarcely hear it.

"That 'yes' was not meant," he told her. His heart lay a lump in his breast.

She said in a torn voice: "There is no freedom from that which was."

"Little Othrik," said Eodan. He looked at his wife's hand and remembered how his son's baby fingers had curled about his thumb. He shook his head and smiled. "No—him we shall always mourn.... But it would be worse if we sailed off leaving him to grow up a Roman's beaten beast. You could not have done otherwise. There will come more children to us, and some of them will die of this or that; so it has ever been. But some will live, Hwicca."

She shook her head, still averting herself. "I am dishonored."

"Not so!" he said harshly. "If you would—" He glanced at Flavius, who raised brows and smiled. Then he put his lips by Hwicca's ear to breathe: "I gave him no true oath. We can sacrifice him in Gaul; that will remove all stain from you."

"No!" She cried it aloud, pulling free of him. The face he looked upon was filled with terror.

"As you like," he floundered. "Whatever you wish. But remember, I am your husband. It is for me to say if you are guilty, and I say you are not."

"Let me alone," she pleaded. "Let me alone."

Eodan sat listening to her dry sobs. He hefted his sword, dully thinking about its use. He had never fought with such a weapon; the Cimbrian blades were for hewing, and this was for stabbing....

Phryne crept over the narrow space and touched his arm. "Wait," she whispered. He saw a helpless look in her eyes, as if she sat watching a child being burned out by fever. "Give her time, Eodan. I know not what the Cimbrian law is—I suppose your women were chaste—it means more to her, what has happened, than you can know."

"I do not understand," he said. "There is some witchcraft here. I do not understand her any longer."

"Wait, Eodan. Only wait."

He squatted into his own corner, under the low roof, and looked across to Flavius. The Roman had closed his eyes and stretched out; could he really sleep now?

At last the noise ended. Eodan saw Hwicca fall asleep herself, curled like a child. There was that much to thank the dark Powers for. Phryne and he seemed too weary to rest, or too taut. Yet no thoughts ran in his head; it felt hollowed out, and time did not flow for him. When a new clamor began, and he felt the ship move, it was a jarring surprise. Already!

He opened the door and looked out. The deckhands had cast loose, the oars were walking, he heard rowlocks creak and the muffled gonging of the stroke-setter beneath his shoes. They slipped through a channel between many hulls still one dark mysterious mass. Ostia and Italy behind her lay misty under the first saffron clouds; ahead, the Tyrrhenian Sea caught a few wan gleams. There were stars in the west.

The sailors, shivering in tunics or mere loincloths, scurried over the deck doing things unknown to Eodan. They were a ruffianly-looking lot, swept from many ports of the Midworld Sea—a hairy Pamphylian, a brown Libyan, a big-nosed Thracian, a brawny red-faced Gaul, another two or three whom Eodan could only guess about. Captain Demetrios walked among them, a sword at his waist, a light whip in his hand. He saw Eodan and came over, beaming snag-toothed in his beard.

"Good morning," he said. "You had a—hah!—pleasant night with your woman and your boy?"

Eodan grunted. "How long to Massilia?"

"Oh, perhaps five days, maybe more, maybe less. Much depends on the wind. I've a fear it will turn against us." Demetrios cocked his head. "Where are you from? I thought I'd seen 'em all, till you turned up."

Eodan said in Cimbric, "You Southland swine!"

"And where's that?" asked Demetrios. But Eodan had closed the door again. The cabin was smoky and foul after the deck. He wondered if he could really smell the human agony that seeped up from the rowers' pit.

Flavius opened an eye. "Have you foreseen you might get sick from the waves?" he asked amiably.

"I have foreseen kicking your ribs in!" grated Eodan.

Flavius nodded at Hwicca, who had also awakened. She sat up with chin on knees and shivered. "Do you see, my dear, it is too much to expect that I should be released if we ever get into Aquitania," he murmured. "It would be asking more of your husband than one may even ask of a god."

Hwicca gave Eodan a forlorn glance. He laid himself upon a mattress near her. "You will swear he shall have his life, will you not?" she asked fearfully.

He said, out of his bitterness: "You are loyal to your owner, Hwicca!"

She shrank back with a little whimper.

"No more of that," said Phryne sharply. "We are certain not to outlive this trip if we quarrel among ourselves." She regarded Hwicca closely. "You look strong," she said, "and I daresay you have some knowledge of weapons."

The Cimbrian girl nodded, wordless.

"Well, then," said Phryne, "Eodan and I can do no more without rest. You have slept a while, now watch Flavius for us. It is simple enough. Hold this sword. Stay out of his reach. If he makes a suspicious move, call us. If it looks as if he might escape, stab!"

Hwicca took the heavy blade. "That much ... yes," she said in the Cimbric.

Eodan laughed, without mirth, but not uncomforted. He curled on his side to face her. The last sight he had, before sleep smote, was the unsure smile with which she looked at him....

Her scream wakened Eodan.

He sprang to a crouch. He had a moment's glimpse of Flavius' tall form stooped beneath the roof. The Roman was at the door, and Hwicca was plunging toward him. Flavius kicked out. He got her swordbearing arm. She cried aloud, fell and tried to seize his feet. He fumbled with the latch, kicking her again.

Eodan roared and sprang, but it was too narrow a space. He stumbled over Hwicca. Phryne had just come awake. Sleep spilled from her, and she grabbed for her knife. Eodan picked himself up from his entanglement with Hwicca as Flavius got the door open. Eodan rushed for him.

They went backwards out on the deck. Eodan reached after Flavius' throat. The Roman's knees were doubled up before his stomach. He straightened them enough to fend off the Cimbrian, rolled over and shouted.

"Help! Captain! Slave mutiny! Help!"

Eodan grasped for him, missed again and saw the Libyan sailor's legs pounding up. The Libyan was swinging a club. Eodan scrambled back from the blow and bounced to his feet. The Libyan yelled and raised the club high. Eodan's fist leaped, and he felt bone and flesh crunch under his knuckles. The Libyan choked and sat down.

Wildly, Eodan looked toward the bow. He had a glimpse of sea that sparkled blue beneath a sun close to noon. The ship rolled gently, but to an opposing wind; they were still only oar-powered. The land was a thin streak to starboard. Flavius stood in a knot of men under the forecastle, pointing back to the cabin and yelling.

"Give me that sword!" bawled Eodan.

Phryne came out with it. The wind rumpled her short dark hair, the sun blinked on her knife blade. Her tilted face looked forward in the calm of—hopelessness? No, Hwicca sobbed behind her, saying, "There are worse endings. Kill me, Eodan."

"No!" he cried. "Come, follow me! By the Bull—"

He lifted his sword and ran aft. The sailors in the bow milled, unsure. Demetrios exhorted them. Up on the poop, the steersman gaped and let go his oar. The ship heeled as the wind brought it about. Eodan stumbled, regained his feet and reached the hatch he wanted.

It stood open. The stench of the grave boiled from it. Even in that moment he was close to retching. But—"Down in there!" he rapped, and sprang first, ignoring the ladder.

He struck a platform where the gong-beater stood, staring, mouth open like a fish. Eodan stabbed once. The gong-beater screamed, caught at his belly and sank to his knees.

Eodan looked down the length of the pit. Overhead was the main deck. Before him was an oblong well, with ten benches on either side and a man chained to each. He could not see them as more than a blur—here a bleached face, there a tangle of hair. A catwalk ran down the middle, above the seats. Light came in shafts through the hatch and the oar-ports. As the ship rolled, a sunbeam would sickle up and down, touching a rib or a strake or a human face, and then flee onward. It was noisy here—timbers groaned, waves slapped the hull, rowlocks creaked, chains rattled.

The overseer came at a run along the catwalk. He was a big man with a smashed, hating face. He was bearing a whip with leaded thongs and a trident for prodding or killing. "Pirates!" he whooped. "Pirates!"

A beast-howl lifted from the benches. Oars clattered in their locks; the men stood up and barked, grunted, yammered. Eodan could not tell whether it was fear or wrath. And his life depended on which it was.

As the overseer reached him, Eodan crouched. The overseer stabbed. Eodan swayed his body aside, as though this were a bull's horn in the Cimbrian springtime games. He should have thrust in his turn, but habit was too strong. He struck downward with his sword. The overseer's trident was wrenched loose and went ringing to the platform.

The man's mouth opened. Perhaps he cursed, but Eodan could not hear above the slave-racket. His fingers clawed for a hold, to wrestle the Cimbrian. Eodan got him by belt and throat, heaved him up over his head, and roared aloud.

"Here! He's yours!"

And hurled the overseer into darkness.

"Eodan," cried Hwicca. Her hands fell frantic upon his body. He looked into wild eyes. "What would you do?"

"No time to hunt for keys to the locks," he rapped. "Pick up that trident. Pry the shackles off these men!"

Hwicca stood back, staring. The slaves hooted and jumped about. A swift sunbeam caught bared teeth down in the murk. They could hear the overseer being ripped apart.

"Can you hold the crew off long enough?" called Phryne.

"I had better!" said Eodan.

He pulled off his cloak and whirled it around his left arm. The gong-beater caught feebly at his heels. He stamped down the hand and bounded up the ladder.

The sailors were nearing. All of them had weapons, such as were kept against pirates. Demetrios was bearing a shield and helmet as well. Flavius was walking beside him.

"There he is!" bellowed the captain, and feet thudded on the planks. Eodan went down again and waited.

There was grunting and cursing at his back. Once the girls had a man or two free, it would go faster.... But if I were a slave, he thought, with the mind beaten out of me, I might not use a sudden woman for anything but—Here is a man to fight!

It was the Libyan, with a broken nose to avenge. He came down the ladder quickly, facing forward in sailor fashion, bearing a short spear. In the shifting gloom he was not much more than another shadow. Eodan poised himself. The spear punched at his stomach. He caught the point in his wadded cloak, shoved it aside and stepped in. The Libyan howled, but was scarcely heard above the howling of the galley slaves. Eodan slid the sword into him. The sailor did not seem to feel it. He backed against the ladder, pulled his spear free and struck. Eodan did not quite sidestep it. The edge raked his shoulder. As the Libyan moved in, Eodan chopped at the wooden handle of his enemy's weapon. Roman iron bit; he caught it. The Libyan wrestled him for the shaft. Eodan jerked. The Libyan lost his balance, slipped in his own pouring blood and fell into the pit.

Eodan glanced up. The sky in the hatch blinded him. He could only see that someone was looking down. As if from far away, he heard Demetrios: "Throw a kettle of boiling water. He cannot withstand that!"

"He can retreat onto the catwalk," said Flavius, "and come back to meet the next man we send. No, let one sailor carry that kettle down the ladder. The barbarian cannot attack him without being scalded. Two or three others can come directly behind—"

Gasping, Eodan turned toward the benches. It had quieted a little. He heard links clash in the darkness. A staple screamed as it was torn out of a timber.

"Follow me!" shouted Eodan. "Break your oars for clubs! There are no more than six or seven men up there! You can be free!"

They shuffled and mumbled in the dark. He glimpsed a few who had been released holding up their dangling chains in a dull, wondering way. They were loathsome with sores and scars.

A voice yelled back to him: "We can be crucified, no more!"

"They have swords," another whispered. "They are masters."

Eodan shook his red blade high and yelled in rage: "Is there even one man among you?"

A moment longer, then a booming from the foul night before him: "Get these god-rotted irons off me, boy, and you'll have at least two more hands!"

[X]

The man who sprang up onto the catwalk and joined Eodan was huge—not as tall as the Cimbrian, but with a breadth of shoulder that made him look almost square. His arms, hanging down toward his knees, were cabled with muscle. His hair and beard were matted filth, but they still had the color of fire. Small blue eyes crackled under bony brows; the dented nose dilated, sucking air into a shaggy bow-legged frame clad only in its chains.

He trumpeted at the darkness: "Hear me! You had courage enough to kill one stunned man, tossed down to you. Now you've no hope for your flea-bitten lives but to fight. Whether you touched the overseer or not, d'you think the Romans would spare a man of us after this? They'll grind you up for pig-mash! Follow us, beat in a few heads—after all the beatings you've taken, it's your turn—and we'll have the ship!"

Whirling on Eodan, he said with a wolfish glee, "Come, let's at 'em—the rest will trail us!"

"There's a spear somewhere," said the Cimbrian.

"Ha! I have my chains!" The big man whirled the links still hanging on his wrists.

Eodan thought of Hwicca, of his son and his father, and of Marius' triumphal parade. He swung up the ladder.

The crew were gathered nearby on guard. One of them shouted as Eodan's head emerged and ran forward, holding a pike. Eodan braced himself. As the metal thrust at him, he caught its shaft and forced it up. He jerked back while he took the last few rungs. The sailor fell to one knee. Eodan came out on deck, yanked the pike away and tossed it under the legs of the two nearest men approaching him. They went down.

"Haw, well cast!" bawled Redbeard.

A man was going up the ladder to the poop deck. Over the heads of two or three sailors, Eodan saw that he had a bow. "See up there!" he cried, as he danced back from the Gaul's sword-thrust. Redbeard grunted, whirled his chain and let fly. The Thracian deckhand screamed as the staple end smashed across his face, and dropped his ax. The redbeard picked it up, took aim and threw it. There was a gleam in the air and a meaty whack. The bowman fell off the ladder, wailing, the ax standing in his shoulder.

"Back to back," snapped Eodan. The crew were circling him, looking for a chance to rush in. He counted four—the Gaul, the Greek, the Pamphylian, and a stocky fellow with a leather apron, belike a carpenter. The Thracian, who rolled about moaning, and the archer, who lay bleeding to death, were out of the fight.

And here, from around the cabin, leaving their hot-water kettle, came Demetrios and Flavius!

Redbeard wrapped a chain about his right hand—the links on his left he kept dangling—and twirled it. "Hoy, down there in the pit!" he shouted. "Get off your moldy butts and come crack some bones!"

The Pamphylian and the Greek moved in side by side, facing Eodan. The first of them leaped about, thrusting lightly with his sword, not trying to do more than hold the Cimbrian's eyes. Then the Greek worked in from the left. Eodan's blade clanged against his. At once the Pamphylian darted close. Eodan could just whip his sword around in time to wound him and drive him back. It gave the Greek an opening. Eodan saw that assault from the edge of an eye; he got his cloak-shielded arm in the way. The Greek struck for his hip, but the thrust only furrowed Eodan's flesh. Then Redbeard swatted his chain-clad hand around, and the Greek reeled back. Eodan thrust savagely at the Pamphylian, who retreated. Redbeard batted the carpenter's pike aside with his right hand. The chain on his left wrist snapped forth and coiled around the Pamphylian's neck. Redbeard pulled him close, took him by an arm and kicked him down the hatch.

"You puking brats!" he roared into the pit, as the sailor fell. "Do I have to send 'em to you?"

Demetrios and Flavius were among their men now—only the Gaul, the Greek, and the carpenter! Eodan screamed and shook his sword at them. "Hau-hau-hau-hau-hoo!"

"Form ranks!" barked Flavius.

"Best we get back under the poop," panted Redbeard.

Eodan drifted aft across the deck, growling. Five men left, no more. But they marched in a line, their timidity gone. Two could not hope to stop them for long—

The slaves came out.

Not all had so much courage, perhaps ten. But those fell upon the crew with broken oars, chains, and bare hands. Eodan saw Flavius turn coolly, lift his sword, and sheathe it in a throat; pull it free and gouge the next man open. The sailors fell into a ring, the yelping slaves recoiled.

"Hau-hau-hee-yi!" shrieked Eodan, and charged.

It was Flavius' head he wanted, but the Greek's he got. The sailor, his face puffy from the chain-blow it had taken, stabbed. Eodan went to one knee and let the point tear his wadded cloak. He thrust upward. Blood ran from the Greek's thigh, but the man stood firm. Eodan jumped to his feet, got two hands on the Greek's sword wrist and put his weight behind them. He heard the arm leave the socket, and the Greek went down. Eodan saw that the fight had departed this place; the slaves were clubbing loose. He followed. A rower emerged from below, saw the Greek and the Thracian lying helpless and battered them to death.

Eodan glimpsed Redbeard across the ship, locked bare-handed with the carpenter. Those were two strong men. The carpenter broke free and ran, pursued by Redbeard. Under the forecastle stood a rack of tools. As the carpenter picked up a hammer, Redbeard smote him with a chain, and the hammer dropped. Redbeard caught it in midair, roared and struck the carpenter.

But now the battle had ended. The Gaul had fallen, pounded to ruin. Only Flavius and the captain still lived. They fought their way aft, to the poop; half a dozen wounded slaves and three dead lay behind them. When they stood on the upper deck and defended the way with their swords, the mutineers fell back.

For a while there was silence. The ship rolled easily, waves clapped the strakes, wind hummed in the rigging. The hurt men moaned, the dead men and the wreckage rolled about. But those were not loud noises, under so high a heaven.

Redbeard went to the foot of the poop and shook his hammer. "Will you come down, or must I fetch you?" he cried.

"Come if you will," said Flavius. "It would be a service to rid the earth of Latin as atrocious as yours."

Redbeard hung back, glowering. One by one, the rowers drifted up to join him. Flavius arched his brows at them and grinned. His hair was flung disarrayed by the breeze, his tunic was ripped and a bruise purpled one calf, but he stood as though in Rome's Forum. Beside him, Demetrios mouthed threats and brandished his blade.

Eodan went to the hatch. He heard the remaining slaves clamor down there, and a sickness choked him. By the Bull, he thought, if those creatures have so much as spoken to Hwicca or Phryne, the fish will get them—cooked!

"Hoy!" he shouted. "Come up, we have won!"

Something stirred on the ladder. And then the sun caught Hwicca's bright blowing hair. She trod forth, dropping the trident in an unaware gesture. One leg showed through a rent in her gown. Her broad snub-nosed face was still bewildered; the blue eyes were hazed, as though she had not fully awakened.

"Hwicca," croaked Eodan. "Are you hurt?"

"No...."

He flung his sword to the deck and drew her to him. "We have the ship," he said. "We are free."

A moment only, her fingers tightened on his arms. Then she pulled away and looked over the blood-smeared deck. "Flavius?" she whispered.

"Up there." Eodan pointed with a stabbing motion. "We'll soon snatch him down!"

Hwicca stepped aside. She shivered. "It does not seem real," she said in a child's high, thin voice.

Phryne's boy-figure emerged. She was holding a dripping dagger. She looked at it, shook her head, flung it from her and bent shut eyes down upon clenched fists.

Eodan laid a hand on her shoulder. He had been wild at thinking of harm to Hwicca; now a strange tenderness rose in him, and he asked very gently, "What happened, Phryne?"

She raised a blind violet stare. "I killed a man," she said.

"Oh. No more than that?" Thankfulness sang within Eodan.

"It was not so little." She rubbed a wrist across her forehead. "I think I will have evil dreams for a long time."

"But men are killed daily!"

"He was a slave," said Phryne without tone. "Hwicca and I went among them. She pulled out the staples, and I guarded her. This one man shouted and seized her dress. He would have had her down under the bench. I struck him. I struck him twice in the neck. He slumped back, but it took him a while to die. A sunbeam came in. I saw that he did not understand. He was only a man—a young man—what did he know of us? Of our purpose down there? Of anything but bench and chains and whip and one niggard piece of sky? And now he is among the shades, and he will never know!"

She turned away, went to the rail and, stared out at the horizon.

Eodan thought for a moment. He would have given blood of his own to comfort her, though this seemed only some female craziness. At last: "Well, do you think it would have been better for him to dishonor the woman that wanted to free him?"

Phryne paused before answering. "No. That is true. But give me a while to myself."

Eodan picked up his sword and went to the poop ladder. The slaves milled about, grumbling. Their bodies were mushroom-colored, and they blinked in the bright day; they had not been starved, for their strength was worth money, but sores festered on them and their hair and beards were crusted. Only the big red man seemed altogether human. Belike he had not been long at the oars.

He turned about, bobbed his head awkwardly and rumbled: "I lay my life at your feet. You gave me back myself."

Eodan grinned. "I had small freedom to choose! It was get help or be cut down."

"Nonetheless, there is fate in you," said Redbeard. He lifted his hammer between both hands. "I take you for disa—for chieftain. I am your hound and horse, bow and quiver, son and grandson, until the sky is broken."

Eodan said, moved to see tears on a giant's face, "Who are you?"

"I am called Tjorr the Sarmatian, disa. My folk are the Rukh-Ansa, a confederation among the Alanic peoples. We dwell on the western side of the Don River, north of the Azov Sea. I carry disa blood myself, being a son of the clan chief Beli. The Cimmerian Greeks caught me in battle a few years ago. I went from hand to hand, being too quick of temper to make a good slave, until at last they pegged me into this floating sty. And now you have freed me!" Tjorr blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

"Well, I am Eodan, Boierik's son, of the Cimbri. We can trade stories later. How shall we dislodge those two up there?"

"A bow would be easiest," said Tjorr, brightening, "but I'd liefer throw things at them."

Flavius went to the deck's edge and looked down. "Eodan," he called. "Will you speak with me?"

The Cimbrian bristled. "What can you say to talk back your life?"

"Only this." Flavius' tone remained cool. "Do you really think to man a ship with these apes? They know how to row. Can they lay a course, hold a rudder, set a sail or splice a line? Do you, yourself, even know where to aim, to reach some certain country? Now Captain Demetrios has mastered all these arts, and I, who own a small pleasure craft, have some skill. Eodan, you can kill us if you wish, but then you will be wrecked in a day!"

There was buzzing among the slaves. The ship heeled sharply, under a gust, and Eodan felt spray sting his face.

Phryne left the rail and came to him. "I have not seen much of the sea," she said, "but I fear Flavius is right."

Eodan looked back along the deck, toward Hwicca. She stood watching the Roman in a way he did not know, save that it was not hate. Eodan raised his sword until it trembled before his eyes. The blood running down the blade made the haft slippery. I had no real quarrel with any of the men whose blood this was, he thought.

Then he regarded the sea, where it curled white on restless greenish blue, and the sky, and the far dim line that was Italy. He spat on the planks and called, "Very well! Lay down your arms and be our deck officers. You shall not be harmed."

"What proof do you have?" snorted Demetrios.

"None, except that he wants to reach land again with his wife," said Flavius. "Come." He led the way down the ladder. The rowers muttered obscenity. Two of them moved close, their pieces of oar lifted. Tjorr waved them back with his sledge. Flavius handed his sword to Eodan, who pitched it down so it rang.

"I advise you to assert your authority without delay." Flavius folded his arms and leaned against the poop, amused of face. "You have an unruly band there."

By now the remaining oarsmen had come on deck. Eodan counted them. All told, he had sixteen alive, including Tjorr, though several of these had suffered wounds. He mounted halfway up the ladder. "Hear me!" he cried.

They moved about, stripping the fallen sailors, shaking weapons they had taken, chattering in a dozen tongues. Several edged close to Hwicca. "Hear me!" roared Eodan. Tjorr took Demetrios' helmet and banged on it with his hammer till ears hurt from the noise. "Heed me now or I throw you overboard!" shouted Eodan.

When he had them standing, squatting or sitting beneath him, he began to talk. There was little art of oratory among the Northern folk, but he knew coldly that he must learn it for himself this day if he wanted to live.

"I am Eodan who freed you," he said. "I am a Cimbrian. Last year, having destroyed many Roman armies, we entered Italy. There our luck turned, we were beaten and I was taken for a slave. But my luck has turned again, for you see that I captured this ship and struck the irons off you. And I shall give you your own freedom back!" He played for a while on the thought of no more manacles or whips, sailing to a land where they could find homes and wives or start out for their own countries. When he had them shouting for him—he was astonished how easy that was—he grew stern.

"A ship without a captain is a ship for the sea to eat. Now I am the captain. For the good of all, I must be obeyed. For the good of all, those who do not obey must suffer death or the lash. Hear me! It may well be needful for you to row again, but you will row as free men. He who will not pull his oar is not chained; he is welcome to leave us over the side. He whose gluttony takes more than his ration shall be cut into fish bait to make up for it. Hear me! I show you two women. They are mine. I know you have been long without women, but he who touches them, he who so much as makes a lewd remark to them, will be nailed to the yardarm. For I am your captain. I am he who will lead you to freedom and safety. I am the captain!"

A moment's stillness, then Tjorr whooped. And then they all shouted themselves raw, clapped, danced and held their weapons aloft. "Captain, captain!" Eodan leaned on the ladder while the cheering beat in his face. Now, he thought drunkenly, now I can forgive Marius that he made a triumph!

But the ship was bucking, drifting before the wind. While Tjorr went among the men, binding hurts and learning what skills they might have, Eodan conferred. Beside him were Hwicca, who held his arm and looked gravely at him, and Phryne, who stood with feet braced wide against the roll and fists defiantly on her hips. Demetrios, red with throttled anger, faced Eodan; Flavius sat on a coil of rope, his chiseled features gone blank.

"First we must know where to betake us," said Eodan. "I do not think we could sail unquestioned into Massilia harbor as we are! Could we put in elsewhere on the shore of Gaul, unseen?"

"It's a tricky coast for a lubber crew," said Demetrios.

"Narbonensis is thickly settled," added Phryne. "Even if we landed in some cove, I doubt we would get far on foot before some prefect tracked us down." Her gaze went west, toward the sun. "Indeed, nearly all the Midworld seacoasts of Europe are Roman."

"There is Africa," said Flavius.

Phryne nodded thoughtfully. It struck Eodan (why had he never noticed it before, with her hair so short?) that the shape of her head was beautiful.

"Mauretania," she murmured. "No, that is well west of us. A long way to go across open sea, with so tiny and awkward a crew. Numidia must be nearly south ... but so is Carthage, where Romans dwell. Then I hear Tripolis and Cyrenaica are desert in many places, down to the very sea—"

Eodan said, "By the Bull, we could sail around Gaul to Jutland!"

Flavius laughed noiselessly. Demetrios rumbled like some fire mountain before he achieved words: "Would you not rather bore a hole in the ship? That would be an easier way to drown!"

Phryne smiled at the Cimbrian. "I should have awaited such a plan from you," she said. "But he is right. It is too long a voyage, and the Ocean is too rough for the likes of us."

"Well, then," he snapped, "where can we go?"

"I would say toward Egypt." Eodan started; he had not often seen Phryne redden. She lowered her eyes but went on, hurriedly: "Oh, we could not sail into Alexandria like any mariners. The King of Egypt has no more desire to encourage slave revolt than the Roman Senate. But there should be smaller harbors, or we could run into the Nile delta after dark, or—It is a world-city, Alexandria, even more than Rome. Let us once enter it afoot, a few at a time, with just a little money, and surely we can be better hidden than in the wildest desert. And those who would go further can find berths with eastbound ships or caravans. You could go as far as the Cimmerian Bosporus, Eodan, Hwicca, and thence make your own way north through the barbarian lands to your home!"

Eodan looked at Demetrios. The captain grunted. "I suppose it might be done, this time of year," he said. "You'll let me off unhurt, won't you now? The gods will hate you if you break your word to me."

Flavius said calmly: "Chance abets your scheme, Phryne. This wind is right for doubling around Sicily."

Eodan whipped his sword up, threw it so it stuck in the bulkhead, toning, and laughed. "Then we sail!"

He found much to do in the next few hours. He had to organize the crew, giving duties to all the men; he had to visit the whole ship; he had to count the stores and guess what ration of moldy hardtack, wormy meat, sour wine and scummed water could be handed out each day. His crew elected to sleep below, in the pit; most of them feared sea monsters would snatch an unconscious man off the deck, a yarn often spun galley slaves to keep them docile. A cleared space in the forecastle peak was turned over to Tjorr, Flavius and Demetrios, who must always be on call. The prisoner-officers would stand watch and watch the whole journey, supervised by captain or mate. Not trusting himself, Eodan said Tjorr would guard Flavius.

Having cleaned the decks and gotten rid of the dead—they promised Neptune a bull when they came ashore, to pay for polluting his waters—the crew made some shambling attempt to become human. It was almost a merry scene. Tjorr dragged a forge out on deck; iron roared as his hammer and chisel struck off men's fetters. Beyond him stood a black Ethiopian, who hacked off as much hair and beard as shears would take; a tub of sea water and a sponge waited; and they could put on the tunics or loincloths of the fallen sailors—shabby indeed, but more than a benched slave had. And a stewpot bubbled on the hearth forward of the mast, and an extra dole of wine was there to pour for the gods or drink oneself. Overhead strained the single square sail, patched and mildewed but carrying them south from Rome.

A thought reached Eodan. He said, dismayed, "But Phryne, I have not found any quarters for you!"

She looked at the cabin, then back at him and Hwicca. Sunset burned yellow behind her slight form. "I can use that canvas shelter up on the forecastle deck," she said.

"It seems wrong," he muttered. "Without you, I would be dead a hundred times over ... or still a slave. You should have the cabin, and we—"

"You could not be alone enough in a tent on deck," she said.

He heard Hwicca's breath stumble, but she uttered no word.

The sun went down, somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The moon, approaching the full, rose out of Asia. The men yawned their way to sleep; Eodan overheard one young fellow say it had been a trying day. Presently only the watch was above decks—a lookout in the bows and one in the crow's-nest, a steersman and Demetrios on the poop, two standbys dozing under the taffrail.

Phryne said to Eodan, "Will you not sleep, too?"

"Not till Tjorr relieves me," he said. "Would you trust that captain man?"

"I can oversee him, and call for help if—"

Eodan's mouth lifted wryly. "Thank you, Phryne. But it is not needful. Later, perhaps. Now I think we shall watch the moon for a bit."

"Oh." The Greek girl was a whiteness in the night; she seemed very small within the great ring of the sea. Her head bent. "Oh, I understand. Good night, Eodan."

"Good night." He watched her go to her tent.

Hwicca stood by the larboard rail. Her hair, loosened, rippled a little in the wind. He thought he could still see a tinge of its golden hue. Otherwise the moon turned her to silver and mist; she was not wholly real. But shadows drew the deep curves of her, where the torn dress fluttered and streamed. Eodan's temples beat, slow and heavy.

He walked to her, and they stood looking east. The moon dazzled their eyes and flung a shaken bridge across darkly gleaming waters. There were not many stars to be seen against its brightness, up in the violet-blue night. The sea rolled and whispered, the wind thrummed low, the ship's forefoot hissed and its timbers talked aloud.

"I had not awaited this," said Eodan at last, because she was not going to speak and he could find no better words. "To gain our own vessel!"

"It seems more of a risk this way," she answered, staring straight before her. The hands he remembered—how fair was a woman's hand, laid beside the rough hairy paw of a man!—were clenched on the rail. "It is my fault. Had I not failed you this noontime—"

"How did the Roman get to the door?" he asked. "You could have called me, or at least put your sword in him, when he neared it ... could you not?"

"I tried," she said. "But when he began to move that way, slowly, as if by mere chance, talking to me all the while—he was so merry, and he was saying me a verse—I did not want to—" She took her head, her lips pulled back from her teeth and she said harshly: "Once I attacked him, were not all our lives forfeit? Was it not to be done only if death stood certain before us? I waited too long, that is all—I misjudged and waited too long!"

"You could have warned him not to move further."

"He talked all the time—his verse—I had no chance to—"

"You had no wish to interrupt him!" flared Eodan. "Is that not the way of it? He was singing you some pretty little lay about your eyes or your lips, and smiling at you. You would not break the mood with anything so rude as a warning. Is that not how he used you?"

Her head bent. She slung to the rail and arched her back with the effort not to scream.

Eodan paced up and down for a time. Somewhere out in the water a dolphin broached, playing with the moonlight. There was strangely little wind to feel when you sailed before it, as though the hollow, murmurous canvas above him had gathered it all in. When he turned his face aft, he caught only the lightest of warm, wandering airs. It was a fair night, he thought, a night when the Powers were gentle.

It was a night to lie out with your beloved, as you carried her home.

Eodan said finally, with more weariness than he had thought a man's bones could bear:

"Oh, yes. I too have learned somewhat of these Southlanders. They are more skilled and gracious folk than we. They can speak of wisdom, opening the very heavens as they talk; and their wit is like sunshine skipping over a swift brook; and their verses sing a heart from its body; and their hands shape wood and stone so it seems alive; and love is also a craft to be learned, with a thousand small delights we heavy-footed Northfolk had not dreamed us. Yes, all this I have seen for myself, and it was foolish of me to suppose you were blind." He came back behind her and laid his hands on her waist. "Is it Flavius then that you care for?"

"I do not know," she whispered.

"But you were never more than a few months' pleasure to him!" cried Eodan. His voice split across.

"He swore it was otherwise." Her fingers twisted together, her head wove back and forth as if seeking flight. "I do not know, Eodan—there is a trolldom laid on me, perhaps—though he said he would raise me from all darkness of witches and gods, into a sunlight air where only men dwelt—I do not know!" She tore herself free, whirled about and faced him. "Can you not understand, Eodan? You are dear to me, but I care for him, too! And that is why I am dishonored. It is not that I, a prisoner, lay with him. But I was his!"

Eodan let his arms fall. "And you still are?" he asked.

"I told you I do not know." She stared blindly out to sea. "Now you have heard. Do what you think best."

"You can have the cabin for yourself," he said. He wanted to make it a gentle tone, but his words clashed flatly.

She fled from him, and he heard the door bang shut upon her.

After a long while he looked skyward, found the North Star and measured its position against the moonlit wake. As nearly as he could tell, they were still on course.

[XI]

The wind held strong, blowing them toward western Sicily with little work on their own part. Now and again they spoke other ships; this was a well-trafficked sea. Eodan, whose height and accent could never be taken for Italian, followed Phryne's advice and told them he was a Gaul out of Massilia for Apollonia; and then they dipped under the marching horizon.

That first day passed somehow. Eodan busied himself with Tjorr, learning what seamanship a surly Demetrios could pass on. He dared hardly speak to Flavius, but the Roman stayed in the forecastle most of the time the Cimbrian was on deck. Hwicca kept her cabin, whelmed by sickness from the roughening sea. It had never before occurred to Eodan that the ills of the body could be merciful.

"Do you stay with her the voyage," he told Phryne. "I will take the tent."

She stared at him. He barked, as though to a slave: "Do what I say!" Her eyes grew blurred, but she nodded.

The crew came on deck, idled in the sun till Tjorr went roaring among them with instruction in the deckhand arts. He had to knock down a couple before he got some obedience.

"It were best you keep all the weapons," he said to Eodan.

The Cimbrian nodded. With a dim try at a jest: "Even yours?"

"If you wish," said Tjorr, surprised. He wore a sword at his thick waist. "But spare me my hammer." Hanging by a thong around one shoulder, it was an iron-headed mallet, a foot and a half long and some fifteen pounds in weight.

"Oh, keep your sword," said Eodan. "But what would you with that tool?"

"I found it a good weapon yesterday, though a little too short in the haft. It needs more strength to wield than a battle-ax—but I am strong, and it will not warp or break when needed most." Tjorr's red-furred hand caressed the thing. "And then, we of the Rukh-Ansa are a horse-loving folk, who honor the smith's trade above all others. It feels homelike to carry a sledge again. And last, but foremost, Captain, this hammer broke the chains off me. For that it shall have a high place in my house on the Don, and I shall offer it sacrifices."

Eodan found himself warming to the Sarmatian. He asked further. The Alans were only barbarians in the sense of doing without cities and books: they were a widespread race, many tribes between the Dnieper and the Volga, who farmed and herded for a living. They bred galloping warriors, word-crafty bards, skillful artisans; they traded with the Greeks on the Black Sea and had not only meat and fish and hides to sell, but cloth and metal shaped by their own hands.

"Times are not what they have been in the lands of Azov," rumbled Tjorr. "We are getting to be too many for our pastures; a dry year means a hungry winter. And the Greeks press upon us. It was in a raid on them that I was captured. Nonetheless, I am of high blood among the Ansa, and now you are my chief. You shall have a good welcome. I hope you will remain, but, if not, you shall go where you wish, with gifts and warriors."

"Let us first get to your Don River," said Eodan. He turned from the Alan, knowing he hurt him by such curtness. But he could not speak of hope when Hwicca lay farther from him than Rome from Cimberland.

Could it but be judged by the sword, between him and Flavius! But death was no remedy, thought Eodan; and that knowledge, which he had not had before, was bitter within him.

The day and the night passed. He noticed that the crew were beginning to talk in small groups, on the deck or down in the south. The former captain jerked a thumb at the sight, as he neared. He thought little of it.

When he came from his tent next morning to take his watch with Demetrios, there were cloud banks piled white in the south. The former captain jerked a thumb at the sight. "There you are," he said. "That marks Sicily. We'll round Lilybaeum today. Then we'll have to come about on an east-southeast course. Don't like cutting over open sea myself, but we can't get lost very bad. Daresay we'll raise Africa around Cyrenaica, then follow the coast to Egypt."

"And abandon the ship on some unpeopled beach," nodded Eodan.

He saw, of a sudden, that his crew was gathering under the poop. Some had been on deck already, now others emerged in answer to low-voiced hails. Only Flavius and the helmsman remained apart. Tjorr unshipped his hammer, walked to the poop's edge and looked down. The wind tossed his hair and beard like flame. "What's this?" he said. "What are you muck-toads up to?"

A very young man, dark and aquiline, not all the eagerness whipped out of him, waved his hands at the others. "Come, follow me," he said. "This way. Stick close. We've all decided, now we've all got to stick together." They shuffled their feet, sheepish under Eodan's chilling green gaze. A burly man in the rear began to herd them along, slapping at stragglers. They drifted toward the Cimbrian.

"Well?" said Eodan.

The youth ducked his head. "Master Captain," he began. "I am called Quintus. I'm from Saguntum in Spain. The men have chosen me, fair and open, by free vote, to speak for us all."

"And?" Eodan dropped a hand to his sword.

The black eyes were uneasy beneath his, but there was a mongrel courage in them. "Master Captain," said Quintus, "we're not unmindful of being freed. Though none of us was asked, and some would not have voted to desert their posts, if it had been put to the fair democratic test. For mark you, Master, it wasn't a very merry life, but you got your bread, and you rested ashore between voyages. Now we can look for nothing but slow death, the innocent with the guilty, if we're caught."

"I do not intend to be caught," said Eodan.

"Oh, of course not, Master!" The boy washed his hands together, servilely, and cringed. But he did not leave the spot where he stood. And behind the silent, shuffling mass, his big confederate held a piece of broken oar to prod the reluctant into place.

"There is money aboard," said Eodan. "When we come to Egypt and beach this hulk, we shall divide the coins and go our separate ways. Would you not rather become a free Alexandrian worker than sit chained to a bench all your life?"

"Well, now, sir, the free man is often only free to starve. An owner keeps his slaves fed, at least. Some of us is right unhappy about that. We don't know how to go about finding work in a strange land. We don't know the talk nor customs nor anything. The older of us are all too plainly slaves, with marks of shackle and whip, maybe a brand—and what have we got to prove we was lawfully freed, if anyone asks? Master Captain, we have talked about this a long time, and reached a fair democratic decision, and now we crave you listen to it."

Eodan thought grimly, It is another thing I had not understood, that a slave need not be pampered to embrace his own slavery.

He said aloud, forcing a grin, "Well, if you want to be chained again, I can oblige you."

A few men snickered nervously. Quintus shook his head. "You make a joke, Master. Now let me put it to you square, as man to man. For we are all free comrades now, thanks to you, Master Captain. But we are all outlaws, too. None dare go home, unless they come from a far barbarian land; none of us from civilized parts can ever return, now can we? But we've got this ship, and we've got arms. There are not so many of us yet, but with the first success we can have more like ourselves. And the eastern sea is full of trade; I know those waters myself. There is also many an island around Greece where nobody ever comes, to hide on—and many a lesser port we could sail into to spend our earnings, where no one asks how it was earned—"

"Get to the point, you dithering blubberhead!" said Tjorr. "You want to turn sea bandits, is that the way of it?"

The Spanish youth shrank back, swayed forward again and chattered: "Pirates, so, pirates, Master Captain. Free companions of the Midworld Sea. There's no other hope for us, not really there isn't. If caught—and many of us would surely be caught, wandering into Egypt by ourselves—we'll die anyhow. This way, if the gods are kind, we'll not die at all. Or if we do, we'll have had good times before!"

"Pirates," mumbled the crew. "Pirates. We'll be pirates."

Tjorr leaped down to the main deck so it thudded beneath him. He walked forward in a red bristle, his hammer aloft. "You fish-eyed slobberguts!" he roared. "Back to your duty!"

The burly man hefted his broken oar. "Now, Master Mate," he said. "Be calm. This was voted on—uh—"

"Democratic," supplied Quintus.

"So now a ship is to be a republic?" called Flavius from the poop. "I wish you joy of your captaincy, Eodan!"

The Cimbrian closed fingers about his sword. He could not feel the anger that snapped from Tjorr; it seemed of no great importance when Hwicca had cloven herself from him.

"I do not wish this," he said mildly.

Emboldened, the Spaniard stepped close to him. "Oh, Master Captain, there was no thought of mutiny," he exclaimed. "Why, we are your best friends! That was the first thing I said, when we met to talk this over, the captain is our captain, I said, and—"

"I have better things to do than skulk about these waters."

"But Captain, sir, we'll be your men! We'll do anything you say." The boy grinned confidently, pressing his words in. "Just treat us like men, with some rights of our own, is all we ask."

"I'll treat you like an anvil first!" snorted Tjorr. His hammer lifted.

"No, wait." Eodan caught the mate's arm as Quintus scuttled back squealing. "Let them have their way."

"Disa!" said Tjorr with horror. "You'd turn into a louse-bitten pirate, who could be a king of the Rukh-Ansa?"

"Oh, no. We shall still leave the ship in Egypt, as we planned. But if they want to take it afterward and go roving, it is no concern of ours." Eodan bent close, muttering, "Until we do get there, we'll need a willing crew."

"We'll have one, if you'll let me bang loose a few teeth," said Tjorr. "I know this breed. Yellow dogs! They'll lick your feet or pull out your throat, but naught in between."

"It is not my pleasure to fight our own men," said Eodan coldly.

"But—but—Well, so be it, my chief."

Eodan turned back to the others. "I agree thus far. You may have the vessel after I have disembarked at my goal. Meanwhile, I advise you to learn better seamanship!"

"But, Master Captain," said Quintus, "we know you and the honored mate are the best fighters aboard. We want you to lead us."

Eodan shook his head.

"Well—will you lead us against any ships we may happen to find before you depart?"

Eodan shrugged. "As you like, provided I think it is safe."

"Oh, indeed, Master, indeed!" The boy spun around to face the men, raising his arms. "Give thanks to the captain!"

"Hoy!" cried Demetrios in dismay. "What about me?"

"You'll do as you're told," said Tjorr.

Demetrios gulped and looked appealingly at Flavius. The Roman smiled, winked and came down the poop ladder. "Your watch," he said.

After a while Eodan began to regret not following Tjorr's counsel. His crew had become still more slatternly. Now they would do nothing but sit about boasting of their future, until he finally kicked them into sullen labor. Quintus sidled up in the afternoon and proposed that the weapons be handed out so the men could practice. Eodan told him they should first practice being sailors. Quintus argued. He would not stop arguing until Eodan finally knocked him to the deck; then he slouched off, muttering, to find his big friend.

Toward evening, Hwicca came on deck. She was supported by Phryne, and her face was pale. Eodan's heart turned over. He went to her and asked, "Do you feel well, my darling?"

"Better," she said dully. "But so tired."

Phryne, who had not followed their Cimbric, said angrily to Eodan: "She shivers with cold. I have no warmth to give her!"

He said in the Northern language, "Would you have me stay with you tonight, Hwicca?"

"As you wish," she said. "You are my husband."

Eodan left her, went to the hearth and struck the cook with his fist for a bad supper.

Presently Hwicca returned to the cabin. Phryne sought Eodan. Was it only the sunset that reddened her eyes? She said in a jagged tone, "I do not know what is wrong between you two. I can only guess. But I will sleep no more with her."

"You can have the tent back, then," said Eodan bitterly, "and I will roll a blanket on deck, since it appears we must all be sundered from each other."

"Before Hades, I wonder now if she may not be right!" yelled Phryne. She stamped her foot, whipped about and ran to the tent.

She was still wearing the boy's tunic, bare-legged, for there were no women's garments aboard save Hwicca's dresses, too large for her. Quintus, squatting by the rail with his friend, the big man called Narses, stared after the Greek girl and smacked his lips.

Eodan paced the deck in wrath, wondering what unlucky thing he had done. Well, the night wind take them all! Phryne, who would not help his wife when she needed help, and Hwicca, who had become a Roman's whore, and—by the Bull, no, he would not say that of her! If it were true, the only thing would be to cast her off, and he would not do that.

He raised his hands toward the early stars. "I would pull down the sky if I could," he said between his teeth. "I would make a balefire for the world of all the world's gods, and kindle it, and howl while it burned. And I would tread heaven under my feet, and call up the dead from their graves to hunt stars with me, till nothing was left but the night wind!"

No thunderbolt smote him. The ship ran onward, dropping the dark mass of Sicily astern; the last red clouds in the west smoldered to ash and then to night; the moon stood forth, insolently cool and fair. Eodan had no wish to sleep, but he saw that Demetrios was dangerously worn, so he sent the man aft to rouse Flavius and Tjorr.

"We can hold this course all night, they tell me," he said to the Alan. "The wind is falling, so we won't go too far. Call me if anything seems to threaten."

"Da." Tjorr's small bush-browed eyes went from Eodan to the closed cabin door. He shook his head, and the moonlight showed a bemused compassion on his battered face. "As you will, Captain."

Flavius hung back, well into the shadows. He did not follow Tjorr and the new watch aft until Eodan had departed.

The Cimbrian rolled himself into his blanket forward of the mast, so the sail's shadow would keep the moon from his eyes. He sought sleep, but it would not come. Now and again he heard bare feet slap the planks, a man on watch or one come from below for some air. It was warmer tonight than before; his skin prickled. He cursed wearily, forbade himself to toss about and lay still. If he acted sleep, perhaps he could draw sleep.