The Golden Slave

XII

In the morning they turned east. The wind had shifted enough to give them some help, though it was necessary to break out the spare oars and put ten men back on them. Eodan thought of making Flavius go into the pit for a while. He glanced at Phryne, who sat pensively looking out toward Egypt, and decided she would think it an unworthy deed.

Hwicca came out some time close to noon. She had put on a fresh gown and a blue palla; it set off her sunlight-colored braids. She looked out over the sea, which glittered blue and green in a hundred hues, foamed, cried out and snorted under a sky of pale crystal. The wind whooped over the world’s rim and drew blood to her cheeks. Eodan had not seen her so fair since they crossed the Alpine snows.

He went to her and said, striving to be calm, “I hope you feel yourself again.”

“Oh, yes. I am used to the movement now.” Hwicca smiled at him, shy as a child, and he remembered that she was after all no more than eighteen winters. “Indeed this is a lovely way of faring, as if we rode on a great bird.”

Hope kindled him. He rubbed his chin weightily ― let him not urge himself too fast ― and answered: “Yes, I could become as much a shipwright as a horse tamer, I think. When we return to the North, we shall begin making some real ships. I only remember boats from my boyhood. Already I think I could teach their builders some new arts.”

Her pleasure faded a little. “Are you indeed bound to return to Cimberland?” she asked.

“If not to the same place, somewhere near,” he said. “I remember my father speaking of tribes not far eastward, Goths and Sueones, strong wealthy folk who speak a tongue we could understand. But I would at least be among my own folk again.”

She lowered her face and murmured, “They have a saying here, that nothing human is alien to them.”

“Would you liefer stay in Rome?” he asked, stabbed.

“Let us not talk of that,” she begged. Her hand stole up to his chin, bristly after the past few unshaven days. When she touched him, it seemed almost pain. “You look so funny,” she smiled. “Black hair and yellow whiskers.”

“Hm, thanks,” he said, gripping his temper tight. “Since the dye will linger, Phryne told me, I’d best shave myself.”

“How did it happen Phryne came with you?” asked Hwicca, a little too lightly.

“She attended a matron at the farm, Flavius’ wife. We came to know each other.”

“How well?” Hwicca arched her brows.

“She is my friend,” he fumbled. “Nothing else.”

“Cordelia is a bitch,” said Hwicca, flushed, “but her maids have an easy enough life. What drove this Phryne to forsake it?”

Eodan bridled. “She wanted freedom for herself. She has a man’s soul.”

“Oh,” purred Hwicca. “One of those.”

He said in a rage, “You learned too much filth in Rome. I’ll speak to you again when you have curbed your tongue.”

He left her staring after him and went forward. “Heat me some water!” he barked. The cook, a deckhand told off to this task among all others, gave him a surly glance and obeyed. Eodan crouched by the hearth with a mirror and scraped the stubble off his face. He cut himself several times.

When he walked aft again, he saw that Flavius had come from the forecastle and stood where he himself had been, talking to Hwicca. Her face was bent from Eodan, but he saw woe in her twining hands. The Roman did not smile this time; he spoke gravely.

Eodan clapped a wild hand to his sword haft. By all the hounds on hellroad! No. It was beneath him. If she chose to betray him with a greasy Southlander, let her ― and wolves eat them both.

When he looked again he saw that Hwicca had gone back inside. Flavius stood looking out to sea. The eagle face was unreadable; then it firmed and his fist struck the rail. Thereupon Flavius went quickly to the poop, where Quintus of Saguntum squatted on standby duty with a red-streaked back. Those two fell into talk.

The day passed. There were many ships. Now and again a man asked the captain if they should not take one. Eodan dismissed the question with scorn ― this galley was armed, that one in plain sight of two others.… The man would go off muttering. Tjorr said nothing, but took the carpenter’s tools and worked on a boarding plank.

Toward sundown, Phryne, who had spent the day making herself a dress from some man-garments-no easy task with only a sail-maker’s equipment ― came to get her food. She found Eodan standing alone, chewing a heel of bread and watching two or three crewmen whisper beneath the mast. “We must be far from land now,” she remarked.

He nodded. “Far enough so we might safely attack some lone ship.”

“Would you indeed fall upon men who never harmed you, to steal their goods?” she asked. It was not deeply reproachful, but he felt he must justify himself to her and thought he was belike the first Cimbrian that ever saw robbery as anything but a simple fact of life.

“I would welcome a fight,” he said. Then, feeling he had shown too much, he made his tones cool: “If nothing else, the money we could gain will help mightily in Egypt. And, if you dislike the idea, we need not slaughter any captives ― and we would be setting the galley slaves free.”

“Then I suppose it is no worse than any other war,” she said. But she left him.

And the night passed.

In the morning, Eodan saw that Flavius was again talking to Hwicca. She showed more life than the last time ― by all cruel gods, but she was fair! ― and once mirth crossed her face. He stayed in the poop with Demetrios until his watch ended.

There had been nothing to see but water for many hours. The wind dropped till the sail hung half empty; the creaking oars rubbed men’s nerves. As noon passed it grew hotter, until the crew shed their clothes. Eodan kept his tunic. Hwicca came from her cabin and sat in its shade, alone, but he did not go to her.

The sun was so brazen off the sea that the other galley had come well over the horizon before the lookout cried its presence. It was also eastbound. Eodan grew tense. “Stand by to come about!” he said.

“Row down there, you clotheads!” bellowed Tjorr. “You may be rowing to your fortunes!”

Eodan took the steering oar himself. It was maddeningly slow, the way they crept over miles. He thought, once, that if he built himself a galley in the North it would not be so heavy and round as these ― yes, open decks, so a man could pull his oar beneath the sky.…

“She’s a big one,” said Demetrios. “Too big for the likes of you.” Sweat glistened on his nose; his eyes rolled in unease.

Eodan felt the old captain was right. The ship he neared had half again the length of his, and its freeboard towered over his deck. Nonetheless, it had no ram, no war engines at all that he could see, though he only knew such by description. And he had eaten too much rage the last few days. It must out somehow.

“We will go nearer,” he said. “We have decided nothing yet.”

“We’ll decide to slink off again, that’s what we’ll do,” muttered Quintus, down on the main deck. “A coward as well as a tyrant, that’s our skipper.”

One or two nodded furtively.

Still they edged closer. The captain of the other galley hailed: “Ho, there! This is the Bona Dea of Puteoli, bound for Miletus with a cargo of wine! Who are you?”

Eodan repeated his old lie. “Well,” replied the stranger, “give us some sea room, then.”

“I sail where I please!” yelled Eodan.

“Come closer and I’ll think you’re a pirate.”

“Think what you want!”

The ships converged. Eodan waited, coldly, until he heard the alarms and the running feet. Then he gave a crewman the steering oar, ran to the shrouds and swarmed to the crow’s-nest. He was high enough and close enough now to look down upon the other deck. He counted the sailors as they scurried about getting their weapons from the captain. Fifteen. And, with himself, this one still carried sixteen!

Of course, that meant he would have to arm all his rowers, but ― He threw a leg around the mast and slid down, shouting, “Hau-hau-hau! Break out the blades!”

The men on deck roared. Tjorr had to knock one overeager rower back down the hatch before the oars would move again. Eodan called two men to him, pointing out Flavius and Demetrios. “Bind them,” he said.

Flavius held out his wrists. “Are you afraid we two will attack your gang from the rear?” he asked mildly.

“I would not trust you with the women,” said Eodan. He slipped Demetrios’ helmet pad on his head. The helmet itself followed. O wild war-gods, he bore a helmet once more!

“Over here!” cried Tjorr. “This way, you moth-eaten monkeys!” The deck planks grated beneath the heavy, grapneled boarding plank he had fashioned.

Spears gleamed along the other ship’s rail. Its captain stood in plumed helmet and polished breastplate, laughing down at the handful on Eodan’s deck. “So you had a slave mutiny, did you?” he said. “Well, come on, come on! We’ll put you to work here, on your way to the arena!”

Eodan looked bleakly over his few, and thought of the ten oarsmen beneath his feet. They were not the stuff of a good fighting force. See that skinny graybeard snivel over there ― this pirating had never been any idea of his. Narses was the best of a bad lot, and Narses lay on the sea bottom. Well, Eodan and Tjorr had to do what they could, for it was too late now. Even if they turned tail, the other galley would pursue, and it had more rowers.

He saw Hwicca and Phryne by the cabin. They held each other’s hands, unspeaking, in that mystery of woe whose initiates are all womankind. He strode to them, buckling on his helmet. “Stay behind that door,” he said. “If the fight goes against us, you must do what seems best.”

He looked into Hwicca’s eyes, and a smile he had not known was within his strength crossed face and soul. “But it will be well,” he said in their own tongue. “You were ever my luck.”

She lifted a fist and bit her knuckles, and Phryne led her into the cabin.

Eodan went below with an armful of weapons. He cried into the grunting, clashing, sweating gloom: “Here is what you asked me for. If you would stay alive, do not disobey me. Remain at your oars until I blow my trumpet. Then pull them in, lest they break your ribs when we strike! And come up and fight!”

No use to wonder if his scummy followers had even understood. He sped back up the ladder, shield on arm and sword in hand. The Bona Dea loomed like a cliff above him. He saw sunlight blink on shields and blades up on her deck.

Tjorr had spiked the boarding plank to the deck. It was elevated by two men with ropes, its claws poised to grab. Tjorr held his hammer up as he gauged the distance. “Now!” he shouted, and swung the mallet down. The two men let go, and Eodan sounded Demetrios’ trumpet. The plank fell as their bow slashed across the other galley’s oars. Wood crackled; a pirate looked at a foot-long splinter hurled into his thigh and wailed. The grapple struck. Its sharpened iron bit deep. The two ships shuddered to a halt.

“Hau!” yelled Eodan, and went up the plank.

Two shields glided into place before him and locked. From behind the men, two pikes reached after his guts. Eodan shoved one spear aside with his own shield. The other withdrew, poised and probed in again. He battered at it with his sword. For one black instant he knew there was no way for him to get past.

“Beware, disa!”

Eodan heard the angry bee-buzz and ducked his head. Tjorr’s whirling hammer was released. It struck a face behind one of the shields. The shield went down, its man upon it.

Eodan sprang between the two spears, into the gap. Over the rail! He stood upon the fallen man and thrust at a pike wielder. The sailor, with no metal to ward his belly, fell backward to escape. Eodan stabbed his mate. The other shield-bearer turned and attacked from the right. Tjorr reached around Eodan and put a sword in the man’s neck.

Then Eodan and Tjorr were back to back upon the high deck, holding off the crew. A tall blond man, a German of some kind, ran at Eodan with a longsword uplifted. “I want that blade!” said the Cimbrian. He fell to one knee, holding the shield over his head. The German’s glaive smashed down on it. Eodan cut at the German’s legs, and the man staggered back. Eodan got up again and battered loose. It was no way to use a shortsword. The German limped out of reach and swung his great weapon up for a cleaving. Eodan raised his own, faster, and threw it. The German sat down, holding death in himself. Eodan darted forward, snatched up the longsword and came back to Tjorr.

The Alan, shieldless, had picked up his hammer again. He smote right-handed with it, a ringing and belling and sundering, while his left wielded his Roman blade. “Ha!” he bellowed down the boarding plank. “Are you never coming? Must I do all the work here?”

His crew hung back, seeing how whetted steel flashed around those two and blood dripped into the sea. Eodan shrieked at them over the din: “If we lose this fight, you will all go to Rome!”

A man down there hefted an ax, set his teeth and ran up the plank. The others poured after him. Quintus alone remained, with a spear. When two of the former slaves turned back, he grinned and prodded them. Only when all his shipmates were caught up in the battle did he himself come.

Eodan, looking over a wall of helmets, considered the youth’s face. By the Bull, he had just made himself second mate!

Their line split, the galley’s crew surged away in clumps of men. The pirates yelped about, rushed in and out, broke past the defenders here or were hurled back there. Eodan struck down a man with a disabling blow ― it was good to have a sword he really understood ― and looked over the combat. It was fiercest near the mast. “There we must go, Tjorr,” he said.

“Aye.” The Alan trotted after him. They faced shields and edges. A few near-naked pirates yammered and waved their weapons, careful to stay beyond reach. “Follow me, you dogs!” cried Eodan. His sword whined and thundered. An Italian sailor thrust at him from behind a shield. Eodan slewed his iron around and cut the man’s wrist. The metal was too blunted already to cut deep, but the bones cracked. The Italian bayed his anguish and dropped from the line. Eodan slashed at the legs of the man beside him. That one stumbled, fell and rolled from the pursuing sword. Tjorr stepped into the widening gap and struck with his hammer. The pirates, heartened, moved in. The defensive force broke up into single men.

Panting, Eodan swung himself into the shrouds. There were more wounded and slain among the ill-equipped pirates than among the merchant crew; nonetheless, fighting stayed brisk, since neither side knew how matters stood. Eodan put the trumpet to his lips and blew. Again and again he blew, until much of the battle died. An arrow grazed his arm, another thunked in his shield, but he stayed where he was and shouted:

“Hear me! Lay down your arms and your lives shall be spared. You will be set free without ransom. May Jupiter or someone strike me dead if I lie! Hear me!”

After he had harangued them a while, a shaken voice called: “How do we know you will do this, if we yield?”

“You know it will be to the death if you don’t!” said Eodan. “Lay down your arms and live!”

As he returned to the deck, he heard the fight resume uncertainly. Neither side pressed too hard, now that a truce might be close. Eodan saw the graybearded pirate cutting the throat of a wounded man, in the shelter of a bollard. The oldster shrank back from him, afraid. Eodan said: “Throw that knife against my shield, as noisily as you can, and cry that you surrender to the freebooter captain.”

The fellow obeyed, given a kick to add urgency to his recital. A moment afterward, Eodan heard from across the deck: “Stop, I yield me!”

It spread like a plague. Within minutes, a disarmed crew huddled gloomily under the pikes of a few crowing pirates.

Eodan took off his helmet and wiped reddened hands on a fallen man’s cloak. His tunic was plastered to him with sweat. It came as a dull surprise that the blood painting him was not his own. Just a few scratches and bruises. Well, the Powers which took all else from him gave him victory in war, a miser’s payment.… He looked at the sun above the yardarm. The battle had lasted perhaps an hour. And now he held two ships.

He walked over planks grisly with the dead and the hurt. There were more of the latter, there always were, but many of them would die, too, from bleeding or inflammation. The still air quivered with their groans. He counted up. Besides himself and Tjorr, eight pirates were hale. Eleven merchant crewmen stood on their feet; but their captain had quit the world bravely. “This should cool our lads off,” said the Cimbrian. “I scarcely think they will want to try piracy again.”

“They can raise their numbers, disa,” Tjorr reminded him. “There must be forty slaves below decks, at least.”

“True ― indeed ― Well, so be it. If we can come to Egypt, I care not.” Eodan looked glumly down the boarding plank to the smaller craft. “I am sick of blood. Can you set matters to rights here?”

“Da. I’ll try not to bother you.” The redbeard’s look was so gentle that Eodan wondered how much he understood ― surely not a great deal; it was growing upon Eodan what a reach of darkness each human soul holds for all others.

He returned to the lesser galley and cut the bonds of Flavius and Demetrios. “You can go look about,” he said listlessly.

Flavius stood up. He searched Eodan’s face for a long while. “It was badly done of the fates not to make you a Roman,” he said at last, and left. Demetrios followed him.

Eodan sighed and went to the cabin. Hwicca and Phryne stood there. The Cimbrian girl was flushed; her breast rose and fell and she ran forward to take his hands. “I thought I saw all our folk come back in you!” she cried.

Eodan looked across her shoulder at Phryne, who stood white in the doorway. “I begin to grasp your meaning,” he said with a crooked smile. “This was no more unjust than any other war.”

“Would you wash yourself?” asked the Greek girl.

He nodded. “That, and sleep.”

Hwicca stepped back, her face hurt and bewildered. Eodan went past her into the cabin. Phryne brought him a sponge and a bucket of salt water. He cleansed himself and lay down on one of the mattresses. Sleep came like a blow.…

He woke suddenly. Lamplight met his eyes. The air had cooled, and the ship was rocking. He heard singing and the stamp of feet, but remotely. He sat up.

Hwicca sat beside him. Her hair was loose, rushing over her shoulders so he did not at first see she wore her best gown. She hugged her knees and regarded him with troubled eyes.

“Is it night?” he asked in the Cimbric.

“Yes,” she answered, very quietly. “Tjorr said not to waken you. He said he had brought order on the new ship. They released the slaves and locked up the crewmen and such of the rowers as did not want to join us. He got the wounded below decks over there ― and everything―” She held out a leather bottle. “He said to give you this.”

Eodan ignored it. He stepped to the door and glanced out. The grappling plank was taken down, and only ropes and a single lashed gangway joined the two vessels; the hulls rocked enough to break any stiff bridge. It was dark and empty on this ship. Torches flared on the other, bobbing in a crazy dance, hoarse voices chanted and laughter went raw under a sky of reborn wind and hurried clouds.

“What is that foolishness?” he snapped.

Hwicca came to stand at his side and look, almost frightened, at the Tartarus-view. A naked black outline, hair and beard one mane, capered against fire-glow. You could just glimpse a circle of others, leaping and kicking with hands joined around the ship’s hearth.

“There was wine on board,” said Hwicca.

“Oh … oh, yes. I remember now. And Tjorr let them have the cargo?”

“He told me he could not stop them. It seemed best to grant them this night’s drinking. Then tomorrow we could all take the big galley―”

“And let the crew of that one have this. Hm. It is not such a bad thought.”

“You would let them go?” asked Hwicca, astonished.

“I gave them my word,” he said. “And what good would it do to kill them?”

He closed the door again, muffling the racket. He picked up the leather bottle and drank thirstily. “Ah! But did they also have some food fit to eat on that ship?”

“I do not know. I prepared what I could from the stores here.” Hwicca pointed to a bowl of stew. “I fear it got cold while you slept.”

Eodan lowered the bottle. The roof was so low his head had to bow down to hers. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“You should not sleep unguarded.” She touched the knife in her girdle. His longsword lay drawn by the wall. He realized that he was unclothed.

“Phryne could have guarded me,” he said.

Hwicca reddened. “Is Phryne your wife?”

“Are you?”

She gasped and turned her back. “Well, I will go!” she cried. “If you do not wish me here, I will go!”

“Halt!” he said as she caught at the door’s bolt. She stopped as though speared and turned about until she stood against the door facing him. Tears whipped down her face, and the breath rattled in her throat.

Eodan felt inwardly gouged, but he stalked to her and took her by the shoulders. “I have had enough of this,” he said. “Tonight you shall decide who your man is.”

“I told you I do not know!” she screamed.

Eodan slipped his hands down over her arms until he had her wrists. “You shall decide,” he repeated. “And you are going to choose me.”

She tried to pull free, but he dragged her to him and laid his mouth upon hers. She writhed her face away. He held her, one-handed about the waist, while his free hand drew her knife and stabbed it into the wall. Then he grasped her hair and forced her lips back where he wanted them.

Suddenly she shivered. He let her go, and she sank to her knees, holding his. He sat down and laid an arm about her waist. She came to him, weeping and laughing. “It is you,” she said. “It is you, Eodan.”

Long afterward, when the lamp had gone out of itself, she whispered, “I think it must always, really, have been you.”