The Golden Slave

XIV

Arpad of Trapezus, who had served ably on the warships of the King, was rewarded with a pleasant commission ― to carry an ambassador and certain dispatches to Egypt. He took a lean black penteconter and a picked crew, not only to impress on his master’s behalf but to return with men not hopelessly slack after a few weeks in the subtle stews of Alexandria. They passed the Bosporus with no trouble, Byzantium having recently become subject to the Kingdom of Pontus. There was a halt at the Hellespont to show diplomatic passports, for that strait was controlled by the Bithynians, who favored Rome. But since Rome was still uneasily at peace with the Pontines, who dominated the Black Sea, Arpad was obsequiously sent on his way.

Thereafter he bore south between the Aegean islands, pausing here and there to admire some temple crowning a high ridge, until he saw pirate-haunted Crete. Beyond lay open sea, but it was not excessively far to the Nile’s mouths.

The Pharaoh of Egypt, who was a Macedonian by ancestry, received the captain from Pontus, who was half Persian and half Anatolian, graciously. Like all cultivated people, they spoke together in Attic Greek. During his stay Arpad found himself much in demand among the learned class; this city swarmed with as many philosophers and geographers as it did with gods and prostitutes. Pontus itself was exotic enough for several evenings’ discussion ― Graeco-Persian-Asiatic on the Black Sea coast, a source of timber, minerals and the fantastically lovely murrhine glass. And one had heard of its king, the great Mithradates, enthroned in his twelfth year, forced to flee the usurping schemes of mother and brother, living for years a hunter in the mountains, until he returned to wrest back his heritage. But this Mithradates Eupator had not been satisfied with one throne ― no, it seemed he must have all the Orient. He skirmished and intrigued among the Cappadocians, Galatians, Armenians, until no neighbor king sat easy. He fought his way up the eastern coast and took Colchis of the Golden Fleece for his own. He hurled back the wild Scythians in the north so that the Greeks of the Cimmerian Bosporus acknowledged their rescuer as their overlord. That kingdom lay near the dark edge of the world, on a peninsula thrusting past Lake Maeotis or the Azov Sea or whatever it was called. Northward was only barbarism till you reached the night and glaciers of Ultima Thule! What could the excellent Captain Arpad tell us of his lord’s Tauric provinces? Did Colchis hold any relics of Jason’s visit? Did he think war with Rome, which now held much of Asia’s Aegean coast and looked greedily east, would be to the death; or would it be a civilized war where boundaries were adjusted and prisoners taken for the slave market?

Thus Arpad’s stay became delightful, and he left with regret. But it was now early summer, and soon the etesian winds would make eastward sea traffic all but impossible.

By some quirk ― by the ill wind of Ahriman, mumbled his sailors ― they encountered a powerful west wind, a veritable gale. It blew steadily, hour upon hour and day upon day; as they wallowed north on bare poles and oars, striving to hold course and not be blown clear to Syria, the skies turned to an unseasonable overcast with chill gusts of rain. When at last he recognized the island of Rhodes, smoky blue through the squalls, Arpad decided to put in and wait out this weather.

Beating through rain and spindrift, he saw another galley. It had a sail up, recklessly, no oars out at all, the ports shuttered.

Arpad steered closer. That fool of a captain would smash himself on the beach!

Something about the stranger’s unruly course told him it was badly undermanned. It had an Italian look, not much of a galley, an old trading scow but even so ― Arpad sent a man up to speak with the lookout in the crow’s-nest. Only three crewfolk were seen on the other deck. Two of them fought their yardarm, trying to pull it about so they would not be blown so directly toward the island. The third stood by a lashed steering oar. The ship was sluggish, low in the water, now and then a wave breaking over the side; it was slowly foundering.

Arpad considered various matters, such as the rescue of distressed mariners and the salvage rights on their vessel. “Stand by to board!” he called.

Even in these high seas, a naval crew had small trouble laying alongside and grappling fast. An armed party surrounded the three and conducted them aboard the Pontine galley. Arpad had them led to his cabin, where they stood dripping on a carpet while he removed his own wet cloak. Only then did he regard them closely.

They stood with a sort of exhausted defiance between four drawn swords. The lamp, swinging from its chains, revealed them clad in rags. But they were no ordinary sailors. There was a burly redbearded fellow, his broad battered face speaking of Sarmatian plains. There was a young woman whose figure would have been good, in the skinny Greek manner, had she not lost so much weight; her hair was cut like a boy’s and her hands were bloodied from ropes and levers. The strangest was a barbarian with yellow hair dyed a fading black and a sun symbol etched on his brow. He looked like a wild king, and yet he stood gloomily withdrawn as any desert eremite, showing no interest in who had taken him or what his fate would be.

The backs of both men had been whipped; the red one bore permanent manacle scars. Slaves, then. And doubtless the woman was, too. Their captured weapons had been laid at Arpad’s feet ― a rusty longsword, an ax and an iron-headed maul.

“Do you speak Greek?” asked Arpad. His Latin was limited.

“I do,” said the girl. Her eyes ― you didn’t see violet eyes very often, and especially not with such long sooty lashes; really, it was her best feature ― were hollow from weariness and wide from anxiety, but she looked on him without wavering. “What ship is this, and who are you?”

“What a way for fugitive slaves to address a Pontine noble! “ exclaimed Arpad lightly. “Down on your knees and beg for your lives; that would be more in keeping.”

“These men are not slaves,” she said. “They are chieftains returning home.”

“And you? Come, now, do not anger me. When a ship is found with only three slaves aboard, I can guess the tale for myself. Tell me your names and how it all came to be.”

She said with a pride at which her exhaustion dragged: “I am merely Phryne, but I stand between Eodan of Cimberland and Tjorr of the Rukh-Ansa.”

“I know them!” said Arpad.

“It is a long story. They were war prisoners, who regained their freedom by conquering the Roman crew ― and even I have heard the King of Pontus is no friend to Rome, so is he not a friend to Rome’s enemies? But the upshot was that we three alone remained on this vessel. We could do little more than set sail and run before the wind, hoping to strike a land, Crete or Cyprus or wherever the gods willed, whence we might make our way to Cimmeria. But we found two men and one woman cannot even keep a ship bailed out in such weather.” She smiled tiredly. “We were debating whether to try and make landfall on that island ahead, risking shipwreck and capture if it is Roman-held, or steer past ― if we could. Now you have changed the situation, Master Captain, and we throw ourselves upon your hospitality.”

“What slave may claim hospitality?” asked Arpad. “And when he has mutinied, probably murdered, as well.… Would you feel bound to consider a wolf your guest?” He stroked his chin. The ship, he calculated, would surely be considered salvaged by him; the Rhodesian authorities had to have their share, but he would get something. If he did not dispute possession of the two men ― the port governor could put them to work, or kill them, or give them to the Romans, whatever the law said ― then the governor in turn would doubtless ignore the girl. There was a good mind under that tip-tilted face, and a hot spirit in that small thin body; she would make the rest of this voyage most interesting to Captain Arpad, and he could get a fair price at home after he had fattened her up enough for the Oriental taste.

Her pale, wet cheeks had darkened as he spoke, more with anger than fear. She rattled off a few harsh Latin words. The Alan growled and looked about. A guard’s sword pricked his hairy flank; he would never cross the two yards to Arpad’s throat. He said something to the tall blank-faced man, who shrugged. Mithras! Didn’t that one care at all? Well, men did go crazy sometimes when the fetters were clinched.

Arpad listened more closely, interested. He heard the red-beard: “But Eodan, disa, they’ll flay us!”

“Then thus the Powers will it,” said the tall one in a dead voice.

The girl, Phryne, stamped her foot and shouted:

“I thought I followed a man! I see now it is a child! You sit like a wooden toad and will not stir a hand, even for your comrades―”

A wan wrath flickered in the cold green eyes. The one called Eodan said: “You lie. I worked my share during these past few days, to keep the ship afloat. If I did not care whether we sank or not, that is my concern.”

She put her fists on her hips, glared up at him and said: “But you make it the world’s concern! I understood you had suffered loss when Hwicca fell. Do you think I cannot imagine it, how it would be for me, too, did the one I cared for die in my arms? I said nothing when you made a raft for her, though we needed your help even that first day; when you laid her on it with the Roman sword and her dagger, though we needed both; when you drenched it with oil that might have nourished us; when you risked your own life to launch it and set the torch to it; and when you howled while it fell burning behind. A man must obey his own inward law, or be no man at all. But since then? I tell you, it has ceased to be your private mourning. Now you call upon the world and all the gods, by your silence and your indifference, to witness how you are suffering!

“You overgrown brat! If you want to sacrifice your comrades to her ghost, do it with your hands like a man!”

Arpad signaled his guards. “Take them out and give them food and dry garments,” he said. “Bind the men and bring the girl back to me.”

A hand closed on Eodan’s shoulder. He pushed it off, impatiently, and made a huge stride toward the captain. His lean face was taut with fury.

“Do you dare treat a Cimbrian like a slave?” he said.

“Hoy!” The guards closed in. Eodan’s fist jumped out. One man lurched back with a smashed mouth. Another circled, unsure. Tjorr growled and reached for the hammer on the floor. The remaining two men forced him away, but had no help to spare with Eodan.

A hand gripped Arpad’s tunic so he choked. The long head bent down toward his. “You little spitlicker,” said Eodan, “I do not know whether to string you to the mast myself or ask your king to do it for me. But I think I shall let him have the pleasure.”

Arpad shuddered and gestured his guards back, for he had seen monarchs enough, and there was no mistaking the royal manner. A king born did not act as if it were possible men could fail to knock their heads on the ground before his boots. Eodan stood unarmed, nearly naked, and shook him back and forth very slowly, in time with the words:

“Now hearken. I am Boierik’s son of the Cimbri. I have a quarrel with the gods, who have treated me ill, but it does not change who I am. I have been searching for a king to hear a message I bear. Since your vessel chanced to pick me up, I will speak first to your ruler. Obey me well, and perhaps I shall forgive you for what you said in ignorance. So!”

He threw Arpad to the floor. The guardsmen stepped in, hemming him between shields and lifted blades. They glanced at their captain. Arpad stood up.

One could never be sure.… If that big man was mad, then he might be the walking voice of ― of anything … or else, there were so many outlandish tribes, a prince of one might easily have been captured and ― and truly great Mithradates would be interested to meet such a person, as he was interested in all the realms of earth. The king might even bestow favor on this Eodan, some of which might then reflect on Arpad. Or perhaps the king would have Eodan beheaded; but that annoyance would surely not be considered Arpad’s fault, since Arpad had only brought this visitor in the hope of amusing the king. It was not too great a risk. And, if the tall one demanded treatment as a guest meanwhile, it was not unduly inconvenient, the ambassador’s cabin stood empty.…

“My master, the sublime one who knows all nations, must decide this,” purred Arpad. His Latin was always equal to titles. “We shall seek his august presence.”