The Golden Slave

XX

They rode up to shepherd’s house. Phryne struck the dog on the nose with her staff when it flew at her throat. It ran away, and she strung her bow and nocked an arrow. Eodan stayed mounted, the German sword in his hand. Tjorr went afoot to the door and beat on it with his hammer.

“Open!” he bawled. Nothing stirred. He hefted the maul, swung it high and sent it crashing against the latch. The flimsy bolt cracked in two. Voices piped with fear in the dark hut. A shaking graybeard barred the entrance, holding a rusty old ax. Tjorr grabbed him by the tunic and threw him to the ground, not unkindly. “Out!” he said, gesturing.

They shambled forth. There was only one woman, shapeless in a sacklike gown, and a dozen children. They looked so unalike that Eodan decided fatherhood was divided among the three herdsmen who had left their flock and were hovering timidly half a mile away.

“Must we turn bandit?” asked Phryne in a troubled voice.

Eodan considered her, clad in the same foul garments as the shepherds, but shining through it. He said bluntly, “This is no otherwise than smiting that whelp they kept.” But because of her look he remembered certain thoughts about a king and fumbled in his purse. He tossed some coins to the ground. The grandsire sucked in his breath and crawled to shaky feet; the three men edged closer.

“Does anyone here speak Greek?” called Eodan. They stared. “Well, you shall understand my signs then, with a kick if your minds lag, for our time is short. I will give you ten times the worth of these hovels.” He turned to Phryne. “Do you watch over Tjorr and me. Let them not talk much among themselves. Shoot the first who shows treachery. And now let us work!”

Dismounting, he peered into the house. Enough light came through the door and smokehole to show him a littered earth floor, piled sheepskins, a few stone tools and clay vessels, a dung fire. But the ceiling was what he looked at. Branches hauled from some remote forest many years ago were laid across the walls, and turf piled on them to make a roof. He nodded. “Thus I thought,” he said.

Tjorr rounded up the family and made them watch him. A child whimpered as he climbed the rough wall to the roof and began throwing off its sod layers. He flung the child a coin. At once the oldest boy grinned brashly, swarmed up and helped. Tjorr laughed, clambered down and went to the shed. Using Phryne’s staff for a lever, he pried a few rocks out of its wall. The same child studied his face carefully and tried another whimper. Tjorr gave it another coin. The mother giggled. Tjorr urged her to the task.

Then for some hours he and Eodan made the shepherd folk demolish their roof and their outbuildings. Phryne paced the dusty grounds, watchfully, her bow always in her hand. The wind blew from the high country and the snow clouds moved closer.

There were stout wooden posts at the corners of the shed. Tjorr dug them out and dragged them to the roofless house. He set two of them upright on the floor ― one close to the entrance and one a yard from the rear wall; across them he laid a third. Then he put the branch-rafters back, crossing his heavy timber piece, and heaped a layer of turf on as before. The shepherd people gaped, blinked, made signs against the evil eye, which these surely crazed men must have, but helped him after a few blows. He had them form a line and pass him stones from the wrecked outbuildings. These he laid on the turf, within a yard of the rear wall, layer upon layer. Finally the branches beneath sagged, and even the timber upbearing them started to groan. Quickly, then, he threw enough sod on his roof of boulders to hide what it was.

Meanwhile Eodan was digging inside the house, at its rear end. He sank a pit nearly eight feet deep and drove a shaft from that, several yards outward, so that it ended below the grounds; he left the wooden shovel there and came back out. Rather his crew of men and children did this, even as most of the roof work had Tjorr merely overseeing. They would need their whole strength later.

At the end, hours past the time they began, Phryne looked at the completed task. She saw merely a shepherd hut with a somewhat thicker roof than was common, and wreckage behind it. “Do our lives hang on no more than this?” she asked wonderingly. “Would it not have been better to flee across the plain?”

“Once they found our trail,” said Tjorr grimly, “they could have changed horse and horse while our own ran themselves dead. No, our chances here are not good, but I think the disa’s plan has made them better for us than if we played mouse to the Roman ferret.”

“One more thing to do,” said Eodan. He kindled a stick, went over and touched it to the haystacks. The shepherds moaned. Eodan grinned, with a certain pity, and tossed the grandsire his full purse. “There’s the price of your flocks and home and a winter’s lodging. Go!” He waved his sword and pointed south. They stumbled from him, out onto the plain, looking back with frightened animal eyes. “Why those bonfires?” asked Tjorr. “Not that I don’t like the warmth on this bitter day, but―”

“Hay could be stacked around the house and lit,” said Eodan. “I do not wish to die in an oven.”

Tjorr tugged his ruddy beard. “I had not thought of that. Is it a heavy burden to be forever thinking, disa?”

Eodan did not hear him. He took Phryne’s hand in his. “Have I any hope of making you depart until the fight is over?” he asked.

Her dark head shook. “In all else will I obey you,” she said, “but I have a right to stand with my man.”

“I made you a promise once,” he began, shaken.

“Oh, I hold you to it,” she laughed. It was a very small and lonely laugh, torn by the wind. “You shall not kiss me against my will. But, Eodan, it is now my will.”

He touched his lips to hers, with an unhurried tenderness; if they lived, there would be more than this. Tjorr said: “I make out a dust cloud to the north, disa. I think horsemen.”

“Then let us go within,” said Eodan.

It was dark in the hut; stones covered the smokehole, now, and the sagging door was closed behind them. They sat on the earth and waited, Phryne lying in the circle of Eodan’s arm. Presently hoofs rang on the ground outside, and weapons clashed. They heard a dog bark.

“The place seems deserted,” said a voice in Latin. “Maybe the fire in that hay drove its people off.”

“And they left two hobbled war-horses?” snapped Flavius. “Look in and see if anyone lairs.”

Tjorr planted himself by the doorway, raising his hammer. The door creaked open. Chill gray light outlined a Roman helmet and shimmered off a Roman cuirass. Tjorr struck down, and the helmet gonged. There was the noise of crunching bones. The man fell and did not move again.

“Here we are, Flavius!” cried the Alan.

Phryne loosed an arrow out the door. Someone cursed. Eodan, glimpsing horses and men, sprang to the entrance and peered out. Ten living Romans and a couple of Gauls in battle harness ― a dozen men, then, against two men and a woman … “I reckon, Eodan,” said Tjorr, “you and I must each strike six blows.”

Flavius rode into the Cimbrian’s view. His ravaged face stiffened beneath the plumed helmet. He spoke almost wearily: “I still offer pardon, even liberty and reward, to your companions. It is only you I want, and only because you murdered Hwicca.”

“I would most gladly meet you in single combat,” said Eodan.

“We have been over this ground before,” said Flavius. “Let me ask you instead ― do you really wish the Sarmatian and the Greek girl to die on your account? Would it not be most honorable of you to release them from whatever vows they gave you ― even command them to depart?”

“He is our king,” said Phryne from the darkness. “There are some commands that no king may give.”

Flavius sighed. “As you will, then. Decurion, seize them!”

It was a narrow doorway; only one person at a time could go through. The Roman decurion advanced with an infantryman’s long shield to guard him. Eodan waited. The decurion charged in, behind him a pikeman. Eodan smote at the first Roman’s knees as the pike thrust for his face. Tjorr’s hammer struck from the right, knocked the pike aside and snapped its shaft against the doorway. The decurion stopped Eodan’s sword-blow, and his own blade darted out. It hit the Persian mail-coat. Eodan chopped at the arm behind it. He lacked room for a real swing, but his edge hit. The decurion went to one knee. Eodan struck at his neck ― a hiss and a butcher sound in the air.

Another man followed the decurion, stepped up on the dying officer’s back and thrust mightily. Eodan slipped aside. Overbalanced, the Roman stumbled and fell into the hut. Tjorr’s hammer crashed on his helmet. One of the Gauls sprang yelling through the undefended entrance. Phryne fired an arrow, and the Gaul staggered; it had caught him in the arm. Eodan attacked him from the side, and the German sword went home in his leg. He fell down, screaming. Tjorr finished him off while Eodan went back to the doorway.

“Nine men left,” he panted.

The Romans stood away from him, where he stood dripping Roman blood. No one moved for a while, although Flavius dismounted and paced. The other Gaul came into view. Eodan remembered now that he had heard thumpings overhead. “This roof is made of stones, Master,” said the Gaul to Flavius. “We can tear it down, I suppose, but not easily. It would cost us men.”

“Likewise to break through the walls,” said the Roman. He spoke impersonally, as though this were no more than a school problem. Eodan wondered how much was left the man of joy and hope and even hate; the demons pacing Flavius had bitten him hollow.

“Arrows,” he said at last.

Eodan watched them make ready. Four soldiers were shield to shield, a few yards away. If he made a dash, they would be on him, and even a Cimbrian could not hold off four good men in the open. Three more strung their bows and put arrows point down in the ground before them ― slowly, carefully, grinning into Eodan’s emotionless face. Flavius and the Gaul dragged a post from a torn-down shed into view.

When everything was ready, Flavius stepped forth. “Do you see what I plan?” he called. “You can stand where you are and be filled with arrows, or you can close that door, which is only leather hinges, and wait for us to break it down.”

“I think we will wait,” said Eodan.

He shut the door, and darkness clamped upon his eyes. He heard the Roman arrows smite and wondered what impulse of fury made Flavius order them fired. He trod on a dead man’s hand and wondered what woman and child and horse would wait till time’s end for its caress.

“Back,” he said. “Into the pit, Phryne.”

She kissed him, a stolen instant among shadows, and was gone.

Feet thudded outside. The door, which he had not barred, flew open. Two black blots staggered through, the timber in their arms.

Tjorr met them as they reeled. His hammer boomed on iron. “Ho-ah!” he cried so it rang. “Yuk-hai-saa-saa! Come in and be slain!”

He stood in the middle of the room with Eodan. Each had a Roman shield and his chosen weapon, maul or longsword. They waited.

Dimly seen, a man pushed close to Eodan. His sword cut low, feeling for the Cimbrian’s legs. Eodan sprang back. His huge German blade whirled up so it touched the low ceiling. Down it came again, and the shield edge crumpled under it. Eodan raised his weapon once more, struck home and felt blood spurt over his hand.

Another shape, another thrust. He caught that one on his own shield, and the metal glided aside. The Roman shield pushed against the Cimbrian’s right arm, giving no room to use a sword. His hobnailed boot trampled down on Eodan’s foot, and pain jagged in its path. Eodan drove the boss of his shield into the Roman’s face and he heard a splintering. The Roman sank to the floor, dazed.

There were two more, now, in the belling, clanging gloom. They came in on either side, to catch him between them. He kicked out to the right, and his spur flayed open a thigh. As the shield dropped a little in the man’s anguish, Eodan smote. He struck a helmet, but the sheer force of it snapped the Roman’s head down. The man went to his hands and knees and crawled away.

Eodan had been holding the other off left-handed, keeping his shield as a barrier. Now, whipping about, he slid the rim aside and then back again, so that he locked shields with his enemy and held him fast. He reached over the top with his longsword and drove the point home.

“Ho-yo-yo!” chanted Tjorr, battering till it thundered. Eodan might have let out a Cimbrian howl, but he had no more wish for it. “Back!” he gasped to the Alan. “Back before they hem us in!”

Eyes were now used to the shifting twilight, the pale gray dazzle of the doorway. Eodan and Tjorr stood side by side, just in front of the rear support timber they had erected. Blood ran from their arms and painted their breasts; blood stained the sweat on them, and it was not all Roman this time. But men lay stricken before them; Eodan did not count how many. He looked across three slippery red yards of trampled earth and saw five men still on their feet. None were unwounded.

But weariness shuddered in him. His sword, nicked and blunted, had not bitten well; it was an iron bar in his hand, heavy as sorrow. He could barely hear the deep hoarse breathing of Tjorr, his own heartbeat and thirsty-throated breath were so loud.

Now that all the hunters were inside his den, it was time to destroy them.

Flavius crouched by the door. “Form a line!” he rapped. “Wall to wall! Drive them back and cut them down!”

Four Roman shields filled that narrow room, Flavius standing behind. Eodan raised his weapon and called, “Will you not try the edge of this even once, murderer?”

Flavius screamed. For one blink of time, over the advancing shields and helmets, through the wintry gloom, Eodan looked upon madness. It came to him that he should not have taunted an unbearable grief. The gods are too just.

Flavius raised his sword and flung it above the soldiers.

Eodan felt it strike him in the head. He staggered back, suddenly blinded with his own blood. The pain seared through his skull until he stood in a world that was all great whirling flame. He thought as he toppled, This also must a king have known, what it is to be slain.

The Romans cried their victory and moved in on Tjorr. The Alan threw down his shield, picked Eodan up with one arm, and swung his hammer. Even as it hit the pillar he had raised, he leaped into the pit and the tunnel beyond.

The timber slipped sideways. The piece it had helped carry, running lengthwise, fell. The thin branches cracked, and the roof of stones came down.

Eodan heard it dimly, from far away. Now the sky has been shattered, he thought, and gods and demons die in the wreck of their war. A star whirled by me and hissed into the sea.

He lay in the tunnel, as though in a womb, while the stones buried his hunters. There followed a silence that tolled. He heard Tjorr and Phryne calling to each other in utter night. Her hands groped for him. He lay in her hands and let the pain reach full tide.

It ebbed again. Tjorr dug a few feet upward. Breaking out into the open, he reached down, hauled forth Eodan and Phryne and whistled at what he saw.

“Best I catch the horses,” he said awkwardly. “You can see to him, can you not?”

She kissed her man for answer.

Eodan looked up at the sky. “Lie still,” whispered Phryne. “Lie still. It is well. We are safe.”

The wind blew softly, almost warm. The first snow fell on his face. “Have I been badly hurt?” he asked.

She told him plainly: “Your left eye is gone. Now I must love the right one twice as much.”

“Is it no more than that?” he sighed. “I thought my debt was greater. The Powers are kind.”