“You will disappoint the king,” she said in an acrid voice. “He is looking forward to the subtlest gladiatorial contest.”
Eodan strode from her. Flavius wrapped his toga more closely against the cold bluster of the air. He smiled, raising his brows, and stood waiting; his dark curly hair fluttered. But somehow no youth or merriment were left in him.
“Will you be kind enough to assault me?” he asked.
“I am not a fool,” grunted Eodan.
“No, not in such respects…. Since your life hangs now on the king’s pleasure, you will heel to his lightest whim like any well-trained dog.” Flavius spoke quietly, choosing each word beforehand. “Thus it is seen ― he who is born to be a slave will always be a slave.”
Eodan held onto his soul with both hands. At last he got out: “I will meet you somewhere beyond the power of both Rome and Pontus.”
Flavius skinned his teeth in a grin. “Your destruction is more important to me than the dubious pleasures of single combat.”
“You are afraid, then,” said Eodan. “You only fight women.”
Flavius clenched his free hand. His whittled face congealed, he said in a flat voice: “I cannot help but smite those women whom you forever make your shields. Now it is a Greek slave girl. How many more have you crawled behind, even before you debauched my wife?”
“I went through a door that stood unbarred to all,” fleered Eodan.
“Like unto like. Will it console you to know, Cimbrian, that she has divorced me? For she grows great with no child of mine, a brat I would surely drown were it dropped in my house.”
Eodan felt a dull pleasure. This was no decent way to hurt an enemy, yet what other way did he have? “So now your hopes for the consulate are broken,” he said. “That much service have I done Rome.”
“Not so,” Flavius told him. “For I allowed the divorce in an amicable way, not raising the charges of adultery I might. Thus her father is grateful to me.” He nodded. “There are troublous years coming. The plebs riot and the patricians fall out with each other. I shall rise high enough in the confusion so that I will have power to proscribe your bastard.”
It had never occurred to Eodan before, to think about the by-blow of his women. He had set Hwicca’s Othrik upon his knee and named him heir, but otherwise ― Now, far down under the seething in him, he knew a tenderness. He could find no good reason for it; there was a Power here. He would have chanced Mithradates’ wrath and broken the neck of Flavius, merely to save an unborn child, little and lonely in the dark, whom he would never see. But no, those guardsmen drilling beneath the walls would seize him before he finished the task.
He asked in a sort of wonder: “Is this why you pursue me?”
“I bear the commission of the Republic.”
“The king spoke truly ― they are not that interested in one man. This decree is a gesture to please you, belike through your father-in-law. You are the one who has made it his life’s work to destroy me.”
“Well, then, if you wish, I am revenging Cordelia,” said Flavius. His eyes shifted with a curious unease.
“I spared you at Arausio. And what was Cordelia to you, ever?”
“So now you call up the past and whine for your life.”
“Oh, no,” said Eodan softly. “I thank all the high gods that we meet again. For you killed my Hwicca.”
“I did?” cried Flavius. His skin was chalky. “Now the gods would shatter you, did they exist!”
“Your sword struck her down,” said Eodan.
“After you flung her upon it!” shrieked Flavius. “You are her murderer and none but you! I have heard enough of your filth!”
He whirled and almost ran. Phryne, small and solitary at the gate, flinched aside from him. He vanished.
Eodan stood for a while staring after the Roman. It came to him finally, like a voice from elsewhere: So that is why he must hate me. He also loved Hwicca, in his own way. Indeed the soul of man is a forest at night.
He thought coldly, It is well. Now I can be certain that Flavius will never depart my track until one of us has died.
Phryne joined him as he left. As they went mutely from the castle, Tjorr rushed up to them. “There are Romans come!” he bawled. “A dozen Roman soldiers in camp … I’d swear I saw Flavius himself go by…. Phryne! You are here!”
“Have you any further information?” asked the girl sweetly.
They walked toward Eodan’s tent, and she explained to the Alan what had happened. Tjorr gripped his hammer. “By the thunder,” he said, “it was well done of you! But what help did you think you could give us?”
“I did not know,” she answered unsteadily, “nor am I certain yet. A word, perhaps … one more voice to plead, with a flattering abasement impossible to Eodan … or some scheme ― I could not stay away.”
Tjorr looked at the Cimbrian’s unheeding back. “Be not angry with him if he shows you cold thanks,” he said. “There has been a blackness in him of late, and this cannot have lightened it.”
“He has already rewarded me beyond measure,” she said, “by the way he greeted me.”
They entered the tent. Eodan slumped on a heap of skins and wrapped solitude about himself. After some low-voiced talk with Phryne, it occurred to Tjorr to take her out and show her to his and Eodan’s personal guards, grooms and other attendants. “She is not to be insulted. Obey her as you would obey me. Any who behaves otherwise, I’ll break his head. D’you hear?”
When they came back it was approaching sunset. Eodan was sitting before a small pile of silks, linens and ornaments. “A slave brought these for you, Phryne,” he said. “The king commands your presence at his feast.”
“The king!” She stared bewildered. “What would the king with me?”
“Be not afraid,” said Eodan. “He is only cruel to his enemies.”
Tjorr’s eyes glittered. “But this is wonderful!” he cried. “Girl, your fortune may be made! I’ll get a female to help you dress―”
When she had gone he muttered, “She did not appear overly glad of the king’s favor.”
“She is too frightened on our behalf,” said Eodan. “Do you think she has good reason to fear?”
“I do not know ― nor care, if I can only lay hands on Flavius.”
As twilight fell, an escort of torchbearers came to bring them to the castle. Entering the feasting hall, Eodan saw it aglow with lamps. Some attempt to make it worthy of the king was shown by plundered robes strewn on the floor; musicians stood in the murk under the god-pillars and caterwauled. It was no large banquet Mithradates gave this night ― couches for a score of his officers, with Eodan on his right and Tjorr beyond him, Flavius on the left. Cimbrian and Alan wore Persian dress, to defy the plain white tunic of the Roman. The rest clad their Anatolian bodies in Greek style, save that the king had thrown a purple robe over his wide shoulders.
Eodan greeted Mithradates and the nobles as always, and reclined himself stiffly. The king helped himself to fruit from a crystal bowl. “Never before has this place known such an assembly of the great,” he declared with sardonic sententiousness. “And yet our chief guest has not been summoned.”
“Who might that be, Lord of the World?” asked a Pontine.
“It is not our custom that women dine with men,” said Mithradates. “We feel it a corruption of older and manlier ways.” That was a malicious dart at Flavius, thought Eodan. “Yet all you nobles would consider it no insult to guest a queen; and many philosophers assure us that royalty is a matter of the spirit rather than of birth.”
“Though the Great King shows that when spirit and birth unite, royalty comes near godhood,” said an officer with practiced readiness.