The Golden Slave by Poul William Anderson (best desktop ebook reader TXT) 📖

"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."

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