"Oh, indeed, Master, indeed!" The boy spun around to face the men,
raising his arms. "Give thanks to the captain!"
"Hoy!" cried Demetrios in dismay. "What about me?"
"You'll do as you're told," said Tjorr.
Demetrios gulped and looked appealingly at Flavius. The Roman smiled,
winked and came down the poop ladder. "Your watch," he said.
After a while Eodan began to regret not following Tjorr's counsel. His
crew had become still more slatternly. Now they would do nothing but
sit about boasting of their future, until he finally kicked them into
sullen labor. Quintus sidled up in the afternoon and proposed that the
weapons be handed out so the men could practice. Eodan told him they
should first practice being sailors. Quintus argued. He would not stop
arguing until Eodan finally knocked him to the deck; then he slouched
off, muttering, to find his big friend.
Toward evening, Hwicca came on deck. She was supported by Phryne, and
her face was pale. Eodan's heart turned over. He went to her and asked,
"Do you feel well, my darling?"
"Better," she said dully. "But so tired."
Phryne, who had not followed their Cimbric, said angrily to Eodan: "She
shivers with cold. _I_ have no warmth to give her!"
He said in the Northern language, "Would you have me stay with you
tonight, Hwicca?"
"As you wish," she said. "You are my husband."
Eodan left her, went to the hearth and struck the cook with his fist
for a bad supper.
Presently Hwicca returned to the cabin. Phryne sought Eodan. Was it
only the sunset that reddened her eyes? She said in a jagged tone, "I
do not know what is wrong between you two. I can only guess. But I will
sleep no more with her."
"You can have the tent back, then," said Eodan bitterly, "and I will
roll a blanket on deck, since it appears we must all be sundered from
each other."
"Before Hades, I wonder now if she may not be right!" yelled Phryne.
She stamped her foot, whipped about and ran to the tent.
She was still wearing the boy's tunic, bare-legged, for there were no
women's garments aboard save Hwicca's dresses, too large for her.
Quintus, squatting by the rail with his friend, the big man called
Narses, stared after the Greek girl and smacked his lips.
Eodan paced the deck in wrath, wondering what unlucky thing he had
done. Well, the night wind take them all! Phryne, who would not help
his wife when she needed help, and Hwicca, who had become a Roman's
whore, and--by the Bull, no, he would not say that of her! If it were
true, the only thing would be to cast her off, and he would not do that.
He raised his hands toward the early stars. "I would pull down the sky
if I could," he said between his teeth. "I would make a balefire for
the world of all the world's gods, and kindle it, and howl while it
burned. And I would tread heaven under my feet, and call up the dead
from their graves to hunt stars with me, till nothing was left but the
night wind!"
No thunderbolt smote him. The ship ran onward, dropping the dark mass
of Sicily astern; the last red clouds in the west smoldered to ash and
then to night; the moon stood forth, insolently cool and fair. Eodan
had no wish to sleep, but he saw that Demetrios was dangerously worn,
so he sent the man aft to rouse Flavius and Tjorr.
"We can hold this course all night, they tell me," he said to the Alan.
"The wind is falling, so we won't go too far. Call me if anything seems
to threaten."
"_Da._" Tjorr's small bush-browed eyes went from Eodan to the closed
cabin door. He shook his head, and the moonlight showed a bemused
compassion on his battered face. "As you will, Captain."
Flavius hung back, well into the shadows. He did not follow Tjorr and
the new watch aft until Eodan had departed.
The Cimbrian rolled himself into his blanket forward of the mast,
so the sail's shadow would keep the moon from his eyes. He sought
sleep, but it would not come. Now and again he heard bare feet slap
the planks, a man on watch or one come from below for some air. It
was warmer tonight than before; his skin prickled. He cursed wearily,
forbade himself to toss about and lay still. If he acted sleep, perhaps
he could draw sleep.
It seemed as though many hours went by. Surely the night was old. He
opened one eye. The same stars, the same moon--it had only been his
thoughts, treading the same barren circle. What use, he thought, was a
kingdom, what use even was freedom, when--
There was scuffling, very faint, up in the bow. Eodan opened both
eyes. Some noise, mice--no, it was heavier. He glanced aft. He could
see Flavius and the helmsman, Tjorr blocky against the Milky Way. They
had seen nothing, heard nothing; indeed it was very faint. Up in the
crow's-nest, the lookout stood gazing into nowhere.
Well, no matter. The bow lookout would have cried any needful alarm.
Eodan sat up. But where was the man in the bow? He remembered dimly
that, yes, the Narses man had traded for that watch about sundown.
Narses' hulking shadow did not show above the forecastle. There was
only Phryne's tent.
With a cold thought of long-necked monsters raiding ships' decks for
their food, Eodan sprang to his feet. Sword out, he glided toward the
forecastle. Up the ladder--The struggle was within the tent.
Eodan howled and lifted its flap. Moonlight splashed Quintus' grinning
face. He knelt on Phryne's arms, one hand over her mouth and the
other on her breast. "No one has to know, my beautiful," he had been
whispering. Narses' knees held her thighs apart; he was just lifting
her tunic.
Eodan struck. He felt his blade grate along a rib. Narses' hands
loosened. He straightened on his knees, plucking at the steel in his
side. Eodan pulled it out, and Narses coughed up blood. Eodan struck
him again, between the jaws, so that it crashed. The sword came out the
back of his neck.
Quintus leaped from the upper deck. "Help!" he wailed. "Help, men,
help!"
Phryne struggled from beneath Narses. Her tunic was drenched black
under the moon with his blood. "Are you harmed?" croaked Eodan out of
horror.
"No," she said in a blind, stunned fashion. "You came soon enough--"
She looked at her dripping garment, and a shudder went through her. She
undid her belt and flung the tunic over the side. "But I would have
bled so much less!" she cried.
"What is it?" bawled Tjorr. "Stand fast!"
The crew boiled from the hatch. Eodan put his foot on Narses' face and
tugged the sword free; it took all his strength. He sprang down to the
main deck. "Where is Quintus from Saguntum?" he roared. "Bind me that
offal before I kill the rest of you!"
They swirled and screamed on deck, blue shadows mingled in the white
relentless moonlight. Tjorr went among the crew, striking with the butt
of his hammer. Eodan saw Quintus huddled up against the poop, hands
raised before his face. "There!" he shouted. "There!"
"Help!" shrieked the boy. "Help me! He has gone mad, shipmates! Hold
off that barbarian!"
It was a while before some sort of calm had been restored. Then Eodan
stood before Quintus and said, "This creature tried to violate a woman.
You have heard the punishment. Nail him up!"
"No, no, no," chattered Quintus, "it isn't so, mates, it isn't so. She
lured us herself, she did, she begged us to come to her--look at her
there, flaunting herself--" Their eyes all went forward, where Phryne
wept as she stood at a water bucket sponging Narses' blood off her
skin--"it's just his jealousy!--this barbarian is a worse tyrant than
overseer ever was. Are you going to stand for this, mates?"
Tjorr tossed his hammer in the air. "That you are," he said, "or feel
my little kissing engine here. Bring us some rope. Up this dog goes!"
By now Flavius and Demetrios had joined the crowded, frightened band.
The Roman stepped forth, raising an arm. Moonlight outlined him white
and clean as some marble god. He said in easy tones:
"Of course I was taken prisoner, so perhaps I've no right to speak.
But I do still think of myself as a shipmate, I'm a sailor, too, for
pleasure, and we're all on this same keel together. So if you would
hear my words--"
"Be still!" said Eodan. "This is nothing worth talking about."
Hwicca came from her cabin. "What is it?" she asked. "What has
happened?"
She looked so young and alone that a Power seized upon Eodan.
Willy-nilly, he must go to reassure her. And meanwhile Flavius waved
an angry Tjorr aside, casually, and went on:
"I understand you turned pirate to escape Rome's crosses. But have you
gained much, when your own captain begins to crucify you, one by one?
Why, this youth was the spokesman of your liberty. Will you listen
to him cry in his agony tomorrow? If so, you will deserve the cross
yourselves. And you will get it! What does the captain care? He is only
going to Egypt. It is nothing to him if he kills one of you outright
and hangs up another to keep you awake with dying groans. So you,
already undermanned, are overcome at your first battle. What of it,
says your captain, safely ashore--"
"Now that's muck-bespattered enough!" growled Tjorr. "One more word
from anybody and I'll spray his brains on deck."
"Hail, free companions of the sea," declaimed Flavius, and stepped
aside.
Phryne left the pail, her body glistened wet as she ran, and when
she caught Eodan's hands her own were like some river nymph's. He
remembered again cool forest becks in the North, when he was small and
the world a wonder. "Eodan," she cried. "You'll not do any such thing!"
"But he would have--"
"He did not succeed. And even if he had, would it restore what I lost?
Eodan, I am the one wronged, and I should give judgment."
He felt himself suddenly exhausted--O great dark Bull, breathe sleep
upon me! He said to her: "Well ... thus did we Cimbri set blood price.
What would you have me do to this animal?"
Phryne looked into the boy's liquid eyes and saw how his thin chest
went up and down, up and down with terror. "Let him go," she said. "He
will not harm me again."
Quintus fell to his knees. "I am your slave, bright goddess of mercy,"
he sobbed.
Eodan snapped, "Had you kept still, I would have let you go wholly
free. You jabber too much. Ten lashes!"
Hwicca's lips thinned. "You are too soft, Eodan," she said. "I would
have put him on the yardarm."
He checked a cruel retort and walked from her.
While the needful work was being done, he heard Flavius speak low by
the rail with a crewman. "It is true--a violently rebelling slave may
not live. However, this case is unusual. I have influence, and of
course it is always possible in case of mutiny ... Hm, shall we say a
few loyal souls had been manumitted beforehand and thus did not come
under the law? Much would depend on the testimony of any Roman citizen."
Eodan thought that trouble was being cooked for him. But he could only
stop such mumbles by cutting out every tongue on board. Fire burn them
all! He would do what he could, and the rest lay with that weird he had
called down upon himself.