"You bid me surrender a guest, who has fought well for me to boot,"
Mithradates said gravely. And then, with an imp's grin: "Also, I doubt
the reality of your threat. If the Cimbri were all like this one,
Europe must still be too shaken to go adventuring in the East. Ten
years hence, perhaps ... but no one would hazard so rich a province as
Pergamum just to capture a man. I have read your official documents,
Flavius, and they convey nothing but a strong request."
"Great King, it was never my intention to threaten," answered the Roman
with a smooth quickness. "Forgive clumsy words. We are blunt folk in
the Republic. But of course the King understands that the Senate and
the people of Rome will welcome so vital a token of a most powerful and
splendid monarch's good will toward them. I am authorized to make a
small material symbol of the state's gratitude, to the amount of--"
"I have seen what the bribe would be," said Mithradates. "We shall
discuss all this at leisure tonight." His gaze flickering between
Eodan and Flavius, he chuckled deeply. "There will be a feast at which
you two old friends may reminisce. In the meantime, I forbid violence
between you. Now I have work to do. You may go."
Eodan backed out, taking Phryne's arm at the door. "Come to my tent,"
he said. "You should not have been so reckless as to travel hither."
"I would not hold back from you even the littlest help," she whispered.
She caught at his cloak, and her tone became shrill. "Eodan, will he
give you up to them?"
"I hardly think so," said the Cimbrian. Bitterness swelled in his
throat. "But neither will he give Flavius up to me!"
They started across the courtyard, and the wind snatched at their
mantles. Eodan looked back and saw Flavius emerging from the keep.
"Wait," he said to Phryne. "There are things I would talk about that no
one else has a right to hear."
"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.