The Golden Slave
Authors: Poul Anderson
Tags: #Warrior, #Pirates, #Science Fiction Grand Master, #Barbarians, #Slavery, #Roman, #Rome, #concubine, #Historical, #Ancient Rome, #Tribesmen
©1960 by Avon Books
A Wonder Publishing Group Book
(WPG-003)
Published by Wonder Publishing Group Books, a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC
Northville, MI 48167
©2009 for Wonder Publishing Group, a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC
ISBN: 978-1-61013-034-9
All rights reserved.
Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This might have happened. The Cimbri are still remembered by the old district name Himmerland. Plutarch describes the battle at Vercellae, which took place 101 B.C., and its immediate aftermath. Other classical writers, such as Tacitus and Strabo, and a treasure of archeological material enable us to guess at the Cimbri themselves. Apparently they were a Germanic tribe from Jutland, with some elements of Celtic culture; by the time they reached Italy they had grown into a formidable confederation.
King Mithradates the Great (more commonly but less correctly spelled Mithridates) is, of course, also historical. His expedition into Galatia in 100 B.C. is not mentioned by the scanty surviving records; but it is known that he had already fought with that strange kingdom and annexed some of its territory, so border trouble followed by a punitive sweep down past Ancyra is quite plausible.
At that time the area now called southern Russia was dominated by the Alanic tribes, among whom the Rukh-Ansa, were prominent. They are presumably identical with the “Rhoxolani” whom Mithradates’ general Diophantus defeated at the Crimea about 100 B.C.
The tradition described in the epilogue may be found in the thirteenth-century
Heimskringla
and, in a different form, in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus.
Otherwise my sources are the usual ancient and modern ones. I have tried to keep the framework of verifiable historical fact accurate. For whatever brutality, licentiousness and unreasonable prejudice is shown by the people concerned, I apologize, adding only that by the standards of the modern free world the era was a good deal worse than I care to describe explicitly.
For the sake of connotation, cities and other political units are generally referred to by their classical rather than contemporary names. It should be obvious from context where any particular spot lies on the map. However, the following list of geographical equivalents may be found interesting.
Ancyra: Ankara, Turkey
Aquitania: West central France
Arausio: Orange, France
Asia: In ordinary Roman usage, the modern Asia Minor plus India
Byzantium: Istanbul, Turkey
Cimberland: Himmerland, northern Jutland, Denmark
Cimmerian Bosporus: A Greek kingdom in the Crimea
Colchis: Mingrelian Georgia, U.S.S.R.
Dacia: Rumania
Galatia: Central Turkey
Gaul: France
Halys River: Kizil River, Turkey
Hellas: Greece
Hellespont: Dardanelles
Helvetia: Switzerland
Macedonia: Northern Greece
Massilia: Marseilles
Narbonensis: Provence, i.e., southern France
Noreia: Near Vienna, Austria
Parthian Empire: Iran and Iraq
Persia: Iran
Pontus: Eastern half of northern Turkish coast, and southward
Sinope: Sinop, Turkey
Tauric Chersonese: The Crimea
Trapezus: Trabzon, Turkey (medieval Trebizond)
Vercellae: Vercelli, Italy, between Turin and Milan
I
The night before the battle, there were many watchfires. As he walked from the Cimbri, out into darkness, Eodan saw the Roman camp across the miles as a tiny ring of guttering red. Now the search has ended, he thought; this earth we shall have tomorrow, or be slain.
He thought, while his blood beat swiftly, I do not await my death.
Only the ghostliest edge of a moon was up, and the stars seemed blurred after the mountain sky. He felt Italy’s air as thick. And the ground underfoot was dusty where tens of thousands of folk, their horses and cattle, had tramped over ripening grain. A poplar grove nearby stood unmoving in windless gloom. Suddenly, sharp as a thrown war-dart, Eodan recalled Jutland, Cimberland―great rolling heathery hills and storm-noisy oaks, a hawk wheeling in heaven and the far bright blink of the Limfjord.
But that was fifteen years ago. His folk, angry with their gods, had wandered since then to the world’s edge. And now the Cimbrian bull must meet for one last time that she-wolf they said guarded Rome. It was unlucky to call up forsaken places in your head.
Besides, thought Eodan, this was good land here. He could make it a pastureland of horses ... yes, he might well take his share of Italy on the Raudian plain, beneath the high Alps.
The night was hot. He rested his spear in the crook of an arm while he took off his wolfskin cloak. Under it he wore the legginged coarse breeches of any Cimbrian warrior; but his shirt was red silk, made for him by Hwicca from a looted bolt of cloth. The twining leaves and leaping stags of the North looked harsh across its shimmer. He wore a golden torque around his neck, gold rings on his arms and a tooled-leather belt heavy with silver god-masks. The dagger it held bore a new hilt of ivory on the old iron blade. The Cimbri had reaved from many folk, until their wagons were stuffed with wealth. Yet it was only land they sought.
There was not much more air to be found beyond the watchfires than within the camp. And it was hardly less full of noise here: the cattle lowed enormously outside the wagons, one great clotted mass of horned flesh. Eodan remembered Hwicca and turned back again.
A guard hailed him as he passed. “Hoy, there, Boierik’s son, are you wise to go out alone?
I
would have scouts in the dark, to slice any such throat that offered itself.”
Eodan grinned and said scornfully, “How many miles away would you hear a Roman, puffing and clanking on tiptoe?”
The warrior laughed. A Cimbrian of common mold, the wagons held thousands like him. A big man, with heavy bones and thews, his skin was white where sun and wind and mountain frosts had not burned it red, his eyes were snapping blue under shaggy brows. He wore his hair shoulder length, drawn into a tail at the back of the head; his beard was braided, and his face and arms showed the tattoo marks of tribe, clan, lodge or mere fancy. He bore an iron breastplate, a helmet roughly hammered into the shape of a boar’s head and a painted wooden shield. His weapons were a spear and a long single-edged sword.
Eodan himself was taller even than most of the tall Cimbri. His eyes were green, set far apart over high cheekbones in a broad, straight-nosed, square-chinned face. His yellow hair was cut like everyone else’s, but like most of the younger men he had taken on the Southland fashion of shaving his beard once or twice a week. His only tattoo was on his forehead, the holy triskele marking him as a son of Boierik, who led the people in wandering, war and sacrifice. The other old ties, clan or blood brotherhood, had loosened on the long trek; these wild, youthful horsemen were more fain for battle or gold or women than for the rites of their grandfathers.
“And besides, Ingwar, there is a truce until tomorrow,” Eodan went on. “I thought everyone knew that. I and a few others rode with my father to the Roman camp and spoke with their chief. We agreed where and when to meet for battle. I do not think the Romans are overly eager to feed the crows. They won’t attack us beforehand.”
Ingwar’s thick features showed a moment’s uneasiness in the wavering firelight. “Is it true what I heard say, that the Teutones and Ambrones were wiped out last year by this same Roman?”
“It is true,” said Eodan. “When my father and his chiefs first went to talk with Marius, to tell him we wanted land and would in turn become allies of Rome, my father said he also spoke on behalf of our comrades, those tribes which had gone to enter Italy through the western passes. Marius scoffed and said he had already given the Teutones and Ambrones their lands, which they would now hold forever. At this my father grew angry and swore they would avenge that insult when they arrived in Italy. Then Marius said, ‘They are already here.’ And he had the chief of the Teutones led forth in chains.”
Ingwar shuddered and made a sign against trolldom. “Then we are alone,” he said.
“So much the more for us, when we sack Rome and take Italy’s acres,” answered Eodan gaily.
“But―”
“Ingwar, Ingwar, you are older than I. I had barely seen six winters when we left Cimberland; you were already a wedded man. Must I then tell you of all we have done since? How we went through forests and rivers, over mountains, along the Danube year after year to Shar Dagh itself ... and all the tribes there could not halt us―we reaped their grain and wintered in their houses and rolled on in spring, leaving their wives heavy with our children! How we smote the Romans at Noreia twelve years ago, and again eight and four years ago―besides all the Gauls and Iberians and the Bull knows how many others that stood in our way―how we pushed one Roman army before us across the Adige, when they would bar Italy―how this is the host they can hope to raise against us, and we outnumber it perhaps three men to one!”
The victories rushed off Eodan’s tongue, a river in springtime flood. He thought of one Roman tribune after the next, tied like an ox to a Cimbrian wagon, or stark on a reddened field among his unbreathing legionaries. He remembered roaring songs and the whirlwind gallop of Cimberland’s young men, drunk with victory and the eyes of their dear tall girls. It did not occur to him―then―how the trek had nevertheless lasted for fifteen years, north and south, east and west, from Jutland down to the Balkan spine and back to the Belgic plains, from the orchards of Gaul to the gaunt uplands of Spain. And for all the burning towns and weeping new-caught women, all the men killed and all the gold lifted, the Cimbri had not found a home. There had been too many people, forever too many; you could not plow when the very earth spewed armed men up into your face.