There was silence. A slave brought forth a cup and knelt to offer it to the king. Mithradates looked over his half-hundred guests. "Tonight I drink hemlock, in memory of Socrates." A kind of unvoiced whisper ran about the assembly as he drained the beaker. "Now," he said, "let the feast begin!" Eodan, who was hungry, paid little heed to the succession of artificed viands. Cordelia had offered him enough of that; let a man be nourished on rye and beef, with a horn of ale to wash it down. He took enough mutton to fill himself and barely tasted the rest. For the hour or so in which they ate--this was no elaborate banquet, only the king's evening meal--no person spoke. Eodan did not miss the talk, and the music he ignored. The dancers were another matter. He studied the acrobatic boys closely; this or that trick could be useful in combat. When the supple women came out with dessert and dropped one filmy garment after the next as they swayed about, he knew his hurts were scarring over. He would have traded all these for Hwicca--yes, all women who lived--but since she was gone and they were here.... Finally, with some decorum restored, there was general conversation. Mithradates talked impatiently to various self-important persons, dismissed them at last with plain relief and roared the length of the table: "Cimbrian! Now let us hear that tale you promised!" Eodan followed his beckoning arm, to lie beside the king himself. Envious eyes trailed him. Not everyone listened--the whole room buzzed with talk--but he was as glad of that. He had not wished to make the Cimbrian destiny a night's idle amusement; but to this gray-eyed man, himself a warrior, it was fitting to relate what Boierik had done. Now and again Mithradates broke in with a question. "Is it true that sky and sea run into one up there, as Pytheas has written?... How high does the sun stand at midsummer?... Do they know of any poisons? This is a self-preserving interest of mine--too many kings have died of a subtle drink. I take a little each day, so that now they cannot harm me, neither hemlock nor arsenicum nor nightshade nor--But continue." The lamps burned low; slaves stole about filling them with fresh oil. Eodan's throat hoarsened; he drank one cup of wine after another, until his head buzzed like all summer's bees in a clover meadow in Jutland.... Mithradates matched him, goblet for goblet, though the king's was larger, and showed no sign of it. And at last Eodan said: "Then your ship found us and brought us hither. So it may be the gods have ended their feud with me." "That Ahriman has," corrected Mithradates, "but he is the common enemy of all men and--Could it be, I wonder, that the Bull in whose sign you wandered the world was the same that bleeds upon the altars of the Mystery? But enough." His hand cracked down on Eodan's shoulder, and he raised his cup, clashing it against the Cimbrian's. "What a journey!" he cried. "What a journey!"