Dusk thickened. After some part of an hour, he heard a furtive
scuttering in the grass. He rode after it, and a naked man squeaked
forlornly and dodged from him. It was a Phrygian, wholly bare; he had
not even a staff, but he clutched something to his breast as he ran.
Eodan drew rein and watched him go.
"What happened to him?" asked Tjorr, clasping his hammer; for this was
an uncanny thing to meet on a treeless autumnal plain at nightfall.
"I do not know," said Eodan. "Robbers--the same who killed Phryne?--or
some trolldom, perhaps, for we are in no good country. We cannot speak
with that man, so best we leave him alone to his weird."
They trotted on. But it grew too dark to see, and Eodan would not risk
passing by his oath-sister. In the morning the kites would show him
from afar where she lay. Then the Romans would come, and he would stand
by her grave and fight till they slew him.
"I would like a fire," said Tjorr. He fumbled in the murk, caring for
his horse. "The night-gangers would stay away."
"They will anyhow," Eodan told him. "It is not fated that we should be
devoured by witch-beasts."
Tjorr said, with awe heavy in his tones: "I will believe that. You are
something more than a man tonight."
"I am a man with a goal," said Eodan. "Nothing else."
"That is enough," said Tjorr. "It is more than I could bear to be. I
dare not touch you before dawn."
Eodan rolled himself into the saddle blanket, put his head on his
wadded cloak and lay in cold, streaming darkness. The earth felt sick,
yearning for rain, and the rain was withheld. He wondered if some of
the lightning Tjorr called on had indeed been locked up in the hammer.
When they died tomorrow, the rain might come; or perhaps, thought
Eodan, the first snow, for he is the rain but I am the winter.
I am the wind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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