“You have done grievous insult onto my sister, the princess Gerune,” said Ortog.
“Accept then the challenge,” said Otto.
“I could have you slain now,” said Ortog.
“But only as a brigand might order a killing,” said Otto.
“It is the challenge of one chieftain to another, milord,” said the clerk.
“Such things have not been done for a thousand years,” said Ortog.
“I have issued the challenge,” said Otto.
“Such challenges can only be between chieftains of tribes,” said the clerk to Ortog. “He is chieftain of the Wolfungs, of the Vandals. He has seen fit to accord you this challenge. Seize this opportunity, milord. It is a rare one. In accepting it, you are acknowledged chieftain of the Ortungs, and the Ortungs a tribe, that in the eyes not only of the Wolfungen, an acknowledged tribe of the Vandals, but in those of all the Vandal peoples, and of a hundred other peoples, as well.”
“Does milord hesitate?” asked Ortog’s shieldsman.
“What is your origin, your true people?” asked Ortog of Otto.
“I do not know,” said Otto. “I was raised in the festung village of Sim Giadini. It is on Tangara.”
“You are only a peasant,” said Ortog. “How could I, a chieftain, in honor and propriety, accept a challenge from one such as you?”
“I have been lifted upon the shields,” said Otto.
“He has the look of an Otung,” said one of the men from the side.
Ortog was silent. He had, himself, long ago, on the Alaria, vouchsafed a similar speculation.
Julian looked closely at the first fellow who had spoken, and then at Ortog.
The Otungs, or Otungen, were the largest, and fiercest, tribe of the Vandal peoples.
“No matter, milord,” said the clerk. “He has been lifted upon the shields. Accept the challenge.”
“Do not hesitate, milord!” called a man from the fellows to the left of the dais.
“Such a thing would consolidate the people, milord,” said the clerk.
“Your sister,” said Otto, “is well curved, and would bring a high price upon a slave block.”
Men cried out with rage.
“Beware,” said Ortog.
Otto shrugged. “She is only a woman,” he said.
“You permitted yourself to be captured,” said Ortog, angrily, to Gerune.
“I could not help it, milord,” said Gerune. “I was overpowered.”
“I see,” snarled Ortog.
“I am a woman,” said Gerune.
“Only a woman,” snarled Ortog.
“I am a princess!” she said.
“And you were taken as easily as any woman. You could have been made a slave.”
“I am a princess!” she cried.
“Only a woman,” snarled Ortog.
“And that becomes clearer,” said Otto, “if her regal robes were to be again removed.”
“Beware, Wolfung!” said Ortog.
“Accept the challenge!” urged the clerk.
“Accept the challenge!” said the shieldsman.
“As I have issued the challenge,” said Otto, “you may, as is the custom of our two peoples, choose the weapons.”
Ortog looked down at the garments, the jewelry, and such, of the princess Gerune, which had been removed from her on the Alaria, and returned to Hendrix and Gundlicht on Varna, some days ago. These various items still lay across his knees.
“You have shamed me, and the Ortungs,” said Ortog to Gerune.
“I am sorry, milord,” said Gerune, tears in her eyes.
“You may, of course,” said Otto, “choose a champion.”
“I have a mind,” said Ortog to Gerune, “to keep you in the tents from now on, to conceal you from the eyes of those you shamed.”
Gerune looked at him, stricken.
“You would have less freedom than a slave girl,” said Ortog.
“Please, no, milord,” wept Gerune.
“And it would be fitting to force you to wear these soiled rags, which have been put upon the body of a slave girl, until they stink and rot, and fall off your body,” he said, “as a badge of your shame.”
“It would be better,” said Otto, “to have her keep her body washed and perfumed, and clad as that of a slave, as such a garmenture is enhancing to the beauty of a woman.”
Gerune looked at him, startled. Perhaps she had never realized that men might speculate as to what she, or, indeed, other women, might look like, clad as slaves.
She wrung her hands, then, wildly, in misery, and looked down, at just that time, at the three slaves to her left, kneeling there, chained in their place. There were all regarding her. Then they looked away, frightened, crying out, for Gerune, in hysterical helplessness, in rage, in fury, that they should dare look upon her, and as though they might share some smug, common sisterhood with her, they only slaves, leapt to her feet and, sobbing, seized a whip, from a keeper, and threw herself down, amongst them, sobbing wildly, striking wildly, hysterically, about. At a sign from Ortog the keeper wrenched the whip away from Gerune. Ortog then, as she stood there to the left, on the rush-strewn earthen floor, below the dais, amongst the cowering, beaten slaves, she half bent over, weeping helplessly, indicated that she should resume her seat.
She turned suddenly, defiantly, and fled toward the side entrance of the tent but her way, there, was blocked by two warriors, those who had conducted her to the tent.
She turned about, and then ascended, again, to the surface of the dais, resuming her seat.
There was laughter from among the men.
The free women in the tent, some of them her own women, looked down.
Even their lofty mistress, to such men, Ortungs, and others, was only a woman.
“I have issued the challenge,” said Otto.
Ortog angrily seized up the jewelry and robes from where they lay, across his knees, and then held them before himself for a moment, and then, wadding them together, hurled them angrily to his left, to the floor, to the foot of the dais.
“Take those things,” said Ortog to a frightened free woman.
She hurried to gather up the items.
“Put them among the stores from which we clothe slaves for our pleasure,” said Ortog.
“The robes, too, milord?” asked the woman, from her knees. She was not more than a yard or two from Otto.
“But first, of course,” said Ortog, “they must be cut into revealing rags.”
“Yes, milord!” said the women.
In a moment she had gathered together the jewelry, the bracelets, the necklaces, the chains and such, and the robes, and hurried from the tent.
“That was not necessary, milord,” said Gerune.
“You have shamed me, and the Ortungs,” said Ortog.
“The challenge has been issued,” Otto said.
“Accept it, milord,” said the clerk.
“Accept it, milord,” said the shieldsman, with the golden helmet.
“You,” said Ortog, paying no attention to the others about him, “you, step forward.”
He was pointing at Julian.
Julian, reluctantly, stepped forward, from where he had been standing, rather behind the left shoulder of Otto.
“I see you have with you,” said Ortog to Otto, “a lowly, and despicable thrall.”
“He is, of course,” said Otto, “a free man, of the empire.”
“Step forward,” said Ortog to Julian.
Julian took another step forward.