“What if he is the king?” asked a man.
“I would not lift a blade against the king,” said another.
“There are only year kings,” said Urta. “That is the wish of the Heruls! There is no king as before.”
Men looked to the empty throne.
“I have not come amongst you to be king,” said Otto. “I come amongst you to recruit a company.”
Men regarded one another.
“I do not come for your high men,” said Otto. “I come for your younger sons, for landless men, for heroes, for those to whom adventure and battle are a lure and a life, I come for the Otungs of old, for Otungs as men.”
“Kill him!” cried Urta.
Two or three men edged forward, but stayed well beyond the compass of the great blade.
“I am a trained killer,” said Otto. “I have been trained in the school of Pulendius, though you know not that place nor what is done there. I have fought in arenas, for the amusement of populaces. I know things about blades, and war, of which you are ignorant. I tell you these things not to boast nor to cause you apprehension, but only that you may understand what it is against which you would stand.”
“I fear you not!” cried a young man.
“Nor is it my wish that you should,” said Otto.
Otto looked about himself.
“I have no wish to kill Otungs,” he said. “Accordingly I shall, of any who now challenge me, cut from them one arm only, and they may choose the arm. If they are right-handed, doubtless they would prefer that it be the left arm which is lost. If they are left-handed, doubtless they would prefer that it be the right arm which is lost.”
“Who will challenge him?” called Urta.
None stepped forward, though many looked about, from one to the other.
“We welcome Otto, chieftain of the Wolfungs, to our hall,” said Urta.
***
Half sitting, half lying in the chair, seemingly asleep, or half asleep, her head back, her eyes closed, the girl, restless, disturbed, twisted and turned.
“Were you Hortense, daughter of Thuron, of the Otungs?” asked Urta.
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Were you, some two years ago, surprised with your maidens, while bathing naked in the pool of White Stones, west of the holdings of Partinax?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you take them there?”
“Yes.”
“Surely you were aware of the danger.”
“I dismissed such danger,” she said.
“Surely your maidens were reluctant to follow you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why did they follow you?” asked Urta.
“Because I teased them and shamed them, if they would not, because I called them cowards, if they would not, because I was a noble, because I was the daughter of Thuron.”
“Go on,” said Urta.
“In the end,” she said, “we were all merry, and eager to go, indeed, it seemed that each of us was vying to outdo the other.”
“It was all very naughty, and amusing?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It was pleasant in the water, bathing, playing, splashing about?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you and your maidens were surprised by Heruls.”
“Yes.”
“You were captured by them?”
“Yes.”
“And carried away, to be made slaves?”
“Yes.”
“Every one of you?”
“Yes.”
“With no exceptions?”
“No.”
“You were not then alone in the forest, away from the scene, gathering flowers or such?”
“No.”
“You were captured with your maidens?”
“Yes.”
“And were you all, without exceptions, including yourself, made slaves?”
“Yes.”
There was much response to this in the hall. “The slave!” cried a woman, angrily.
The girl in the chair squirmed.
“But there was no sign of bondage on you when you were found by Ulrich and his men in the forest, no collar, or anklet, or such.”
“No.”
“And the women tell us that you do not bear a slave brand.”
“No,” she said, “I am not marked.”
“Why are these things as they are?” asked Urta.
“Among Heruls,” she said, “what could a woman of our species be but a slave?”
“What was the fate of your maidens?” asked Urta.
“They were sold in Scharnhorst, to Telnarian agents,” she said. “Thence they were sold later to wholesalers, of diverse species, and thence sent to various far worlds, there to be sold a third time, there to learn their fate in slave markets.”
“How did you learn these things?”
“It pleased the Heruls to inform me, while I knelt abjectly, head to the dirt, before them,” she said.
“But you were kept among the wagons?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“I was perhaps found desirable,” she said.
“As a slave is desirable?”
“Yes.”
“In that way?”
“Yes.”
One of the women in the hall gasped.
“Be silent!’’ said another woman to the one who had permitted the small sound to escape from her lips.
“Too,” said the girl, “I was the daughter of a noble. Thus I think they enjoyed keeping me with the wagons, being pleased to be served by one who had once been a noblewoman. Too, in the beginning they found me arrogant, and it pleased them that I should be well taught my slavery.”
“And did you learn it well?”
“Yes.”
There was a soft, half-suppressed, thrilled cry from several of the free women in the hall.
“No! No!” cried one woman, angrily. “Slave! Slave!” she cried.
“I do not understand,” said Urta, “why you, and your maidens, surely aware of the risks run, went to such an isolated, lonely place.”
“We were courting the collar,” said the girl. “I think it was only later that I fully realized that, and the others, too, when we were bound together, later, helpless in our cords. We had wanted to become slaves. That is why we did what we did. We wanted to have no choice but to love and serve, to be owned by masters.’’
“No, no!” cried an angry free woman in the hall.
“What are you?” inquired Urta.
“I am a female slave,” she said. “I have always known it, but I have not dared to speak it.”
“How is it that you dare to speak it now?” asked Urta.
“I am now wholly, and secretly, within myself,” she said. “I can now speak as I wish, and no one can possibly hear.”
“You were a slave of Heruls?”
“Yes.”
“But you were found in the forest.”
“I fled the Heruls,” she said.
“Then you are a runaway slave.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you should be returned to Heruls,” said Urta.
She squirmed in the chair, miserably. “No, please, no, Master!” she said.
“She calls him ‘Master’!” said a free woman, angrily.
“He is a free man. That is how a slave girl must address him,” said a woman.
“Yes,” averred another.
“How terrible to be a slave girl!” said a woman.
“Yes,” said another, thrilled.
“Why did you run away?” asked Urta.
“I feared the Heruls,” she said. “They held me in contempt not only as a slave, which was suitable, but as a human. My beauty, if beauty it is, gave me little protection from them. They did not even give me to a single master, to whom I might then be devoted, whom I might then have endeavored with my whole helplessness and being to please, but to the camp, as a whole. Anyone there might have injured, or killed, me, even a woman or child, on a caprice, or in a fit of impatience. They are not human. They are a different species. Too, everything that I had been taught had told me to be not like a woman, but like a man, that I should be like a man! I thought, thusly, that it was expected of me to run away, and seek freedom. And, too, I need a human master, not a Herul master. I am a human female, and need a human master, someone who can understand me, and will master me as I require. Somewhere I know masters have been prepared for me by nature, just as I, in my heart, know that I have been prepared for them.”