The Chieftan

The gladiator crouched beside the blond captive. He loosened her gag, pulling it down about her neck. “You understand what you are to do?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, angrily.

Doubtless her mouth had a foul taste.

The officer of the court looked again at Janina.

Janina was now clad not in the keb, but in garments of barbaric splendor, muchly bedecked with primitive ornaments. This garb, the officer of the court suspected, had once been that of the bound captive, to her right. The captive, for example, did not have locked about her neck, closely encircling it, the chain and disk of a ship slave. That suggested that she was a free woman and, given the raiment on Janina, perhaps one of considerable importance. “Yes, what?” inquired the gladiator.

“Yes, milord,” said the blond woman, bitterly.

“That word costs you much, does it not?” asked the gladiator.

“Yes,” she said, angrily.

He looked at her.

“Yes, milord,” she said.

“Who is she?” asked the officer of the court, looking down on the blond captive.

The gladiator rose to his feet.

“I have been remiss,” he said. “May I introduce Gerune, a princess of the Drisriaks, and one who chose to join the secessionist house of Ortog.”

“A princess!” exclaimed the officer of the court.

“To be sure,” said the gladiator, “she is now indistinguishable from a comely slave.”

The captive squirmed.

“Are you not pleased, milady,” said the gladiator, “that your face and figure might fetch a goodly price in a slave market?”

“Wretch!” hissed the captive.

“May I introduce our new guest?” the gladiator asked the captive, indicating the officer of the court.

“I do not greet commoners,” she said.

“I am of the blood!” said the officer of the court.

“You are only a Telnarian bitch, fit, at best, for the collar,” said the blond woman.

“Barbarian!” said the officer of the court.

“Slave!” said the blond captive.

“‘Slave’!” exclaimed the officer of the court.

“Yes, slave,” said the captive. “Did you not, a moment before, bespeak yourself such?”

The officer of the court felt faint.

“Do you think such words can be unspoken?” asked the captive. “Once uttered, it is done. You are then powerless to alter or qualify them in any way.”

“Surely you jest,” said the officer of the court.

“It is the law,” laughed Janina, “slave.”

“And, too,” said the blond captive, “it was not I who in the darkness, it seems, licked and kissed at a man’s boots!”

“I thought him of the strangers, of the boarders!” said the officer of the court.

“And what does that matter, slave?” asked Janina.

“I am not a slave!” said the officer of the court to the gladiator.

“My plan,” said he, “is as follows. We shall descend to the hold, and seek out Section 19, for there, I think unbeknownst to our friends outside, there are stored several escape capsules. You may recall them, from the evening of the contest. Some of these, by Pulendius and others, were, two days ago, taken on their tracks to the elevators, and conveyed upward to space locks.”

“I saw damaged capsules, useless, outside, by the ships,” said the officer of the court.

“It is my hope that some escaped,” said the gladiator. “I know that many did not.”

“Why did you not try to escape then?” asked the officer of the court.

“Can you not guess?” asked Janina, angrily.

“No,” said the officer of the court. Then she said, frightened, “Surely it has nothing to do with me.”

Janina laughed, bitterly.

Then the officer of the court said, “Oh!” for a rope was being knotted about her neck.

“Kneel,” said the gladiator.

The officer of the court knelt. She looked up at the gladiator.

“I do not understand,” she said.

She saw the end of the rope on her neck tossed to Janina.

“I do not think it is so hard to understand,” he said.

“Please,” she said.

“Surely we have much to discuss,” he said.

“Please!”

“Janina will wear the royal robes of a princess of the Drisriaks,” said the gladiator.

“What are you going to do with me?” asked the officer of the court.

“We think,” said the gladiator, “that with her robes about her face, Janina may pass for the princess. My garb, I trust, will serve as my disguise. The princess, gagged, on a neck rope, her hands bound behind her, will be marched before us, to be taken for a captured passenger. If she should attempt to struggle or flee, or give any sign of her distress or identity, I will gun her down immediately with the fire pistol. You understand, princess?”

“Yes, milord,” she said.

“If she is recognized, she will prove a valuable hostage,” said the gladiator.

“You will accompany us as another captured prisoner, one not yet even stripped, on all fours, on your leash, held by Janina. Perhaps it will be assumed she may have selected you for a serving slave. Perhaps you have the makings of a useful serving slave. One does not know. I have the fire pistol, and a Telnarian rifle, as extra insurance.”

“I am to be marched before you, as I am?” asked the blond captive.

“Yes, milady,” said the gladiator.

“I am the sister of Ortog, king of the Ortungen!” she said.

“Let him then understand you in a new light,” said the gladiator, “a light in which brothers seldom understand their sisters, that other men might find them of great interest as slaves.”

“Wretch!” cried the princess.

“And I am somehow not overly fond of Ortog,” said the gladiator.

“And so you would march his sister thusly?”

“Certainly.”

“You are a barbarian!” said the officer of the court, aghast.

“I do not know who I am,” said the gladiator.

The officer of the court recalled that Ortog had identified the gladiator, obviously mistakenly, as of the blood of the Otungen, whoever they might be. Indeed, the names, to her civilized ear, though clearly distinguishable, sounded too much alike. The Ortungen was a secessionist house of the Drisriaks, a tribe of the Alemanni. She had no notion of who, or what, the Otungen might be. Nor, it seems, had the gladiator.

“I despise you!” said the princess.

“But it will be you who will be naked, on the rope,” said the gladiator.

“How dare you treat me so?” asked the princess.

“Do not peoples such as yours often march the women of the enemy, even women of the royal houses, through the forests naked, on ropes?”

“How dare you do such a thing!” she exclaimed.

“It is in accord with my plan,” he said.

“You are a man of no name, of no people!” said the blond captive.

“I have heard,” said Janina, “that it is not uncommon for barbarians to march the captured women of