sun on my bared skin. I was put on my feet near a tall, narrow, cylindrical cage with a conical top. The height of this cage was about seven feet; its rounded floor was perhaps a yard in diameter. In the top of the cage, at the top of the cone, on the outside, there was a heavy ring. I was thrust into the cage and the door was locked shut behind me.
It had two locks, one about a third up from the door and the other about a third down from the top.
'In this cage, Lady Sheila,' said Miles of Argentum, 'you will be paraded through the streets of Corcyrus, exhibited in Our triumph. Doubtless you will enjoy receiving the love and devotion of your people. You will, thereafter, be transported n this same cage to Argentum. I might mention to you that he bars of this cage, like the chains you wear, are not of pure gold, but of a sturdy golden alloy. Similarly, portions of the cage, like the floor and the interior of the top, and the gilded cone ring, are of iron. You will find that the holding power of these various devices is more than adequate, by several factors, to hold ten strong men. Incidentally, allow me to commend you on how well you look in chains. You wear them beautifully enough to be a slave.' I clutched the golden bars, in order not to fall.
'Your body, also,' he said, 'is beautiful enough to be that of a slave.' I moaned. I could see men approaching, with rope. Too, behind them, drawn by two tharlarion, came a flat-topped wagon. At the back of this wagon was an arrangement of beams, with a projecting, supported, perpendicularly mounted beam that extended forward, some fifteen feet in the air, toward the front of the wagon. At the forward portion of this projecting beam there was a ring, not unlike the one on the top of the cage.
Miles of Argentum surveyed me, and the chains, and the cage.
'Yes,' he said, 'these arrangements all seem suitable and efficient. I think we may count on your arriving in Argentum in good order.'
A rope was being passed through the ring at the top of my cage.
The flat-topped wagon was being drawn near. I gathered that the cage would be suspended from the ring on the projecting beam on the wagon, that it would hang suspended over the surface of the wagon, some feet from the flat bed of the wagon. From within the cage, it suspended thusly, I would not even be able to touch anything outside of the cage.
I was totally in their power.
I was inutterably helpless.
'What are you taking me to Argentum for?' I asked.
'For impalement,' he said.
14 The Camp of Miles of Argentum; Two Men
'No,' I whimpered. 'No!' I awakened, my legs drawn up, cramped, in the tiny cage. I lay on my side. I heard the chains move on the small, circular floor of the cage. I twisted to my back, my knee raised. I could feel the chain from the collar lying on my body. My manacled hands were at my belly. The chain joining them I could feel, too, on my belly. I could feel the extension of the central chain, below the manacles, too, on my body, and then it passed between my legs, lying on the iron floor, then making its rendezvous with my shackled ankles. I had been dreaming that I was again being carried in the cage through the streets of Corcyrus. Because of 'the width of the wagon bed and the height of the cage, some five feet or so above the surface of the wagon bed, I had been reasonably well protected from the blows of whips, the jabbings of sticks. Soldiers, too, patrolled the perimeters of the moving wagon. More than one man, pressing between the soldiers and clambering onto the wagon, sometimes unarmed, sometimes with a whip or stick, sometimes even with a knife, was seized and thrown back into the crowd by soldiers. The crowds cheered Miles of Argentum. and his men. And, as my wagon passed them, they seemed to go mad with hatred and pleasure, crying out and jeering me, and shrieking with triumph to see me so helplessly a captive. The people of Corcyrus, it was clear, had welcomed the men of from Ar, as liberators. The colors of Argentum and of Ar, on ribbons and strips of cloth, angled from windows and festooned, even being stretched between windows and rooftops overhead, the triumphal way such colors, too, were prominent in the crowd, on garments being waved, fluttering, by citizens and sometimes even children, perched on the shoulders of adults. I had stood in the cage, frightened, bewildered and confused. I had not been able to even begin to understand the hatred of the people. I had stood in the cage that I might be better seen. If I did not do so, Miles of Argentum had informed me, simply, I would be beaten like a slave.
I had now awakened in the cage, frightened. I had dreamed I was being again carried through the streets of Corcyrus. I had- recoiled, fearfully, from the sting of a fruit rind hurled at me. Often in that miserable journey, suspended in the cage, carried between jeering crowds, I had been pelted with small stones, garbage and dung.
I whimpered, chained in my tiny prison. At least I was alone now, and it was quiet. The cage creaked a little, moving in the wind. I crawled to my knees and, with my fingers, parted the opaque cloth which had been wrapped about the cage for the night, before it had been raised to its present position. I looked out through the tiny crack. I could see fires of the camp, and several tents. I heard music from the distance, from somewhere among the tents, where perhaps girls danced to please masters. We were one day out of Corcyrus, on the march to Argenturn. I looked down to the ground. It was some forty feet below. The cage was slung now not from the ring on the wagon beam but from a rope which had been thrown over a high stout branch of a large tree. The cage had then been hoisted to this height and the rope secured.
'Villainess of Corcyrusl Tyranness of Corcyrusl' the people had cried. I lay back down then in my chains, on the small iron floor of the cage, my knees pulled up high, and looked upward at the hollow, conelike ceiling of the cage. It seemed I had no more tears to cry.
I did not want to die.
I heard the music in the distance.
I wished that I were a slave, that I might have a chance for life, that I might have an opportunity to convince a master somehow, in any way possible, that I might be worth sparing.
But I was a free woman and would be subjected only to the cold and inhuman mercies of the law.
I was being transported to Argentum for impalement.
I could not cry any more.
Then, suddenly, I felt the cage drop an inch, and then another inch.
I scrambled to my knees, looking out, as I could. But, because of the opaque covering of the cage, its fastenings and the difficulty of moving it, I could see very little.
Then the cage was still. Then, after a time, it dropped another inch, and then another. I knelt in the cage, holding my chains, to keep them from making noise. Slowly the cage was lowered. Then it rested on the ground.
My heart was beating wildly. I now seemed very much alive. The stealth, and the gradualness, which seemed to characterize what was going on, did not suggest the activities of authorized representatives of Miles of Argentum. It did not even occur to me to scream. From whom would I summon help, and to what purpose? If these nocturnal visitors wished to steal me, perhaps to make me a slave or sell me, I would go only too willingly into whatever bondage they chose to inflict upon me. I would enter it joyfully. I would revel in it. I would, in my gratitude, see to it that I proved to be to them a slave beyond their wildest dreams.
Then suddenly I was terrified. What if these visitors were not opportunists or slavers. What if they were men of Corcyrus who wished to return me to the city, there to subject me to secret and horrifying tortures which might shame the agonies of an impaling spear on the walls of Argentum?
I did not know whether to cry out or not.
The cover on the cage was unlaced, and thrust back, around the cage. Two men were there. They were dressed entirely in black. They wore masks. One of them held an unshuttered dark lantern and the other opened a leather wrapper containing keys and tools on the ground. He, then, with a variety of keys and picks, and small tools, swiftly, expertly, trying one thing and then another, addressed himself to the upper lock. He was skillful, and apparently a smith in such matters, perhaps a skilled specialist within his caste. In fifteen Ehn both locks had
