Adventure Magazine Cover — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Prisoners of War. you! Answer my other question: Why did Cesar write in Latin and not Gaulish? He knew the lord Caswallon knows no Latin.” “Ah! But if the letter were in Gaulish, the lord Caswallon might have been sharp enough to understand it was a trick to turn him against you.” Tros laughed in spite of weariness and anger, sheathing his sword. “Who sups with Cesar needs a long spoon!’ She tried to take advantage of his changed mood, gazing at him with dark, lustrous eyes that verged on tears. “Lord Tros, ‘you said you pity me. Do pity me! J was free-born. Romans de- stroyed our city when I was a young child. I was sold and they took me to Rome. Do you know what that means? To save my- self from the worst that can befall a woman I strove to become so valuable that for their own sakes they would not throw me on the market. “A dealer had bought me; he had me taught to dance and sing; he began to make use of me to entertain his customers; and so I learned intrigue. : “Once, when Cesar was in Rome, I was sent to coax him to buy man-slaves. I en- tertained him, and he bought, at above the market rate for such cattle as I offered. Then, thinking better of it, he returned those man-slaves to the dealer and kept me, at the price of three of them. “And since then he has used me for his purposes, bringing me to Gaul because I knew my mother-tongue. Lord Tros, ‘like master like slave!’ I have had to be wicked, because Cesar is! Lord Tros, I will serve you as I never served Cesar!” She glanced at Helma, smiled with such meekness and such lustrous eyes that Hel- ma was stirred to sympathy and rose from the bench, though Sigurdsen’s wife whis- pered and restrained her. “She is yours, too. Lord Tros, lei: ‘me serve her!”’ Helma shuddered. She had not expected that. She shook her head. But Tros was in a quandary and given to strange, master- ful impulses when in that mood. “You have joined your destiny to mine,” he said to Helma. ‘You shall do your part. Take charge of her, keep her until Cas- wallon comes.”’ Helma protested in a flutter of mistrust. 49 She whispered to the other women, then seizing Tros’ arm, begged him to be more cautious. “She will betray us all! Let Britons guard her!” But Tros knew jealousy when he saw it. He laughed. | “I have given you your task,” he answered. “Then at least a guard of Northmen!” — “Zeus!” he exploded. But Helma saw the laughter in his eyes. ‘Are Northmen deaf? And you dumb? If they are my men, shall they not obey you?” She dropped her eyes, apologizing, pleased. “So be it. All, save Sigurdsen,” she an- swered. But when she looked up it was at Con- ops. She knew well enough she could manage Sigurdsen. “Heh? What was that? Who disobeys you deals with me!” Tros answered. He, too, suddenly faced Conops. “You! You see that woman? Helma her name is. She is my bride. You obey her, save and except only when her orders clash with mine!”’ Conops blinked. Helma smiled at him. “Owmoi! We were master and man, Now we are three and —— take us!” Con- ops murmured. | For which impertinence Tros took him by the ear and cuffed him, but not hard enough to hurt. Over Helma there crept a new, visible sense of possession. Nothing that Tros could have said or done could have made as much impression as that speech. She had come into her own; she was his mate, his partner! Strangers they might be, with almost all to learn about each other, but Tros had laid a rock of confidence in place, on which to build the future, and her eyes glowed gratitude. CHAPTER IX TROS STRIKES A BARGAIN g Bes slept until Caswallon came, full pelt, with a yell to the guard at the gate, reining in foaming stallions with their fore-feet over the porch and leaping along the pole between them into the house, Fflur following a moment later. The chief and Orwic were conferring when Tros rose sleepily and bulked through the leather Eomicbooks.co