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almond shaped, and had a deep sapphirine tint to it.
Hers was a cold beauty, marred only by a long scar,
which ran at an angle across her face, starting at her
right brow, down across the bridge of her nose, to
intersect her left cheekbone. The wound had taken her
eye, and luckily not her life.
She contemplated him, her newly accepted lord and
employer, this
Raubritter. He lived off the
toil and ache of the common people he held sway over,
and continued to grind them into the ground, by
unjust levies and taxations, with a compassion one
usually reserved for vermin crushed beneath the heel
of one's boot. She was well paid for her services
though. "But," she thought, "I am beginning to
see why, now."
"So," he began to speak, all the while picking bits
of meat from between his teeth, the words slurring
slightly around his fingers, "you do not approve of
the morrow's forthcoming activities? I assure you,
the profit will be high, and the Turks, heathen
savages that they are, will not ask any questions."
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He reached for his own goblet. Gesticulating his
point with the wine cup in hand, he continued. "Why
the girl alone should bring in fifty
Rhinegulden!" He quaffed a mighty draught from
the cup, wine splashing over the rim to run down his
beard and drip into his lap, then heaved forth a
mighty belch. "And, add to that the
other...commodities, we should do quite well." He
leaned back in his chair and chuckled, obviously
pleased with himself.
The woman felt her stomach begin to turn. The thought
of enslavement sickened her. Indentured servitude was
one thing, and a way of life for many common folk;
why she herself had been a bonded servant before
finally being given her freedom, but total slavery
–the buying and selling of human flesh as if it were
livestock– this was too much. But she said nothing.
She stared at her lord and drank again, deeply,
seeking some solace from the bottom of the winecup.
Her introspective inaction infuriated the
Raubritter.
He flung his copper goblet from
him; it clanged against one wall, then fell to the
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