I watched him leave.

"Strip her," said Miles of Argentum, "and put her in golden chains, and put her in the golden cage."

I felt the hands of soldiers at my clothing. It was torn from me, before the very throne. Then, when I was absolutely naked, a golden collar, to which a chain was attached, with Jk~ wrist rings and ankle rings, was brought. It was a chaining system of that sort called a sirik. M? chh, was thrust up and I felt the golden collar locked on my throat. Almost at the same time my wrists, field closely together before me, were locked helplessly in the wrist rings. In another instant my ankles, held, were helpless in the ankle rings. A chain then ran from my collar to the chain on my wrist rings and from thence, the same chain, to tile chain on my ankle rings. My ankle-ring chain was about twelve inches in length, and my wrist-ring chain was about six inches in length. The central chain, where it dangled down from the wrist rings, Jay on the floor before the throne, before it looped up to where it was closed about a central link of the ankle-ring chain. This permits; the prisoner, usually a slave, to lift her arms. She is thus in a position to feed herself or better exhibit tier beauty to masters in a wider variety of postures and attitudes than would otherwise be the case. The point of the sirik is not merely to confine a woman, but to confine her beautifully.

Two guards then held me, one by each arm, before the throne. I was naked. I was chained. I wore the sirik.

They lifted me up, then, at a sign from Miles of Argenturn. I was absolutely helpless. My feet must have been some six or seven inches from the floor before the throne. Even by pointing my toes I could not couch the carpeting. I was held there, being exhibited to the crowd, chained in the sirik.

"Behold the Tatrix of Corcyrus," called Miles of Argentum, indicating me with a sweeping gesture, "helpless, and in chainsl"

There was a wild cheer from the crowd, almost a shriek, as though for blood. "Will you come back for me?" I had asked Ligurious.

"Have no fear, Lady Sheila," he had said. "You will be come for." "Soon?" I had asked.

"Yes," he had said. Then he had bade me farewell, and left.

I looked down on the crowd, into the wild eyes, the upraised fists. I saw, too, the soldiers. I moved helplessly in the chains, held before the crowd. Ligurious and the woman, and the others, had doubtless, by now, on tams, made good their escape. The uniforms the men had worn were not unlike that in which I had just seen Drusus Rencius, and not unlike those of certain others about the dais, soldiers. They were, I took it, babilifnents of Ar. The woman in the slave collar and on the leash, covered by the sheet, her bare feet and ankles visible beneath it, would presumably be assumed to be merely a naked captive.

I struggled in the chains. The words of Ligurious, that I would be come for, now took on a new and frightful meaning for me.

I looked down into the crowd.

Now it seemed, truly, I had been come for.

"Make wayl Clear the way!" called Miles of Argentum. Soldiers began to clear the aisle of men and women, that we might have a clear exit from the great hall. I was lowered to my feet.

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked Miles of Argentum.

"We are going to take you into the courtyard," he said, and put you in the golden cage. You may recall that I told you once that you belonged in a cage, a golden cage."

Tears sprang into my eyes. I did not want to be put into a cage. I was not a slave, or another type of animal. Too, I did not understand the meaning of a golden cage.

At a sign from Miles of Argentum a soldier picked me up, lightly, in his arms. He held me as easily as though I might have been a child.

Then, in his arms, I was carried rapidly down the steps of the dais and down the aisle, between the halves of the parted crowd.

In a matter of but moments I was blinking against the sunlight in the courtyard. Too, I felt the heat and the 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.