"Listen," he said, "and do not interrupt. You must deliver me up. I am the cause of war—I, the Duchess Joan. Hear you? I have a husband who makes war upon me because I contemn his bed and board. He has summoned the Muscovite to help him to woo me. Well, if I am to be given up, it is for us to stipulate that the armies be withdrawn, first beyond the Alla, and then as far as Courtland. I will go with them; they will not find me out—at least, not till they are back in their own land."
"What matter?" cried Balta. "They would return as soon as they discovered the cheat."
"Let us sink or swim together," said Hussite George. "We want no talk of surrender!"
But grey dry Alt Pikker said nothing, weighing all with a judicial mind.
"No, they would not come back," said the Sparhawk; "or, at worst, we would have time—that is, you would have time—to revictual Kernsberg, to fill the tanks and reservoirs, to summon in the hillmen. They would soon learn that there had been no Joan within the city but the one they had carried back with them to Courtland. Plassenburg, slow to move, would have time to bring up its men to protect its borders from the Muscovite. All good chances are possible if only I am out of the way. Surrender me—but by private treaty, and not till you have seen them safe across the fords of the Alla!"
"Nay, God's truth;" cried the three, "that we will not do! They would kill you by slow torture as soon as they found out that they had been tricked."
"Well," said the Sparhawk slowly, "but by that time they would have been tricked."
Then Alt Pikker spoke in his turn.
"Men," he said, "this Dane is a man—a better than any of us. There is wisdom in what he says. Ye have heard in church how priests preach concerning One who died for the people. Here is one ready to die—if no better may be—for the people!"
"And for our Duchess Joan!" said the Sparhawk, taking his hat from his head at the name of his mistress.