"Specially knowing that so pretty a wench as she is could get a better husband to-morrow an it liked her!" commented Alt Pikker drily.
"Well," cried the Sparhawk, "still your quarrel, gentlemen. At all events, the thing is settled. The only question is when? How many days' water is there in the wells?"
Said Peter Balta, "I will go and see."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE GREETING OF THE PRINCESS MARGARET
They were making terms concerning treaty of delivering thus:—
"When the last Muscovite has crossed the Alla, when the men of Courtland stand ready to follow—then, and not sooner, we will deliver up our Lady Joan. For this we shall receive from you, Louis, Prince of Courtland, fifty hogsheads of wine, six hundred wagon-loads of good wheat, and the four great iron cannon now standing before the Stralsund Gate. This all to be completed before we of Kernsberg hand our Lady over."
"It is a thing agreed!" answered Louis of Courtland, who longed to be gone, and, above all, to get his Muscovite allies out of his country. For not only did they take all the best of everything in the field, but, like locusts, they spread themselves over the rear, carrying plunder and rapine through the territories of Courtland itself—treating it, indeed, as so much conquered country, so that men were daily deserting his colours in order to go back to protect their wives and daughters from the Cossacks of the Don and the Strelits of Little Russia.
Moreover, above all, Prince Louis wanted that proud wench, his wife. Without her as his prisoner, he dared not go back to his capital city. He had sworn an oath before the people. For the rest, Kernsberg itself could wait. Without a head it would soon fall in, and, besides, he flattered himself that he would so sway and influence the Duchess, when once he had her safe in his palace by the mouth of Alla, that she would repent her folly, and at no distant day sit knee by knee with him on his throne of state in the audience hall when the suitors came to plead concerning the law.