Joan of the Sword here looked calmly at him with a certain austerity in her glance.
"Why, of course you would!" she said simply.
Meanwhile the lad had been freed from his bonds and stood with a sword in his hand suppling himself for the work before him with quick little guards and feints and attacks. There was a proud look in his eyes, and as his glance left the Duchess and roved round the circle of his foes, it flashed full, bold, and defiant.
Werner turned to a palish lean Bohemian who stood a little apart.
"Peter Balta," he said, "will you be my second? Agreed! And who will care for my honourable opponent?"
"Do not trouble yourself—that will arrange itself!" said Joan to her chief captain.
With that she flashed lightfoot into one of the low doors which led into the flanking turrets of the quadrangle, and in a tierce of seconds she was out again, in a forester's dress of green doublet and broad pleated kirtle that came to her knee.
"I myself," she said, challenging them with her eyes, "will be this young man's second, in this place where he has so many enemies and no friends."
As the forester in green and the prisoner stood up together, the guards murmured in astonishment at the likeness between them.
"Had this Dane and our Joan been brother and sister, they could not have favoured each other more," they said.