And that was at it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. She should have been posed against a background of sea clouds, painted masts, and wheeling gulls. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.Īgainst the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was tall, full-bosomed, and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty archs formed by intertwining branches. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.
The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked saddle. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tassled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed.
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