It didn’t seem like a matter of a broken wheel. Cotiso threw an extra robe over his shoulders to protect him from the cold as he went out to have a look.
“What’s happening?”
“It looks like the captain has found himself a nice catch.” The guard smiled cunningly.
Cotiso looked over the man’s shoulder and saw that one of the guards was holding a girl by the wrist while another was questioning her.
The captain, Dardanos, was off his horse. He stood by and listened to the interrogation while keeping his eyes on the forest at the same time.
Cotiso stepped closer.
The girl looked very young. She was slim and her skin was pale. She seemed prettier than average but she was also unbelievably filthy.
Her long blond hair was dirty, wet and messy. It looked as if she had washed it with water straight from a dirty pond. Leaves were caught in her locks. Thick mud stained her face, hands, and feet and a sheen of dirt tainted her skin. Also, she had nothing on her but an old cloak!
The first thought that crossed Cotiso’s mind when he saw her miserable condition was that she was a survivor of an attack on her convoy, but upon a closer inspection, he saw that she wore a collar on her neck ─a sign that she was a slave whose owner had either never intended to keep her or was too kind-hearted to brand her.