“They really do that?” Smitty said.
“Of course they really do that,” Rollant said. “Baron Ormerod, he was a regular tomcat amongst the serf huts. Why not? If your mother was a serf, you’re a serf, too, even if you do look like your liege lord.”
“That’s a pretty filthy business, all right,” Smitty said.
With a shrug, Rollant answered, “Whoever’s on top is going to give it to whoever’s on the bottom.” He used a gesture that showed exactly what he meant by give it to. Smitty clucked in delicious horror. Rollant went on, “If we’d licked you Detinans a long time ago, you’d’ve ended up slaving for us. But that’s not what the gods had in mind, and so it didn’t happen.”
Smitty grunted. He plainly didn’t like thinking about might-have-beens. But then he wagged a finger at Rollant. “You’ve got no business talking about `you Detinans.’ If you’re not one yourself, then what’s King Avram been fussing and fuming about all this time? If you’re not one yourself, what are you?”
“What am I?” Rollant echoed. It was a good question. He spoke Detinan. He followed Detinan gods. Avram did want to free his people from their ties to the land and make the law look at them the same way it looked at every other Detinan. And yet, the question had a dreadfully obvious answer. “What am I? Just a gods-damned blond, that’s all. And there’s plenty of southrons who’d say it along with the traitors in the north.”
He wondered if Smitty had ever said such a thing. Probably. By everything he’d seen and heard, there weren’t a whole lot of Detinans-ordinary, gods-fearing Detinans, they would surely call themselves-who didn’t say such things in places where they didn’t think blonds could hear. But Smitty didn’t mock blonds when Rollant could hear him, which put him up on a lot of his countrymen.