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These landed proprietors were called the Bonders, and formed the chief strength of the realm. It was they, their friends and servants, or thralls, who constituted the army. Without their consent the king could do nothing.
But the thralls were some of them of a shorter and darker breed, black-haired also and dark-eyed, lighter of limb; sometimes better knit, but sometimes crookeder of leg and knottier of arm.
There Odysseus spake to his thralls and to his son, saying: 'Do ye now get you within the well-builded house, and quickly sacrifice the best of the swine for the midday meal, but I will make trial of my father, whether he will know me again and be aware of me when he sees me, or know me not, so long have I been away, Therewith he gave the thralls his weapons of war.
"So William says, and he is a fox. Tostig is a hothead; he cannot govern himself, so of course he cannot rule others. He was made lord of the Northumbrians because of his royal blood, but they were men, not thralls, and presently told him that his health would be better in another land.
He employed about five hundred men, and they were as much his thralls as were Gurth and Wamba of Cedric of Rotherwood, only they wore no engraved collars around their necks bearing their names and that of their master. Maxwell was not a hard governor, and his people really loved him, as he was ever their friend and adviser.
But the hero straightway soothed their pain, encouraging them, and bade the thralls take up his weapons for war; and they in silence with downcast looks took them up.
But now, while they were covering in the barrow with the turf-slips, thither came Signy, bearing straw with her, and cast it down to Sinfjotli, and bade the thralls hide this thing from the king; they said yea thereto, and therewithal was the barrow closed in.
He did not at all believe that he came from that refuge of thralls. But he must seem certain unless he was to be laughed at again. So he said, "He comes from the marsh-country." "Does he speak Welsh?" "I have heard him do so to the market people, if he happened to meet a Briton there."
Now we had been seen as soon as we stood on the sandhills; and before long the herdsman and thralls began to gather to us, keeping aloof somewhat at first, as if fearing my father's arms. But when we spoke with them we could learn nothing, for they were Welsh marshmen who knew but little of the tongue of their English masters.
He said that the folk of Rose-dale had been a goodly folk before they were enthralled, and peaceable with one another, but that now it was a sport of the Dusky Men to set a match between their thralls to fight it out with sword and buckler or otherwise; and the vanquished man, if he were not sore hurt, they would scourge, or shear some member from him, or even slay him outright, if the match between the owners were so made.
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