she would tell him various things about her former master.
Just how Nonari the Gross had gained elevation to the rank of a Roman Senator in absentia during the eighty-odd years sped by since the coming of the Wamphyri into Dacia - that was anybody's guess. But the way the girl described his castle, backed up to a great cliff, with his private chambers facing away from the sun and always in the shade; and his servants, 'like mists over a bubbling swamp, drifting, pale and ghastly, yet smiling with strong white teeth ... all wafting and weaving, hastening to Onarius's beck and call, yet shuddering to his touch so cold and menacing; and his right hand like a club, with its fingers all welded into one ...'
He had called her 'his little trog,' and had told her that he'd known trogs before, in the dank caverns of a far forbidden world.
Except they had been shambling leathery creatures, while Ulutu was graceful and her skin so soft. It had never ceased to amaze him: that she'd been browned by the sun, 'but yet was not burned up!' But Onarius's odalisques were white - Arabs, Britons, and Syrians - and he had no time for dalliance with trogs, even if they were as beautiful as Ulutu. And so she had carried water, cleaned Onarius's chambers, and been grateful. For she knew how he dealt with them with whom he 'dallied.' Or rather, she did not know, for he was wary of prying eyes.
But she had seen the evidence of his passion, apparent in the feral yellow eyes of his male and female thralls alike, and in their 'wafting and weaving' after only a very short space of time spent in his service; even in certain of the villa's children, which were gross. She had seen how rapidly his odalisques aged and his thralls were worn down - 'sucked dry, until they were no more,' - and how when they died he buried them deep in the earth where the rocky land sloped down to the sea, with the rush and roar of breakers to deaden ... other sounds.
Onarius had a son in the mountains far to the north, in a place called the Khorvaty in Moldavia. (Here Radu had paid more attention. What, another living Ferenczy?) He was called Belos Pheropzis (not Ferengus? No, of course not, not if one desired to hide one's true kith and kin away!) and kept a great castle in the heights, on the very borders of the Empire's territory. All secret from Romans and nomad invaders alike, the place was to be Onarius's bolt-hole, in the event he should need one.
As to how Onarius's 'little trog' had known these things: she had feared this Belos mightily when he visited his father, because of the way he looked at her - the way he looked at all females, even his father's thrall mistresses! Yet at the same time she had been fascinated by him: his dark good looks, hawkish features, massive yet proportionate stature. Keeping well out of sight, she'd listened to their conversations, mainly to ensure that Belos did not ask for her. For if he had, then she would have run away.
But when Radu had queried her one time, about this attraction that she'd felt towards Belos:
'No, my Lord,' Ulutu had told him, lying sprawled between his legs and fondling his now flaccid rod, squeezing its glans between her dark breasts, and kissing its tiny lips, 'perhaps I have given you the wrong impression. It was not so much fascination as terror that I felt. For this Belos was like one of the great warhorses that draw the Roman chariots ... and what was I but a tiny black mare? I was a slave, and if this son of Onarius had wanted me ... I scarcely believed I could contain him in my small body!' (At which she had seen her mistake at once, for Radu was fiercely prideful). ' - But, since it seems I contain you well enough, my Lord, obviously I was mistaken! Whichever, this Belos frightened me, seeming more creature than man, more animal than human.'
'What, even as I am more creature than man, more animal than human?' Radu had reached down to fondle her soft breasts and draw Ulutu effortlessly up onto his belly, where he could squeeze her dark and rounded buttocks.
'You are a wolfling, as I've seen,' she had told him then. 'But Belos . . .