Kris didn't understand what had happened, but he saw his chance and took it.
He turned to Dran peDran and Bor pePrannt, who were standing next to him.
"Quick! Give me a boost!" He gestured at the carved, detailed figures on the wall ten feet from the pavement.
Both of them got the idea quickly enough. Within seconds, Kris had been lifted above the crowd. He reached out, tightened his fingers around an intricately-carved and fanciful gargoyle, and drew himself up, working upward onto the balcony.
The Elders were arguing among themselves when he pulled himself over the balcony rail.
"My name is Kris peKym Yorgen!" he bellowed.
The Elders looked at him in astonishment. "What are you—"
"I'm here to see justice done!" Kris roared. "You heard what that Earthman said, didn't you? Speak up, Elder Grandfathers! Did you hear him?"
The Elder Kovnish started to speak, but Kris cut him off in mid-syllable. "You heard him, all right! You heard him refuse to deny that he and his crew took the money! And why did he refuse to deny it? It's because they did take it! Can any of you claim the Earthmen did not steal the cobalt, now that you've heard the admission of guilt from the Earthman's own lips?"
Kris glanced around belligerently. The crowd below was completely silent, watching in awe. In the center, he saw his ring of a hundred loyal men.
The Elder Grandfathers were also watching him with something like awe. This was Kris' big moment; he was determined to play it for all it was worth.
"I say the Earthmen stole the cobalt, and I say I know where it is! It's buried on the land of that School of theirs! Come with me, and I'll dig it up for you!"
"How do you know this?" Grandfather Kiv asked stonily.
"I have my sources of information," Kris retorted. "Just as you Elders do. And I know the money's in Bel-rogas."
He looked down, saw the crowd beginning to move impatiently, heard them talking among themselves.
A sudden blue-white glow attracted Kris' attention, and he turned his head upward to see what it was.
It was Smith—standing on the wall of the Great Temple. A blue-white aura of radiance surrounded him, and he was lifting himself into the air.
"Look!" Kris cried. "There's the devil Smith now—on his way back to Bel-rogas to hide the cobalt!" His pointing linger jabbed the air in the direction of the rapidly-dwindling figure of the Earthman, who was outlined for a moment in sharp relief against the grayness of the sky and then vanished in the general direction of the School.
"There goes Smith!" Kris shouted. "Back to Bel-rogas." He caught his breath and yelled, "Who's for going to the School to see what's there?"
"Just a minute," Grandfather Kiv protested feebly. Kris brushed the old man aside and lifted his hand toward the west.
"Your money's there, and I can prove it! Who'll go with me? Saddle your deests, and on to Bel-rogas!"
"Wonderful, is wonderful," Dran peDran exulted, as Kris made his way down from the balcony and into the threshing mob in the courtyard. "You is a marvelous speaker."
"Get the men together and get those deests up from the Inn," Kris ordered brusquely. "The mob's with us. It's our chance, now. Smith's talk left them all confused."
"To Bel-rogas!" someone cried. Kris glanced around. It was a stranger who had said it, a Gelusar townsman. Kris grinned. The fever was catching now. Soon, a mighty torrent of men would be behind him.
"Come on," Kris said. "Let's get out of here before the Grandfathers realize what's up." He shoved his way through the mass of people and out into the street, with his men following behind.
"Get down to the Inn and get your deests," he ordered. "Then get back here."
Turning to the Gelusar people, he shouted, "Saddle your deests and ride with us! To Bel-rogas!"
Minutes later, Kris was astride his deest, a handsome, powerful creature whose long muscles throbbed beneath Kris' weight. A current of excitement ran through the crowd that surrounded him as Kris stood high in his saddle and swung his arm aloft.
Then he kicked his heel into the deest's side and began to race down the streets of the Holy City, past the Central Railway Terminal, through the crowded, heavily-populated West End of the city, and on out onto the Bel-rogas road. The thunder of a thousand deest hoofs clattered behind him as he rode.
Bel-rogas was five miles from the City of Gelusar, in a secluded area of foothills. The twisting, brown dirt road that led there soon became a river of dust as Kris and his men raced over it. Particles of dust floated eye-high as they charged onward.
They were on their way at last, Kris thought excitedly, as he urged his deest onward. The Bel-rogas School was, at last, under attack. He glanced backward and saw a flood of men pouring after him.
Within minutes, the buildings of Bel-rogas became apparent.
Dran peDran drew up alongside him. "Where is we going first, captain?"
"We'll ride right through the School and on to where we've planted the money. Once we've dug it up, the rest will follow automatically."
Dran peDran's round head bobbed as his deest lurched and raced ahead. The Bronze Islander's eyes gleamed. "I know what you means, captain."
"There's the School!" Kris yelled. "We're riding right through!"
They climbed the gently-sloping hill and rode up to the massive but open and unguarded gate of the School. Kris laughed savagely and spurred his deest on. It plunged through the gate into the Bel-rogas School of Divine Law.
"Follow me!"
They were in the midst of a vast green swath of well-kept grass which led up to a square, thick-hewn building surrounded by smaller ones. There's the School, Kris thought. There it is.
He saw figures running toward him over the lawn, waving their arms at him and shouting angrily.
"You can't come in here! Go away!''
Students, he thought derisively. There were perhaps a dozen of them, with more in the background. He bore down on them, scattering them every which way as his deest burst into their midst, and continued on, through the main square of the School and out into the green field behind the central group of buildings. His keen eyes searched for the slight hump in the ground that would be the hiding-place of the cobalt.
For a moment he was unable to find it, and his body went cold with apprehension. What if the Earthman had discovered the cobalt—had carried it away? What would he say to the people when it proved impossible to find the treasure?
Kris' fears were groundless. "There it is," he cried, pointing to a rise in the ground. He swung himself down from his deest almost in mid-canter, and Dran dropped lightly at his side.
"Get shovels! Start digging!"
They fell to with a will, while Kris watched impatiently. After some minutes of energetic digging, the first cobalt coin glinted from the ground.
Kris looked around and saw a tremendous crowd swarming over every corner of the field.
"Lift me up," he murmured to Dran, and the Bronze Islander and another crewman boosted Kris to his shoulders.
"Now give me a loop of coins."
They handed him a quarter-man-weight loop of cobalt, and he swung it aloft. "See! See! The cobalt is here! The Earthmen have had it all along!"
"Kill the devils!" a powerful voice cried.
"Aye," Kris echoed. "Kill them!"
He held the cobalt high overhead, showing it to all in sight. The flame started to spread through the mob; he sensed their fury building toward a tremendous explosion.
"All right, put me down."
He dropped to his feet and hauled another loop of cobalt from the opened pit. Then he glanced at Dran. "Get all this stuff out of the ground, and have twenty men guard it. I'm going to see what happens down below at the School."