"… and if I find some knave's slain our quarry without absolute necessity, I'll do to him what I did to Sir Daviran—"
Somebody blew a horn that sounded full of spit. The mess of men and animals pulled itself into formation and streamed out onto the road—eshuna and their handlers first, then hunters with their lances, then more servants with the net and other equipment like gongs and unlit torches.
The parade stretched itself out over a longer and longer piece of road as the eshuna pulled away from the hunters and they from the slower assistants in the rear. Hasselborg rode silently at a trot, his sword banging against his left leg. It seemed an hour, although the sun had not yet risen.
"A good rally," said a vaguely familiar voice. Ye'man, his smorgasbord acquaintance of the day before, pulled up alongside. "Let's hope the ball scrambles not in the beard."
"Yes, let's," said Hasselborg, not having the faintest notion of what the man meant. The loud voices died away, leaving only the drumming of hoofs, the rattle of equipment, and the occasional mewing of the eshuna up front. Hasselborg, whose riding muscles had never got properly hardened at Novorecife, found the whole thing very tiresome.
As the sun came up in the egregious glory of a Krishnan sunrise, the hunt left the road and headed up a shallow valley. Hasselborg, in his first taste of cross-country riding, found that he had to pay full attention to simply staying in his seat. As the bigger animals of his fellow-hunters were pulling ahead, he spurred his aya to an occasional canter to keep pace.
On they went, up one gentle slope and down another, over cultivated fields—which would not be of much use to their owners thereafter—and through brush. The hunt came to a low stone wall. Eshuna and aya flowed over it in graceful leaps—except Has-selborg's aya, which, having been trained for road work only, refused the jump, almost spilling its rider. As the rest of the party began to leave it behind, the animal galloped in a wide curve around the end of the wall and scurried to catch up. Hasselborg swore under his breath.
Next time he had to detour around a fence which the rest jumped. This was getting more tiresome every minute, though no doubt his aya showed better sense than those that let themselves be forced to jump.
A horn blew raucous notes up front, and the eshuna gave a weird howl. Hasselborg could have sworn they howled in parts. Everybody broke into a run. Now Hasselborg found himself really falling behind. Another detour, around a wall, put him back among the servants.
At the next obstacle, he spurred his mount right at a fence, holding the reins tightly to keep it from turning, and letting go at the last minute as he'd been taught. The aya hesitated, then jumped. While Hasselborg went up with it all right, he kept on rising after the beast had started down, with disastrous results. In his fall, he caromed off its rump into the moss.
For an instant he saw stars. The stars gave place to the bellies of the servants' ayas leaping the wall after him. They looked as though they were coming right down on top of him with all six hoofs. Somehow they all missed him.
Then as the universe stopped whirling, he climbed to his feet. A sharp stone had bruised his fundament; he had bitten his tongue; his pants were burst open at the right knee; his sword belt had somehow got wound around his neck; and altogether he was not feeling his best.
The servants were disappearing over the next rise, and the notes of the horn and the weird howl of the eshuna died in the distance.
"Give me an automobile," he muttered, picking up his lance and limping toward his aya. Faroun, however, wanted a rest and a quiet graze. It stopped eating as he neared it, rolled an indignant eye, and trotted off.
"Come here, Faroun!" he said sternly. Faroun walked a little farther away. .
"Come here!" he yelled, thinking: / said it very loud and clear; I went and shouted in his ear… but no heed did the beast pay. Hasselborg was tempted to throw a stone at the perverse creature but refrained for fear of driving it farther away.
He tried stalking. That did no good either, for the aya looked up between mouthfuls of moss and kept a safe distance between itself and its owner. Perhaps he would just have to walk the animal until it tired. He grimly plodded toward it.
A Krishnan hour later, he was still at this forlorn pursuit, when something erupted out of a little bushy hollow with a frightful roar and charged. Hasselborg had just time to swing the point of his lance toward this menace before it swerved and leaped upon the truant Faroun. There was a crunch of neck bones, and the aya was down with the newcomer standing over it. Hasselborg recognized the animal from descriptions as a yeki, the very beast they were after—a brown furry carnivore about the size of a tiger, but resembling an overgrown mink with an extra pair of legs to hold up its middle.
For a few seconds, it stood watching Hasselborg and making guttural noises, as if wondering whether to drag off the dead aya or to try to dispose of this other prey, too. Then it slithered forward towards the man.
Hasselborg resisted the impulse to run, knowing that such a move would bring it on his back in a matter of seconds. He wished harder than ever for a gun. Since wishing failed to produce one, he gripped his lance in both hands and stepped towards the beast, shouting:
"Get out of here!"
The yeki advanced another step, growling more loudly. Presently Hasselborg, still shouting, had the lance point in the creature's face. As he thought of trying for an eye, the yeki reared up on its four hind legs and batted at the point with its forepaws. Hasselborg sent a jab into one paw, whereat the beast jumped back a step, roaring furiously.
Hasselborg followed it, keeping his spear ready.
How long could he keep this up? There was little chance of his killing it singlehanded…
Then the howl of the eshuna came across the downs. The hunt was flowing past behind a nearby rise. Hasselborg shouted:
"Hey! I've got him!"
This was perhaps a debatable point, and in any case he did not seem to have been heard. He screamed:
"Over here! Yoicks, tally-ho, and all that sort of thing!"
Somebody swerved over the crest of the rise, and then in no time they were all pounding towards him. The yeki began to slink off, snarling right and left. The eshuna swarmed around the yeki, howling like banshees but not closing, while their quarry roared and foamed and made little dashes at them.
Then the servants unfolded the net, and four of them, still mounted, hoisted it by the corners on poles as if it were a canopy. They dashed forward and dropped the net over the yeki, who in another second was rolled up in it, chewing and clawing at the jneshes in a frenzy of rage.
"Good work!" roared the dasht, clapping Hasselborg on the back so hard as almost to knock him down. "We'll have our game now after all. Your mount dead? Take mine. Ao, you!" he shouted at a servitor. "Give Master Kavir your aya. You, Kavir, keep the beast with my compliments, for the manful part you've played."
Hasselborg was too conscious of his bruises to worry about how the servitor should get back to Rosid. He salvaged his saddle, mounted, and rode home with the rest, acknowledging their praises with smiles but saying little. When they got back to the road, they passed a big bishtar wagon driven by men in Jam's livery, evidently to bring home the captive.
The dasht told him: "We're having an intimate supper this night; third hour after sunset. But a few friends—you know, people like Namaksari the ac-tress and Chinishk the astrologist. Come and we'll talk of that portrait, will you?"
"I thank Your Altitude," said Hasselborg.
Back in Rosid, he spent some time window shopping. Although he knew better than to load himself down with more chattels than he absolutely needed, the temptations of Batruni's unlimited expense account proved too great. He arrived back at his hotel bearing an umbrella with a curiously wrought handle, a small telescope, a map of the Gozashtando Empire, and an ugly little ivory god from some backward part of the planet. When he got home—after wasting another hour by getting lost in the crooked streets—he felt sticky and suspected himself of being stinky as well, not have had a bath since leaving Novorecife.