They loaded Hasselborg into a kind of cage on wheels and drove it across the city to the stadium. Armed men let him out and led him to a room under the tiers of seats, where they watched him silently while noises of the entertainments filtered in from outside. One said to the other:
"The crowd's in a bad mood today."
"A dull performance," said the other man: "They do say the dasht has been too much wrapped up in his love-life to put the care he should upon the events."
Then silence again. Hasselborg lit a Krishnan cigar and offered one to each of his guards, who took them with a grunt of thanks.
More waiting.
At last a man stuck his head in the door and said: "Time!"
The guards nodded to Hasselborg, one saying: "Leave your jacket here. Stand up and let us search you." After a last-minute frisk, they led him into one of the tunnels connecting the dressing rooms with the arena.
At the end of the tunnel was a heavy gate of crisscrossed iron bars. A man swung it open with a creak. Hasselborg looked back. The guards had a tight grip on their halberds in case he should get any funny ideas about bolting.
Hasselborg, seeing no alternative, stuck his thumbs into his belt and strolled out into the arena with elaborate unconcern.
The place reminded him of some of the bowls he'd played football in years before as a college undergraduate; he had played fullback. This arena was a bit too small, however, for football; more like a bull ring than a North American athletic theater. The seats pitched down at a steep angle. The floor was sunk a good twenty feet below the lowest tier of seats so that there would be no question of a mighty leap into the audience. In front of the first row of seats, guards paced a catwalk. Could he somehow get one of those halberds and do a pole vault up to the catwalk? Not likely, especially for one who, while something of an athlete in his day, had never practiced pole-vaulting.
The sky was overcast, and a dank wind whipped the pennons on the flagpoles around the upper edge of the stadium. The dasht sat in his box, wrapped in his cloak and too high up for his expression to be seen.
As the gate clanged shut behind Hasselborg, he saw a gate on the far side of the arena open and his friend the yeki issue from another tunnel.
The people in the stands gave a subdued roar. Hasselborg, facing this particular jabberwock without any vorpal sword, stood perfectly still. If Yeshram had had a bright idea, let it work now!
The yeki padded slowly forward, then stopped and looked about it. It looked at Hasselborg; it looked at the people above it in the audience. It grumbled, walked a few paces in a circle, flopped down on the sand, yawned, and closed its eyes.
Hasselborg stood still.
The audience began to make crowd noises, louder and louder. Hasselborg could catch occasional phrases, the rough Gozashtandou equivalent of "Kill dose bums!" Objects began to whizz down into the arena—a jug, a seat cushion.
Here a couple of Gozashtanduma were punching each other; there another was throwing vegetables in the direction of the dasht's box; then some more were pushing one of the guards off the catwalk. The guard landed in the sand with a jangle, got up with an agility astonishing for one burdened with full armor, and ran for the nearest exit, though the yeki merely rolled an eye at him before shutting it again. Another guard was beating a group of enraged citizens over the head with the shaft of his halberd. Other members of the audience were prying up the wooden benches and making a fire.
"Master Kavir," cried a voice over the uproar, "this way!"
Hasselborg turned, saw that the barred gate was open a crack, and walked quickly out without waiting to see how the riot developed. One of the assistant jailers shut the gate behind him.
"Come quickly, sir." He followed the man out of the warren of passages into the street.where they put him back into the cage on wheels. Thunder rumbled overhead as the conveyance rattled on its springless wheels over the cobbles back toward the jail. They were nearly there when the rain began. The driver lashed his ayas and yelled Byant-hao!"
"We did it, heh heh," said Yeshram afterward.
"How?" asked Hasselborg, who was rigging a string across his cell to hang his wet clothes on.
"Well, now, then, I suppose 'twill do no great harm to tell you, since the deed's done and if one's betrayed all are lost. 'Twas simple enough; I bribed Rrafun the beast-keeper into keeping the yeki awake all night by squirting water into its cage. Then I prevailed upon him to let it eat an entire boar unha just before the game. So, to make a long story short, 'twas far more interested in sleep, sweet sleep, than in forcing one Mikardando spy into an already overstuffed paunch. Be ye adequately equipped for blankets? I'd not have you perish of the rheum owing me half my reward. Let's hope Garmsel makes a speedy return, ere the dasht thinks to look into his pet's curious lack of appetite."
The rest of that day passed and the night that followed it, however, without word from either the soldier or the dasht. Hasselborg tried to console himself with the thought that another of these games would not be along for some days at least, until the next conjunction— Although no doubt, if sufficiently annoyed, Jam could have Hasselborg executed out of hand.
After dinner there were sounds of voices and movement in the jail. Presently Yeshram came in with Garmsel, the latter wet and worn-looking.
"You still live, Master Kavir?" said the latter. "Thank the stars! I believed it not when this knave, my friend Yeshram, said so, for 'tis notorious that of all slippery liars he's the chief and slipperiest. At least now I'll not have to worry about my death horoscope for a time."
"What's this?" asked Yeshram. "What death horoscope?"
"Just a private understanding between Garmsel and myself," said Hasselborg, who did not want the soldier's faith in the pseudo-science undermined by the jailer's skepticism. "How'd you make out?"
"I got it," said Garmsel. "The ride to Novorecife I made in record time on my good shomal, but coming back I was slowed by having to lead three great stout pack-ayas behind me with the bags of gold. 'Tis in the foyer below, and I trust there'll be no unseemly forgetting my just recompense for this deed."
"When has Yeshram forgotten a faithful friend?" said Yeshram.
"Never, the reason being you've never had one. But come; pay me my due and I'll back to barracks to dry. Fointsaq, what weather!"
When Yeshram returned to Hasselborg's cell, the prisoner said: "Since it's still raining, wouldn't this be a good night to get me out of here?"
The jailer hesitated. Hasselborg read into the hesitation a feeling that now that he had the money, it might be safer to hold Hasselborg after all rather than risk his present gain in trying to double it. Careful, Hasselborg told himself; whatever you do, don't show despair or fly into a rage.
Hasselborg said: "Think, my friend. As you've said, the dasht may do some investigating sooner or later. Something seems to have interfered with it so far, and rumor tells me he's having love-life trouble. Now, when he does come around, wouldn't you rather have me far away from here, making arrangements to send you another quarter-million, than here where the dasht can lay his red-hot pincers on me and perhaps wring the truth from me?"
"Certainly, such was my idea, too," said Yeshram readily—a little too readily* Hasselborg thought. "I but pondered how to effect this desired end of ours. Ye'll want your gear, won't ye? 'Twere not prudent to leave bits of it lying about Rosid for the agents of His Altitude to find and perhaps trace you by. What stuff have ye, and where's it stowed?"