Hasselborg gave him the information.
Yeshram said: "Clothe yourself for a speedy departure, lad, and try to snatch some sleep, for the arrangements will take some hours to perfect. By which road would ye wish to flee?"
"The road to Hershid, I think."
"Then leave all to Yeshram. We'll have you out as neat as the Gavehon thief spirited away King Sab-zavarr's daughter. And if ye get clean away, when ye're feeling that wonderful relief that'll be yours, think whether Yeshram mayhap deserves not a mite extra for his trouble, heh heh. May the stars guide you."
Next to Earthmen, perhaps the most mercenary race in the galaxy, thought Hasselborg. He found that his physical organism perversely refused to sleep, however. He tossed on his bunk, paced the floor, and tossed some more. His sleeping pills were still in his room at the inn and so out of reach. Over half this interminable night must have gone past when to his delight he at last found himself getting sleepy. He threw himself down on the bed, closed his eyes, and instantly was aroused by the opening of his cell.
"Come," said a figure holding a candle.
Hasselborg jumped up, whipped his cloak around him, and strode out the door. As he got closer to the figure, he saw that it was masked and that it held a cocked crossbow in one hand. As he brushed past, he was sure that he recognized the eyes of one of the assistant jailers. The size and voice were right, too. However, no time for that now.
Below, he found another masked man standing guard with a crossbow over the jailer and his remaining assistant, both thoroughly bound and gagged. Yeshram caught Hasselborg's eye and wiggled his antennae in the Krishnan equivalent of a wink. Then out they went into the rain, where a man held three saddled ayas.
Hasselborg's companions stopped to uncock their bows and remove their masks. They were two of the assistant jailers, sure enough. All three, without a word, mounted and set off at a canter for the east gate.
Hasselborg, practically blind in the rain and darkness, hung on to his saddle, expecting every minute to be thrown out or to have his mount skid and fall on the wet stones. He concentrated so hard on keeping his seat that he did not see his companions pull up at the gate. When his own mount stopped, too, he almost did take a header.
One of his deliverers was shouting at a spearman: "Fool, where is he? Who? Why, the prisoner who escaped from the jail! He came through here! If ye caught him not, that means he's out of Rosid and away! Stand aside, idiots!"
The gate swung open. Hasselborg's escort spurred their animals to a furious run, although how they could see where they were going mystified the investigator. He bounced along behind them as best he could, barely able to make them out in the murk. A
glob of soft mud thrown up by one of their hoofs smote him in the face, spreading over his features and for a few minutes cutting him off entirely from the world. By the time he could see again, they were just visible ahead, and the, lanterns of the city gate could no longer be seen behind.
After a few minutes more of this torture, one of them held up an arm and they slowed. Before he knew it, Hasselborg came upon his buggy, parked on the edge of the road. A man was holding the head of his new aya, which was already hitched up.
"Here ye are, Master Kavir," said a voice in the dark. "Ye'll find your gear in the back of the carriage; we packed it as best we could. Waste no time on the way, and show no lights, for a pursuit might be sent after you. May the stars watch over you!"
"Good night, chums," said Hasselborg, handing over the reins of the aya he had ridden to the man who was holding the carriage. The man swung into the saddle, and all three splashed off into the dark.
Hasselborg got into the buggy, gathered up reins and whip, released the brake, and started off at the fastest pace he could manage without blundering off the road—a slow walk.
VII.
When the sky began to lighten, Hasselborg had been alternately dozing and then waking up just in time to stop himself from falling out of the vehicle. He had discovered one of the very few advantages that an animal-drawn vehicle has over an automobile—that the animal can be trusted not to run off the road the second the driver takes his mind off his business.
The rain had stopped, although the sky was still overcast. Hasselborg yawned, stretched, and felt monstrously hungry. No, his friends of the Rosid jail, who had thought of so much else, had not thought to provision the buggy with food. Moreover, no villages were in sight. Thank the pantheon they'd packed his pills and disinfectants, without which he felt himself but half a man!
He whipped his new aya, Avvau by name, to a brisk trot and for some hours rolled steadily over the flat plain. Finally a ranchhouse provided him with a meal. He bought some extra food to take with him, drove on a few miles, and pulled up where the road dipped down to a ford across a shallow stream. He forced the aya to draw the buggy downstream around the first bend, where the walls of the gully hid him and his vehicle from the view of the road. There he caught an uneasy nap in the carriage before going on.
Just before sunset, the clouds began to break. The road was now bending and weaving around the end of a range of rugged hills: the Kodum Hills if he re-membered his map. Here were trees—real trees, even if they did look like overgrown asparagus-ferns with green trunks and rust-red fronds.
The sunset grew more gorgeous by the minute, the undersides of the clouds displaying every hue from purple to gold, and emerald sky showing between. Hasselborg thought: If I'm supposed to be an artist, maybe I should learn to act like one. What would an artist do in a case like this? Why, stop the buggy on the top of a rise and make a color sketch of the sunset, to be turned into a complete painting at leisure.
The aya was trotting toward just such a rise—a long spur that projected out from the dark Kodum Hills into the flat plain. The animal slowed to a walk as it breasted the slope, while Hasselborg fussed with his gear to extract his painting equipment. Just short of the crest, he pulled on the reins and set the brake. The aya began munching moss as Hasselborg got out and dragged his easel up to the top of the rise. As his head came above the crest, so that he could see over the spur into the plain beyond, he stopped short, all thoughts of surpassing Claude Monet driven from his head.
There on the plain ahead, a dozen men on ayas and shomals were attacking a group of vehicles. The attackers were riding up one side and down the other shooting arrows, while several men in the convoy shot back. The first vehicle had been a great bishtar cart, but the bishtar, perhaps stung by an arrow, had demolished the cart with kicks and gone trumpeting off across the plain.
Hasselborg dropped his easel and snatched out the little telescope he had bought in Rosid. With that he could make out details—one of the defenders lying on the wagons; another lighting a Krishnan firework resembling a Roman candle. (Hasselborg knew that the Krishnan pyrotechnic was not gunpowder, but the collected spores of some plant, which, while it did not explode, made a fine sizzle and flare when ignited.) The firework spat several balls of flame, whereupon the movement of the attackers became irregular. One shomal, perhaps singed by a fireball, broke away and ran across the plain towards Hasselborg, who could see its rider kicking and hauling in a vain effort to turn it back.
Shifting his telescope back to the convoy, Hasselborg saw a female Krishnan in the last carriage. Though she was too far to recognize in the fading light, he could see that she wore clothes of good cut and quality. She was also of an attractive size and shape and seemed to be shouting something to somebody up forward.
Although Victor Hasselborg was a seasoned and self-controlled man, who seldom let himself be carried away by emotion, this time his adrenal glands took the bit in their teeth and ran away with him. Even as he told himself sternly that he ought to hide until the fracas was over and then continue quietly to Hershid, he ran back to the carriage, unhitched the aya—he was getting fairly expert with harness—got his saddle out of the buggy, took off the animal's harness, saddled and bridled the beast, buckled on his sword, mounted, spurred the aya, and headed for the fray as fast as the animal's six legs would carry him, as if he were the legendary Krishnan hero Qarar out to slay a slither of dragons.