The Queen of Zamba

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.

The robber whose shomal had run away with him had finally got his animal under control and turned it back toward the convoy. Therefore he did not see Hasselborg until the latter was almost upon him, when the sound of hoofs behind him made him turn. He was just reaching for an arrow when Hasselborg took him in the ribs with his sword from behind. Not quite sporting, thought Hasselborg, but this is no time for chivalry. The blade went in clear to the hilt. Unfortunately the aya carried Hasselborg past so fast that the handle was wrenched out of his hand before he had time to withdraw the blade from his victim's body.

And there he was, riding full-tilt and weaponless towards the convoy. Resistance had died down. One man was tearing off across the plain with a couple of robbers after him, while another fenced with three more from aya back. The other robbers were busy with the remaining people of the convoy, binding those who had fallen to their knees and subduing those who had not. The woman was still standing in the rearmost vehicle, as if waiting for the first robber who felt so-minded to ride by and scoop her up.

Hasselborg headed for her, calling: "I'll try to get you away!" As he came nearer he saw that she was young and beautiful, with the light-blue hair of the western races.

She hesitated as he held out an arm, then let herself be lifted down onto the back of the aya behind Hasselborg. He spun his mount and headed back the way he had come as a chorus of shouts told him that the robbers did not intend to let this act go unnoticed.

While Hasselborg wondered how to get out of the predicament into which his impulse had plunged him, his aya carried him past the robber he had run through. This Krishnan had fallen off his shomal and was crawling on all fours with the hilt of the sword sticking out of his back. Hasselborg, feeling that he was likely to need a whole arsenal of weapons in the next few minutes, reached down and retrieved his sword. I ought to have a movie film of that stunt, he thought; anybody'd think I planned it that way.

"Here comes one," said the woman. Hasselborg looked around to see another robber riding hard at him.

He said: "Hold on!" and put his mount into a sharp curve, leaning inward as he did so. These six-legged creatures could certainly turn on a dime, he thought. The robber pulled up a little, as if surprised to see a supposedly unarmed man suddenly whirl and charge him with a sword.

As Hasselborg went by, too excited to remember to thrust, he aimed an overhead cut at the robber's head. Too late he realized that he'd probably break his blade on the man's iron hat. But Da'vi, the Krishnan goddess of luck, was still with him, for the blow missed by just enough to shear off an ear and come down between neck and shoulder. The man dropped his mace with a howl.

"You'd better hurry," said the girl. A glance showed that at least three other bandits were riding toward them.

Hasselborg turned again and resumed his flight, wishing he had some shrewd plan of escape all figured out, instead of being in a kind of exalted confusion and anxiety. Still, if he could make the hills before they caught him, he would have an advantage on rough ground over those on the long-legged shomals and might give them the slip in the darkness.

Hasselborg's aya loped up the slope of the rise. A glance back showed that the pursuers were gaining. Hasselborg's beast was slowed by its double load, even though it was one of the dasht's big hunting breed. Something went past with a faint whistling screech. Some flying creature of the night? No; as the sound was repeated, Hasselborg realized that they were shooting arrows at him. He pulled Awau off the road and headed cross-country up into the wooded crest of the ridge; no use leading them right to his carriage. Another arrow clattered among the branches.

"Are they gaining?" he said.

"I—I think not."

"Hold on tight."

Hasselborg's own heart was in his mouth as the animal leaped fallen logs, dropped out from under him as it took a dip, and swerved to avoid trees. He clamped the beast's barrel with his knees, leaned right and left, and ducked branches that were upon him almost before he could see them. He thanked Providence that the hunt and the flight from Rosid had given him at least a little practice at rough riding. The aya stumbled a couple of times, and Hasselborg blessed its six legs as it recovered each time without dropping its riders.

A crash from behind and a volley of shrill curses. "One of the shomals fell," said the girl.

"Good. Hope the rider broke his fertilizing neck. If it gets dark enough—"

They must have reached the base of the spur, where the land rose and fell irregularly in all directions. Hasselborg pulled to the right down a shallow draw. The animal crashed through a thicket that tore at its riders' legs; then up—down—left—right— The aya almost spilled them as it ran head-on into a sapling in the darkness. To his horror, Hasselborg felt his saddle, put on in such haste, beginning to slip out of place.

"I think we've escaped them," said the girl.

Hasselborg halted the aya and listened for sounds of pursuit over the heavy breathing of the animal. A distant crashing and the sound of voices came faintly, but after several minutes the noise seemed to be dying away altogether.

"Hasselborg dismounted stiffly and helped the girl down, saying: "Haven't I met you somewhere?"

"How know I? Who are you, that goes about rescuing damsels in distress?"

"I'm Kavir bad-Ma'lum, the painter," he said, adjusting the girths. He seemed to have got half the straps buckled together wrong.

"So? I heard of you at the court of the dasht."

"I know where I saw you! Somebody pointed you out to me at the court as Fouri bab-Something."

"I'm Vazid's daughter."

"That's right, bab-Vazid. And you're somebody's niece, aren't you?"

"You must mean my uncle Haste. Haste bad-Labbade. You know, the high priest."

"Sure." He wasn't, but no matter. Trot out the courtly manner. "I'm glad I was of service to Your Ladyship, though I'd rather we'd met under less strenuous circumstances. Were you on your way home from Rosid?"

"Yes; I but came thither to visit my friend the Lady Qei, and since the dasht made himself unpleasant, I thought it time to go home to uncle. Charrasp the merchant had collected a group to take the new tabid crop to Hershid before the price dropped, and some people of quality had elected to go with him for safety. So, thought I, why not go at once? I hope no ill came to my man and my maid, who were with me. What do we now?"

"Try to find our way back to the road, I suppose."

"What then?"

"If my buggy's still there, we'll hitch it up and ride into Hershid in it. Otherwise we shall have to ride pillion all the way."

"Whither lies the road?"

"Maybe the stars know, but I don't." He listened, hearing nothing but the breathing of three pairs of lungs. While one of the three moons was up, the sky was still partly cloudy, so that the moonlight came through in fitful beams only.

"Seems to me," he mused, "that we came down this little valley after running along that ridge to the left—"

He started up the draw, leading Fouri with one hand and the aya with the other. He proceeded cautiously, watching for obstacles and listening for robbers. He led them along the ridge he thought they had come by, then along another branching off from it—and realized that the terrain was quite unfamiliar.