"If you plan to carry us out into the country and murder us there, you may as well slay us now. Our men will avenge us."
"No, sire, I won't kill you, on my word of honor. I'll merely drop you off a few regakit from the city, to make your way back afoot. But if, while we still have you, we see a pursuit coming after us, then you shall die. Tell them so... Ready, Alicia?"
"Ready, Percy."
"Off we go!" Mjipa put his aya into motion. At the forced command of the Heshvavu, the gate of the palace wall swung open; so did the Kalwm Gate of Mejvorosh. The fugitives lashed their mounts to a gallop and disappeared up the northern road in a whirlwind of dust.
"Time to breathe these animals," said Mjipa, dropping to a walk. "We must be at least ten hoda from Mejvorosh. It'll take Khorosh hours to walk back, unless someone gives him a lift."
"You 're not going to let the little louse go?" cried Alicia. "Certainly. That's what I agreed to."
"You're kidding!"
"No, I'm serious."
"But he won't appreciate your mercy!"
"I know, but I promised."
"Oh, you idiot! He'll send his whole army after us, to hunt us down. We'll never get out of Zhamanak alive!"
"Calm down, young woman. We shall have to stop for a bit of sleep some time. We can't have him with us then; if we both dozed off at the same time, we might wake up with our throats cut. What's your idea?"
"To keep him as long as we can, then kill him."
"What a bloodthirsty little lady! Sorry, but I gave him my word of honor."
"Oh, you silly anachronism! It's our lives you're. risking, with your ridiculous ideas of honor! And just when we've almost escaped. You're being childish and stupid!"
"You sound like my wife. Let me tell you, my popsy, that if it hadn't been for my ridiculous ideas of honor, I'd never have come to Zhamanak in the first place."
Mjipa grasped the Heshvavu's slim waist in both hands, hoisted the Krishnan, and dropped him into the dirt. "Farewell, Your Awesomeness—no you shan't, Alicia!"
The girl was wearing Mjipa's baldric, the strap passing between her bare breasts. When she started to pull out the sword, Mjipa seized her arm. Then he pulled the purple baldric off over her head and put it on himself. "Come along, now!"
Not understanding English, the Heshvavu backed away in alarm. When he saw that he was not to be sworded to death after all and the ayas were moving off, he turned his back and began the long hike back to his capital.
Mjipa and his companion had already passed beyond the cultivated lands around the city and entered the tropical forest, with its boles of crimson and gold and emerald and purple. For another hour they alternately walked, trotted, and cantered, as a long-distance rider does who wishes to save his mount from collapse. Then Mjipa halted his aya, turning his head and laying a finger to his lips.
"Somebody's following at a gallop," he said. "I didn't think they could organize a pursuit so soon ..."
"It's your own stupid fault, for not killing that tyrant when you had the chance. You and your scruples!"
"Not at all. They'd have set out from Mejvorosh soon after we left, whether or not we let Khorosh go. Now shut up! I'm tired of your carping. Gallop!"
They ran on, while Roqir neared the horizon and the shadows deepened. When Mjipa pulled up again, he said: "I still hear the hoofbeats. Sounds like a single rider. Best thing is to turn into the trees and let him go past."
They found a dense grove and guided the animals in among the red and green and violet trunks, whose colors were fading with the end of the day. The hoofbeats waxed in volume. Presently an aya appeared down the road, running hard, with the rider hunched over the saddle. As the rider raced past, Mjipa uttered a stentorian yelclass="underline"
"Minyev! Ho there, Minyev!"
The rider drew rein uproad and stood his aya, whose head hung and whose sides heaved. Mjipa trotted out from the trees, exclaiming: "By the nose of Tyazan, what in the fifty-nine hells are you doing here? Alicia, this is my factotum, Minyev of Kalwm City. Minyev, this is she of whom I told you, Mistress Dyckman. Now tell me what you do here. I thought you would all have gone back to Kalwm."
Minyev said: "My lord, I sent the others back, with pay and aliment for the journey. But I abode, hoping ye would somehow contrive your escape; and behold! so ye did. Mejvorosh buzzed with the news at once; so I saddled up and set out in pursuit, ere they arrested me as a fautor of your treason against the Heshvavu."
"But why? Why did you stick?"
"I was fain to toil for you further. 'Tis plain as Phaighost's whiskers that Terrans will play a growing part in my world's future. So it behooves a man of ambition to know them and their ways. An ye'll have me, I'll swink for you all the way back to Novorecife. Besides, alien though ye be, ye are a wight of punctilious honor, so one ever knows where one stands with you. Be all Terrans like unto you?"
Mjipa sighed. "I fear we have the same proportion of scoundrels and lack wits as you. But we must move on, lest Khorosh's searchers come up to us." He glanced sidelong at Alicia. "See? My silly scruples do pay off sometimes. Minyev, did you pass the Heshvavu on the road, walking back to Mejvorosh?"
"Now that ye speak thereof, my lord, I did behold one little pajock, besmeared with dust, who looked somehow familiar. But I galloped on without pause to scrutinize the lob."
They rode most of the night, until the exhausted mounts refused to move at more than a walk. At length the riders, equally fatigued, drew off and halted to make camp. Alicia said:
"Help me down, please, Percy. I'm so stiff I can't move."
"I'm not much better off myself," said Mjipa, painfully lowering himself from his saddle. "We shall have a pair of sore bums tomorrow."
He helped Alicia down. Both opened their bags and took out the clothes they had been wearing when they were stripped. "After what's happened," said Alicia, "I won't ever take clothes seriously again."
As he wolfed his traveler's rations, Mjipa mused: "Another day should bring us to the Mutabwcian border. I don't know if Ainkhist's men have orders to stop you; he can't have heard of our escape yet. But I don't like unnecessary chances. Damn, if I'd brought along a Krishnan disguise kit, I could make a Krishnan out of you. But there was no point in my trying to pass as a native, so I left the stuff in Novo."
"Why not pass me off as a Terran boy?" said Alicia.
"We must hide your bumps, old girl, better than that little shirt does. And if they're on watch for someone with golden hair, they might take a second look at you. There are no blond Krishnans."
"Not quite true. The last time I was in Majbur, the barbers were advertising blond dye jobs in imitation of Terrans like me. It's a new fad. But we'll wrap my hair in a scarf, like a turban." She searched her bag and brought out a length of translucent polyester with a striking pattern of blue and emerald and gold. "Here; it's almost the last decent thing I have that I brought from Earth."
The following morning, before dawn, Alicia called in a small voice: "Percy! Help me up; I can't move my legs."
"Same here," grumbled Mjipa, hobbling over to where she lay on her blanket. "I'm stiff, too, though I've been riding more recently than you. We should have asked Khorosh to give us daily rides to keep in practice—as if he would have let us."
When it came time to mount, the girl could not bend her leg enough to put a foot in the stirrup. Mjipa and Minyev had to boost her into the saddle, bringing a yelp of pain.
"A little riding will take the stiffness out," said Mjipa, wincing as he painfully swung into his own saddle. "It's the best kind of massage for what you've got."
They did not reach the border the next day. Fatigued from long hours in the saddle and little sleep, they made camp in the late afternoon, well away from the road. Alicia went to work with her sewing kit on the remnants of the shirt from which she had been stripped in Mejvorosh, mending tears and replacing buttons.