Asimov's Choice & De Camp, L Sprague The Queen of Zamba

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Other characters ran about afoot in red suits, some struggling with a pack of six-legged
eshuna the size of large dogs but much uglier. Somebody pressed a mug of kvad upon
Hasselborg, who downed half of it before he had to stop to keep from gagging. The
dasht, trotting past, shouted:
"I'll watch you, master painter! If you play not the man, I can always feed you to the
yeki, ha ha ha!"
Hasselborg smiled dutifully. A group of servitors were wrestling with a great net and a
set of poles that went with it; another pair was lugging out a rack in which were stuck a
couple of dozen long lances. (They must import timber for their bows and spears,
thought Hasselborg; this country seems to have few decent trees.) As the workmen set
up the rack in front of the lodge, the hunters began guiding their mounts past it to pick
out lances. As Hasselborg snatched his, he heard the dasht shouting behind him:
". . . 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
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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: I 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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