"I understand the practicality," I assured him, "but I don't glory in it. A fair combat, like the one last night with Rohbar, is like a game—grim, but like a game. Not so these strategems and pitfalls, which are only an unpleasant job to be done."
"The strategems need not affect Yandro," stated Gederr. "As for a simple single combat, I say that will be arranged. We broadcast, Yandro will remember, a warning and a challenge. The enemy has sent back a message that they are making ready a fighter to face anyone we can furnish."
"I see," said I. "Well, they speak my language." Both Doriza and Gederr started violently, and stared. "Probably they are simple of battle-viewpoint, like me. They'll blunder easily into your trap." I said those last two words to assure Gederr that I considered the whole deception his. "Now, when is all this to happen?"
"Perhaps within twenty hours. Perhaps within thirty."
"I feel like a puppet," I said. "Like the figurehead poor Rohbar called me. Perhaps I am, and perhaps it is as well, because I'm not in tune with your strategy. Understand me, I see its need and its practicability. That is all I see, though."
"Will Yandro walk forth?" asked Doriza. "There are troops waiting to be reviewed."
We went into a corridor, and entered one of the purring vehicles. It took us away—toward the fighting sector, I judged—and I dismounted in a great low stretch of subterranean cavern. This was lighted by great glowing bulbs hung to the ceiling, and men were drawn up in triple rows, armed and at attention. An officer was speaking to them, and toward one side stood the two unarmed men, under guard.
"Not yet, mighty Yandro," counselled Doriza beside me. "There is—a ceremony."
I could hear the officer speaking, though not clearly:
"In this moment, the eve of certain triumph over the enemy, two men see fit to circulate lies that calculate to dismay and destroy our plans. For them is only one fate, as judged by the Council. Attention to that fate!"