C4 IV

~ ACCORDING TO THE FICTION TAPES, the colonized worlds of the galaxy vary wildly from each other. In cold and unromantic fact, it isn’t so. Space travel is too cheap and sol-type solar systems too numerous to justify the settlement of hostile worlds. There’s no point in trying to live where one has to put on special equipment every time he goes outdoors. There’s no reason to settle on a world where one can’t grow the kind of vegetation one’s ancestors adapted themselves to some tens of thousands of generations ago. It simply doesn’t make sense!

So the inhabited worlds of the galaxy are farther apart than they could be, perhaps, and much more alike than is necessary. But the human race has a predilection for gravity fields not too far from 980cm-sec accellerative force. We humans were designed for something like that. We prefer foodstuffs containing familiar amino compounds. Our metabolism was designed around them. And since our geneticists have learned how to put aggressiveness into the genes of terrestrial-origin plants—why nowadays they briskly overwhelm the native flora wherever they are introduced. And it’s rational to let it happen. If people are to thrive and multiply on new worlds as they are colonized, it’s more convenient to modify the worlds to fit the colonists than the colonists to fit the worlds.

Therefore Bron Hoddan encountered no remarkable features in the landscape of Darth as he rode through the deepening night. There was grass, which was not luxuriant. There were bushes, which were not unduly lush. There were trees, and birds, and various other commonplace living things whose forebears had been dumped on Darth some centuries before. The ecological system had worked itself out strictly by hit-or-miss, but the result was not unfamiliar. Save for the star-pattern overhead, Hoddan could have believed himself on some parts of Zan, or some parts of Walden, or very probably somewhere or other on Lohala or Kent or Famagusta or any other occupied world between the Rims.

There was, though, the star-pattern. Hoddan tried to organize it in his mind. He knew where the sun had set, which would be west. He asked the latitude of the Darthian spaceport. Thal did not know it. He asked about major geographical features—seas and continents and so on. Thal had no ideas on the subject.

Hoddan fumed. He hadn’t worried about such things on Walden. Of course, on Walden he’d had one friend, Derec, and believed he had a sweetheart, Nedda. There he was lonely and schemed to acquire the admiration of others. He ignored the sky. Here on Darth he had no friends, but there were a number of local citizens now doubtless recovered from stun-pistol bolts and yearning to carve him up with large knives. He did not feel lonely, but the instinct to know where he was, was again in operation.

The ground was rocky and far from level. After two hours of riding on a small and wiry horse with no built-in springs, Hoddan hurt in a great many places he’d never known he owned. He and Thal rode in an indeterminate direction with an irregular scarp of low mountains silhouetted against the unfamiliar stars. A vagrant night-wind blew. Thal had said it was a three-hour ride to Don Loris’ castle. After something over two of them, he said meditatively:

“I think that if you wish to give me a present I will take it and not make a gift in return. You could give me,” he added helpfully, “your share of the plunder from our victims.”

“Why?” demanded Hoddan. “Why should I give you a present?”

“If I accepted it,” explained Thal, “and made no gift in return, I would become your retainer. Then it would be my obligation as a Darthian gentleman to ride beside you, advise, counsel, and fight in your defense, and generally to uphold your dignity.”

Hoddan suspected himself of blisters in places that had no dignity about them. He said suspiciously:

“How about Don Loris? Aren’t you his retainer?”

“Between the two of us,” said Thal, “he’s stingy. His presents are not as lavish as they could be. I can make him a return-present of part of the money we won in combat. That frees me of duty to him. Then I could accept the balance of the money from you, and become a retainer of yours.”

“Oh,” said Hoddan.

“You need a retainer badly,” said Thal. “You do not know the customs here. For example, there is enmity between Don Loris and the young Lord Ghek. If the young Lord Ghek is as enterprising as he should be, some of his retainers should be lying in wait to cut our throats as we approach Don Loris’ stronghold.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Hoddan grimly. But Thal seemed undisturbed. “This system of gifts and presents sounds complicated. Why doesn’t Don Loris simply give you so much a year, or week, or whatnot?”

Thal made a shocked sound.

“That would be pay! A Darthian gentleman does not serve for pay! To offer it would be insult!” Then he said, “Listen!”

He reined in. Hoddan clumsily followed his example. After a moment or two Thal clucked to his horse and started off again.

“It was nothing,” he said regretfully. “I hoped we were riding into an ambush.”

Hoddan grunted. It could be that he was being told a tall tale. But back at the spaceport, the men who came after him waving large knives had seemed sincere enough.

“Why should we be ambushed?” he asked. “And why do you hope for it?”

“Your weapons would destroy our enemies,” said Thal placidly, “and the pickings would be good.” He added: “We should be ambushed because the Lady Fani refused to marry the Lord Ghek. She is Don Loris’ daughter, and to refuse to marry a man is naturally a deadly insult. So he should ravage Don Loris’ lands at every opportunity until he gets a chance to carry off the Lady Fani and marry her by force. That is the only way the insult can be wiped out.”

“I see,” said Hoddan ironically.

He didn’t. The two horses topped a rise, and far in the distance there was a yellow light, with a mist above it as of illuminated smoke.

“That is Don Loris’ stronghold,” said Thal. He sighed. “It looks like we may not be ambushed.”

They weren’t. It was very dark where the horses forged ahead through brushwood. As they moved onward, the single light became two. They were great bonfires burning in iron cages some forty feet up in the air. Those cages projected from the battlements of a massive, cut-stone wall. There was no light anywhere else underneath the stars.

Thal rode almost underneath the cressets and shouted upward. A voice answered. Presently a gate clanked open and a black, cavelike opening appeared behind it. Thal rode grandly in, and Hoddan followed. Now that the ride seemed over, he let himself realize where he ached from the unaccustomed exercise. Everywhere. He also guessed at the area of his skin first rubbed to blisters and then to the discomfort of raw flesh underneath.

The gate clanked shut. Torches waved overhead. Hoddan found that he and Thal had ridden into a very tiny courtyard. Twenty feet above them, an inner battlemented wall offered excellent opportunities for the inhabitants of the castle to throw things down at visitors who after admission turned out to be undesired.

Thal shouted further identifications, including a boastful and entirely untruthful declaration that he and Hoddan, together, had slaughtered twenty men in one place and thirty in another, and left them lying in their gore.

The voices that replied sounded derisive. Somebody came down a rope and fastened the gate from the inside. With an extreme amount of creaking, an inner gate swung wide. Men came out of it and took the horses. Hoddan dismounted, and it seemed to him that he creaked as loudly as the gate. Thal swaggered, displaying coins he had picked from the pockets of the men the stun-pistols had disabled. He said splendidly to Hoddan:

“I go to announce your coming to Don Loris. These are his retainers. They will give you to drink.” He added amiably, “If you were given food, it would be disgraceful to cut your throat.”

He disappeared. Hoddan carried his ship bag and followed a man in a dirty pink shirt to a stone-walled room containing a table and a chair. He sat down, relieved to have a rest for his back. The man in the pink shirt brought him a flagon of wine. He disappeared again.

Hoddan drank sour wine and brooded. He was very hungry and very tired, and it seemed to him that he had been disillusioned in a new dimension. Morbidly, he remembered a frequently given lecture from his grandfather on Zan.

“It’s no use!” it was the custom of his grandfather to say. “There’s not a bit o’ use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot’s ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin’, and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck’s wasted on him because it ain’t reasonable and he don’t believe in it when it happens! It’s taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin’ me! No, sir! I hope none o’ my descendants inherit my brains! I pity ‘em if they do!”

Hoddan had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he’d found himself robbed, had resented it, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his host not to cut his throat. And he’d gotten into this by himself! He’d chosen it! He’d practically asked for it!

He began strongly to share his grandfather’s disillusioned view of brains.

After a long time the door of the cell opened. Thal was back, chastened.

“Don Loris wants to talk to you,” he said in a subdued voice. “He’s not pleased.”

Hoddan took another gulp of the wine. He picked up his ship bag and limped to the door. He decided painfully that he was limping on the wrong leg. He tried the other. No improvement. He really needed to limp on both.

He followed a singularly silent Thal through a long stone corridor and up stone steps until they came to a monstrous hall with torches in holders on the side walls. It was barbarically hung with banners, but it was not exactly a cheery place. At the far end logs burned in a great fireplace.

Don Loris sat in a carved chair beside it; wizened and white-bearded, in a fur-trimmed velvet robe, with a peevish expression on his face.

“My chieftain,” said Thal subduedly, “here is the engineer from Walden.”

Hoddan scowled at Don Loris, whose expression of peevishness did not lighten. He did regard Hoddan with a flicker of interest, however. A stranger who unfeignedly scowls at a feudal lord with no superior and many inferiors is anyhow a novelty.

“Thal tells me,” said Don Loris fretfully, “that you and he, together, slaughtered some dozens of the retainers of my neighbors today. I consider it unfortunate. They may ask me to have the two of you hanged, and it would be impolite to refuse.”

Hoddan said truculently:

“I considered it impolite for your neighbors’ retainers to march toward me waving large knives and announcing what they intended to do to my inwards with them!”

“Yes,” agreed Don Loris impatiently. “I concede that point. It is natural enough to act hastily at such times. But still— How many did you kill?”

“None,” said Hoddan curtly. “I shot them with stun-pistols I’d just charged in the control room of the landing grid.”

Don Loris sat up straight.

“Stun-pistols?” he demanded sharply. “You used stun-pistols on Darth?”

“Naturally on Darth,” said Hoddan with some tartness. “I was here! But nobody was killed. One or two may be slightly blistered. All of them had their pockets picked by Thal. I understand that is a local custom. There’s nothing to worry about.”

But Don Loris stared at him, aghast.

“But this is deplorable!” he protested. “Stun-pistols used here? It is the one thing I would have given strict orders to avoid! My neighbors will talk about it. Some of them may even think about it! You could have used any other weapon, but of all things why did you have to use a stun-pistol?”

“Because I had one,” said Hoddan briefly.

“Horrible!” said Don Loris peevishly. “The worst thing you could possibly have done! I have to disown you. Unmistakably! You’ll have to disappear at once. We’ll blame it on Ghek’s retainers.”

Hoddan said:

“Disappear? Me?”

“Vanish,” said Don Loris. “I suppose there’s no real necessity to cut your throat, but you plainly have to disappear, though it would have been much more discreet if you’d simply gotten killed.”

“I was indiscreet to survive?” demanded Hoddan bristling.

“Extremely so!” snapped Don Loris. “Here I had you come all the way from Walden to help arrange a delicate matter, and before you’d traveled even the few miles to my castle—within minutes of landing on Darth!—you spoiled everything! I am a reasonable man, but there are the facts! You used stun-pistols, so you have to disappear. I think it generous for me to say only until people on Darth forget that such things exist. But the two of you ... oh, for a year or so ... there are some fairly cozy dungeons—”

Hoddan seethed suddenly. He’d tried to do something brilliant on Walden, and had been framed for jail for life. He’d defended his life and property on Darth, and nearly the same thing popped up as a prospect. Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.

But there was an interruption. A clanking of arms sounded somewhere nearby. Men with long, gruesome, glittering spears came through a doorway. They stood aside. A girl entered the great hall. More spearmen followed her. They stopped by the door. The girl came across the hall.

She was a pretty girl, but Hoddan hardly noticed the fact. With so many other things on his mind, he had no time for girls.

Thal, behind him, said in a quivering voice:

“My Lady Fani, I beg you to plead with your father for his most faithful retainer!”

The girl looked surprisedly at him. Her eyes fell on Hoddan. She looked interested. Hoddan, at that moment, was very nearly as disgusted and as indignant as a man could be. He did not look romantically at her—which to the Lady Fani, daughter of that Don Loris who was prince of this and baron of that and so on, was news. He did not look at her at all. He ground his teeth.

“Don’t try to wheedle me, Fani!” snapped Don Loris. “I am a reasonable man, but I indulge you too much—even to allowing you to refuse that young imbecile Ghek, with no end of inconvenience as a result. But I will not have you question my decision about Thal and this Hoddan person!”

The girl said pleasantly:

“Of course not, Father. But what have they done?”

“The two of them,” snapped Don Loris again, “fought twenty men today and defeated all of them! Thal plundered them. Then thirty other men, mounted, tried to avenge the first and they defeated them also! Thal plundered eighteen. And all this was permissible, if unlikely. But they did it with stun-pistols! Everybody within news range will talk of it! They’ll know that this Hoddan came to Darth to see me! They’ll suspect that I imported new weapons for political purposes! They’ll guess at the prettiest scheme I’ve had these twenty years!”

The girl stood still. A spearman leaned his weapon against the wall, raced across the hall, shifted a chair to a convenient position for the Lady Fani to sit on it, and raced back to his fellows. She sat down.

“But did they really defeat so many?” she asked, marveling. “That’s wonderful! And Thal was undoubtedly fighting in defense of someone you’d told him to protect, as a loyal retainer should do. Wasn’t he?”

“I wish,” fumed her father, “that you would not throw in irrelevances! I sent him to bring this Hoddan here this afternoon, not to massacre my neighbors’ retainers—or rather, not to not massacre them. A little blood-letting would have done no harm, but stun-pistols—”

“He was protecting somebody he was told to protect,” said Fani. “And this other man, this—”

“Hoddan. Bron Hoddan,” said her father irritably. “Yes. He was protecting himself! Doubtless he thought he did me a service in doing that! But if he’d only let himself get killed quietly the whole affair would be simplified!”

The Lady Fani said with quiet dignity:

“By the same reasoning, Father, it would simplify things greatly if I let the Lord Ghek kidnap me.”

“It’s not the same thing at all—”

“At least,” said Fani, “I wouldn’t have a pack of spearmen following me about like puppies everywhere I go!”

“It’s not the same—”

“Their breaths smelling of wine except when they smell of beer, and they breathe very noisily and—”

“It’s not—”

“And it’s especially unreasonable,” said the Lady Fani with even greater dignity, “when you could put Thal and this—Hoddan person on duty to guard me instead. If they can fight twenty and thirty men at once, all by themselves, it doesn’t seem to me that you think much of my safety when you want to lock them up somewhere instead of using them to keep your daughter safe from that particularly horrible Ghek!”

Don Loris swore in a cracked voice. Then he said:

“To end the argument I’ll think it over. Until tomorrow. Now go away!”

Fani, beaming, rose and kissed him on the forehead. He squirmed. She turned to leave, and beckoned casually for Thal and Hoddan to follow her.

“My chieftain,” said Thal tremulously, “do we depart, too?”

“Yes!” rasped Don Loris. “Get out of my sight!”

Thal moved with agility in the wake of the Lady Fani. Hoddan picked up his bag and followed. This, he considered darkly, was in the nature of a reprieve only. And if those three spaceships overhead did come from Walden—but why three?

The Lady Fani went out the door she’d entered by. Some of the spearmen went ahead, and others closed in behind her. Hoddan followed. There were stone steps leading upward. They were steep and uneven and interminable. Hoddan climbed on aching legs for what seemed ages.

Stars appeared. The leading spearmen stepped out on a flagstoned level area. When Hoddan got there he saw that they had arrived at the battlements of a high part of the castle wall. Starlight showed a rambling wall of circumvallation, with peaked roofs inside it. He could look down into a courtyard where a fire burned and several men busily did things beside it. But there were no other lights. Beyond the castle wall the ground stretched away toward a nearby range of rugged low mountains. It was vaguely splotched with different degrees of darkness, where fields and pastures and woodland copses stood.

“Here’s a bench,” said Fani cheerfully, “and you can sit down beside me and explain things. What’s your name, again, and where did you come from?”

“I’m Bron Hoddan,” said Hoddan. He found himself scowling. “I come from Zan, where everybody is a space pirate. My grandfather heads the most notorious of the pirate gangs.”

“Wonderful!” said Fani, admiringly. “I knew you couldn’t be just an ordinary person and fight like my father said you did today!”

Thal cleared his throat.

“Lady Fani—”

“Hush!” said Fani. “You’re a nice old fuddy-duddy that father sent to the spaceport because he figured you’d be too timid to get into trouble. Hush!” To Hoddan she said interestedly, “Now, tell me all about the fighting. It must have been terrible!”

She watched him with her head on one side, expectantly.

“The fighting I did today,” said Hoddan angrily, “was exactly as dangerous and as difficult as shooting fish in a bucket. A little more trouble, but not much.”

Even in the starlight he could see that her expression was more admiring than before.

“I thought you’d say something like that!” she said contentedly. “Go on!”

“That’s all,” said Hoddan.

“Quite all?”

“I can’t think of anything else,” he told her. He added drearily: “I rode a horse for three hours today. I’m not used to it. I ache. Your father is thinking of putting me in a dungeon until some scheme or other of his goes through. I’m disappointed. I’m worried about three lights that went across the sky at sundown and I’m simply too tired and befuddled for normal conversation.”

“Oh,” said Fani.

“If I may take my leave,” said Hoddan querulously, “I’ll get some rest and do some thinking when I get up. I’ll hope to have more entertaining things to say.”

He got to his feet and picked up his bag.

“Where do I go?” he asked.

Fani regarded him enigmatically. Thal squirmed.

“Thal will show you.” Then Fani said deliberately, “Bron Hoddan, will you fight for me?”

Thal plucked anxiously at his arm. Hoddan said politely:

“If at all desirable, yes. But now I must get some sleep.”

“Thank you,” said Fani. “I am troubled by the Lord Ghek.”

She watched him move away. Thal, moaning softly, went with him down another monstrosity of a stone stairway.

“Oh, what folly!” mourned Thal. “I tried to warn you! You would not pay attention! When the Lady Fani asked if you would fight for her, you should have said if her father permitted you that honor. But you said yes! The spearmen heard you! Now you must either fight the Lord Ghek within a night and day or be disgraced!”

“I doubt,” said Hoddan tiredly, “that the obligations of Darthian gentility apply to the grandson of a pirate or an escap.... To me.”

He’d been about to say an escaped criminal from Walden, but caught himself in time.

“But they do apply!” said Thal, shocked. “A man who has been disgraced has no rights! Any man may plunder him, any man may kill him at will. But if he resists plundering or kills anybody else in self-defense, he is hanged!”

Hoddan stopped short in his descent of the uneven stone steps.

“That’s me from now on?” he said sardonically. “Of course the Lady Fani didn’t mean to put me on such a spot!”

“You were not polite,” explained Thal. “She’d persuaded her father out of putting us in a dungeon until he thought of us again. You should at least have shown good manners! You should have said that you came here across deserts and flaming oceans because of the fame of her beauty. You might have said you heard songs of her sweetness beside campfires half a world away. She might not have believed you, but—”

“Hold it!” said Hoddan. “That’s just manners? What would you say to a girl you really liked?”

“Oh, then,” said Thal, “you’d get complimentary!”

Hoddan went heavily down the rest of the steps. He was not in the least pleased. On a strange world, with strange customs, and with his weapons losing their charge every hour, he did not need any handicaps. But if he got into a worse-than-outlawed category such as Thal described—

At the bottom of the stairs he said, seething:

“When you’ve tucked me in bed, go back and ask the Lady Fani to arrange for me to have a horse and permission to go fight this Lord Ghek right after breakfast!”

He was too much enraged to think further. He let himself be led into some sort of quarters which probably answered Don Loris’ description of a cozy dungeon. Thal vanished and came back with ointments for Hoddan’s blisters, but no food. He explained again that food given to Hoddan would make it disgraceful to cut his throat. And Hoddan swore poisonously, but stripped off his garments and smeared himself lavishly where he had lost skin. The ointment stung like fire, and he presently lay awake in a sort of dreary fury. And he was ravenous!

It seemed to him that he lay awake for aeons, but he must have dozed off because he was awakened by a yell. It was not a complete yell; only the first part of one. It stopped in a particularly unpleasant fashion, and its echoes went reverberating through the stony walls of the castle. Hoddan was out of bed with a stun-pistol in his hand in a hurry, before that first yell was followed by other shouts and outcries, by the clashing of steel upon steel, and all the frenzied tumult of combat in the dark. The uproar moved. In seconds the sound of fighting came from a plainly different direction, as if a striking force of some sort went rushing through only indifferently defended corridors.

It would not pass before Hoddan’s door, but he growled to himself. On a feudal world, presumably one might expect anything. But there was a situation in being, here, in which etiquette required a rejected suitor to carry off a certain scornful maiden by force. Some young lordling named Ghek had to carry off Fani or be considered a man of no spirit.

A gun went off somewhere. It was a powder gun, exploding violently to send a metal bullet somewhere. It went off again. There was an instant almost of silence. Then an intolerable screeching of triumph, and shrieks of another sort entirely, and the excessively loud clash of arms once more.

Hoddan was clothed, now—at least clothed enough to have places to stick stun-pistols. He jerked on the door to open it, irritably demanding of himself how he would know which side was which, or for that matter which side he should fight on.

The door was locked. He raged. He flung himself against it and it barely quivered. It was barred on the outside. He swore in highly indecorous terms, and tore his bedstead apart to get a battering-ram.

The fighting reached a climax. He heard a girl scream, and without question knew that it was the Lady Fani, and equally without question knew that he would fight to keep any girl from being abducted by a man she didn’t want to marry. He swung the log which was the corner post of his bed. Something cracked. He swung again.

The sound of battle changed to that of a running fight. The objective of the raiders had been reached. Having gotten what they came for—and it could only be Fani—they retreated swiftly, fighting only to cover their retreat. Hoddan swung his bed leg with furious anger. He heard a flurry of yells and sword strokes, and a fierce, desperate cry from Fani among them, and a plank in his guest-room-dungeon door gave way. He struck again. The running raiders poured past a corner some yards away. He battered and swore, swore and battered as the tumult moved, and he suddenly heard a scurrying thunder of horses’ hoofs outside the castle altogether. There were yells of derisive triumph and the pounding, rumbling sound of horses headed away in the night until it was lost.

Still raging inarticulately, Hoddan crashed his small log at the door. He was not consciously concerned about the distress Don Loris might feel over the abduction of his daughter. But there is an instinct in most men against the forcing of a girl to marriage against her will. Hoddan battered at his door. Around him the castle began to hum like a hive of bees. Women cried out or exclaimed, and men shouted furiously to one another, and off-duty fighting men came belatedly looking for somebody to fight, dragging weapons behind them and not knowing where to find enemies.

Bron Hoddan probably made as much noise as any four of them. Somebody brought a light somewhere near. It shone through the cracks in the splintered planks. He could see to aim. He smote savagely and the door came apart. It fell outward and he found himself in the corridor outside, being stared at by complete strangers.

“It’s the engineer,” someone explained to someone else. “I saw him when he rode in with Thal.”

“I want Thal,” said Hoddan coldly. “I want a dozen horses. I want men to ride them with me.” He pushed his way forward. “Which way to the stables?”

But then he went back and picked up his bag of stun-pistols. His air was purposeful and his manner furious. The retainers of Don Loris were in an extremely apologetic frame of mind. The Lady Fani had been carried off into the night by a raiding party undoubtedly led by Lord Ghek. The defenders of the castle hadn’t prevented it. So there was no special reason to obey Hoddan, but there was every reason to seem to be doing something useful.

He found himself almost swept along by agitated retainers trying to look as if they were about a purposeful affair. They went down a long ramp, calling uneasily to each other. They eddied around a place where two men lay quite still on the floor. Then there were shouts of, “Thal! This way, Thal!” and Hoddan found himself in a small stone-walled courtyard doubtless inside a sally-port. It was filled with milling figures and many waving torches. And there was Thal, desperately pale and frightened. Behind him there was Don Loris, his eyes burning and his hands twitching, literally speechless from fury.

“Pick a dozen men, Thal!” commanded Hoddan. “Get ‘em on horses! Get a horse for me, dammit! I’ll show ‘em how to use the stun-pistols as we ride!”

Thal panted, shaking:

“They ... hamstrung most of the horses!”

“Get the ones that are left!” barked Hoddan. He suddenly raged at Don Loris. “Here’s another time stun-pistols get used on Darth! Object to this if you want to!”

Hoofbeats. Thal on a horse that shied and reared at the flames and confusion. Other horses, skittish and scared, with the smell of spilt blood in their nostrils, fighting the men who led them, their eyes rolling.

Thal called names as he looked about him. There was plenty of light. As he called a name, a man climbed on a horse. Men thrust swords, spears—all manner of weapons upon them. Some of the chosen men swaggered because of their choice. Some looked woefully unhappy. But with Don Loris glaring frenziedly upon them in the smoky glare, no man refused.

Hoddan climbed ungracefully upon the mount that four or five men held for him. Thal, with a fine sense of drama, seized a torch and waved it above his head. There was a vast creaking, and an unsuspected gate opened, and Thal rode out with a great clattering of hoofs and the others rode out after him.

There were lights everywhere about the castle, now. All along the battlements men had set light to fire-baskets and lowered them partway down the walls, to disclose any attacking force which might have dishonorable intentions toward the stronghold. Others waved torches from the battlements.

Thal swung his torch and pointed to the ground.

“They rode here!” he called to Hoddan. “They ride for Ghek’s castle!”

Hoddan said angrily:

“Put out that light! Do you want to advertise how few we are and what we’re doing? Here, ride close!”

Thal flung down the torch and horses trod it underfoot as the knot of men rode on. Thal boomed:

“The pickings should be good, eh? Why do you want me?”

“You’ve got to learn something,” snapped Hoddan. “Here! This is a stun-pistol. It’s set for single-shot firing only. You hold it so, with your finger along this rod. You point your finger at a man and pull this trigger. The pistol will buzz—briefly. You let the trigger loose and point at another man and pull the trigger again. Understand? Don’t try to use it over ten yards. You’re no marksman!”

There on a galloping horse beside Hoddan in the darkness, Thal zestfully repeated his lesson.

“Show another man and send him to me for a pistol,” Hoddan commanded curtly. “I’ll be showing others.”

He turned to the man who rode too close to his left. Before he had fully instructed that man, another clamored for a weapon on his right.

This was hardly adequate training in the use of modern weapons. For that matter, Hoddan was hardly qualified to give military instruction. He’d only gone on two pirate voyages himself. But little boys on Zan played at pirate, in dutiful emulation of their parents. At least the possibilities of stun-guns were envisioned in their childish games. So Hoddan knew more about how to fight with stun-pistols than somebody who knew nothing at all.

The band of pursuing horsemen pounded through the dark night under strangely patterned stars. Hoddan held on to his saddle and barked out instructions to teach Darthians how to shoot. He felt very queer. He began to worry. With the lights of Don Loris’ castle long vanished behind, he began to realize how very small his troop was.

Thal had said something about horses being hamstrung. There must, then, have been two attacking parties. One swarmed into the stables to draw all defending retainers there. Then the other poured over a wall or in through a bribed-open sally-port, and rushed for the Lady Fani’s apartments. The point was that the attackers had made sure there could be only a token pursuit. They knew they were many times stronger than any who might come after them. It would be absurd for them to flee....

Hoddan kicked his horse and got up to the front of the column of riders in the night.

“Thal!” he snapped. “They’ll be idiots if they keep on running away, now they’re too far off to worry about men on foot. They’ll stop and wait for us—most of them anyhow. We’re riding into an ambush!”

“Good pickings, eh?” said Thal.

“Idiot!” yelped Hoddan. “These men know you. You know what I can do with stun-pistols! Tell them we’re riding into ambush. They’re to follow close behind us two! Tell them they’re not to shoot at anybody more than five yards off and not coming at them, and if any man stops to plunder I’ll kill him personally!”

Thal gaped at him.

“Not stop to plunder?”

“Ghek won’t!” snapped Hoddan. “He’ll take Fani on to his castle, leaving most of his men behind to massacre us!”

Thal reined aside and Hoddan pounded on at the head of the tiny troop. This was the second time in his life he’d been on a horse. It was two too many. This adventure was not exhilarating. It came into his mind, depressingly, that supposedly stirring action like this was really no more satisfying than piracy. Fani had tricked him into a fix in which he had to fight Ghek or be disgraced—and to be disgraced on Darth was equivalent to suicide.

His horse came to a gentle rise in the ground. It grew steeper. The horse slacked in its galloping. The incline grew steeper still. The horse slowed to a walk, which it pursued with a rhythmically tossing head. It was only less uncomfortable than a gallop. The dim outline of trees appeared overhead.

“Perfect place for an ambush,” Hoddan reflected dourly.

He got out a stun-pistol. He set the stud for continuous fire—something he hadn’t dared trust to the others.

His horse breasted the rise. There was a yell ahead and dim figures plunged toward him.

He painstakingly made ready to swing his stun-pistol from his extreme right, across the space before him, and all the way to the extreme left. The pistol should be capable of continuous fire for four seconds. But it was operating on stored charge. He didn’t dare count on more than three.

He pulled the trigger. The stun-pistol hummed, though its noise was inaudible through the yells of the charging partisans of the Lord Ghek.