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.
[Illustration]
V
Hoddan swore from the depths of a very considerable vocabulary.
"You (censored)--(deleted)--(omitted)--(unprintability)", he roared.
"Get back up on your horse or I blast you and leave you for Ghek's men
to handle when they're able to move about again! Get back on that horse!
One--two--"
The man got back on the horse.
"Now go on ahead," rasped Hoddan. "All of you! I'm going to count you!"
The dozen horsemen from Don Loris' stronghold rode reluctantly on ahead.
He did count them. He rode on, shepherding them before him.
"Ghek," he told them in a blood-curdling tone, "has a bigger prize than
any cash you'll plunder from one of his shot-down retainers! He's got
the Lady Fani! He won't stop before he has her behind castle walls!
We've got to catch up with him! Do you want to try to climb into his
castle by your fingernails? You'll do it if he gets there first!"
The horses moved a little faster. Thal said with surprising humility:
"If we force our horses too much, they'll be exhausted before we can
catch up."
"Figure it out," snapped Hoddan. "We have to catch up!"
He settled down to more of the acute discomfort that riding was to him.
He did not think again of the ambush. It had happened, and it had
failed. Four-fifths of the raiding party that had fought its way into
Don Loris' stronghold and out again, had been waiting for pursuers atop
a certain bit of rising ground. They'd known their pursuers must come
this way. There were certain passes through the low but rugged hills.
One went this way or that, but no other. Their blood already warmed by
past fighting, when Hoddan and his dozen seemed to ride right into
destruction, they flung themselves into a charge.
But Hoddan had a stun-pistol set for continuous fire. He used it like a
hose or a machine gun, painstakingly sweeping it across the night before
him, neither too fast nor too slowly. It affected the rushing followers
of Lord Ghek exactly as if it had been an oversized meat-chopper. They
went down. Only three men remained in their saddles--they'd probably
been sheltered by the bodies of men ahead. Hoddan attended to those
three with individual, personalized stun-pistol bolts--and immediately
had trouble with his men, who wanted to dismount and plunder their
fallen enemies.
He wouldn't even let them collect the horses of the men now out of
action. It would cost time, and Ghek wouldn't be losing any that he
could help. With a raging, trembling girl as prisoner, most men would
want to get her behind battlements as soon as possible. But Hoddan knew
that his party was slowed down by him. Presently he began to feel
bitterly sure that Ghek would reach his castle before he was overtaken.
"This place he's heading for," he said discouragedly to Thal. "Any
chance of our rushing it?"
"Oh, no!" said Thal dolefully. "Ten men could hold it against a
thousand!"
"Then can't we make better time?"
Thal said resignedly:
"Ghek probably had fresh horses waiting, so he could keep on at top
speed in his flight. I doubt we will catch him, now."
"The Lady Fani," said Hoddan bitterly, "has put me in a fix so if I
don't fight him I'm ruined!"
"Disgraced," corrected Thal. He said mournfully, "It's the same thing."
* * * * *
Gloom descended on the whole party as it filled their leaders.
Insensibly, the pace of the horses slackened still more. They had done
well. But a horse that can cover fifty miles a day at its own gait, can
be exhausted in ten or less, if pushed. By the time Hoddan and his men
were within two miles of Ghek's castle, their mounts were extremely
reluctant to move faster than a walk. At a mile, they were kept in
motion only by kicks.
The route they followed was specific. There was no choice of routes,
here in the hills. They could only follow every twist and turn of the
trail, among steep mountain-flanks and minor peaks. But suddenly they
came to a clear wide valley, yellow cressets burned at its upper end, no
more than half a mile distant. They showed a castle gate, open, with the
last of a party of horsemen filing into it. Even as Hoddan swore, the
gate closed. Faint shouts of triumph came from inside the castle walls
to the completely frustrated pursuers without.
"I'd have bet on this," said Hoddan miserably. "Stop here, Thal. Pick
out a couple of your more hang-dog characters and fix them up with their
hands apparently tied behind their backs. We take a breather for five
minutes--no more."
He would not let any man dismount. He shifted himself about on his own
saddle, trying to find a comfortable way to sit. He failed. At the end
of five minutes he gave orders. There were still shouts occasionally
from within Ghek's castle. They had that unrhythmic frequency which
suggested that they were responses to a speech. Ghek was making a fine,
dramatic spectacle of his capture of an unwilling bride. He was
addressing his retainers and saying that through their fine loyalty,
co-operation and willingness to risk all for their chieftain, they now
had the Lady Fani to be their chatelaine. He thanked them from the
bottom of his heart and they were invited to the official wedding, which
would take place sometime tomorrow, most likely.
Before the speech was quite finished, however, Hoddan and his weary
following rode up into the patch of light cast by the cressets outside
the walls. Thal bellowed to the battlements.
"Prisoners!" he roared, according to instructions from Hoddan. "We
caught some prisoners in the ambush! They got fancy news! Tell Lord Ghek
he'd better get their story right off! No time to waste! Urgent!"
Hoddan played the part of one prisoner, just in case anybody noticed
from above that one man rode as if either entirely unskilled in riding
or else injured in a fight.
He heard shoutings, over the walls. He glared at his men and they
drooped in their saddles. The gate creaked open and the horsemen from
Don Loris' castle filed inside. They showed no elation, because Hoddan
had promised to ram a spear-shaft its full length down the throat of any
man who gave away his stratagem ahead of time. The gate closed behind
them. Men appeared to take their horses. This could have revealed that
the newcomers were strangers, but Ghek would have recruited new and
extra retainers for the emergency of tonight. There would be many
strange faces in his castle just now.
"Good fight, eh?" bellowed an ancient, long-retired retainer with a wine
bottle in his hand.
"Good fight!" agreed Thal.
"Good plunder, eh?" bellowed the ancient above the heads of younger men.
"Like the good old days?"
"Better!" boomed Thal.
At just this instant the young Lord Ghek appeared. There were scratches
on his cheek, acquired during the ride with Fani across his saddlebow.
He looked thrilled by his victory but uneasy about his prize.
"What's this about prisoners with fancy news?" he demanded. "What is
it?"
"Don Loris!" whooped Thal. "Long Live the Lady Fani!"
Hoddan painstakingly opened fire; with the continuous-fire stud of this
pistol--his third tonight--pressed down. The merrymakers in the
courtyard wavered and went down in windrows. Thal opened fire with a
stun-pistol. The others bellowed and began to fling bolts at every
living thing they saw.
"To the Lady Fani!" rasped Hoddan, getting off his horse with as many
creakings as the castle gate.
His followers now rushed, dismounting where they had to. They fired with
reckless abandon. A stun-pistol, which does not kill, imposes few
restraints upon its user. If you shoot somebody who doesn't need to be
shot, he may not like it but he isn't permanently harmed. So the twelve
who'd followed Hoddan poured in what would have been a murderous fire if
they'd been shooting bullets, but was no worse than devastating as
matters stood.
* * * * *
There were screams and flight and utterly hopeless defiances by
sword-armed and spear-armed men. In instants Hoddan went limping into
the castle with Thal by his side, searching for Fani. Ghek had not
fallen at the first fire. He vanished, and the castle was plainly fallen
and he made no attempt to lead resistance against its invaders. Hoddan's
men went raging happily through corridors and halls as they came to
them. They used their stun-pistols with zest and at such close quarters
with considerable effect. Hoddan heard Fani scream angrily and he and
Thal went swiftly to see. They came upon the young Lord Ghek trying to
let Fani down out of a window on a rope. He undoubtedly intended to
follow her and complete his abduction on the run. But Fani bit him, and
Hoddan said vexedly:
"Look here! It seems that I'm disgraced if I don't fight you somehow--"
The young Lord Ghek rushed him, sword out, eyes blazing in a fine frenzy
of despair. Hoddan brought him down with a buzz of the stun-gun.
One of Hoddan's followers came hunting for him.
"Sir," he sputtered, "we got the garrison cornered in their quarters,
and we've been picking them off through the windows, and they think
they're dropping dead and want to surrender. Shall we let 'em?"
"By all means," Hoddan said irritably. "And Thal, go get something
heavier than a nightgown for the Lady Fani to wear, and then do what
plundering is practical. But I want to be out of here in half an hour.
Understand?"
"I'll attend to the costume," said the Lady Fani vengefully. "You cut
his throat while I'm getting dressed."
She nodded at the unconscious Lord Ghek on the pavement. She disappeared
through a door nearby. Hoddan could guess that Ghek would have prepared
something elaborate in the way of a trousseau for the bride he was to
carry screaming from her home. Somehow it was the sort of thing a
Darthian would do. Now Fani would enjoyably attire herself in the best
of it while--
"Thal," said Hoddan, "help me get this character into a closet
somewhere. He's not to be killed. I don't like him, but at this moment I
don't like anybody very much, and I won't play favorites."
Thal dragged the insensible young nobleman into the next room. Hoddan
locked the door and pocketed the key as Fani came into view again. She
was splendidly attired, now, in brocade and jewels. Ghek had evidently
hoped to placate her after marriage by things of that sort and had spent
lavishly for them.
Now, throughout the castle there were many and diverse noises.
Sometimes--not often--there was still the crackling hum of a
stun-pistol. There were many more exuberant shoutings. They apparently
had to do with loot. There were some squealings in female voices, but
many more gigglings.
"I need not say," said the Lady Fani with dignity, "that I thank you
very much. But I do say so."
"You're quite welcome," said Hoddan politely.
"And what are you going to do now?"
"I imagine," said Hoddan, "that we'll go down into the courtyard where
our horses are. I gave my men half an hour to loot in. During that half
hour I shall sit down on something which will, I hope, remain perfectly
still. And I may," he added morbidly, "eat an apple. I've had nothing to
eat since I landed on Darth. People don't want to commit themselves to
not cutting my throat. But after half an hour we'll leave."
The Lady Fani looked sympathetic.
"But the castle's surrendered to you," she protested. "You hold it!
Aren't you going to try to keep it?"
"There are a good many unpleasant characters out yonder," said Hoddan,
waving his hand at the great outdoors, "who've reason to dislike me very
much. They'll be anxious to express their emotions, when they feel up to
it. I want to dodge them. And presently the people in this castle will
realize that even stun-pistols can't keep on shooting indefinitely here.
I don't want to be around when it occurs to them."
* * * * *
He offered his arm with a reasonably grand air and went limping with her
down to the courtyard just inside the gate. Two of Don Loris' retainers
staggered into view as they arrived, piling up plunder which ranged from
a quarter keg of wine to a mass of frothy stuff which must be female
garments. They went away and other men arrived loaded down with their
own accumulations of loot. Some of the local inhabitants looked on with
uneasy indignation.
Hoddan found a bench and sat down. He conspicuously displayed one of the
weapons which had captured the castle. Ghek's defeated retainers looked
at him darkly.
"Bring me something to eat," commanded Hoddan. "Then if you bring fresh
horses for my men, and one extra for each to carry his plunder on, I'll
take them away. I'll even throw in the Lord Ghek, who is now unharmed
but with his life in the balance. Otherwise--"
He moved the pistol suggestively. The normal inhabitants of Ghek's
castle moved away, discussing the situation in subdued voices.
The Lady Fani sat down proudly on the bench beside him.
"You are wonderful!" she said with conviction.
"I used to cherish that illusion myself," said Hoddan.
"But nobody before in all Darthian history has ever fought twenty men,
and then thirty men, and destroyed an ambush, and captured a castle, all
in one day!"
"And without a meal," said Hoddan darkly, "and with a lot of blisters!"
He considered. Somebody came running with bread and cheese and wine. He
bit into the bread and cheese. After a moment he said, his mouth full:
"I once saw a man perform the unparalleled feat of jumping over nine
barrels placed in a row. It had never been done before. But I didn't
envy him. I never wanted to jump over nine barrels in a row! In the same
way, I never especially wanted to fight other men or break up ambushes
or capture castles. I want to do what I want to do, not what other
people happen to admire."
"Then what do you want to do?" she asked admiringly.
"I'm not sure now," said Hoddan gloomily. He took a fresh bite. "But a
little while ago I wanted to do some interesting and useful things in
electronics, and get reasonably rich, and marry a delightful girl, and
become a prominent citizen on Walden. I think I'll settle for another
planet, now."
"My father will make you rich," said the girl proudly. "You saved me
from being married to Ghek!"
Hoddan shook his head.
"I've got my doubts," he said. "He had a scheme to import a lot of
stun-pistols and arm his retainers with them. Then he meant to rush the
spaceport and have me set up a broadcast-power unit that'd keep them
charged all the time. Then he'd sit back and enjoy life. Holding the
spaceport, nobody else could get stun-weapons, and nobody could resist
his retainers who had 'em. So he'd be top man on Darth. He'd have
exactly as much power as he chose to seize. I think he cherished that
little idea,--and I've given advance publicity to stun-pistols. Now he
hasn't a ghost of a chance of pulling it off. I'm afraid he'll be
displeased with me."
"I can take care of that!" said Fani confidently. She did not question
that her father would be displeased.
"Maybe you can," said Hoddan, "but though he's kept a daughter he's lost
a dream. And that's bereavement! I know!"
* * * * *
Horses came plodding into the courtyard with Ghek's retainers driving
them. They were anxious to get rid of their conquerors. Hoddan's men
came trickling back, with armsful of plunder to add to the piles they'd
previously gathered. Thal took charge, commanding the exchange of
saddles from tired to fresh horses and that the booty be packed on the
extra mounts. It was time. Nine of the dozen looters were at work on the
task when there was a tumult back in the castle. Yellings and the clash
of steel. Hoddan shook his head.
"Bad! Somebody's pistol went empty and the local boys found it out. Now
we'll have to fight some more--no."
He beckoned to a listening, tense, resentful inhabitant of the castle.
He held up the key of the room in which he'd locked young Ghek.
"Now open the castle gate," he commanded, "and fetch out my last three
men, and we'll leave without setting fire to anything. The Lord Ghek
would like it that way. He's locked up in a room that's particularly
inflammable."
The last statement was a guess, only, but Ghek's retainer looked
horrified. He bellowed. There was a subtle change in the bitterly
hostile atmosphere. Men came angrily to help load the spare horses.
Hoddan's last three men came out of a corridor, wiping blood from
various scratches and complaining plaintively that their pistols had
shot empty and they'd had to defend themselves with knives.
Three minutes later the cavalcade rode out of the castle gate and away
into the darkness. Hoddan had arrived here when Ghek was inside with
Fani as his prisoner, when there were only a dozen men without and at
least a hundred inside to defend the walls. And the castle was
considered impregnable.
In half an hour Hoddan's followers had taken the castle, rescued Fani,
looted it superficially, gotten fresh horses for themselves and spare
ones for their plunder, and were headed away again. In only one respect
were they worse off than when they arrived. Some stun-pistols were
empty.
Hoddan searched the sky and pieced together the star-pattern he'd noted
before.
"Hold it!" he said sharply to Thal. "We don't go back the same way we
came! The gang that ambushed us will be stirring around again, and we
haven't got full stun-pistols now! We make a wide circle around those
characters!"
"Why?" demanded Thal. "There are only so many passes. The only other one
is three times as long. And it is disgraceful to avoid a fight--"
"Thal!" snapped an icy voice from beside Hoddan, "you have an order!
Obey it!"
Even in the darkness, Hoddan could see Thal jump.
"Yes, my Lady Fani," said Thal shakily. "But we go a long distance
roundabout."
* * * * *
The direction of motion through the night now changed. The long line of
horses moved in deepest darkness, lessened only by the light of many
stars. Even so, in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a
glamorous spectacle--twenty-eight beasts moving through dark defiles and
over steep passes among the rugged, ragged hills. From any one spot they
seemed at once to swagger and to slink, swaying as they moved on and
vanished into obscurity. The small wild things in the night paused
affrightedly in their scurryings until they had gone far away.
[Illustration]
Fani said in a soft voice:
"This is nice!"
"What's nice about it?" demanded Hoddan.
"Riding like this," said Fani enthusiastically, "with men who have
fought for me to guard me in the darkness, with the leader who has
rescued me by my side, underneath the stars-- It's a delicious feeling!"
"You're used to riding horseback," said Hoddan dourly.
He rode on, while mountains stabbed skyward and the pass they followed
wound this way and that and he knew that it was a very roundabout way
indeed. And he had unpleasing prospects to make it seem less
satisfying, even, than it would have been otherwise.
But they came, at last, to a narrow defile which opened out before them
and there were no more mountains ahead, but only foothills. And there,
far and far away, they could see the sky as vaguely brighter. As they
went on, indeed, a glory of red and golden colorings appeared at the
horizon.
And out of that magnificence three bright lights suddenly darted. In
strict V-formation, they flashed from the sunrise toward the west. They
went overhead, more brilliant than the brightest stars, and when partway
down to the horizon they suddenly winked out.
"What on Earth are they?" demanded Fani. "I never saw anything like that
before!"
"They're spaceships in orbit," said Hoddan. He was as astounded as the
girl, but for a different reason. "I thought they'd be landed by now!"
It changed everything. He could not see what the change amounted to, but
change there was. For one thing--
"We're going to the spaceport," he told Thal curtly. "We'll recharge our
stun-pistols there. I thought those ships had landed. They haven't. Now
we'll see if we can keep them aloft! How far to the landing grid?"
"You insisted," complained Thal, "that we not go back to Don Loris'
castle by the way we left it. There are only so many passes through the
hills. The only other one is very long. We are only four miles--"
"Then we head there right now!" snapped Hoddan. "And we step up the
speed!"
He barked commands to his followers. Thal, puzzled but in dread of acid
comment from Fani, bustled up and down the line of men, insisting on a
faster pace. And the members of the cavalcade had not pushed these
animals as they had their first. Even the lead horses, loaded with loot,
managed to get up to a respectable ambling trot. The sunrise proceeded.
Dew upon the straggly grass became visible. Separate drops appeared as
gems upon the grass blades, and then began gradually to vanish as the
sun's disk showed itself. Then the angular metal framework of the
landing grid rose dark against the sunrise sky.
* * * * *
When they rode up to it. Hoddan reflected that it was the only really
civilized structure on the planet. Architecturally it was surely the
least pleasing. It had been built when Darth was first settled on, and
when ideas of commerce and interstellar trade seemed reasonable. It was
half a mile high and built of massive metal beams. It loomed hugely
overhead when the double file of shaggy horses trotted under its lower
arches and across the grass-grown space within it. Hoddan headed
purposefully for the control shed. There was no sign of movement
anywhere. The steeply gabled roofs of the nearby town showed only the
fluttering of tiny birds. No smoke rose from chimneys. Yet the slanting
morning sunshine was bright.
As Hoddan actually reached the control shed, he saw a sleepy man in the
act of putting a key in the door. He dismounted within feet of that man,
who turned and blinked sleepily at him, and then immediately looked the
reverse of cordial. It was the red-headed man he'd stung with a
stun-pistol the day before.
"I've come back," said Hoddan, "for a few more kilowatts."
The red-headed man swore angrily.
"Hush!" said Hoddan gently. "The Lady Fani is with us."
The red-headed man jerked his head around and paled. Thal glowered at
him. Others of Don Loris' retainers shifted their positions
significantly, to make their oversized belt-knives handier.
"We'll come in," said Hoddan. "Thal, collect the pistols and bring them
inside."
Fani swung lightly to the ground and followed him in. She looked
curiously at the cables and instrument boards and switches inside. On
one wall a red light pulsed, and went out, and pulsed again. The
red-headed man looked at it.
"You're being called," said Hoddan. "Don't answer it."
The red-headed man scowled. Thal came in with an armful of stun-pistols
in various stages of discharge. Hoddan briskly broke the butt of one of
his own and presented it to the terminals he'd used the day before.
"He's not to touch anything, Thal," said Hoddan. To the red-headed man
he observed, "I suspect that call's been coming in all night. Something
was in orbit at sundown. You closed up shop and went home early, eh?"
"Why not?" rasped the red-headed man. "There's only one ship a month!"
"Sometimes," said Hoddan, "there are specials. But I commend your
negligence. It was probably good for me."
He charged one pistol, and snapped its butt shut, and snapped open
another, and charged it. There was no difficulty, of course. In minutes
all the pistols he'd brought from Walden were ready for use again.
He tucked away as many as he could conveniently carry on his person. He
handed the rest to Thal. He went competently to the pulsing call-signal.
He put headphones to his ears. He listened. His expression became
extremely strange, as if he did not quite understand nor wholly believe
what he heard.
"Odd," he said mildly. He considered for a moment or two. Then he
rummaged around in the drawers of desks. He found wire clips. He began
to snip wires in half.
The red-headed man started forward automatically.
"Take care of him, Thal," said Hoddan.
He cut the microwave receiver free of its wires and cables. He lifted it
experimentally and opened part of its case to make sure the thermo
battery that would power it in an emergency was there and in working
order. It was.
"Put this on a horse, Thal," commanded Hoddan. "We're taking it up to
Don Loris'."
The red-headed man's mouth dropped open. He said stridently:
"Hey! You can't do that!" Hoddan turned upon him and he said sourly:
"All right, you can. I'm not trying to stop you with all those hard
cases outside!"
"You can build another in a week," said Hoddan kindly. "You must have
spare parts."
Thal carried the communicator outside. Hoddan opened a cabinet, threw
switches, and painstakingly cut and snipped and snipped at a tangle of
wires within.
"Just your instrumentation," he explained to the appalled red-headed
man. "You won't use the grid until you've got this fixed, too. A few
days of harder work than you're used to. That's all!"
He led the way out again, and on the way explained to Fani:
"Pretty old-fashioned job, this grid. They make simpler ones nowadays.
They'll be able to repair it, though, in time. Now we go back to your
father's castle. He may not be pleased, but he should be mollified."
He saw Fani mount lightly into her own saddle and shook his head
gloomily. He climbed clumsily into his own. They moved off to return to
Don Loris' stronghold. Hoddan suffered.
* * * * *
They reached the castle before noon, and the sight of the Lady Fani
riding beside a worn-out Hoddan was productive of enthusiasm and loud
cheers. The loot displayed by the returned wayfarers increased the
rejoicing. There was envy among the men who had stayed behind. There
were respectfully admiring looks cast upon Hoddan. He had displayed, in
furnishing opportunities for plunder, the most-admired quality a leader
of feudal fighting men could show.
The Lady Fani beamed as she and Thal and Hoddan, all very dusty and
travel-stained, presented themselves to her father in the castle's great
hall.
"Here's your daughter, sir," said Hoddan, and yawned. "I hope there
won't be any further trouble with Ghek. We took his castle and looted it
a little and brought back some extra horses. Then we went to the
spaceport. I recharged my stun-pistols and put the landing grid out of
order for the time being. I brought away the communicator there." He
yawned again. "There's something highly improper going on, up just
beyond atmosphere. There are three ships up there in orbit, and they
were trying to call the spaceport in nonregulation fashion, and it's
possible that some of your neighbors would be interested. So I postponed
everything until I could get some sleep. It seemed to me that when
better skulduggeries are concocted, that Don Loris and his associates
ought to concoct them. And if you'll excuse me--"
He moved away, practically dead on his feet. If he had been accustomed
to horseback riding, he wouldn't have been so exhausted. But now he
yawned, and yawned, and Thal took him to a room quite different from the
guest-room-dungeon to which he'd been taken the night before. He noted
that the door, this time, opened inward. He braced chairs against it to
make sure that nobody could open it from without. He lay down and slept
heavily.
He was waked by loud poundings. He roused himself enough to say
sleepily:
"Whaddyawant?"
"The lights in the sky!" cried Fani's voice outside the door. "The ones
you say are spaceships! It's sunset again, and I just saw them. But
there aren't three, now. Now there are nine!"
"All right," said Hoddan. He lay down his head again and thrust it into
his pillow. Then he was suddenly very wide awake indeed. He sat up with
a start.
Nine spaceships? That wasn't possible! That would be a space fleet! And
there were no space fleets! Walden would certainly have never sent more
than one ship to demand his surrender to its police. The Space Patrol
never needed more than one ship anywhere. Commerce wouldn't cause ships
to travel in company. Piracy-- There couldn't be a pirate fleet! There'd
never be enough loot anywhere to keep it in operation. Nine spaceships
at one time--traveling in orbit around a primitive planet like Darth--a
fleet of spaceships.
It couldn't happen! Hoddan couldn't conceive of such a thing. But a
recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to
date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe
also.
He groaned and lay down to sleep again.