"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.
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.
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.
When frantic bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the communicator headphones, and until he heard his name called tried drearily to make sense of them.
But suddenly he opened his eyes. Somebody banged on the door once more. A voice cried angrily:
"Bron Hoddan! Wake up or I'll go away and let whatever happens to you happen! Wake up!"
It was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant and tearful and solicitous and angry.
He rolled out of bed and found himself dressed. He hadn't slept the full night. At one time he couldn't rest for thinking about the sounds in the communicator when he listened at the spaceport. He listened again, and what he heard made him get his clothes on for action. That was when he heard a distinctly Waldenian voice, speaking communications speech with crisp distinctness, calling the landing grid. The other voices were not Waldenian ones and he grew dizzy trying to figure them out. But he was clothed and ready to do whatever proved necessary when he realized that he had the landing grid receiver, that there would be no reception even of the Waldenian call until the landing grid crew had built another out of spare parts in store, and even then couldn't do much until they'd painfully sorted out and re-spliced all the tangled wires that Hoddan had cut. That had to be done before the grid could be used again.
He'd gone back to sleep while he tried to make sense of things. Now, long after daybreak, he shook himself and made sure a stun-pistol was handy. Then he said:
"Hello. I'm awake. What's up? Why all the noise?"
"Come out of there!" cried Fani's voice, simultaneously exasperated and filled with anxiety. "Things are happening! Somebody's here from Walden! They want you!"
Hoddan could not believe it. It was too unlikely. But he opened the door and Thal came in, and Fani followed.
"Good morning," said Hoddan automatically.
Thal said mournfully:
"A bad morning, Bron Hoddan! A bad morning! Men from Walden came riding over the hills—"
"How many?"
"Two," said Fani angrily. "A fat man in a uniform, and a young man who looks like he wants to cry. They had an escort of retainers from one of my father's neighbors. They were stopped at the gate, of course, and they sent a written message in to my father, and he had them brought inside right away!"
Hoddan shook his head.
"They probably said that I'm a criminal and that I should be sent back to Walden. How'd they get down? The landing grid isn't working."
Fani said viciously:
"They landed in something that used rockets. It came down close to a castle over that way—only six or seven miles from the spaceport. They asked for you. They said you'd have landed from the last liner from Walden. And because you and Thal fought so splendidly—why, everybody's talking about you. So the chieftain over there accepted a present of money from them, and gave them horses as a return gift, and sent them here with a guard. Thal talked to the guards. The men from Walden have promised huge gifts of money if they help take you back to the thing that uses rockets."
"I suspect," said Hoddan, "that it would be a spaceboat—a lifeboat. Hm-m-m.... Yes. With a built-in tool-steel cell to keep me from telling anybody how to make—" He stopped and grimaced. "If they had time to build one in, that's certain! They'd take me to the spaceport in a sound-proofed can and I'd be hauled back to Walden in it. Fine!"
"What are you going to do?" asked Fani anxiously.
Hoddan's ideas were not clear. But Darth was not a healthy place for him. It was extremely likely, for example, that Don Loris would feel that the very bad jolt he'd given that astute schemer's plans, by using stun-pistols at the spaceport, had been neatly canceled out by his rescue of Fani. He would regard Hoddan with a mingled gratitude and aversion that would amount to calm detachment. Don Loris could not be counted on as a really warm personal friend.
On the other hand, the social system of Darth was not favorable to a stranger with an already lurid reputation for fighting, but whose weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged—and who couldn't count on that as a steady thing.
As a practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate the nine inexplicable ships overhead. They hadn't co-operated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no confidential relationship existed up there. It was possible that the nine ships and the Waldenians didn't even know of each other's presence. There is a lot of room in space. If both called on ship-frequency and listened on ground-frequency, they would not have picked up each others' summons to the ground.
"You've got to do something!" insisted Fani. "I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he's planning some skulduggery!"
"I think," said Hoddan, "that I'll have some breakfast, if I may. As soon as I fasten up my ship bag."
Thal said mournfully:
"If anything happens to you, something will happen to me too, because I helped you."
"Breakfast first," said Hoddan. "That, as I understand it, should make it disgraceful for your father to have my throat cut. But beyond that—" He said gloomily. "Thal, get a couple of horses outside the wall. We may need to ride somewhere. I'm very much afraid we will. But first I'd like to have some breakfast."
Fani said disappointedly:
"But aren't you going to face them? The men from Walden? You could shoot them!"
Hoddan shook his head.
"It wouldn't solve anything. Anyhow a practical man like your father won't sell me out before he's sure I can't pay off better. I'll bet on a conference with me before he makes a deal."
Fani stamped her foot.
"Outrageous! Think what you saved me from!"
But she did not question the possibility. Hoddan observed:
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?"
He strapped the ship bag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the space communicator. It was not ruined, but nobody else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.
"Helping one's neighbor," he'd said frequently in Hoddan's hearing while Hoddan was a youth, "is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's a hell of a lot better neighbor!"
This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.
Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed. Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements, and Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety, he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career and riches and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow-citizens. Trivial things! But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!
Fani watched him breakfast.
"I don't understand you," she complained. "Anybody else would be proud of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?"
"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.
"Then why aren't you angry?"
"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.
"And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful," said Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder"—she pointed and Hoddan nodded—"and having Thal there with orders to serve you faithfully—"
She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps leading here from the great hall where conferences took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.
"This is a very bad business, my dear fellow," he said benevolently. "Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell me terrible things about you!"
"Yes," said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He said: "One of them, I think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man's police, isn't he?" He reflected a moment. "If I were you, I'd start talking at a million credits. You might get half that."
He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.
"Do you think," he asked indignantly, "that I would give up the rescuer of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet, to be locked in a dungeon for life?"
"Not in those words," conceded Hoddan. "But after all, despite your deep gratitude to me, there are such things as one's duty to humanity as a whole. And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented a danger to millions of innocent women and children—still, under such circumstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own emotions."
Don Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.
"Moreover," he observed, "gratitude for actions done on Darth does not entitle you to judge of my actions on Walden. While you might and even should feel obliged to defend me in all things I have done on Darth, your obligation to me does not let you deny that I may have acted less defensibly on Walden."
Don Loris looked extremely uneasy.
"I may have thought something like that," he admitted. "But—"
"So that," said Hoddan, "while your debt to me cannot and should not be overlooked, nevertheless"—Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke less clearly—"you feel that you should give consideration to the claims of Walden to inquire into my actions while there."
He chewed, and swallowed, and said gravely:
"And can I make deathrays?"
Don Loris brightened. He drew a deep breath of relief. He said complainingly:
"I don't see why you're so sarcastic! Yes. That is a rather important question. You see, on Walden they don't know how to. They say you do. They're very anxious that nobody should be able to. But while in unscrupulous hands such an instrument of destruction would be most unfortunate ... ah ... under proper control—"
"Yours," said Hoddan.
"Say—ours," said Don Loris hopefully. "With my experience of men and affairs, and my loyal and devoted retainers—"
"And cozy dungeons," said Hoddan. He wiped his mouth. "No."
Don Loris started violently.
"No, what?"
"No deathrays," said Hoddan. "I can't make 'em. Nobody can. If they could be made, some star somewhere would be turning them out, or some natural phenomenon would let them loose from time to time. If there were such things as deathrays, all living things would have died, or else would have adjusted to their weaker manifestations and developed immunity so they wouldn't be deathrays any longer. As a matter of fact, that's probably been the case, some time in the past. So far as the gadget goes that they're talking about, it's been in use for half a century in the Cetis cluster. Nobody's died of it yet."
Don Loris looked bitterly disappointed.
"That's the truth?" he asked unhappily. "Honestly? That's your last word on it?"
"Much," said Hoddan, "much as I hate to spoil the prospects of profitable skulduggery, that's my last word and it's true."
"But those men from Walden are very anxious!" protested Don Loris. "There was no ship available, so their government got a liner that normally wouldn't stop here to take an extra lifeboat aboard. It came out of overdrive in this solar system, let out the lifeboat, and went on its way again. Those two men are extremely anxious—"
"Ambitious, maybe," said Hoddan. "They're prepared to pay to overcome your sense of gratitude to me. Naturally, you want all the traffic will bear. I think you can get half a million."
Don Loris looked suspicious again.
"You don't seem worried," he said fretfully. "I don't understand you!"
"I have a secret," said Hoddan.
"What is it?"
"It will develop," said Hoddan.