"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 spilled 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. Some of the chosen men swaggered; 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 lighted the 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. Streaming smoke, lighted by the flames, made weird patterns in the starlit night.
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. There was confusion and crowding on Hoddan's right-hand side. The smell of horse-flesh was strong. 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 fingers 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! And don't waste charges! Remember what to do?"
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. Hoddan checked his instructions and armed him.
The band of pursuing horsemen pounded through the dark night under strangely patterned stars. Hoddan held on to his saddle and harked 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 of pursuers happened to he. They'd be outnumbered many times by those they sought to pursue.
Thal had said something about horses being hamstrung. There must, then, have been two attacking parties. One swarmed into the stables and drew 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.
"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 enthusiastically. "It would be disgrace not to fight them. The plunder—"
"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! We've got to catch up to him before he shuts his castle gate in our faces!"
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. He held on doggedly, riding with all the grace and spirit of a sack of cement. This adventure was not exhilarating. He was badly worried about innumerable things that could go wrong. Even if everything went right he'd still have plenty of troubles! It came into his mind, depressingly, that supposedly stirring action like this was really no more satisfying than piracy or the practice of electronics as a business. It was something one got into and had to go through with. Fani, for example, 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 started up 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. Soon 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 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; its noise was inaudible through the yells of the charging partisans of the Lord Ghek.
Chapter 5
Hoddan swore from the depths of a very considerable vocabulary.
"You" (censored), "get back on your horses or I'll blast you and leave you for Ghek's men to handle when they're able to move about again! Get back on those horses!"
The men got back on their horses.
"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. 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: