"Ghek probably had fresh horses waiting, so he could keep on at top speed in his flight. I doubt that 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 added 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 a half 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.
"I'd have bet on this," said Hoddan miserably. "Stop here, Thal. Pick out a couple of your more hangdog characters and fix them up with their hands apparently tied behind their backs. We take a breather for five minutes."
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, cooperation 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 some time tomorrow, most likely.
Before the speech was quite finished, however, Hoddan and his weary followers 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 down the throat of any man who gave away his strategy ahead of time. The gate closed behind them. Men came 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's personal servant appeared.
"What's this about prisoners with fancy news?" he demanded. "What is it?"
"Don Loris!" whooped Thal. "Long live the Lady Fani!"
Hoddan carefully 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 dismounted. 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 and Lord Ghek. Hoddan's men went raging happily through corridors and halls. They used their stun-pistols with zest. 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 a half-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.
"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 shall sit down on something which will, I hope, remain perfectly still. And I may," he added morbidly, "I may 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 one half-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."