Part 31 (2/2)
”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 n.o.body 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?”
”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.”
”Disappear? Me?” Hoddan exclaimed.
”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 of 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 into 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.
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 in surprise 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 powerful lord, Don Loris, was a novelty. 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 will soon be talking 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!”
”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 irrelevancies! I sent him to get Hoddan this afternoon, not to ma.s.sacre my neighbors' retainers-or rather, not to not ma.s.sacre them. A little bloodletting 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 foul-breathed puppies everywhere I go!”
”It's not the same.”
”And it's especially unreasonable,” continued 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; if those three s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps 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 circ.u.mvallation, 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 s.p.a.ce-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.”
”Hus.h.!.+” said Fani. ”You're a nice old fuddy-duddy that father sent to the s.p.a.ceport because he figured you'd be too timid to get into trouble. Hus.h.!.+” To Hoddan she said, ”Now, tell me all about the fighting. It must have been terrible!”
She watched him with her head on one side, expectantly.
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