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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 ma.s.sacre 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 s.p.a.ce 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 pa.s.ses 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.