A Logic Named Joe Part 32

"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.

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."

"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."

"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 asked 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 many worlds away. She might not have believed you, but-"

"Hold it!" said Hoddan. "That's just manners? What do you say to a girl you really like?"

"Oh, then," said Thal, "you 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 charges 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 if food were given to Hoddan it 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 wakened by a yell. It was not a complete yell, only the first part of one. It stopped in a particularly unpleasant fas.h.i.+on, 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. The first yell was followed by other shouts and outcries, by the clas.h.i.+ng 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 the striking force were rus.h.i.+ng through only indifferently defended corridors.

It would not pa.s.s 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 chemical gun went off somewhere. It went off again. There was almost an instant 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 now clothed. He jerked on the door to open it.

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 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 swordplay, and a fierce, desperate cry from Fani among them, and a plank in his guestroom-dungeon door gave way. He struck again. The running raiders poured past a corner some yards away. He battered and swore, and swore and battered as the tumult moved, and he suddenly heard a scurrying thunder of horses' hoofs outside the castle. There were yells of derisive triumph and the pounding, rumbling sound of horses headed away in the night.

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; 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. 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 s.h.i.+ed 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 ambus.h.!.+"

"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 ma.s.sacre 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 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. 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 ambus.h.!.+ 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.