Somebody's pistol went empty and the local boys found it out. Now
we'll have to fight some more--no."

He beckoned to a listening, tense, resentful inhabitant of the castle.
He held up the key of the room in which he'd locked young Ghek.

"Now open the castle gate," he commanded, "and fetch out my last three
men, and we'll leave without setting fire to anything. The Lord Ghek
would like it that way. He's locked up in a room that's particularly
inflammable."

The last statement was a guess, only, but Ghek's retainer looked
horrified. He bellowed. There was a subtle change in the bitterly
hostile atmosphere. Men came angrily to help load the spare horses.
Hoddan's last three men came out of a corridor, wiping blood from
various scratches and complaining plaintively that their pistols had
shot empty and they'd had to defend themselves with knives.

Three minutes later the cavalcade rode out of the castle gate and away
into the darkness. Hoddan had arrived here when Ghek was inside with
Fani as his prisoner, when there were only a dozen men without and at
least a hundred inside to defend the walls. And the castle was
considered impregnable.

In half an hour Hoddan's followers had taken the castle, rescued Fani,
looted it superficially, gotten fresh horses for themselves and spare
ones for their plunder, and were headed away again. In only one respect
were they worse off than when they arrived. Some stun-pistols were
empty.

Hoddan searched the sky and pieced together the star-pattern he'd noted
before.

"Hold it!" he said sharply to Thal. "We don't go back the same way we
came! The gang that ambushed us will be stirring around again, and we
haven't got full stun-pistols now! We make a wide circle around those
characters!"

"Why?" demanded Thal. "There are only so many passes. The only other one
is three times as long. And it is disgraceful to avoid a fight--"

"Thal!" snapped an icy voice from beside Hoddan, "you have an order!
Obey it!"

Even in the darkness, Hoddan could see Thal jump.

"Yes, my Lady Fani," said Thal shakily. "But we go a long distance
roundabout."

* * * * *

The direction of motion through the night now changed. The long line of
horses moved in deepest darkness, lessened only by the light of many
stars. Even so, in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a
glamorous spectacle--twenty-eight beasts moving through dark defiles and
over steep passes among