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SIXTEEN

It took Arno only three more castles—five more days—to get his recruits up to thirty-three. He did it without any more personal appearances from me, too. Roland's presence with him was a big help. Roland already had a reputation as someone with a nose for politics and profit, a man who would someday be rich and powerful. He'd been close to Duke William, then had shown the good sense to come back to Normandy as one of the duke's loyal supporters at home instead of staying in England under the great man's thumb.

Arno reported the final recruits just before dawn on the sixth morning. He also told me that Roland had been very agreeable—had hardly argued about anything since I'd gotten his oath. That sounded promising, as if we'd be able to work with him without worrying too much that he'd do something crazy and unexpected.

We agreed it was time now to try for a chaser. I corrected myself mentally before I said it out loud: not try—it was time to capture a chaser.

That day we flew by daylight again, in spite of a clear sky, to select a place to set up the action. All our troops were at Roland's castle now, so we decided on a little one-room log hut not too far from it, where forest bordered on a big meadow near the edge of Roland's fief. A herdsman lived there, one of Roland's villeins, tending cattle. I told Arno to have Roland remove the cattle from the area of the herdsman's hut before evening, so they wouldn't be wandering around in the way, complicating things.

Then we sat a quarter-mile above the hut and talked about how we were going to pull it off. Three civilians, almost unarmed, one of them a sixteen-year-old and another one his mother, were going to capture a Federation corvette that was parked a few hundred miles above the planet! And they were going to do this with the help of some thirty primitive barbarians armed with swords. Barbarians who were looking for the chance to cut each other's throats, and maybe ours, too.

It didn't pay to look at it like that, I decided. I could feel my confidence shrinking when I did, and I didn't have too much to begin with.

You could hardly call what we did planning; there were too many unknowns to plan much. But we talked about how we'd deploy to start things out. After that we agreed on a few simple steps that were supposed to lead to success, accomplishing these any way we could. What it really came to was, we'd do whatever the situation called for, and hope for the best.

I was beginning to feel pretty tense, but Arno didn't seem nervous at all. Maybe that was because he was a Norman, with the idea that he could do anything.

Finally, we flew Arno and his horse back to Roland's castle and set him down right in the bailey. It was the first look that the new men had had at the cutter. And it was good public relations for Arno, getting taxied around like that. He was the only Norman who had flown, and no one could doubt that he was really number one with us.

For the rest of the day, about all we had to do was wait—dad and mom and I. Bubba ran off to gather his wolves. I lay down, but for once I couldn't go to sleep right away. While I lay there, I couldn't help thinking about the possibility of failure, and that we might be stranded here on this planet.

If that happened, I'd have some decisions to make. First, what would I do on Fanglith? Maybe I could train to be a knight. I shouldn't be too old to learn. Back on Evdash I was considered strong for my age and size, and an outstanding natural athlete. And it seemed to me that I could not only get through the knight training, but be very good at it, even if I would be starting late.

But then what? I didn't have any interest at all in going into battle and killing people, and that's what the knight business was all about. Not that they seemed to think of it as the knight business. It was a way of life that they followed, for whatever reason. Maybe because it was better than anything else on Fanglith, or on this part of Fanglith anyway.

What might my reasons be for becoming a knight? Why did knight training appeal to me if I didn't want to be a warrior? I decided it was because it would be great to be that good at something. Those little kids I'd seen training were going to be super-expert warriors.

But being super expert wasn't quite it either, for me. That was close, but it wasn't it. The training would be kind of a game, too—not in the sense of a contest against anyone, but a kind of— It would let me find out how good I could get at operating my body and having it perform really difficult things.

And controlling my mind! There was the secret of the champion distance runner, weight lifter, gymnast, and maybe the mathematician. Or someone like dad—the top-flight management consultant. The same would be true of knighthood—getting so good at something that nothing mental got in your way. These knights never worried about combat techniques. They were so good at them, it was all automatic. They could give their whole attention to the battle situation.

But as a knight, the real test was combat. They didn't even get to be knights until they'd impressed their officers by acts of valor in real combat. Arno had been tested in Sicily, first in some skirmishes, and finally, in a big battle. And Roland had been a bloody battle hero in England. But I didn't want to kill anyone if I could help it—certainly not just to show how good I was at fighting. And I definitely didn't want anyone to kill me, which was the other side of that coin.

Next, I looked at the possibility of being a monk or a priest. It wouldn't be so bad if I could be like Brother Oliver. He had something that the other monks I'd talked with, and Father Drogo, didn't. He had enthusiasm. He loved being a monk and knowing all the stuff he knew about his religion. And about a lot of other stuff. I couldn't have that enthusiasm because the stuff there was to know about his religion was mostly not real to me. It was interesting, and maybe I could get into sorting and analyzing it for what truths it did hold. But no, I wouldn't be happy as a monk or priest. I'd need to believe, first.

Maybe I'd need to see some more of Fanglith, and see what other options there were. But, of course, what I really needed to do was make this project work. I needed to get Deneen back from the political police, and head out for someplace like Evdash.

And then I'd still have to find out what I wanted to do.

Things like that went on in my mind for quite a while, but finally I went to sleep.

When the sun had gone down and it was starting to get dark, I flew the cutter into the woods behind the hut. That may sound strange, but it was easy. Cattle had grazed in that woods, apparently for a lot of years, and they'd eaten all the new tree seedlings as they came up. So there weren't any thickets or saplings or young trees at all, just the stand of big trees, with grass underneath. That left plenty of room between the trunks to float the cutter in, and once in there, we were practically impossible to see from above.

I set the cutter on the ground about a hundred yards back in the woods, beneath the spreading crown of a huge old tree. I wasn't feeling very well. My stomach was nervous and my skin felt numb, and I felt kind of weak all over. I had this growing premonition that the whole thing was going to be a disaster. If I'd been able to think of any other possible way to get Deneen back, I'd have left right away.

The knights and sergeants were already there, most of them sitting on their horses, talking. They seemed entirely relaxed and alert; it was awesome how unworried they were. Arno and Roland were with them. I didn't know if Bubba had arrived with his wolves or not, but then, I didn't know what they'd be able to do anyway. If they were around, they'd stay out of sight. Otherwise the knights would go after them and try to kill them.

I got out of the cutter with a blast rifle slung on one shoulder, and talked with Arno for a few minutes, letting it get darker. Then I went to the hut. There were four knights waiting around outside it with bows and arrows, to back me up when the chaser got there.

The poor herdsman was inside the hut. He'd been ordered to stay when the cattle had been driven away, and he didn't have any idea what was going on. He just hunkered in a corner of the hut, keeping quiet and out of the way.

It wasn't dark enough yet by quite a bit, so I walked back to the cutter to do my waiting.

I wondered if I looked as jittery to the knights as I felt. In the cutter, nobody said much. Mom had heated a pot of korch, and I had a cup.

I'd never noticed before how long it took to get dark.

We heard a kind of low plaintive howl from far back in the forest, and decided it was Bubba calling, so dad left to go back and see what he had to tell us.

It was about ninety percent dark when I got out and walked to the hut once more. I was so nervous I could hardly breathe. It was nearly time, and I didn't want to wait any longer. I took the communicator off my belt and spoke into it.

And suddenly I wasn't nervous anymore.

"This is Klentis kel Deroop," I said, "calling the Federation police corvette." I tried to make my voice sound weak and feverish. "I'm hiding in an abandoned hut down here, by a pasture. Are you getting my coordinates? I've been shot with an arrow, and the wound is badly infected. I'm afraid if I don't get medical attention right away, I'll be dead by tomorrow."

There was a long wait, maybe a minute, I suppose while they waited for the captain to come to the radio. Finally a voice, very businesslike, said, "Comrade kel Deroop, we have your coordinates. A chaser will be there shortly to pick you up. Its personnel are prepared to treat you with antibiotics, and our medical officer will be standing by to receive you aboard ship."

As soon as I had the captain's answer, I told the four knights who were standing around me to get behind some big trees close by at the very edge of the woods. They did, trotting away calmly but briskly. I got behind a thick trunk not more than ten feet to one side of the hut. About three minutes later, dad ran up. He'd been listening on the cutter's radio, to the police channel, and heard some traffic between the corvette and the chasers.

"Their commanding officer is being careful," he said. "I don't think he's suspicious, just cautious, but he's sending all three chasers down. Two will stand by out of sight, at two thousand feet, watching everything on infrascope. The corvette itself will be standing by at five miles.

"Now I'm going to talk to Arno," he added, and hurried off into the woods.

So there went our plans, such as they were, shot down. Instead of one chaser to deal with, we had three plus the corvette. But somehow I wasn't scared or worried now. I was calm as anything, with this feeling that it would all work out just fine, just the opposite of the way I'd felt a little earlier. I didn't say anything to the knights about what was happening because I didn't have anything useful to tell them. We'd just have to start out as if nothing had changed, and play it by ear.

It took about ten minutes for the first chaser to appear. I didn't see it coming because it was dark, without even any moonlight, and the chasers weren't showing any lights. One minute there was nothing, and suddenly there was this spotlight beam, dead on the front of the hut. Then the chaser settled to the ground no more than a hundred feet away, its spotlight still on. For a minute, nothing more happened.

I avoided looking at the light, but it occurred to me that my four bowmen were probably staring right at it, because they'd never seen anything like it before. It would make their pupils contract, and they wouldn't be able to hit anything in the dark with their arrows.

So it was going to be up to me.

And if my guys started shooting blind and missing when the agents were still outside stunner range, I'd have to use my blaster instead of my stunner. And that would bring on a violent response. They might shoot the whole place up, and that would be that. Well, I thought, I'll just have to play it by eardo the best I can, and hope it works out. I couldn't very well yell to my men. That would tell the political police that I wasn't alone down there.

I stopped thinking about anything and just watched. The chaser was some light color, maybe an off-white, and I could see the side panel swing up and two guys come out. I didn't know if there was a third man still inside or not. One of the two had a hand up to his mouth. It had to be holding a police band communicator, because I could hear him talking as they walked toward us, although I couldn't hear what he was saying. The other man had a rifle in his hand, probably a heavy military weapon.

They were just getting into good broad-beam stunner range when I heard two bowstrings twang, almost at once. Before I could react, both agents fell; they should have been wearing some of that primitive chain mail. I guess my knights had looked away from the spotlight quickly enough; they could still see all right.

As soon as the agents fell, I sprinted toward their chaser, shouting "stay back!" to my bowmen as I ran. I didn't look to see if they were staying back, I just kept my eyes glued to the chaser door, running hard, ready to shoot if anyone showed there. I didn't even look to see if either of the downed agents was moving as I ran past them. It took me about four seconds to get there and jump in, and it was empty. Their radio was on, and a voice was saying, "Okay, MC-1, get clear of our firepower."

Maybe they hadn't been watching as closely as they should have. Maybe, seeing me running on infrascope, they thought I was one of theirs. Or maybe they'd gotten rattled when they saw their men go down. Anyway, I couldn't fly that thing on short notice; I'd need time to look it over and find out how.

But short notice was what they'd just given me. So I jumped back out and sprinted back to the trees, taking maybe five seconds for the return trip because I bent to snatch up the rifle laying by one of the fallen agents.

I just had time to give it to one of the knights when both other chasers arrived, hovering twenty or thirty feet above the meadow. I didn't know whether they'd seen me run for cover or not. Their spotlights flashed on, searching the edge of the meadow and the fringe of the woods. I huddled behind the knight's tree, giving him a ten-second course in the use of a blast rifle, then darted to my own tree as the beam moved someplace else.

From there, peering out, I aimed at one of the searchlights, and at almost the instant I fired, the knight shot out the other light, a split second ahead of mine. I shouldn't have been surprised, I guess. The knights had been smart enough not to let themselves be blinded, and it was obviously good sense to kill the lights if we could. But to use a totally unfamiliar weapon like a blast rifle maybe twenty seconds after he first touched one, and hit the target... I'd heard dad say once that there was no explaining ability sometimes. Now I knew what he meant.

The only problem was that about one second later the guy shot out the spotlight in the abandoned chaser, too. I'd have preferred to keep its light intact.

Lights or not, after two or three seconds to get over their surprise, the two chasers started firing into the woods. But only for a moment. I later found out that the commanding officer on the corvette had started yelling at them over the radio to cease fire, that he wanted Klentis kel Deroop alive.

But at that time I didn't know that. I just knew that the shooting had stopped. Then everything was quiet for a little while, until after four or five minutes the corvette itself settled down and parked about fifteen feet above the ground. It was a half ovoid, with the flat side on the bottom, and it looked about a hundred and twenty feet long. I could dimly see turrets on it whose firepower could probably blow the hut away and tear trees into slivers.

It was interesting that the corvette's captain wasn't willing yet to risk his spotlights.

Then someone, probably their captain, called out on the loud-hailer. "Klentis kel Deroop! Come out and give yourself up. We know your family is with you. Give up or we'll destroy you all!"

My voice sounds a lot like my dad's, especially over a communicator. The trick was to talk like him—say the things he might say, using the words he might use, in case someone there had known him.

"That won't do you any good," I said into my communicator. "You weren't sent out here to kill me. The government wants a show trial.

"Now I've got something you want—me. And you have something to trade for me—my daughter. If you let her go—if you let her come out here into the forest to her mother and brother—I'll give myself up to you. What do you say to that?"

"I'm afraid not, kel Deroop," the loud-hailer answered. "Not in that sequence, certainly. But I will make you a counteroffer. First of all, I do prefer to take you alive. You are right about that, although dead will do. If you give yourself up, then, when we have you in our hands, we will release your daughter alive and well. If you do not, then we will throw her dead body from the ship and blast all three of you into small pieces.

"So what you must do now is come out of the hut with your hands in the air and lie face down on the ground, spread-eagled." He paused. "You have exactly one minute to make up your mind and do it.'

One minute!

There was a door in the back of the hut and, crouched over, I darted to it and into the blacker darkness inside. My tree was only ten feet from the hut, and there was a pile of firewood between them that I ducked behind, so it seemed like there was a good chance they hadn't seen me.

The herdsman was still there. I could make him out dimly, a dark something, in the starlight that came through the doors. "You!" I said. "If you want to live, go to the front door and stop there."

Slowly he went.

"Now get down on your hands and knees and crawl outside, about thirty feet out. Then stop."

Peeking around the doorjamb, I watched him do it. I could almost feel his heart thudding in his chest, his breath nearly suffocating him. When he stopped, I said after him, "Now lie down on your belly with your arms and legs spread out."

So far, so good, I thought, as I watched him do that, too. Then, out of the dark sky, one of the chasers moved in, stopped to float a few yards from the herdsman, and its panel opened. I saw a hand and arm come out, and realized they'd just zapped the poor guy.

Quickly then it landed, and two men jumped out to load the body in. I fired my own stunner, set on wide beam and at maximum intensity. On wide beam, I couldn't miss, yet the range was close enough that they'd either be dead or out for hours. As soon as they fell, I turned and sprinted, running low, out the back door and into the woods behind, as hard as I could run, hooking left when I had a bunch of trees between me and the ship. I hadn't more than gotten out of the line of fire when the third chaser began to pump blaster charges into the hut. Chunks of wood flew around, and when the shooting stopped ten seconds later, the front of the hut was burning. Not burning very hard because it was pretty waterlogged, but putting out a lot of smoke.

By that time I was behind a big tree again, back in the woods a little way. About sixty or seventy feet in front of me I could see a Norman crouched behind his tree—the knight who had the rifle. I wondered what he thought of all that heavy-caliber shooting. Was he scared? My heart was pounding like crazy, and it mostly wasn't from running.

I started forward, bent low and trying to keep his tree between me and the infrascope head on the corvette, the problem there being that I didn't know where the infrascope head was. "It's me," I whispered as I approached the knight. He gave a quick glance back and then turned toward the meadow again. The corvette was moving closer, sideways, and I could see her turrets pivot, her blaster cannon swinging toward us.

I decided it was time to talk again, quickly, and reached for my communicator. But before I had it off my belt, I heard dad's voice from it. I could also hear him live, off to my right, and looked in that direction. He'd left the cutter and was behind a tree.

"Captain," he was saying, "you're making things too complicated. Let's look at this rationally. You don't trust me, and I don't trust you. We need to make the exchange a small step at a time, so that neither of us commits himself more than the other."

He stopped then until the captain's voice boomed out on the loud-hailer. "Continue!"

"First, have the other chaser land out in the middle of the meadow, where I don't have to worry about it. Then I'll come out into the edge of the meadow where you can see me. After that we can talk about the next step."

It seemed to me that if I were the corvette captain, I'd go along with that. I stared hard into the night, scanning around, not knowing where the third chaser was any longer. After maybe half a minute I saw it settle to the ground, way out near the middle of the meadow.

I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to go out now, or if dad was going to. He answered that by coming out from behind his tree to just in front of it, where he stopped.

"Next," he said, "your chaser crew will have to come out and walk at least one hundred feet away from their craft, in this direction, so I can see them."

The answer was quick. "Kel Deroop, I'm losing patience with you. You have already done something to four of my men—probably killed them. I am not having this crew step outside."

"Captain," dad answered, "I don't know what trickery you're up to, but I do know that a man short on patience would never have risen to your rank in the political police. And so far as your four men down here are concerned, they will wake up. I hope the same is true of my son, whom one of your men used a stunner on a few minutes ago.

"Now, I am not going out any farther while your chaser is in a position to rush me. Your chaser crew will simply have to come out and walk at least one hundred feet in this direction."

There was a long pause, maybe fifteen or twenty seconds. Then the loud-hailer spoke again. "Kel Deroop, I now have my turrets trained on the two derelict chasers near you. Should either of them move, or should any of you try to approach them, I will fire on them instantly. So if that is your plan, be advised that it is suicide to try. As for the other chaser, I will agree only to have her crew stand outside her door."

"Make it fifty feet, captain," dad said. "If they come out fifty feet, I'll come out fifty feet and we'll talk again."

A few seconds later the chaser opened, and its two men got out and walked a little way in our direction. They were about two hundred yards from us, so I didn't pay much attention to them. I was watching the corvette, my rifle gripped tightly in sweaty hands. Dad walked out about fifty feet farther.

Then I heard his voice again from my communicator. "Now it's your turn again. Land your corvette three hundred feet in front of me, open the gangway, and let me see my daughter."

Nothing visible happened for a while. The greepers caught a part of my awareness again, and the stars glittering in the black sky. Tiny biting insects I'd half noticed earlier hummed around my head, and absently I slapped at one and then another. I was amazed, in a detached kind of way, at how calm I felt. And not long before, I'd felt ready to come apart with nerves.

After a couple of minutes, the corvette lowered to the ground about three hundred feet away. Half a minute later a square of light appeared low in her side as the gangway opened. I could see three people standing in it, but couldn't tell who they were.

"Have her call out to me," dad told the captain, "so I know it's her."

A few seconds later I heard one of them shout. "Hi, dad! It's me, Deneen!" And it was; there wasn't any question about it.

"All right, captain," dad said into his communicator, "We've made start. But before we go any further with this, there is something you need to know, just in case you have some trick in mind. I am quite willing to stay on this planet; I can be successful on any inhabited world. You know my reputation. Now, the only reason I called you in is to get my daughter free. She has her whole life ahead of her, while I've used up the best half of mine. More than half. But if at any time you fail to carry out in this procedure, I'm going to break and run for it.

"Next, make sure she can hear me on her guards' communicators. Because if she doesn't follow my instructions, I'll assume she either didn't hear them, or she was prevented from carrying them out. Whichever, I'll cancel the whole thing. Then, when you get home, you'll have to report that you blew it. You'll never be able to cover it; it's sure to leak: You had me for the taking and you blew it."

He stopped and waited for half a minute, I supposed to give the captain time to give orders about the communicators. I wondered what dad's reputation was that the captain was supposed to be impressed with it.

"All right," dad said, "now I'll come out another twenty feet. That will put me roughly seventy feet from the woods. Then she comes out seventy toward me from your ship."

Without waiting for an answer, he took about eight steps in their direction, then stopped. Deneen came out about sixty or seventy feet, I suppose, with a guard on each side holding her arms. And then the thought hit me that what dad was doing was working, and we'd have Deneen back, and the corvette would have dad and take off, leaving us sitting here in the middle of a bunch of angry Normans.

My insides snapped into a hard, tight knot, even though I knew that was nonsense. I knew my father better than that; he had something else in mind. My stomach relaxed a little.

"That's far enough for her guards," he said into his communicator. "She comes alone from there, about halfway to me. That's still within their maximum stunner range. Then she'll stop; if she doesn't, they can zap her from where they stand. When she's stopped, I'll go most of the way to meet her.

"After that, she comes on slowly, step by step. And your men follow her step by step, keeping her within maximum stunner range. When she's four or five steps from me, she runs for the woods. Understand? She runs for the woods and they let her. Then your men can zap me if they want, or they can just walk up and take me. Your choice."

Even I didn't believe that, and he was my father. Both he and the captain had tricks in mind, I was sure of it, and so were they. It was a question of whose trick worked.

"You either agree right now," dad went on, "or I head back for the woods. And remember, back on Morn Gebleu they want me alive. Your career is on the line."

I thought I knew the captain's trick. Back in imperial days, one of the things that emperors were known to do was root out whole families—leave no survivors. If the captain could get dad in his hands alive, he might blast every living thing in the vicinity, and report that he'd wiped out the kel Deroop family.

"You overrate your importance," the loud-hailer answered. "But all right, I'm quite willing. We really aren't interested in your family, you know, except as bargaining units. You're the one we were sent for."

At that moment I heard a terrible scream, and a second, from the direction of the chaser. Even as I jerked my head around to look, out of the corner of my eye I saw dad break into a sprint toward Deneen and her guards. At that same moment, Deneen did something—I couldn't see what, but it had to be hand-foot art—and one of her guards went down. Then she dove for the ground. An instant later dad and the second guard both staggered and fell, as if they'd stunned each other.

While that was in the middle of happening, I heard another wild yell, this time from the ship. I threw a quick glance that way, just in time to see two wolves disappear into the gangway. At that moment a trumpet blared a little way off to my right, and a couple of seconds later, a bunch of yelling and a wild scream came over my communicator. While that was going on, Arno's cavalry charged out of the forest.

I stood there confused for a moment, then realized that the nearby knights—my bowmen—were running on foot after the horsemen, toward the corvette, to get in on the action. I took off running toward dad and Deneen.

She was on her feet before I got there, and meanwhile, the knights were pouring into the gangway. When I reached dad, Deneen had already gotten the stunner from the zapped guard and used it on the other one—the one she'd laid out. Next, she gave the first zapped guard a second jolt, because dad had only gotten him at near-maximum range. She wanted to make sure he stayed out of action as long as necessary. Then, together, she and I dragged dad to the woods.

He wasn't unconscious; his body just wouldn't do what he told it to. I left him under the trees with Deneen, then ran as hard as I could out toward the middle of the meadow where the third chaser was. My rifle was ready in my hands, but I didn't need it; thirty or forty feet from the chaser, I found its two crewmen sprawled in the grass. Wolves had jumped them—several wolves, apparently—knocked them down and killed them almost before they knew what was happening. They hadn't even had time to use their blasters.

I took their weapons and got in the chaser, closing the door behind me. The panel light was enough to show me that the controls didn't look very much different from the cutter's. It didn't have a deep-space drive, of course, but all I wanted was to be able to use it to support the knights if I needed to. The radio was on, but dead quiet for the moment, only its dial light showing life. After locating key controls and instruments, I activated the drive.

I wasn't sure what to do next because I didn't know what the situation was on the corvette. I'd just decided to lift a dozen feet, and was reaching for the control stick, when a wolfish face caught my eye, looking in at me through the window. It was Bubba, so I pushed the switch marked door.

He jumped in and I closed the door behind him. Then he told me what had happened. When the corvette and all three chasers had arrived, dad had thought a message to him. When dad gave the signal, mentally, of course, the wolves would sneak out into the middle of the meadow from the far side. He would give the signal only in a situation where neither the corvette nor a chaser would be monitoring out there with an infrascope.

And, of course, both the corvette and the last chaser had ended up on the ground, with their attention on dad and the edge of the woods.

The really tough thing for dad had been that he could only think instructions to Bubba. Not being telepathic himself, naturally, he couldn't get any feedback. He couldn't know whether Bubba and his pack were able to carry out his instructions, although he had a lot of faith in Bubba. He couldn't even know for certain that Bubba had gotten the message.

Dad has not only got guts; he's also smart and quick. He'd worked the whole thing out on the spur of the moment, after the corvette commander had spoiled our plans by bringing his entire command down. It also turned out that before dad came up to the meadow, he'd had Arno move his troops off to the west a little, so they wouldn't trample us when they charged.

Arno was to signal an immediate charge, the minute the wolves went into the corvette. And the knights would have to be quick because, while the wolves should have a big shock effect, it probably wouldn't last long. Especially if they ran into someone with a stunner or blast pistol in his hand.

The way it turned out, though, the wolves got to the bridge without casualties. Three of the local wolves, plus Bubba, had boarded the corvette, and the crewmen in the gangway area and corridor had freaked and run. The man in charge of the gangway had a stunner, but didn't have a chance to use it before he was knocked down and killed. Bubba didn't say who'd done it, but I could see blood on his muzzle.

The people on the bridge—there'd been four of them—had heard the yelling but had no idea what it was about. One of them had drawn a stunner and killed the first wolf in—Biggest. But Biggest's momentum had knocked the man down. Then Blondie had grabbed the guy's wrist. That took care of the stunner. Slim had followed and gone for the throat, which finished the guy off.

Meanwhile, one of the people hit the emergency door release and the rest of them piled out, with Slim and Blondie after them. Bubba had stayed until after he'd heard the Normans coming into the ship. When one of them appeared from the corridor, sword in hand, Bubba had jumped out, too.

While Bubba was describing all that to me, I lifted a little way, flew over by the hut, and landed. Bubba was pretty certain there weren't any Federation people running around loose. But before I left the chaser unattended, I took the weapons out, and then the power activation plate, just in case. Then I did the same for the other two chasers.

Meanwhile, Deneen and mom had brought up the cutter and loaded dad into it. Dad's mind was working all right, even if his arms and legs weren't, and he could talk in an understandable mumble. He was giving the orders, and that was fine with me. I hadn't been doing so badly, for a novice, but if this was an example of how he'd operated as a revolutionary, I could see why the political police wanted him so badly.

The Normans held the surviving Federation people prisoner; they'd need them to help operate the corvette. But dad didn't trust the political police, even as captives. So he told me to go over with my stunner and make sure they were all asleep and that they'd stay that way the rest of the night. He even told me just how to set my stunner. After I'd zapped them, I was to find out from the ship's computer how to disable the astrogational system, and then do it. If I had any trouble with it, I was to get him to the corvette and he'd see what he could do. That was to keep the corvette effectively tied to the vicinity of Fanglith.

It didn't turn out to be too hard. First I had to access and follow parts A and B in the control system's overhaul instructions. Then I went to the engineering section, pulled two flow plates, and ran them through the materials recycler.

While I was at it, I also checked out the firing code to make sure no one could operate the turret guns without some instructions. I didn't want the Normans shooting up the woods before we left.

Then I went to the hangar and checked out our old cutter—the one Deneen and I had come to Fanglith in. I checked with mom on my communicator, and she said to disable it. We didn't want to leave the crew any way to get back to civilization. That was no problem. I just took the master cube out of the computer and put it in my pocket. The ones from the chasers wouldn't fit.

The prisoners were no problem. The Normans had run amuck and only taken nine of them. One of the crew had killed several knights with a blast pistol and really triggered a Norman bloodlust. There were federation bodies all over the place, and the decks were gummy with their blood. There was no way to get around without walking in it, of course, and when I got back outside, I almost wore my shoes out rubbing them in the grass, trying to wipe the blood off.

Back at the cutter, I hadn't had a chance to go to bed yet when Arno came over and asked me to bring the chasers on board the corvette. He was worried that Roland's men would go out and take them over.

He was already having trouble with Roland, who was claiming that he should be the head man now. The corvette was on his fief, he said, and therefore belonged to him. But more than half the Normans owed fealty to Arno and weren't ready to buy Roland's argument yet, even though it had a certain legal justification, I suppose.

An important factor was that Arno had their only blast pistol, and one of his men had their only blast rifle, though Roland's men had two of the four stunners they'd gotten their hands on. The Normans hadn't recognized the small-arms locker yet, and couldn't open it anyway until their prisoners woke up.

Arno didn't seem upset about Roland at all, though. I'm sure he'd expected something like this to happen. Born and raised a Norman, I suppose he'd have been surprised if it hadn't.

I wasn't eager to go into a situation like that. Roland's people might look at me as a promising hostage, or just covet my weapons. But Arno's guys would be there to protect me, and I thought we owed it to Arno to do it for him. Dad said fine, it was my option. Deneen said she wanted to go with me and back me up, and to my surprise, dad said all right and gave her his blast pistol! Mom never turned a hair.

None of us mentioned to Arno the weapons I'd brought aboard from the chasers. It just didn't seem like a good idea to bring it up. Without even saying anything to one another, it occurred to all of us that any more high-powered weapons among a group of squabbling Normans just wasn't a good idea. Nothing happened when Deneen and I went back over to the corvette. I opened the hangar door and took in the three chasers, and then we came back to the cutter.

* * *

The family was all together now, and we could have left right then. We could have been on our way outsystem without even saying goodbye. But somehow, we decided to stay until daylight. We all felt a certain loyalty to Arno, even though one, we still didn't trust him, and two, we'd already set him up with the corvette, just as we'd promised. We all felt uncomfortable about leaving before he'd firmly established himself as boss over there. So I lifted to seven feet, where we were out of reach, and parked. Then we set up a watch schedule and I went to bed.

 

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