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Two of them did not quite grasp that it was a ritual, and he had to shoot them in the knife arm. Then he hunted in the ship's supplies for ointment for the blisters that would appear from stun-pistol bolts at such short range. As he bandaged the places, he again tried to find out why the Lady Fani had tried to get him carved up by the large-bladed knives all Darthian gentlemen wore.
I wish you well, but when you carry my men off for pirates, and make my neighbors into my enemies, and infect my daughter with strange notions and the government of a friendly planet asks me in so many words not to shelter you any longer ... why that's the end, Hoddan. So with great regret " "The regret is mine," said Hoddan. Thoughtfully, he aimed a stun-pistol at a slowly opening door.
He moved with great dignity to depart. The stun-pistol buzzed. He leaped and howled and fled. Hoddan had aimed accurately enough, but prudence suggested that if he appeared to kill anybody, the matter might become serious. So he'd fired to sting the man with a stun-pistol bolt at about the same spot where, on Walden, he'd scorched members of a party of police in ambush. It was nice shooting.
One of them stood up, smiling unpleasantly. The stun-pistol clicked. Hoddan withdrew it from charging-contact, flipped the butt shut, and turned toward the three men. Two of them charged him suddenly the redhead and the unpleasant smiler. The stun-pistol hummed. The redhead howled. He'd been hit in the hand. His unshaven companion buckled in the middle and fell to the floor.
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 swung her up and over his shoulder. With a stun-pistol in his free hand he headed down the hall. "Outside," she said zestfully. "Get out the side door and turn left, and nobody can jump down on your neck. Then left again to the gate." He obeyed. Now and again he got in a pot-shot with his pistol. Don Loris had turned the castle into a very pretty trap.
He painstakingly made ready to swing his stun-pistol from his extreme right, across the space 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.
He put his bag conveniently close to the terminals at which his pistols could be recharged. He snapped open a pistol butt and presented it to the electric contacts. "Quaint customs you have here," he said conversationally. "Robbing a newcomer. Resenting his need for a few watts of power that comes free from the sky." The stun-pistol clicked.
His followers now rushed, dismounting where they had to. They fired with reckless abandon. A stun-pistol, which does not kill, imposes few restraints upon its user. If you shoot somebody who doesn't need to be shot, he may not like it but he isn't permanently harmed.
Yet the slanting morning sunshine was bright. As Hoddan actually reached the control shed, he saw a sleepy man in the act of putting a key in the door. He dismounted within feet of that man, who turned and blinked sleepily at him, and then immediately looked the reverse of cordial. It was the red-headed man he'd stung with a stun-pistol the day before.
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