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I don't like him, but at this moment I don't like anybody very much, and I won't play favorites." Thal dragged the insensible young nobleman into the next room. Hoddan locked the door and pocketed the key as Fani came into view again. She was splendidly attired, now, in brocade and jewels.
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.
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!
And he'd gotten into this by himself! He'd chosen it! He'd practically asked for it! He began strongly to share his grandfather's disillusioned view of brains. After a long time the door of the cell opened. Thal was back, chastened. "Don Loris wants to talk to you," he said in a subdued voice. "He's not pleased." Hoddan took another gulp of the wine.
They were great bonfires burning in iron cages some forty feet up in the air. Those cages projected from the battlements of a massive, cut-stone wall. There was no light anywhere else underneath the stars. Thal rode almost underneath the cressets and shouted upward. A voice answered. Presently a gate clanked open and a black, cavelike opening appeared behind it.
"Muss aus dem Thal jetzt scheiden, wo alles Lust und Klang;" but at least the memory of it would remain with him a gracious possession. The long afternoon wore on; Crewe, Stafford, Lichfield, Tamworth went by, as things in a dream, for his thoughts were far away.
"You couldn't even pick out its sun, from where we are now!" Thal gulped. "I ... do not understand what you want with us," he protested. "We are not experienced in space! We are simple men " "You're pirates now," Hoddan told him with a sort of genial bloodthirstiness. "You'll do what I tell you until we fight. Then you'll fight well or die. That's all you need to know!" He left them.
They were of all nations, but there were so many New Yorkers whose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, and baum that she seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on Broadway.
Thal had no idea, but he did not care. Hoddan did care. He was bewildered and inclined to be indignant. A noble friendship like theirs A spearman, came in and saluted. Hoddan went through a symbolic duel, which was plainly the way the thing would have happened in reality. Others came in and went through the same process.
And then, one evening, when the last rays of the sun were shining along the hills and touching the stems of the tall pines, we drove into a narrow valley and caught sight of a large brown building of wood, with projecting eaves and quaint windows, that stood close by the forest. "Here is my dear inn!" cried Tita, with a great glow of delight and affection in her face. "Here is mein gutes Thal!
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