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."

He'd been about to say an escaped criminal from Walden, but caught
himself in time.

"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 said 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 half a
world away. She might not have believed you, but--"

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

"Oh, then," said Thal, "you'd 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 charge 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 food given to Hoddan
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