Hoddan shook his head at her.
"Once you asked me if I'd fight for you, and look what it got me into! No commitments."
He glanced along the battlements. There was a fairly large coil of rope in view. He picked up his bag and went over to it. He checked the fastening of one end and tumbled the other over the wall.
Ten minutes later he trudged up to Thal, waiting in the nearby woodland with two horses.
"The Lady Fani," he said, "has the kind of brains I like. She pulled up the rope again."
Thal did not comment. He watched morosely as Hoddan made the perpetually present ship bag fast to his saddle and then distastefully climbed aboard the horse.
"What are you going to do?" asked Thal unhappily. "I didn't make a parting-present to Don Loris, so I'll be disgraced if he finds out I helped you. And I don't know where to take you."
"Where," asked Hoddan, "did those characters from Walden come down?"
Thal told him. At the castle of a considerable feudal chieftain, on the plain some four miles from the mountain range and six miles this side of the spaceport.
"We ride there," said Hoddan. "Liberty is said to be sweet, but the man who said that didn't have blisters from a saddle. Let's go."