Wing Alak licked his lips. A lot of Patrolmen got killed on the job, and it looked as if he would be another name on the list, and he personally much preferred being a live coward to a dead hero. He did not have a single lethal weapon, and he was alone on a planet out to get him. It didn’t look good.

* * *

The hall was old, a long dim structure of gray stone, where only the leaping ruddy flames broke the chill dusk and where the hollow echoes were like voices of the dead centuries which had stirred bloodily here. Many a council had been held in the great chamber, the results being announced with screaming war-horns and the clash of arms and armor, but perhaps none so dark as the secret meeting tonight.

The twelve earls of Mordh were seated at the head of the huge ancient table. Red firelight seemed to splash them with blood, throwing their grim bony faces into eerie visibility against the sliding misshapen shadows. Outside the windows, the mighty autumn wind flung sleet and rain at the castle walls and roared about its towers.

Dorlok, who had called the meeting, spoke first. His deep voice was low, and the storm snarled over and around its rumble: “To me, at least, the situation has become intolerable. When so-called honor clashes with basic instincts—and just how much honor does our dead king have left?—there is only one choice if we wish to remain sane. The king must go.”

Yorm sprang out of his seat. The light gleamed bloodily on his slitted yellow eyes. Three of his fists were clenched, the fourth half drew his dagger from its sheath. “Treason!” he gasped.

“As you like.” Dorlok’s scarred face twisted in a snarl. “Yet I would say that we have a higher duty than our oath to the king. As earls of Mordh, which now rules the entire planet and thus our entire species, we are pledged to preserve the integrity of our race and traditions. This the king, corrupted by the she-devil Franna, has lost. He is no longer a warrior, he is a drinker and idler in his palace—the swords of Mordh rust, the people cry for battle, and he sits under the complete dominion of his mistress. This won’t be the first time a king has been deposed—and we will be driving her off the throne rather than him.”

More than half of the earls nodded their heads in dark agreement. Valtan murmured: “I wonder if she is of this planet at all? Could she not be some devilish robot invented by the Patrol’s unholy agents? Her very nature is alien to all we know.”

“No, no, my agents have checked very carefully on her background,” said Dorlok. “She is the daughter of a Mordhan spaceman who sold her on Sol III after he had run up a great gambling debt—sold her to a man of the very Patrol which seeks to destroy slavery, or says it does! Franna was educated in the Solar System, apparently with the ultimate object of becoming the king’s mistress. I have reason to believe plastic surgery was used to make her the most beautiful of our race, and certainly her education in the arts of love—At any rate, she did come back here, enslaved the king, and now for ten years has run the country—the planet—the system! And—undoubtedly on behalf of the cursed Patrol!”