Dominic Flandry, Vol. 2 — Poul Anderson

PLANET OF THE GOLDEN HORDE: The squad's eyes registered the girl's blaster even as their chief spoke. Someone yelled. Bourtai fired into the thick of them. Ionic lightning crashed. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry dropped. A bolt sizzled where he had been. He fired, wide-beamed, the energy too diluted to kill even at short range but scorching four men at once. As their screams lifted, he bounced back to his feet, overlapped the fallen frontline, stiff-armed a warrior beyond, and hit the landing . . . . This was the beginning of Flandry's hair-raising mission to Altai, one of the neutral planets between the two warring galactic cultures. But it also looked like the end of the adventure, for beyond his escape lay the man-killing frozen wastes of an ultra-polar zone.