The Valley of Creation Page 11

  "It is our vengeance, gray brothers! Let be!"

  Vengeance of the captive, of the slave. Nelson could see on their backs the marks of lash and club and on the necks the scars of the rope. They were fouled with stable dirt and dust and crusted blood, these who had bathed in mountain streams and combed their manes with the wind. And they were bitter for their vengeance.

  The wolves were forgotten. They ran between the staggering legs of men, under the bellies of the horses and on outside, lest they themselves be trampled. They crouched out there in the shadows, watching.

  The big hall was full of sounds of hoofs and running men and death. Nelson saw swords flash red in the torchlight, saw breastplates crumple and helmets battered in.

  Sloan was shouting for the Humanites to scatter so that he and Van Voss could use their guns but there was no place to scatter, no refuge from those terrible hoofs.

  Sloan got in two careful shots, Van Voss one, and horses fell and kicked and killed as they died. The others plunged over their bodies and went on with flying heels. Blood crawled on the floor.

  The Humanites fled along the only way that was open to them, back into the palace, and they swept Sloan and Van Voss with them.

  Hatha and his Clan-brothers pressed them, trampling the stragglers. Then the black stallion wheeled with a neighing cry and came galloping on bloodstained hoofs back out the broad doorway with the others following him.

  "Back to the forest, my brothers! Back to Vruun!"

  The Hoofed Ones thundered down the dark winding forest-avenue. Nelson and Tark ran beside them and, overhead, the eagle soared, and where men of Anshan tried to stand against them they were trampled down. Out across the moonlit plain they went and up into the edge of the forest where Nsharra was waiting for them.

  Before she could ask the question Tark told her.

  "Barin is dead."

  She said nothing, but Nelson saw that she stood quite fixed and still.

  Tark's thought came roughly. "There is no time to mourn now! At dawn, our enemies come with fire for the forest!"

  "Fire?" That struck Nsharra out of her frozen grief as no other thing could have done. "But that is death for the Clans?"

  "Unless we warn them in time!" Tark thought swiftly. "Ei must spread the word, while we speed to Vruun."

  Nsharra looked at the wolf that was Eric Nelson, standing there rocking with exhaustion.

  Nelson heard her swift question. "Tark, what of him?"

  "He failed to save Barin and he goes back to Vruun as the Guardian ordered," Tark answered grimly. "With us."

  "He fought the other outlanders — tried to kill them when he learned their crime!" Ei put in swiftly. "He is not one of them now."

  "I think you speak truth, Winged One," retorted the wolf. "Yet the Guardian's word holds. He goes back to Vruun for judgment."

  "I am willing," Nelson told them dully. "I can go nowhere else than Vruun."

  He had known that from the first. Had known that, even if he failed to redeem his own human body, he must go back to it because he would rather die in that body than live in another shape.

  Nsharra leaped onto Hatha's back. "We go now and we will spread the warning as we go."

  They started through the forest, Nelson loping with Tark behind the great stallion, Ei winging fast and far ahead of them. And all through the dark forest, Nelson heard the warning ahead of them, spreading, spreading, across the river, up the hills.

  Run! Run, Clan-brothers! At dawn the forest bums!

  Fear was in the valley this night. Nelson could smell it on the wind. Already, the Clans were beginning to move away from the shelter of the forest that had become a trap.

  Northward to Vruun, eagles winging black against the stars, tigers running velvet-pawed, the packs of the Hairy Ones voicing the wailing cry of danger again and again, the horses crashing like driven bucks over the deadfalls.

  At dawn, the forest burns!

  Nelson felt even his rangy wolf-body sag with utter exhaustion by the time dawn came. They had reached the ridge above Vruun and the wind brought the first sharp taint of smoke over the forest to them now.

  Hatha lifted his head and snuffed the air and, as he too breathed the faint cruel smell, Nelson again felt a primal terror.

  Hatha said, "It has begun."

  To Nelson it seemed half an eternity later before they had covered those last miles into Vruun. He saw the city through a red blur of utter weariness. He stumbled as he went with the others through the winding forest-ways whose green tide lapped the shimmering glass bubble-domes and towers.

  Warning had come ahead of them to Vruun, eagle-winged. Fear seethed through the strange fraternity of men and beasts in the streets and woods-ways. And southward, a haze thickened and rose against the sun and turned it to a disk of ugly copper.

  Nelson turned blindly with the others into the Hall of Clans. He followed them into the pale, shimmering hall where Kree was waiting. They were all there now, the Clan-leaders. And Eric Nelson, in the body of Asha the wolf, went heavily across the wide room to stand before the Guardian.

  "Your son is dead," he told the Guardian.

  Kree stood straight and tall in his dark mantle, his gaze somber as he looked down at Nelson.

  "Then you have failed, outlander. But your judgment can come later for now the doom you helped bring here is sweeping toward us."

  Yes, I helped bring that doom to L'Lan and the Brotherhood, he thought. I helped bring it, the death that is coming.

  "Confine him until we judge him," Nelson heard Kree order. He heard the thought only vaguely, for his mind was too drunk with fatigue to function. He was hardly aware of walking unsteadily in the direction that guards pointed out with their swords, through corridors, through a door—

  It was a green-glass walled chamber that they locked him into. Nelson, his mind darkening, stretched his wolf-body on the cool floor and sank into an abyss of sleep.

  Chapter XV

  THE WRATH OF THE CLANS

  Nelson dreamed strangely in his stuporous sleep, dreams of thought-voices that his mind could hear, of forms moving around him, of, finally, a stunning, thunderous wave of force that rolled upon him.

  He was overwhelmed by it, carried by it over the sheer brink of the world. He was falling into an awesome, howling gulf that was outside space and time, was falling, falling-

  A strange shock stopped his fall. And then he became dimly aware that sensation was returning to him, that he was awaking.

  "Is all well with you, Asha?" Nelson heard a thought-voice ask.

  "All is well — and I am glad to have awaked from my sleep!" He heard the eager answering thought. That was strange. The question had been answered by Asha, yet he was Asha the wolf-at least he dwelt in the wolfs body.

  Or did he?

  Nelson suddenly realized that half his sense-perceptions were gone, that he could no longer scent anything at all. His body felt different. Not the tight, compact wolf-body to which he'd grown accustomed, but a long, gangling, awkward body—

  Nelson, with an inarticulate cry, wrenched his eyelids open. But he knew what he would see before he looked down at himself. His hoarse wordless cry had been no wolf's howl but a human cry.

  He looked down at the length of his own body again, sprawling in its dusty khaki uniform on a padded cot, still wearing its thought-crown. He moved arms and legs and they responded.

  "I'm back," he whispered thickly.

  "Yes," said a breathless voice. "You are back, Eric Nelson!"

  He knew it for Nsharra's voice and he turned to look for her and looked full into the face of Asha the wolf. They lay side by side on two narrow cots — the wolf whose mind had slept so that a man could occupy his body — and the man.

  Asha's body was dusty now, his hair matted with dried blood from wounds, his feet sore and bleeding. But his bright green eyes looked intelligently into Nelson's face. Nelson turned and looked up. Kree stood behind the cots, beside the big platinum mind-transference
machine of the ancients.

  "You brought me back into my own body while I slept?" Nelson said hoarsely.

  "Yes," said Kree. "The force of the ancients stunned you in sleep so that you did not wake."

  Nelson sat up. He felt strong, rested, fresh-and realized it was because his human body had lain here in coma for so long. Yet his human body now felt strange. He felt blinded and deafened by his loss of scent, felt slow, clumsy, awkward.

  He sat up and saw that Nsharra stood at the foot of his cot. And that the four leaders of the great Clans were here — Tark and Hatha, the tiger and Ei. They were watching him.

  "Death and danger walk toward Vruun on swift feet of flame," Kree was saying somberly. "Little time was left to give Asha back his body and return you to your body for judgment."

  For judgment? That was why they had returned him to his humanity as doom drew close to Vrunn? Then the time had come.

  Nelson stood up and faced them all. "I am ready," he said heavily.

  "Tark and Ei have told us how you fought to save Barin — how you fought your friends," said Kree.

  "They were not my friends, save one who is dead now," Nelson answered heavily. "I did not know, though, they were butchers."

  "It seems you have learned much you did not know, outlander," said Kree. "You know now what it will be like for the Clans if the Humanites break the Brotherhood."

  "Yes, I know that now," answered Eric Nelson sickly. Free children of the forest, hunted and slain and enslaved as in the outer world! Swift sentient folk of the Clans, crushed beneath a stupid human tyranny! He deserved what was coming—

  "You are free to leave L'Lan," said Kree. Nelson stared, incredulous. "You're not going to kill me for what I've helped to do?"

  Kree shook his head. "By your work last night, you redeemed the crime that you committed in ignorance. You can go."

  Nelson looked at the Guardian, then around the watching leaders of the Clans.

  "But I want to stay!" he cried. "I want to help you save the Brotherhood, to undo what I helped do here!"

  Nsharra cried eagerly to her father, "Give him the chance! He will be loyal to us, I know!"

  "He will be loyal," Tark's thought agreed. "And he knows the ways and weapons of the outlanders."

  Kree's eyes searched Nelson's face, seemed to be searching his soul. Finally the Guardian spoke.

  "So be it, outlander. Your help can be valuable in this hour of peril." He swung toward the others. "Clan-leaders, let the word run through all your Clans that this outlander fights on our side!"

  "We shall see how he fights," growled the thought of Quorr the tiger.

  Nelson felt the uplift of a queer buoyancy, as though an oppressive weight had been lifted from him. He knew, now. He knew that this Brotherhood that had at first seemed to his outer-world eyes so unnatural and alien was worth all sacrifices to preserve. He had learned that in the body of Asha the wolf.

  And he felt strangely happy. For ten years he had fought the purposeless battles of warlords, first for adventure and then because he had no other profession. But this last battle was to be for a cause that he thought worth all he had to give.

  Kree, as the Clan-leaders hurried out, led Nelson to a window that looked southward over Vruun.

  "The hour comes fast upon us, outlander!"

  Nelson was appalled by the spectacle. He realized now that hours had passed, for the sun was westering in a bloody, smoky murk. The whole southern sky was a wall of black smoke laced with livid flame — a wall that marched toward Vruun and was but a few miles distant. Only the forests west of the river were burning, but they were burning from the river to the western hills.

  "That fire will be here in a few hours and Sloan and Van Voss and the Humanites will come after it!" Nelson exclaimed.

  Kree nodded. "But we hope to stop it. The men of Vruun have labored all day to cut a fire-break from the river to the western hills."

  "No mere fire-break will stop that!" Nelson told him emphatically. "It will jump it. You've got to start a backfire."

  "Use fire as a defense against fire?" Kree looked worried. "The Clans would not like it. They hate all fire."

  "Either that or the blaze will come into Vruun tonight!" Nelson warned.

  Kree said reluctantly, "I will go with you and give the order."

  As they turned, Nelson found Nsharra handing two heavy service pistols to him. He recognized them as his own and Lefty's.

  "Less than twenty shots," he muttered, as he belted on the guns. "And Sloan and Van Voss will have submachine-guns and will have trained some of the Humanites to use grenades."

  "But your experience of war will be valuable to us," Kree told him. "We know little of war in L'Lan. Our swords have only been used at long intervals to repel out-land tribes who sought to enter."

  "I go with you, father!" cried Nsharra, her eyes dark and stormy with excitement.

  Kree shook his head. "Nsharra, if aught befalls me, you alone remain to rally the Brotherhood. You must remain in Vruun."

  Eric Nelson went out of the Hall of Clans with the Guardian into a thickening, ominous dusk. Smoke was rolling ever more densely from the south, blotting out the sunset. The air was bitter with it.

  Tark ran up to them, the Hairy One's eyes blazing. "The fighters of the Clans are already on their way in the forest! Two of the Hoofed Ones wait for you!" _

  Nelson leaped on the back of one of the excited horses as Kree too mounted. They rode southward out of Vruun.

  The sun had gone down behind smoke-veils as though afraid, and darkness was thickening westward. But southward it was like a dreadful new dawn over the forest, the whole sky there blood-red, immense.

  Nelson, as he rode with Kree along a red-lit forest aisle beside the wide, dark-flowing river, heard the Clans moving through the forest with them, and heard their thought-cry.

  Gather, O ye of the Brotherhood! Gather to the south, my brothers, for soon we fight — and die!

  The woods were full of running shadows. Shaking red light fell on gray backs and striped backs and struck fire from eyes that were already like blown coals in the darkness and shone white on gleaming, snicking teeth.

  The ground shook to the trampling thunder of hoofs as Hatha's Clan went by, great stallions, their loose manes whipped like banners on the wind of their going. Some of them bore men of Vruun, armed for battle. And above the treetops in the bloody glare, the wide-winged eagles looped and swung.

  There rose the terrific call of Tark beside them and it was answered. A tiger roared and another, sending their deep rolling coughs to echo from the hillsides. And the sons of Hatha lifted their wild neighing on the night.

  Roll call! Roll call of the Clans!

  Nelson's throat contracted and the warrior in him was shaken by a strange emotion. He heard the thought-cry of a lithe gray wolf-shape that ran in close to Tark and Kree and himself.

  "Outlander, we go together this time! Good hunting!"

  With a weird feeling, Nelson recognized that running wolf-shape as the one which for a time had been his own.

  "Good hunting, Asha!"

  They came to the fire-break that the men of Vruun had labored all day to hew across the forest, and Nelson groaned inwardly.

  This ragged hundred-foot lane, cut at such labor from the woods, would never stop the cyclone of flame raging up from the south.

  "We must start our backfire going from the south side of this lane, and keep it from jumping back across!" he told Kree. "And there's little time!"

  The whole night a few miles ahead was now a sky-high chaos of smoke and flame. The red glare lit the hosts of human and beast warriors now pouring here from the north.

  "Fire to stop fire, my brothers!" Kree's thought called, from his steed. "It must be your task to prevent it from jumping back."

  They did not like it, Nelson saw. The blood-mad excitement of the Clans checked briefly with something that was close to fear. But they had the courage to face what was to them the supremely d
readed thing.

  "Fire to stop fire!" flared Tark. "Let it begin!"

  Nelson had dismounted. Now he hastily supervised the men Kree deputed to the task of starting the backfire. Their torches kindled the dry brush like tinder all along the southern edge of their fire-lane. Dry cedar and fir blazed up and the edge of the lane became a new wall of fire moving back south toward that mightier oncoming wall.

  But moving slowly, slowly! The wind was against them, Nelson realized. Blazing leaves and twigs began to whirl across the lane, to dance with joyous wickedness over the narrow gap.

  "Stamp the fire-sparks out where they fall!" Hatha's thought called. "Help the man-Clan, Hoofed Ones!"

  Nelson, half stifled by smoke, sweating, labored with the men of Vruun and the Hoofed Ones, beating out each dangerous spark. And Kree sat his mount in the shaking red glow, his mind reaching out to steady the excited, jumpy Clans.

  "Wait, brothers! Soon our fire will have conquered the fire of our enemies and then we shall seek them out!"

  Nelson, laboring with the men of Vruun to stamp out the sparks that came across, felt that the south wind was a living thing, a malignant demon that delighted in hurling fire across the gap.

  Yet he saw, through smoke-stung, half-blinded eyes, that the backfire was steadily if slowly creeping south. Soon it would have scorched a belt across which the giant flame-storm could not leap.

  And then with a harsh, screaming cry, Ei winged down through the rolling smoke and sparks.

  "The Humanites and the two outlanders come down the river, floating upon rafts!" cried the eagle's thought. "They are swinging in to land behind you!"

  Appalled, Eric Nelson suddenly realized that that would be Nick Sloan's strategy, that it was the only possible strategy for him. Rafts that would carry the Humanite warriors would have been simple to build and with them the river became a safe highway to Vruun for Sloan and his forces, a safe road behind and past the fire-storm.

  And Sloan, seeing them setting their backfire here, would try to swing around and catch them from behind, trap them between his forces and their fire.