The Valley of Creation Page 3

  Nick Sloan, his flat brown face hard and suspicious, harshly seconded Nelson. "That's right, Shan Kar. It seems we're up against more than just a tribal war. Spill it or we'll backtrack out of here."

  Shan Kar smiled thinly. "You want the platinum we can pay you. You won't go back to China to be shot."

  "Not to China — but we can cross southward over the Kunlun," Sloan spat. "Don't think you have us in your hand. You need us worse than we need you. Talk or we walk out."

  Shan Kar eyed them, his mind obviously busy behind the handsome olive mask of his face. Then he shrugged.

  "There is not time to tell you everything. We must move fast or we are lost. Also-you would not believe all if I told you."

  He hesitated. "This much I will tell you. There are two factions in L'Lan. One is the party of the Humanites, of which I am one of the leaders. The other party is the Brotherhood.

  "We Humanites are all men and women as our name implies. We believe in the superiority of humanity to all other forms of life and are ready to fight for it. But the Brotherhood, our enemies, are not all men!"

  Sloan stared. "What do you mean? What are those of the Brotherhood who are not men?"

  "Beasts!" hissed Shan Kar. "Beasts who assert their equality with men! Yes, in L'Lan the wolf and tiger and eagle claim themselves the equals of humans!"

  His black eyes flashed. "And they'll not stop there! The winged ones and the hairy ones and the clawed ones — all the forest clans — will eventually aspire to dominance over man! Is it strange that we Humanites are preparing to crush them before that can happen?"

  There was stunned silence for a moment, then Lefty Wister's shrill laughter crowed. "Didn't I tell you the man was cracked? We've come half into Tibet on a wild-goose chase with a crazy native for guide!"

  Nick Sloan's face darkened and he started toward Shan Kar. Eric Nelson intervened hastily.,

  "Sloan, wait! That platinum was real enough!"

  Sloan stopped. "So it was. And we're going to find its source. But we won't find it by listening to crazy talk of wild beasts plotting against men!"

  "The beasts of the Brotherhood are not the brute beasts of your outer world!" flared Shan Kar. "They are intelligent, as intelligent as men."

  He made a fierce gesture. "I knew you would not believe! It was why I dared not tell you! But you at least should know I speak truth!" He pointed to Nelson.

  Nelson felt a queer chill. He did have an uncanny conviction that Shan Kar was speaking the truth. But the impossible couldn't be true. A witch-girl and her pets, a crippled eagle, a queer native's fantastic talk-was he for these to throw away his firm footing on the everyday earth?

  “L’Lan the golden where the ancient Brotherhood still lives'" whispered Li Kin, quoting. "So that is what it means?"

  Nick Sloan snapped the spell. "This is all moonshine, but we can talk it out later! Right now I want to know what the danger is that you claim threatens us! How far are we now from L'Lan?"

  Shan Kar pointed at the great wall of mountains that rose on the other side of the deep wooded gorge.

  "The valley L'Lan lies on the other side of those mountains. We are that close! But getting into it will be perilous now."

  He hurried on. "There is only one pass into the valley. It leads into it near the city Vruun which is the heart of the Brotherhood. Yet we must pass Vruun to reach Anshan, the city in the south which we Humanites hold.

  "I hoped to creep through the pass and past Vruun without detection. But if the Brotherhood's scout gets word back of our coming they'll move to block us at the pass. That is why we must hurry!"

  Nelson and Sloan and the other three grasped at least the urgency of the situation. They had, all of them, fought too many battles and made too many forced marches not to understand strategy.

  Eric Nelson told Sloan, "We'd better move as he says. We can get him to explain his queer statements later."

  Sloan nodded, frowning. "He's either a liar or a superstitious fool. We'll find out later. Right now I smell trouble."

  The sun was setting. Darkness came with a swift rush as Shan Kar led their little caravan down into the wooded gorge.

  The forest was a dark tangle of fir, scruboak and poplar. Beneath it, the brush was tindery and crackling from the long dry season. A mountain-stream brawled noisily along in the night somewhere nearby.

  Shan Kar knew the trails. He turned southward and they moved after him, their ponies stumbling in the dark, Lefty Wister swearing in a monotonous whine each time his little steed staggered.

  A cold wind whined down from the black mountains on their right. The trees stirred mournfully. Eric Nelson had a sudden strongly claustrophobic awareness of the huge ranges that shut them into this wild and forgotten pocket of the globe.

  A wolf howled, a long swelling cry that came from somewhere up in the wooded slopes on the west side of the gorge.

  Shan Kar turned in his saddle. "Faster!" he rasped.

  Nelson was drawn by some instinct to look up and, through the tracery of branches overhead, saw a dark, winged shape plane swiftly above the gorge. It was high, moving in searching loops and curves.

  It screamed, an eagle cry echoing thinly down from the night. Almost at once the distant wolf-cry came again.

  Shan Kar abruptly reined in his pony. "They know we're coming! I must try to learn what faces us inside L'Lan!"

  He had dismounted. Fumbling under his cloak, he brought out something that glinted oddly in the starlight.

  Then Nelson glimpsed what it was — the hoop of platinum with the two quartz disks mounted on it, that odd ornament or instrument which had sparked the treasure-lure of their quest.

  "What the—!" Sloan exploded harshly. "If there's danger, we've no time to waste here!"

  "Wait!" commanded Shan Kar. "Wait and be silent! All depends on whether I can contact my friends!" He had put the platinum hoop upon his head like a crown. He crouched, his strange headgear glistening vaguely.

  Nelson felt incredulous wonder. What was Shan Kar doing with the odd thing? What was it?

  Chapter IV

  HIDDEN LAND

  The moon was rising. As it gleamed above the mountains east of them, its lambent light poured down into the dark forest of the gorge like quicksilver trickling through a sieve.

  Shan Kar remained crouched as a pool of the vague light widened around him. The little quartz disks on the headpiece of platinum he wore caught the light and shone brilliantly. The man's olive face was taut, his eyes stared, unseeing, into the darkness.

  "What is it? What has happened now?" came Li Kin's anxious voice from the darkness.

  Behind the little Chinese, Eric Nelson heard the rattle of the ponies' hoofs on stones and Lefty Wister cursing steadily.

  "Cursed native mumbo-jumbo, that's all!" swore Nick Sloan. "Are we going to stand here all night?"

  Nelson laid a hand on the other's sleeve. "Wait, Sloan. Shan Kar seems to know what he's doing."

  Again a wolf howled, this time a lonely wailing single cry, echoing away, infinitely pregnant with menace.

  Shan Kar finally broke his taut immobility, leaping to his feet and jerking the platinum circlet from his head.

  "I have talked with my people in Anshan. They warn that a force of the Brotherhood is on its way to cut us off inside the pass, and that their own warriors can't reach us in time to help!"

  Talked? Talked how, Nelson wondered swiftly? Had mind somehow spoken to distant mind through the agency of the platinum crown? But how could a people who were desperate to obtain the ordinary weapons of the outer world possess such a super-scientific instrument as that implied?

  Shan Kar was continuing urgently. "We must get up through the pass and into L'Lan before they block us! All depends on that!"

  Nelson shared the bafflement of the others. In this outlandish situation, they couldn't estimate the true magnitude of perils.

  "How many men have the Brotherhood, your enemies, sent out to cut us off?" he demanded.

>   "Perhaps not many men" answered Shan Kar. "But they have many who are not men. Too many for us."

  "More superstition," spat Nick Sloan, disgustedly. "He's trying to tell us there are intelligent beasts coming against us."

  Nelson hesitated. "This Brotherhood may use trained beasts as fighters at that. Such a fight would be plenty messy. Especially in a narrow pass."

  Again, he was forced to make a quick decision based on information whose sources seemed too fantastic to be credited.

  "Get the ponies moving!" he ordered. "Whatever danger may be ahead, we'd be better off to meet it inside the valley than up in that pass."

  They started climbing out of the great gorge, Shan Kar leading them up a trail that twisted amid giant boulders and gaunt firs. Soon they glimpsed above them the crack of a pass that split the titanic moonlit wall of the range.

  A pulse-quickening sense of expectation spurred Eric Nelson as he helped drag the ponies upward. What lay within that mighty wall of mountains, what guarded answer to the mysteries that seemed to deepen around them hour by hour?

  They came up clear of the last trees onto naked rock and shingle with the last lofty rampart of the range looming before them. The pass was a mere narrow crack through that rampart.

  It was a place of shadows and shivering cold. The ponies' hoofs clattered on the loose rock as they rode through.

  They came out onto an open ledge of moonlight, and Shan Kar leaned in his saddle to gesture ahead.

  "L'Lan!"

  It looked like a valley of dreams to Eric Nelson. It looked like a place he had visited in some former life and had never quite forgotten.

  It was a pear-shaped land fifty miles long, completely walled in by towering ranges that stepped up toward stupendous, snow-crowned peaks at the northern, narrow end of the pear.

  The pass at whose outlet they sat their ponies was some twelve miles from the northern end of the valley and nearly a mile above its floor. They looked down into a land silvered by the rising moon.

  "Where is the city of your own people?" Nick Sloan demanded brusquely of Shan Kar.

  The other pointed southward. "That way — out of sight. But Vruun, the city of the Brotherhood, is there!"

  He was pointing north of due west. Eric Nelson followed the direction of his finger.

  Nelson had already noticed the big river that flowed down the valley, whose every sprawling loop caught the moon. Now he saw a little cluster of lights beside it near the north end of the valley.

  Vruun, city of the mysterious Brotherhood? Nelson strained his eyes. He glimpsed around the lights a mass of vague, glimmering structures that were oddly enlaced by the surrounding forest.

  Nelson caught his breath. Unless the light tricked him, Vruun could be like no Asiatic city he had ever seen.

  "But what—" he began, turning to Shan Kar.

  He didn't finish. The cry that came echoing faintly up out of the great moonlit valley struck him silent.

  Hai-ooo!

  No human cry was that but one he had heard before in the uplands. The hunting call of wolves, of many wolves.

  Hai-ooo! Hai-ooo!

  The ponies jumped nervously. Shan Kar's voice rang urgent above the clatter of their hoofs.

  "Tark's clan race ahead to cut us off! We must ride fast for Anshan!"

  "These pack-ponies can't go fast!" Nick Sloan started to object and was silenced by the grim reply.

  "They will!"

  They rode pellmell down slippery rock slopes, Shan Kar leading them southward. And forest came darkly up to meet them — black forest of fir and larch and cedar that seemed to clothe much of the great valley.

  Each of them led one of the pack-ponies. Nelson noted that the heavily burdened, shaggy little horse he led was nervously running with all its strength.

  "The Hairy Ones can go faster than we, but we have a start!" rang Shan Kar's voice from ahead. "All depends upon which of the Brotherhood are out!"

  A few minutes later, as though to answer him, a squalling cat-scream drifted from far behind them — a screech of feline anger.

  "Quorr and his clawed ones, too!" cried Shan Kar. "And Ei's scouts wing ahead!"

  Nelson had already glimpsed the dark shapes of great winged things sliding fast above the forest, only momentarily visible through the tangle of black foliage against the silvered sky.

  Ei's folks — eagles of the Brotherhood! Nelson saw three of them sweeping overhead, then circling back.

  Abruptly they emerged from the forest onto rolling moonlit plain.

  "Those are the lights of Anshan!" Shan Kar called back over the rush of wind. "See!"

  Nelson glimpsed a few closely grouped lights far ahead in the moonlit vagueness of the valley. Then they were lost to view as the party galloped down into a declivity of the plain.

  Hai-ooo!

  Wolf-clan of the Brotherhood shouted to each other as they raced down the valley in pursuit!

  Nelson thought, "I should be wondering if all this isn't a crazy dream. Only I know it isn't!"

  No dream — no! The great peaks that walled L'Lan loomed lofty and clear in the moonlight. The wind smacked his face with irritating persistence, a twisted stirrup-leather was rubbing his leg raw.

  Again the lights of Anshan came into view as they topped another rise in the plain. At the same moment, Lefty Wister uttered a strangled yell. "Blimy, they're—"

  It was choked from his lips. Nelson, turning in the saddle, glimpsed the dark wolf-shape that was dragging the Cockney from his frantically bucking pony.

  Black leaping forms were all about them, eyes and teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Eagle-wings threshed the night close overhead.

  Nelson had his pistol out but his own pony was so frantic with fear that he could not fire. He heard a Dutch curse from Van Voss.

  "Off saddle before they pull us down one by one!"

  Nelson yelled, making a split-second decision. "Stick together—here!"

  He was sliding from the saddle as he spoke, holding his scared pony's reins. A bkck bulk came at him in soundless rush and he triggered his automatic.

  The staccato bark of the gun seemed momentarily to startle the dark beast-forms that were now all around them. As the creatures wavered, Van Voss shot the wolf that had dragged Lefty down.

  The Cockney staggered up, a forearm slashed and bleeding, mouthing curses. Nick Sloan and Li Kin were already dismounted and Shan Kar was leaping catlike with a short sword from beneath his cloak.

  "Help me get the tommy-guns out!" Nick Sloan shouted.

  "Look out!" came Li Kin's scared cry. "There are men with them!"

  * * *

  Eric Nelson was later to remember this as the moment in which he first realized the fantastic otherworldliness of this valley.

  For with the dark beasts charging them now came mounted men — men and horses who companioned wolf and tiger and eagle, men who wore queer metal skull-cap helmets and breastplates and wielded swords.

  "There is Tark with Barin!" yelled Shan Kar.

  Tark? Nelson's heart jumped. The great wolf who had been Nsharra's comrade, who had nearly had his throat out at Yen Shi?

  Then he saw the wolf. He glimpsed that massive hairy head plunging forward beside an iron-gray horse on which sat a yelling, sword-wielding young man in helmet and breastplate.

  Nelson and Li Kin and the Cockney had their rifles off their saddles and fired at the dark forms charging through the moonlight.

  "Kill the men!" Nelson yelled. "The brutes will run off if we get their masters!"

  He knew almost as he said it that it was not so, that his incredulity and accustomed habits of thinking were deceiving him.

  For these beasts were intelligent. They showed it by the way in which wolf and tiger came on in irregular zigzag leaps to avoid the rifle-fire that was obviously new to them.

  In one sense, it was like all the battles in which Eric Nelson had ever engaged. There was the same sense of crazy confusion, the lack of a clear pattern, the
feeling of being caught in a random collision of forces in which personal effort counted for nothing.

  Then, as always, the fight suddenly crystalized. The youth whom Shan Kar had called Barin was shouting in a high, ringing voice, the other horsemen and the great beasts gathering toward him. "Stand clear!" yelled Sloan, from behind. Nelson and the others jumped aside and Sloan and Van Voss let go with the submachine-guns they had hastily unpacked.

  The chattering storm of lead broke full on the human and beast attackers massing for charge. Blood-chilling horse-screams and cat-squalls ripped the din as mounted men and beasts crashed.

  "They are beaten — they cannot face your outland weapons!" cried Shan Kar. "See, they flee!"

  The beasts and the few horsemen left were dropping back, retreating from that deadly fire. Tiger-squall and wolf-howl rose and fell swiftly. Hoofs drummed the plain. Then Nelson heard a long, clear eagle-scream from far up in the moonlit sky. There followed comparative silence. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was bounding out toward the dark bodies dotting the plain.

  "Nelson, what kind of place is this valley?" came Sloan's shaken voice. "Wolves, tigers, eagles—"

  "Kuei!" exclaimed Li Kin tremulously. "Shan Kar spoke truth! Brute and men are equal here — at least, in the Brotherhood!"

  They heard Shan Kar yell something and plunged forward after him. They were in time to witness an astounding spectacle. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was tensely approaching a mighty, crouching wolf that had been attempting to drag away a man's limp form.

  "It's Tark!" cried Shan Kar. "He was trying to drag Barin away!"

  Eric Nelson glimpsed the flaring green eyes of the great wolf as it turned its face toward them. It did not snarl, as an ordinary beast would have done. It merely crouched for an instant, seeming to choose its victim swiftly before it sprang.

  Nelson, startled, raised his rifle as the wolf launched itself for his throat. Shan Kar yelled at the same instant.

  "Don't kill him if you can help it! He's valuable to us alive!"

  The wolf would have died despite that cry had Nelson been able to shoot in time. But the spring was too swift for that. Nelson, involuntarily stepping back from the blazing-eyed charge as he raised his gun, tripped and stumbled.