The Valley of Creation Page 8
Quorr laughed, a coughing, snarling burst of mockery.
Nsharra spoke, her urgent thought-voice ringing quite clear in Nelson's mind.
"Father, speak to him! Explain to him, before his heart breaks!"
Nelson crouched watching them. He did not stir except that his head moved from side to side in little nervous jerks. He could feel the slow light breathing of his hitman body as his paws touched it.
Kree's thought came slowly. "It is true, outlander. You now inhabit the body of the wolf, Asha."
The strong wild thought of the stallion interrupted. "The power of the ancients! The punishment of those who transgress the Brotherhood!"
Again Quorr, the tiger, looked at Nelson and laughed.
"You should be proud, outlander! For you, the Guardian has made an exception, giving you the useful body of a Clan-brother. If we sin, we are banished into the bodies of the little hunted things that are born only to be eaten."
Then, sharp and clear, Ei the great eagle called out to Nelson. "Courage, outlander!" And Nsharra's softer echo said, "Courage, Eric Nelson."
It was then that Nelson's anger began to creep warm across his icy fear. But still he could not believe.
Stunned, bewildered, his thought went out to Kree. "It isn't possible. No science could do that — my brain in a wolf's body—"
"Not your brain, but your mind" Kree said grimly. "The mind is immaterial, a tenuous web of force. So said the ancients. And they built the instrument that can transfer minds to other bodies. I merely used that instrument.
"It is Asha's body still and Asha's brain. Asha's instincts, memories, latent knowledge are still in that brain and you will have use of them. But the real you, your conscious mind, is now in Asha's body and Asha's conscious mind-sleeps."
Nelson felt his new body tense and rise. He cried out bewilderedly, "But why? Why didn't you just kill me?"
"You are hostage for my son Barin," Kree answered. "When Barin is returned to us you will be returned to your own body!"
The anger that had been growing and growing in Nelson burst suddenly into a flame of rage. Rage such as he had never known, the wild anger of the wolf.
That they should have done this to him, Eric Nelson! That they should have dared!
Nelson was dimly aware of a strange linking of his familiar mind to something dark and primal and alien. Man-rage drawing from the deep red wells of the beast. He bared his fangs and snarled. He felt his whole new wolf-body coil tensely tight as he crouched.
Man-rage, beast-rage-memory, instinct, the loosing of the chain — not so alien after all, not so strange! Not so long ago man himself was a hunting beast!
He sprang in a beautiful, deadly, arching leap, straight for Kree.
He heard Nsharra cry out, and then in mid-air he felt the shock of Tark's great leaping body. The wolf's broad breast struck his shoulder, bowled him over to crash on the glassy floor. He slashed out, felt hair and hide tear under his teeth, tasted blood on his tongue.
And then Tark's greater weight was smothering him, Tark's huge jaws had closed on the back of his neck, and Tark was shaking him as a wolf-cub shakes a rat. The leader of the Clan flung Nelson from him, rolling over and over, and stood contemptuous and lordly in his strength, laughing with his red tongue run out between his open jaws.
"You've yet to learn," came his thought, "that I, Tark, lead the pack of the Hairy Ones!"
And Nelson, gathering himself, sent back the raging thought, "But I am not of your Clan!"
He sprang again at Tark.
It was strange, how he knew the ways of fighting. To dart in low to snap the foreleg, to use the breast as a ram, to keep the throat always covered, to dodge and dance and whirl and give the long terrible slashing stroke where the hair thins on the side of the opponent's neck, over the vein.
All these things Nelson knew and knew well. He was young and powerful and he was fighting to kill. But it availed him nothing. Tark moved like a wraith before him so that his jaws rang shut on the empty air-and before he could recover himself the old pack lord would smash him off balance with his greater weight and his jaws would chop and slash and then he would be away again, out of reach, laughing.
Nelson sprang and sprang again, and was beaten down, and would not quit. The hot sweet taint of blood reddened the air, and the great black stallion tossed his head and stamped his hoofs on the glassy floor. Quorr wrinkled his striped face in a snarling grin, and his claws ran in and out of their velvet sheaths and his tail twitched.
Only Ei perched motionless on the back of Nsharra's chair. The girl's face was white and full of pity and there was a sickness in her eyes. She looked pleadingly at her father, who sat watching with dark, somber eyes.
In answer to Nsharra's look Kree sighed and said, "Do not hurt him, Tark — more than you must."
And Tark answered, panting, "He must learn to obey!"
Once more his great jaws ripped, slashed and sent Nelson sprawling.
There came a time when Nelson tried to spring again and could not. Whipped to standstill, he stood trembling on legs braced far apart, his flanks heaving, his head hanging low. He left blood and sweat wetting his hairy wolf-body.
Tark's though asked, "Have you learned, cub?"
Nelson answered, "I have learned." But still the dulled fire of rage burned in him.
Tark's mind said grimly, "Do not forget!"
He trotted back to Nsharra's side and began to lick his fur, keeping one mocking eye on the creature that was Eric Nelson. Kree leaned forward, his deep-set gaze brooding somberly upon the wolf that was Nelson.
"Listen," he said. "Listen, Eric Nelson, to the price of your deliverance."
He waited, as though for Nelson's shaken mind to clear, before he went on.
"Go back to your comrades, Eric Nelson. Go back to the Humanites. Bring my son to me alive and safe and you shall be a man again."
Nelson voiced a bitter, snarling laugh.
"Do you think they'll believe me?" he demanded. "Do you think they'll listen?"
"You must make them listen."
"They'll shoot me on sight."
"They are your comrades, Eric Nelson. They are your problem." Kree turned to the pack-leader and his grim thought ordered, "Tark, start him on his way."
Tark rose and shook himself. He took three soft padding steps toward Nelson and said, "Go."
Nelson faced him sullenly and would not move.
Quorr's thought said, "The cub is forgetful, Tark. You must teach him his lesson again."
And Hatha, eyes rolling, stamped. "Teach him!"
Ei rustled his wings in what sounded like a sigh.
"Remember, outlander," his thought said, "courage is a good quality only when one is wise enough to use it."
"All of you, leave him alone!" cried Nsharra. She put out her hands pleadingly and said, "Please go, Eric Nelson!"
Nelson saw that there were tears on her cheeks. He watched Tark padding toward him, his great body all one coiled and fluid motion. He watched the filtered sunlight gleam on Tark's teeth.
The smell of his own blood rose hot in his nostrils.
Quite suddenly Nelson turned and ran. As though that were a signal, a burst of sound broke from behind him — the stamp and squeal of Hatha, the tiger's echoing roar, a long wolf-howl. They were answered all through the Hall of Clans.
And Nelson, as he ran, heard with the noise the great ringing shout of Tark's mind.
"Clam of the Brotherhood! Send Clan-call forth that Asha the wolf is outlaw!"
Through the glittering corridors and dusty vaulted halls they drove him, out of the building, out into the forested streets of Vruun. With hoof and fang and claw they drove him and always the word ran ahead of him like wildfire:
"Asha the wolf is outlaw-outlaw!"
And he ran, he who was both wolf and man, both Asha and Eric Nelson. He ran along the broad forest ways between the bubble buildings, though the glittering city, and there was no shelter for him.
The men and women of Vruun watched the driving of the outlaw with bitter eyes and they too barred his way. Nelson went the only way left open to him, out of Vruun and into the open forest. He ran belly-flat, choking on his own heart, and he knew how a dog feels when he is driven through a town.
The forest shade gathered him in. The earth was moist and soft under his paws. He fled onward between the trees and, after a time, he realized that the pursuit had drawn back and was dim and far away.
He slowed his pace to a trot and then to a dragging walk. Breathing was an agony, a tearing pain. Where Tark had slashed him the blood oozed and dripped and took his strength with it and his every joint and muscle was a separate ache and soreness.
He crossed a little stream and stopped to drink. Then he lay down in the running water. The icy touch of it burned in his raw flesh.
He rose and slunk on.
Instinct that was not his own but Asha's told him where to lair. He crept into a hollow between two great gnarled roots, where it was warm.
There he lay down and began, wolf-like, to lick his wounds.
Night darkened over the valley of L'Lan.
Chapter XI
FOREST DANGER
He had slept for a time but he had dreamed and the dreams were full of terror. He woke suddenly as a man wakes from nightmare, with a start and a cry, and the howling sound of his own wolf-voice reminded him that the nightmare was reality.
He lay alone in the depths of the nighted forest and suffered as few men have suffered since the beginning of the world. Then, gradually, when he found that he was not going to die or go mad, the mind of Eric Nelson began to function again.
Nelson had lived a long time in the wild places of the world. He had spent years on the ragged edge of death and his inner fiber had been hammered into toughness. After the first black wave of horror passed it became a point of pride with him. He would not break. He would not give in and let himself be whipped by anything Kree and his people could do to him.
Again Nelson was conscious of the strange linking of his mind with another mind. Almost without his knowing it, the night and the forest had become familiar. He had spent many nights in the woods but never before had he had this intimate kinship with them. The forest was alive, teeming with its own secret business, and to the new Eric Nelson the secrets were all an open book, infinitely fascinating.
His keen ears told him of the motion of the grasses, the stirring of the trees, the rush of distant water in a streambed. Somewhere near him a mouse scuttered across a dry leaf and above him he could hear plainly the squeaking of a bat and the sound its leathery wings made on the air. Far away down the valley a deer went crashing through a deadfall and behind it rose the deep hunting cry of a tiger.
Eric Nelson felt the sweet taut thrill of excitement that passed through his borrowed body. He was hungry. The wind brought him news. He drew it in through quivering nostrils, rich and tangled and throbbing scents, the breath of the forest that was his mother because it had been Asha's mother.
He rose and stretched himself, wincing and grunting because he was very sore. Then he stepped out into the moonlight and stood with his head up, turning it slowly to quarter the wind, his nose twitching.
Downwind it was all a blank, but upwind a small pack of wolves was driving a buck. They were going away from him, and he must remember to stay clear. The tiger had killed. Down by the stream a band of Hoofed Ones had come to drink, and there were deer with them.
He would not run a deer. The whole forest would know of it. He would be content with a rabbit. Grim determination steeled Nelson's mind. He was going to Anshan and somehow he would bring Barin back to Vruun. But in the meantime they had made him a wolf. Very well, he would be a wolf.
The distant hunting call of the pack moaned and wailed down the valley. His throat quivered to answer it but he kept silent. Then, like a lean gray wraith in the splashing silver moonlight, he loped away south, toward Anshan.
At first it was difficult to move, but as his stiff body warmed and loosened he forgot his hunger in the delight of going. His man-body had been a pretty good one. It was tough and lithe and quicker than most. But it was a dull, clumsy thing compared to the one he had now.
The body of Asha was sensitively alive, from the bottoms of its padded paws to the tip of its nose. Every nerve and muscle worked to a hair-trigger reflex. It could thread its way like a lightning-flash through a thicket of brush and never so much as stir a leaf. It could stop stock-still without a quiver and it could soar over a deadfall like an arrow going home. And it could run. Gods of the forest, how it could run!
Nelson had known that when they drove him out of Vruun. But there had been no pleasure in running then. Now he sped down the open ridges for the sheer joy of it, rushing through the pools of moonlight, whirling and pouncing, playing delightedly with the shadows.
Hysteria, Nelson thought. Bravado, reaction against fear. But why not? Why not?
He crept upwind upon a little band of deer feeding by a pond. For a time he lay in the long grass and watched them, slender lovely things with their moist black noses and great eyes. A tall buck and two does and a fawn. The rich sweet odor of them made his mouth water.
Presently he rose and walked boldly out into the clearing. They lifted their heads and froze, staring at him-fleet-limbed children of flight and fear. Then they snorted the wolf-taint out of their nostrils and were gone.
He went to the pool and drank. His reflection looked up at him from the moonlit water, and he ran his tongue over his teeth and glared back wolf-eyed at himself.
He went southward again, ever southward toward An-shan, and he found no rabbits. He began to be aware that the game was moving. Time and again he crossed the new trails of deer and smaller beasts, all drifting westward. Word had gone through the forest that even the true beasts who were not of the Brotherhood could understand, and they were moving on both sides of the river, back to the barrier cliffs, leaving the forest to the Clans.
The wind, which had been blowing steadily from the south, dropped and then died altogether. Nelson felt a strange muffling of his senses then. It was like being partly blind and deaf because he could no longer tell what was happening upwind. He moved with increased caution and he was hungry, very hungry.
He came down to the edge of a wide shallow stream and suddenly, with a flying clatter of hoofs, a dappled mare and her foal came splashing across the fiord and up the low bank beside him.
"Greetings, Hairy One," came the mare's thought, She stopped to blow and, through Asha's wolf-senses, Nelson could smell the fear on her. The little inky-black foal whickered and pushed his head against his mother's flanks, his long ridiculous legs planted far apart and trembling. Both of them were streaked with sweat. "You have run far, oh Sister," said Nelson, through Asha's mind.
"North from Anshan," answered the mare, and shivered. She nosed the foal's thin neck tenderly and added, "I could not come before because of him."
"Anshan?" said Nelson. "I go toward there now."
"I know. The Clans are gathering for war." The rolling eyes of the mare showed white in the moonlight, "There is death in the forest, Hairy One! There is death in the valley of L'Lan!"
And the little black foal started. With lifted head and rolling eyes in imitation of his mother, he echoed, "Death! Death! Death!" His tiny hoofs made a rattling sound on the stones.
"Hush, little one," whispered the mare and stroked his quivering neck. "What do you know of death?"
"I have smelled it," said the foal. "Red in the wind." His nostrils showed pink as they flared to his frightened breathing.
"I pastured on the slopes above Anshan," the mare told Nelson, "because my mate was taken by the Humanites and
I wanted to be near him. The foal was born there. There was killing in the valley below us. The outlanders had come with their new fire-weapons and many of the Brotherhood were killed."
"Death," said the foal again, and whinnied like a child crying. "I am afraid."
Nelson reassured with his thought. "You're safe now, little one. There is no death here."
But there would be, Nelson knew. Sooner or later the fire-weapons would bring death to the gates of Vruun and the little foal, if he lived, would one day be bitted and shod and bridled, broken to bear the weight of man.
Looking at them there in the moonlight, Nelson was aware of a strange revulsion at that thought, as though they had been his own kind, enslaved and toiling in chains.
The mare's gentle thought came into his mind.
"Take care, Hairy One, if you go toward Anshan. Shan Kar and the outlanders have cleared the forest edges of our scouts, and their weapons guard the city well."
Then she turned to the foal. "Come, little fleet one. Only a little farther, and then you can rest"
He watched them go, the dappled mare with her flowing mane and tail, a graceful shape of silver in the moonlight, her ink-black foal rocking along beside her. Light feet that had never known the weight of iron shoes, proud high heads that had never bent to the curb and the cutting bit.
Nelson had always liked horses as a man likes them. Treat them well, take pride in them, feed and groom them and occasionally drop the old phrase, "That horse is almost human!"
But these of Hatha's Clan were different. By whatever unholy alchemy the thing had been done, these horses were human in intelligence. He remembered the bitter pride of the captive Hoofed Ones in Anshan, when he had ridden out with Tark and Lefty and Shan Kar on their ill-starred mission.
He turned slowly to cross the stream but he did it mechanically, because he had been headed that way before. Nelson's mind had been jarred and some gate had opened between it and the subconscious mind of the wolf. He remembered Kree's words, "Asha's instincts, memories, latent knowledges—"