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.
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.
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.'
'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
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,
