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 dreaded 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.

'To the river!' Nelson cried. 'If they land behind us we're lost! Ei, lead the way!'

'This way, Clan-brothers!' flashed the eagle's thought as he soared up again on thunderous wings.

Nelson had leaped on Hatha's back. Riding beside Kree back through the red-lit forest toward the river-edge, he sensed the wild relief of the Clans pouring to the fight around him.

Fire they hated, inaction they hated, but now at last their chance to come to grips with the destroyers had come. Beasts and mounted men, they crashed through brush and trees to the edge of the red-lit river just as the first of a score of long crude rafts, loaded with warriors, was poled ashore. Nelson saw that some of the Humanites carried webbing sacks of grenades.

He shouted, 'Charge them! Rush them in the shallows! You Hoofed Ones — ride them down!'

Hatha laid his ears back and ran straight for the water. Nelson clung to his mane, his gun out, firing. Behind him, in a terrible resistless rush, the Clans swept into battle and even the red thundering flowers of the grenades could not stop them.

In the brush of the banks, on the rocky shore, in the water, men and beasts crashed together, screamed and died, and the river was the color of blood under the flame-lit sky.

Squealing, kicking, plunging, Hatha raged through the thick of the fight and took Nelson with him. Nelson caught a glimpse of Sloan and Van Voss, on rafts out in the river, willing to let Shan Kar's men bear the brunt of the fight. They fondled submachine-guns but could not use them, the two forces were so entangled.

The men of Vruun rode up and down the beaches, their swords flashing, and where their horses were killed under them they fought on foot, locked breast to breast with their erstwhile brothers of Anshan.

Great striped bodies leaped and rolled and clawed, and everywhere the gray wolves ran, slashing, slaying. Eagles swooped and struck their talons home. Bodies fell on the stones and lay heaped in the shallows and the clans and the men of Anshan fought on over them, the horses' hoofs ringing on the mail of the fallen men.

'Hai-ooo!' came the blood-chilling killing-cry of Tark, a gray demon gone mad with battle.

Nelson, clinging to Hatha's back as the stallion crashed and whirled in the crazy fight, glimpsed a white-faced Humanite warrior stabbing upward with his sword.

He shot, and glimpsed the man's face drive in. But another Humanite had seized the instant to rush in at him, sword gleaming. A gray thunderbolt flew from behind Nelson at the new attacker, aiming for the throat.

'Asha, look out!' Nelson sent his warning thought as he saw the dog-wolf's staggering opponent drop sword and whip out a dagger.

Even as he flung himself off Hatha into the shallow water to help he saw the dagger rip the dog-wolf's ribs. And then the Humanite sprawled in the water, his throat a pumping red gash.

Asha staggered, slipped. Fading flare of green eyes shone up at Nelson as he reached the wolf. He heard the dying thought

'Good hunting, broth—'

'They flee!' came the wild, raging thought-cry of Quorr. 'Kill, before they escape!'

The Humanites, what was left of those who had landed, were wildly pushing their rafts back into the river, back into the deeper water.

Nelson heard Nick Sloan's cool sharp voice cut in across the din, from the rafts farther out.

'Pull back! That's enough!'

The fighters of the Clans, blood-mad, were balked, could not follow into that deeper water. But as the fight momentarily slackened thus, past Nelson pushed Kree.

The Guardian stood outlined in the suddenly brighter glow of distant firelight, his hand raised as his voice rolled out onto the river.

'Men of Anshan, will you destroy all L'Lan in blood and fire? Wrath of the ancients, wrath of the Cavern, fall upon you if you follow this road farther!'

'Kree, get back!' yelled Nelson, leaping forward.

He was too late. The burst of submachine-gun fire that came from out there on the rafts was brutally, contemptuously short. Kree clutched his breast and went down in the water. And Nelson heard Nick Sloan's voice from out there.

'Good shooting, Piet!'

A mad cry, a cry that was a thought and a howl and a scream of fury, went through the Clans.

'The Guardian is slain!'

Nelson, turning to drag Kree's body ashore, felt his heart check as he saw why the firelight was suddenly brighter now. The forest between them and their firebreak was a wall of flame, marching southward toward them.

'Our backfire has jumped the gap while we fought here!' he cried. 'We can't stop it now — Vruun is doomed!'

Chapter XVI

THE CAVERN OF CREATION

Nelson now realized with tragic clarity the simple and effective strategy that Nick Sloan had used. Seeing them building a defense against the sweep of fire, Sloan had callously sent Humanite warriors in to a landing he knew could not succeed to draw them away from their fight against the flames.

And the strategy had worked. The fire had overrun their line of defense and was now moving on the wings of the wind toward Vruun.

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