The Valley of Creation

'Yes, a myth, a legend,' Li Kin said earnestly. 'Yet this man Shan Kar says that he comes from L'Lan!'

Eric Nelson shrugged. ' 'Nature imitates Art,' said Wilde. The tribe out there in the mountains probably named their valley after the legend.'

'Perhaps so,' Li Kin said doubtfully. He got to his feet. 'Should we not go now?'

'Go along and tell Sloan I'll be there soon,' Nelson said carelessly.

Li Kin's eyes nickered to the emptied Scotch bottle, and he hesitated a moment 'Remember, we have to get away by morning.'

'I'll be there,' snapped Nelson and the little Chinese went silently out.

Eric Nelson looked after the little man with a sympathy he felt neither for himself not his three other fellow- officers. Li Kin was a patriot, an absurdly impractical patriot whose fervent dreams had set his feet stumbling through the quagmire of China's civil wars to this blind-alley end.

The other three and he himself, Nelson thought with savage self-contempt, were not patriots, nor dreamers nor anything but soldiers of fortune.

Soldiers of fortune? The phrase lent an ironical twist to his lips. He and his fellow mercenaries were so far removed from the gay, gallant connotations of that name. Nick Sloan was a cool ruthless self-seeker, Van Voss a moronic sadist, Lefty Wister a spidery criminal.

And he, Eric Nelson? He, least of all, fitted that glamorous name. He was thirty years old, and the best years of his life had no other memorial than forgotten battles. Now he was a fugitive whose only out was to hire himself to Shan Kar's mountain people.

* * *

Nelson swept the empty Scotch bottle off the table to crash in splinters against the mud wall.

'Am I a dog to sit here untended?' he demanded of the fat Cantonese. 'Bring another.'

The liquor had lighted his somber mood by the time he went out into the night an hour later.

The few blinking lights along Yen Shi's wrecked and wretched streets danced in a cheerful rosy glow as he stalked along.

'I'm tired of Yen Shi anyway!' he thought as he, elbowed between shadowy, shuffling peasants. 'San Kar's mountains will be new, at least.'

'L’Lan, L'Lan the golden, inhere the ancient Brotherhood still lives—'

Now what was this Brotherhood that the old seer had talked of so raptly? And if it was so important, why hadn't Shan Kar mentioned it?

Eric Nelson stopped suddenly. Green eyes blazed at him from directly ahead in the gloom.

A huge tawny dog crouched there, staring at him. Only it wasn't a dog.

'A wolf,' he told himself, as his hand went to the heavy pistol at his belt. 'I'm not that drunk.'

He was a little drunk, yes, but even so he could see that the beast was too big for a dog, its massive head too wide, its crouching tenseness too feral.

Its green eyes watched him with hypnotic intensity.

Nelson was deliberately raising his gun when a soft voice spoke from the darkness beyond the animal.

'He will not harm you,' said a girl's voice in accented Tibetan dialect. 'He is — mine.'

She came toward him out of the shadows, past the crouching beast.

It was hard to see her clearly because Nelson's vision was obscured by the alcohol in his brain.

But he felt that this girl was special enough to justify the effort.

The way she moved, for one thing — she was light on her feet with a sort of gliding grace that belonged to an animal rather than to a town-bred human.

Nelson had never seen a woman move that way before and he wanted to see more of it — much more of it.

She wore the conventional dark jacket and trousers and at first he took it for granted that she was Chinese. Her hair was black enough, clustered around her shoulders as though she had brought part of the night with her into the lamplight. But it was soft wavy hair and the face it framed was the wrong color, a smooth, olive tan and the wrong shape.

Vaguely Nelson had a feeling that only recently he had somewhere seen an olive face like that, finely wrought and strong and just a little arrogant — only it had been a man's face.

Her great, grave dark eyes were looking up at him provocatively. Yet there was something oddly childlike about the innocence of her red mouth, the delicate tanned planes of her face.

''I am Nsharra, white lord,' she said softly, her glance tilting to meet his eyes. 'I have seen you in the village before the battle.'

Nelson laughed. 'I haven't seen you before. Nor that wolf-dog, either. I'd remember you both.'

She came a step closer.

Through the alcoholic haze that fogged his mind Nelson saw her dark eyes studying him.

'You look tired and sad, lord,' Nsharra murmured. 'You are — lonely?'

Nelson's first impulse was to toss her a coin and be on his way. In his ten years in China he hadn't sunk so low as to meddle with village street-girls.

But this girl was different. It might be the Scotch that made her seem so, but her smooth face and slumbrous eyes had a beauty that held him.

'My hut is very near,' she was saying, looking up at him with an oddly shy little smile.

'And why not?' Nelson said suddenly in English. 'What difference does it make now?'

Nsharra understood his tone if not his words.

Her small hand on his arm guided him softly through the shadows.

The mud hut was on the fringe of the village. In the starlight Nelson saw the looming bulk of a great black stallion standing outside it.

The horse was fire-eyed, its ears alertly erect, yet it stood quietly and there was neither rope nor halter upon it.

'Yours?' Nelson said to her, and then laughed. 'Good thing Nick Sloan hasn't seen him. He likes fine horses.'

He was not completely drunk, not drunk at all, he told himself He knew quite well the incongruity of a village singsong girl owning a wolf-dog and a stallion but in his rosy, reckless mood he didn't pause to wonder or care.

The interior of the hut was a squalid cubicle that wavered out of darkness when the girl lit a candle. As she straightened, Nelson took her into his arms.

For just a moment, Nsharra struggled, then relaxed. But her lips remained cool and unmoved under his.

'I have wine,' she murmured, a little breathlessly. 'Let me—'

The rice wine was a pungent fire in his throat and Nelson knew he should drink no more of it. But it was too easy to sit here on the soft mat and watch Nsharra's delicate, grave face as her slim hands refilled his cup.

'You will come again to see me, tomorrow or the next night, white lord?' she murmured, as she handed him the cup.

'The name is Eric Nelson and I won't be back tomorrow night for I won't be in Yen Shi,' he laughed. 'So tonight is all there is.'

Her dark eyes fixed on his face, suddenly intent. 'Then you and your comrades leave at once with Shan Kar?'

'Shan Kar?' The name brought a flash of memory to Nelson. 'Now I remember who you remind me of! You've got the same olive complexion, the same features and the same accent—'

He broke off, staring at her. 'What do you know of Shan Kar anyway?'

Nsharra shrugged slim shoulders. 'All the village knows that he is a stranger from the mountains and that he seeks to hire you and your comrades to go back to his land with him.'

Eric Nelson could believe that, for he had had past experience with the swiftness of gossip in an Oriental town. His fogged mind was still baffled, though, by the thing that didn't explain — the queer similarity between Shan Kar and Nsharra, as though they belonged to the same race.

All that didn't matter. What mattered was that this was the last night for him, that the girl's tapering fingers were light against his cheek, her breath warm in his ear.