The Valley of Creation

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