The Valley of Creation

horse-screams and cat-squalls ripped the din as mounted men and beasts crashed.

'They are beaten — they cannot face your outland weapons!' cried Shan Kar. 'See, they flee!'

The beasts and the few horsemen left were dropping back, retreating from that deadly fire. Tiger-squall and wolf-howl rose and fell swiftly. Hoofs drummed the plain. Then Nelson heard a long, clear eagle-scream from far up in the moonlit sky. There followed comparative silence. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was bounding out toward the dark bodies dotting the plain.

'Nelson, what kind of place is this valley?' came Sloan's shaken voice. 'Wolves, tigers, eagles—'

'Kuei!' exclaimed Li Kin tremulously. 'Shan Kar spoke truth! Brute and men are equal here — at least, in the Brotherhood!'

They heard Shan Kar yell something and plunged forward after him. They were in time to witness an astounding spectacle. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was tensely approaching a mighty, crouching wolf that had been attempting to drag away a man's limp form.

'It's Tark!' cried Shan Kar. 'He was trying to drag Barin away!'

Eric Nelson glimpsed the flaring green eyes of the great wolf as it turned its face toward them. It did not snarl, as an ordinary beast would have done. It merely crouched for an instant, seeming to choose its victim swiftly before it sprang.

Nelson, startled, raised his rifle as the wolf launched itself for his throat. Shan Kar yelled at the same instant.

'Don't kill him if you can help it! He's valuable to us alive!'

The wolf would have died despite that cry had Nelson been able to shoot in time. But the spring was too swift for that. Nelson, involuntarily stepping back from the blazing-eyed charge as he raised his gun, tripped and stumbled.

He just glimpsed the terrific swing of Sloan's heavy gun as the other batted with it at the plunging wolf.

He heard the thud of the blow, felt Tark's massive, hairy weight hit him — but limply. Then he scrambled hastily from beneath the motionless body of the stunned wolf.

'We've got Tark alive and Barin, Kree's son, too!' Shan Kar exclaimed. 'And we've given the Brotherhood its first taste of our new weapons!'

The man was ablaze with exultation and excitement. Nelson looked down at the two bodies. The wolf still lay senseless, and the youth Barin was bleeding from a crease-wound across the temple.

Nick Sloan looked more shaken than Nelson had ever seen him as he stared at the dead beasts that lay there on the moonlit plain.

'Nelson, these brutes are intelligent!' he panted. 'Running with men, fighting as allies of men.'

'Kuei!' repeated Li Kin, his saffron face pallid in the silver light. 'A valley of witches and devils!'

Shan Kar interrupted. 'More of the Brotherhood will be here swiftly. We must ride on fast for Anshan or die here on the plain!'

He was, as he spoke, kneeling to lash hide thongs securely about the feet of the stunned wolf.

Tark, the wolf, stirred as Shan Kar finished the task. The green eyes of the great beast flickered open. Then, seeing Shan Kar binding the youth, Barin, the wolfs lips writhed away back from great fangs in a soundless snarl

Shan Kar finished binding the youth, turned and laughed full in the face of the wolf.

'Tark the mighty, trapped like a tame outland dog!' He jeered at the great beast. 'Did Kree send you to guard his stripling son? A potent guardian!'

The wolf made no sound, but his green eyes blazed an intelligent hatred of his mocker that made Eric Nelson's skin crawl.

'Riders are coming from the south!' Nick Sloan shouted suddenly. 'Get ready!'

Chapter V WOLF HATRED

Nelson and the others raised their weapons as a dull clatter of many hoofs grew swiftly louder.

'Wait!' cried Shan Kar. 'They are my own people from Anshan! Do not shoot!'

In the moonlight, Nelson presently made out a band of horsemen galloping toward them from the south. They wore armor much like that of their recent attackers, skullcap helmets and breastplates of metal. Swords gleamed in the moon. For a moment, Nelson thought that the new-come horsemen would ride right onto them.

But they pulled up sharply. A burly, bearlike warrior tumbled from his steed and strode toward San Kar with noisy greetings. Shan Kar, after brief colloquy, called to Eric Nelson and the others.

'Hoik and these warriors came out to escort us to Anshan. But we mustn't delay. The scouts of the Winged Ones will have the whole Brotherhood down on us if we do.'

Nelson heard the warriors exchanging fierce exultant words. Their dialect was not Tibetan but so much akin to that ancient tongue that he could catch most of the phrases.

'— Kree's son himself and the Hairy One!' the bearlike Hoik was shouting. 'We'll make the Brotherhood squirm now!'

Nelson found Lefty Wister bleeding from a slash in his forearm but not badly injured. The little Cockney was shaken.

'They weren't wolves!' he panted. 'They were men that can change like the old stories! They must be that!'

The two prisoners — the bound, senseless youth and the wolf — had already been lifted and slung across horses by the warriors of Hoik, two of whom were to ride double.

'Why don't you just kill them?' Lefty demanded viciously of Shan Kar.

The other shook his head peremptorily. 'No, these two captives are worth much to us Humanites! We take them to Anshan! Mount quickly, for we ride!'

* * *

Nelson's thoughts drummed in unison with the thudding of hoofs as they galloped with Shan Kar and Hoik's warriors across the rolling moonlit plain. His mind was bewildered, trying to reconcile this fantastic valley with the ordinary world.

L'Lan was not of that world. That was sure. This hidden pocket of Earth held a way of life of man and beast unheard of on the rest of the planet. Here reigned an ancient and unearthly way of life — one even now moving toward a climax of conflict within itself.

'Captain Nelson, to think it is all true!' came Li Kin's exclamation. 'L'Lan, the legendary valley of the Brotherhood, unchanged!'

'Perish old legends!' Nelson thought. There was some normal explanation for all this. There must be.

The helmeted, sword-armed warriors who rode around him were like no ordinary Asiatic tribesmen, but Asia was vast and held queer racial survivals in its hidden places. The uncanny community of men and beasts here surely had other explanation than that the beasts were as intelligent as the men.

'Anshan!' called Shan Kar, from where he rode at the head of the mounted band.

Nelson perceived that they were riding down a gentle dope of the moonlit plain toward a city whose lights glimmered near the shore of the valley L'Lan's big woods-bordered river.

He didn't like the way the city looked in the moonlight. It was not large, an oval stretching along the river less than a mile. But it looked so strange, too much like the disturbing impression he had obtained in his vague glimpse of distant Vruun.

It was a city interpenetrated by forest, by the low, dark woods that bordered the river. The forest came into Anshan as though by right, was woven into its design in wide windings of dense foliage.

'What kind of place is this?' demanded Nick Sloan, startled. 'Those domes and towers are black glass!'

Black glass? It could not be that, surely. Yet every surface shimmered blackly and brilliantly in the moon, as though vitreous.