RETURN TO DOOM
For Nelson, it was a strange, weird battle. More so even than his fight with Tark, because this time he was fighting men. There was something beautiful about it. To sweep in under the flash of a falling blade, leap and slash and twist away, then dodge and leap again. He had not realized that men were so slow and weak, their flesh so soft to tear, so naked. He felt contempt for them.
A savage joy in his own wolf-strength swept over him. He hurled himself high in the air, right over the striking sword that would have split him open, saw terror widen in the swordsman's eyes, heard him cry out. Then he felt his own jaws snap and crunch an arm, heard the yell of pain and the clatter of the sword falling to the floor.
But it was no use. Men might be soft and slow, but there were many of them. More came running into the doorway as word went forth that the wolves of Vruun were trapped. And their swords could bite, deep and deadly as fangs.
Nelson and Tark recoiled, panting, and for all their swiftness they had not come off unmarked. Ears flattened, bellies down, they crouched for one brief moment as doom closed in on them. For behind them, Sloan and Van Voss had entered the big hall. Their guns were ready, but they could not fire yet for fear of killing the Humanites.
Nelson licked his own blood off his lips, and said, "I go."
Tark's answer came. "I, too. Farewell, outlander."
The two lean gray shapes gathered themselves for what they knew would be their last charge against that wall of swords.
Then, above the clamor, Nelson heard from outside the high shrill screams of Hatha's Clan rise like trumpets on the night and the rolling drumbeats of their hoofs.
Hatha had freed his imprisoned mates and his thought-cry rang out to the fighting wolves— "We come, brothers!"
And they came. Out of the darkness, through the wide door that long ago had been made for the clans to enter, into the big hall itself they came, their hoofbeats ringing on the glassy floor. They shook the torchlight from their gleaming hides and squealed and reared like giants under the high-arched roof as they trampled the Humanites down.
Hatha led them — a demon, a shape of darkness, a living hate. He stood on his hind legs and screamed, the terrible ripping cry of his kind. Nelson saw him, towering high, teeth bared and mane flying, the great muscles of his breast flecked with foam, his eyes flaming and his fore-hoofs striking out like slim instruments of death.
"It is our vengeance, gray brothers! Let be!"
Vengeance of the captive, of the slave. Nelson could see on their backs the marks of lash and club and on the necks the scars of the rope. They were fouled with stable dirt and dust and crusted blood, these who had bathed in mountain streams and combed their manes with the wind. And they were bitter for their vengeance.
The wolves were forgotten. They ran between the staggering legs of men, under the bellies of the horses and on outside, lest they themselves be trampled. They crouched out there in the shadows, watching.
The big hall was full of sounds of hoofs and running men and death. Nelson saw swords flash red in the torchlight, saw breastplates crumple and helmets battered in.
Sloan was shouting for the Humanites to scatter so that he and Van Voss could use their guns but there was 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.
Run! Run, Clan-brothers! At dawn the forest bums!
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.
At dawn, the forest burns!
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."
Yes, I helped bring that doom to L'Lan and the Brotherhood, he thought. I helped bring it, the death that is coming.
"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.