There was silence for a time between their thoughts, and then Nelson asked, "Why did Nsharra send you?"
"She will tell you that herself," Ei answered. "Wait."
The long still hours of the afternoon wheeled over them. The drooping forest brooded and, beneath the trees, the watching scouts of the Clans slept with sheathed claw and covered fang, a light and uneasy sleep. At sunset Ei flew off and at dusk he returned, guiding Nsharra. She rode the black stallion, Hatha, and Tark loped beside her, his lolling tongue dripping in the heat.
At sight of Tark, Nelson sprang up, bristling. But Tark flung himself down in the cool water and rolled, luxuriating.
"A long run from Vruun, in the dry season," came his thought. He snapped the water between his jaws, biting it like a puppy.
Nelson watched Nsharra as she slid from Hatha's back. Even now, when with his wolf's vision all her exquisite coloring was dulled to a monotony of black and gray and the pure white of her skin, he thought that she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.
He had no anger for her now. All that was long burned out of him and he knew that, in Kree's place, he would have done the same or worse. All he remembered was that Nsharra had pleaded for him and that there had been tears on her cheeks.
The wild hope rose in him that she had come to take him back to Vruun to his own body.
She divined his thought and said, "Not yet, Eric Nelson."
Nelson's whole body drooped with the sickening shock of disappointment, and then he felt Nsharra's hand on his rough head and heard her thought.
"I am not without heart, outlander. My father has given you an impossible task. I have brought Tark and Hatha and Ei to help you."
"Without Kree's knowledge," growled Tark, who had obviously been persuaded against his will.
Hatha snorted and added, "The lightning will not equal his anger when he learns of it."
Nelson told the girl, "You're not doing this for me."
She looked at him steadily and answered, "The one goes with the other. If you fail, my brother Barin will die. My father would sacrifice him if necessary, as he would sacrifice me or himself for the good of the Clans. But I want to save him. Therefore I must save you."
"That's all clear," said Nelson grimly. "Well, I'm ready."
But they waited in silence until full dark.
Then Tark rose and shook himself. He ordered, "You will wait here, Nsharra."
When she started to protest they all three cried her down, Hatha refusing to carry her. She went to the very edge of the forest with them, sat down sulkily to wait. Then her face cleared.
"Good luck," came her thought and, for a second, Nelson had a queer feeling that she meant that for him too — for Eric Nelson, apart from Barin or anything else.
Then Ei's wings thundered as they beat up into the dark sky, and the three of them, Tark and Hatha and the wolf Asha who was Eric Nelson, slipped silently out across the plain toward Anshan.
Ei soared over them, watching the Humanite outposts, sending down his thought-word of the movements of the guards. Nelson realized that, even with his keen wolf-senses, he could never have made it alone through the outer defenses. Sloan's military genius, long trained in guerrilla warfare, shone out in the way he had placed his sentinels so that almost every inch of the plain was under surveillance.
Hatha said, "We must make it before moonrise. I am not small enough to hide like a mouse in the grass with you Hairy Ones."
They went on silently, swiftly, following the direction of Ei's mind as he threaded them like a needle though the sentries, taking advantage of every blade of grass and every fold of the ground.
The stallion was black as the night itself and there was no skyline to show him against the background of the forest. His hoofs fell daintily as dry leaves on the turf. The two wolves were no more than two wisps of gray smoke blown on the wind.
Even so, twice they were almost discovered, lying flat until it was safe to creep on again. The first flooding silver of the moonlight touched the eastern peaks as they slipped into the shelter of the woods that bordered the river. Silent as shadows, they followed the winding forest ways into the city.
Night lay heavy on Anshan. The long forested avenues brooded, deserted and silent. Where for countless centuries the hoofed and padded feet of the Clans had walked, the dust and the dry leaves blew lonely on the wind and even the birds had gone.
The bubble-domes and the towers glistened cold as black ice under the rising moon and, where the buildings fronted on the forest ways, the empty doorways watched them pass and gaped in silent woe.
Where are they now, the children of the Brotherhood? Where have they gone, the tall hunters, and the Winged Ones, and the mothers with their cubs?
The trees made a sound of weeping in the night wind, and they were answered by the hollow voices of the eyrie-towers high above, where the nests of the eagles had fallen into dust.
Where the Humanites lived, in the midst of this desertion, torches burned inside the walls, so that here and there a building would burst upon the darkness in a blaze of sullen light. But there was no sound of revelry or excitement. The Humanites hovered on the edge of war. They were tensely ready but they were not gay.
No one saw the four beasts who went swiftly and quietly down the dark forest avenues toward the palace of Anshan. Near it, Nelson heard the stallion's angry snort. The wind had brought him scent of his mates, those enslaved ones penned in the Humanite stables.
"Silence!" snapped Tark. "Do you want to rouse the city?"
"My Clan-brothers!" came Hatha's fierce thought. "Slaves of the Humanites. Should I rejoice?" His hoof-beats quickened. "By the Cavern, I'll free them!"
Tark sprang at his nose, his teeth clicking purposely just close enough to give the stallion pause.
"You'll ruin everything," Tark said furiously. "Our first task is to get Barin safely away. After that we'll see."
"He is right, Hatha," came Ei's thought.
Reluctantly, sullenly, Hatha consented.
"You and Ei must wait here," Tark said. "The outlander and I can move better inside. Keep watch and be ready if we meet trouble."
The two waited, the eagle perched high in a tree-top, the stallion sulking in the darkness below. Nelson and Tark were two slinking wolf-shadows as they went through the darkness toward the palace. They avoided the big open doorway through which they could glimpse the great torchlit entrance hall.
Instead they circled the palace until they found a side entrance, inside which they could scent no guards. They slipped into the building and paused, sniffing. Then on through the dusty deserted corridors of the sleeping pile they went and came at last to the rooms where Nelson and his comrades had been quartered.
It is very strange, thought Nelson, that now I creep into these rooms on four feet and that, before I enter, I know that only Li Kin is here.
One dim lamp burned in the room. The little Chinese lay on his cot, his face relaxed in sleep-the face, Nelson thought, of an unhappy child, hollowed with a long hunger of the soul. He felt a warm surge of affection for Li Kin.
"Wait," he told Tark. "I will wake him."
Tark waited, his nose wrinkling with disgust at the alien odors of the outlanders. Nelson padded over to the cot, wondering how to wake Li Kin without causing him to cry out in terror and bring the others running. He felt that he could talk to Li Kin alone of all these men he had fought and drunk with for so long.
He hesitated over the sleeping man and Li Kin stirred and moaned uneasily. Then Nelson saw the dull platinum circle of the thought-crown that lay with Li Kin's things beside the bed. He picked it up carefully in his jaws and laid it by Li Kin's head. At the touch of the cold metal the Chinese stirred again and sighed.