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.