Kree said reluctantly, "I will go with you and give the order."
As they turned, Nelson found Nsharra handing two heavy service pistols to him. He recognized them as his own and Lefty's.
"Less than twenty shots," he muttered, as he belted on the guns. "And Sloan and Van Voss will have submachine-guns and will have trained some of the Humanites to use grenades."
"But your experience of war will be valuable to us," Kree told him. "We know little of war in L'Lan. Our swords have only been used at long intervals to repel out-land tribes who sought to enter."
"I go with you, father!" cried Nsharra, her eyes dark and stormy with excitement.
Kree shook his head. "Nsharra, if aught befalls me, you alone remain to rally the Brotherhood. You must remain in Vruun."
Eric Nelson went out of the Hall of Clans with the Guardian into a thickening, ominous dusk. Smoke was rolling ever more densely from the south, blotting out the sunset. The air was bitter with it.
Tark ran up to them, the Hairy One's eyes blazing. "The fighters of the Clans are already on their way in the forest! Two of the Hoofed Ones wait for you!" _
Nelson leaped on the back of one of the excited horses as Kree too mounted. They rode southward out of Vruun.
The sun had gone down behind smoke-veils as though afraid, and darkness was thickening westward. But southward it was like a dreadful new dawn over the forest, the whole sky there blood-red, immense.