"They should all die now, little sister! For he even now seeks them out, to hire them as our foes! Ei has brought me word!"
"Turk, no! Watch only till I order—"
Nerve-tension snapped and Eric Nelson found himself scrambling up from his blankets, staring wildly around the dark room.
A black flying shadow leaped for the open window and was gone as his blurred eyes focused — a shadow that was not human!
With a strangled exclamation, Nelson lurched to the window, plucking the heavy pistol from his belt.
Great wings flapped suddenly out there in the night, rapidly receeding. He leveled the pistol but he could see nothing, and after a moment there were no more sounds.
Eric Nelson stood bewildered, his skin still creeping from the uncanny terror of the experience. His brain was fogged by sleep and by the sick aftertaste of the previous night's drinking.
Gradually his bristling nerves quieted. There was nothing out there in the dark-nothing but the few blinking lights of the wretched mud village, cowering underneath the silent stars, close beside the black wall of the great mountains that shouldered all the way to Tibet.
Dawn was coming. Nelson holstered his gun and ran his hands heavily over his unshaven face. Waves of pain surged up through his eyeballs as he turned from the window.
"Too much to drink," he muttered. "No wonder I'm hearing — and seeing — things."