Sloan nodded, frowning. "He's either a liar or a superstitious fool. We'll find out later. Right now I smell trouble."
The sun was setting. Darkness came with a swift rush as Shan Kar led their little caravan down into the wooded gorge.
The forest was a dark tangle of fir, scruboak and poplar. Beneath it, the brush was tindery and crackling from the long dry season. A mountain-stream brawled noisily along in the night somewhere nearby.
Shan Kar knew the trails. He turned southward and they moved after him, their ponies stumbling in the dark, Lefty Wister swearing in a monotonous whine each time his little steed staggered.
A cold wind whined down from the black mountains on their right. The trees stirred mournfully. Eric Nelson had a sudden strongly claustrophobic awareness of the huge ranges that shut them into this wild and forgotten pocket of the globe.
A wolf howled, a long swelling cry that came from somewhere up in the wooded slopes on the west side of the gorge.
Shan Kar turned in his saddle. "Faster!" he rasped.
Nelson was drawn by some instinct to look up and, through the tracery of branches overhead, saw a dark, winged shape plane swiftly above the gorge. It was high, moving in searching loops and curves.
It screamed, an eagle cry echoing thinly down from the night. Almost at once the distant wolf-cry came again.
Shan Kar abruptly reined in his pony. "They know we're coming! I must try to learn what faces us inside L'Lan!"