The other's face tightened a little, but he nodded. "That and other things." He went out, and Nick Sloan stared after him with suspicion hardening his flat brown face.
He muttered, "He's too cursed cagey to suit me. I've an idea there's a joker in his offer."
Eric Nelson almost envied Sloan's hard singleness of purpose. The increasingly disturbing mystery of this strange valley of men and beasts had not deviated the other a hair from his goal. Lack of imagination and of sympathy served Sloan well.
A frightened-looking olive-skinned girl in silk brought them food in earthenware bowls and platters-coarse wheaten cakes, a mush of cooked vegetables and a jar of yellow wine.
Nelson drank heavily. Then fatigue crushed him down like a giant, gentle hand onto one of the low beds.
Time unreeled backwards as his tired brain sank into darkness. L'Lan was a dream and ten years of Asia were a dream and he was back in his old slant-walled bedroom under the eaves of an Ohio farmhouse.
* * *
He did not awaken until sunlight splashed his face. The others were waking, rubbing bleared eyes and unshaven faces, looking wonderingly around the black, glassy rooms.
The bearlike warrior captain, Hoik, came in as they finished breakfast. He said curtly, "If you're ready to come we'll talk now."
"Talk with whom?" Eric Nelson demanded. "Who, exactly, runs things here?"