A bay stallion, ears flattened and eyes rolling, reared up despite the saw-edged bit that cut his mouth.
"Tark, have you come to free us? By the Cavern, speak but a word and we fight and die here now!"
"My warriors can kill you all swiftly — and then Barin dies!" Shan Kar warned the wolf.
"Wait, brothers!" the wolf's thought ordered the rearing, excited horses. "Wait and go quietly with us now — it is for the good of the Brotherhood."
Unearthly, that thought-colloquy of wolf and horses, to Eric Nelson! He was surely deluding himself, he thought — his mind could not actually be hearing that swift interchange of passionate thought—
But the rearing horses quieted, and from them came quick answer. "We obey, Tark! If it is for the Brotherhood!"
Shan Kar spoke to Nelson and the Cockney. "Mount now — and fear nothing. These Hoofed Ones have learned their masters!"
It gave Nelson a creepy feeling to swing into the rude saddle of the golden mare and to realize that his mount was intelligently aware of him, hating him, wanting to kill him.
They rode out of the court and on out through the dark silent windings of forest that enlaced Anshan. Tark ran silently, a black shadow, beside Shan Kar's steed.
Then they were out on the rolling plain, under a sky of magnificent stars against whose sparkling splendor the lofty peaks around L'Lan towered solemn and distant!