Fiercely throbbed the striped beast's answer. "I go at once! If they come I shall send word by Ei's folk! Speed you to Vruun, brother!"
Nelson saw the tiger whirl and melt away in the dark forest, heading southeastward down the wooded slope. He lowered the gun he'd kept leveled as Tark came loping back to them. "There can be no delay now! We must hurry!"
"So Kree gathers the Clans for war?" Shan Kar said fiercely. "So be it! They shall learn their masters when they come against men!"
The wolf made no answer but his eyes flared brilliantly as he turned to lead on.
Nelson, aware of the vital necessity of keeping the way back to the horses clearly in mind, estimated they went nearly a mile more along the forested ridge before Tark stopped. The wolf led them down the slope from the ridge a little. Here was a fire-scarred break in the trees that gave vision downward.
"Vruun!" exclaimed Shan Kar in a taut whisper.
Nelson, startled, perceived in his first glimpse that, in the level forest down below this ridge, there sprawled the big river. And beside the river, on their side of it, glimmered the lights and buildings of the city of the Brotherhood.
"Blimy!" choked Lefty Wister. "Look at that place!"
Nelson realized that he was looking upon a city whose strangeness had no counterpart on Earth.