"We block your way to liberty! You cannot escape — lay down your weapons!"
"A trick!" raged Shan Kar. "Tark somehow managed to betray us without our knowing."
"As you planned to betray me with your lie of coming for Jhanon!" rang the wolf's thought from the darkness. "Fools, not to know that when Grih went toward Anshan at my order, he'd strike our trail and backtrail it — follow us to Vruun!"
Nelson, in a flash, realized the wolf's cunning in sending that Clawed One they had met in the forest on a direction that would cross their trail and thus tell the tiger something was wrong.
"Lay down your weapons and we shall not kill!" Tark's thought continued swiftly. "You shall be our hostages for Barin!"
For answer, Lefty Wister mouthed a curse and emptied his gun into the darkness. But again the slugs ricocheted in whining shrieks off the curved walls of the tunnel.
"They're back around the fork where your weapons can't reach them!" Shan Kar cried. "They'll arouse all Vruun! No chance now to seize the Guardian. We must escape this trap!"
Nelson, scrambling back to the fork in the tunnel, had hastily pulled a bulbous object from his pocket. He ripped out its pin.
"This will clear the way out for us!" he rasped and leaned and hurled the deadly thing around the fork of the tunnel.
"Down!" he yelled, and at the same instant heard the swift warning thought of Tark.