"So now the old blood wakes in us," I said exultantly. "Why? After so long, why now? Are we like locusts, our knowledge lying hidden for an age and then bursting up in all of us at the same time?"
"A quaint notion," said Skagarach. "No, we have always known, I think, in all the periods of history. But we never banded together before, never fought the ancient enemy as an army within its gates, as we are doing and will do with increasing potency."
"Why not?"
"Think, Cuff, only think! You are born in 1700; at a certain age you begin to know you are different. You hate the race of men. You have racial memories of living in caves, of being harried by men. What do you do? You never heard the name of—what we were and are. Science has told you nothing of prehistory. So where do you end?" He shrugged. "Bedlam. The lunatic dungeons. Fancy ladies come and giggle at you, the murderous madman, through the bars. You pine for fresh air and freedom, because freedom is even more precious to our race than to man. You die."
"Oh," I said, catching his meaning. "It's only in the last century that science has opened the door to the past, of course. Now we can realize what we are, and work accordingly."
"Yes, we can organize, can sheer off from the pack of humankind, and strengthen our race by inbreeding. We have children here and in the other HQs, born of two of us who remember what they are before they can read and write. I said it was a powerful strain. Listen. I raise dogs. Once I bred a wolf to a shepherd. Five generations later a pup was born that was all wolf, every last ounce of him. Perfectly untameable little brute. We have that same tenacious blood-line, but to an almost incredible degree. In fact I think it is not so much blood with us as a strain in the mind. In us it has carried down through the uncountable years since prehistory. As that dog was no dog, but a true wolf, so we are not men, but—what we are." He broke off and looked at me appraisingly. "I have hopes for you," he said. "The tide runs high in you, Cuff. We will win back the world some day, we who are not of mankind. You should prove tremendously important to us."
I said, "Skagarach, who are we?"
"Hush," he said, "the Old Man is coming."
"Old Man?"
"The leader."