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to dominance over men! All his instincts rebelled against the idea.
"It gives me the creeps!" muttered Lefty Wister. "You ought to kill all the brutes."
destroy
Shan Kar looked a little shocked at that. "We don't want to the beast-clans. It's
simply that they must learn the Brotherhood is a myth, that men are best fitted to govern."
Nick Sloan's hard practical mind swung them back to immediate problems. "We still
don't know the strategic
DARING PLAN
55
setup in this valley," he rapped. "How much of the valley do you Humanites hold?"
Hoik rumbled answer. "Only the southern quarter of the valley, including this city Anshan
and a few smaller places."
Shan Kar added, "Vruun is the great metropolis of the Brotherhood, humans and
beast-clans alike. So far there's been armed truce between them and us Humanites. But the
fight last night means war!
"Kree must have suspected my purpose in going to the outer world, and sent his
daughter Nsharra with Tark and Hatha and Ei to block me. They failed and the Brotherhood
failed again last night. But our capture of Tark and Kree's son begins open conflict now."
Eric Nelson asked quick questions. The answers of the Humanite leaders gave him a
discouraging picture. The Humanites, with their fanatic desire to establish human authority,
were a minority in the valley. They could not put more than two thousand warriors into the
field.
"The Brotherhood has twice that many men and five times that many intelligent beasts of
the clans," Shan Kar admitted.
"Pretty stiff odds-but we hold a joker in our machine-guns and grenades," said Nick
Sloan.
Nelson nodded. "If there are only swords and bows and spears and the claws and fangs
of the brutes against us we should be able to discount the advantage of numbers."
He continued decisively. "We ought to hit them Vith everything we've got before they get
used to our new weapons-smash hard at the heart of this Brotherhood, at Vruun."
Sloan voiced agreement. But the big warrior Hoik shook his head doubtfully.
"Our warriors might not follow you to a direct attack on Vruun. They're still afraid of
Kree."
THE VALLEY OF CREATION
56
"For heaven's sake, why?" demanded Nick Sloan disgustedly.
Shan Kar explained. "The Guardian of the Brotherhood, as I told you, is reputed to be
warder of terrible powers left by the ancients in the Cavern of Creation. That's mostly myth
put out by the Guardians during the ages, of course!"
The Humanite paused. "Yet the Guardian does have a few queer powers. He's known to
transformations,
have effected some terrible to punish those who transgressed the
Brotherhood. That's left such a memory of horror in L'Lan that even our own fervent followers
might hesitate to attack Kree's city directly."
Nelson exploded. "How can we lead a campaign for you when your own people are
poisoned by superstition?"
"Let's pull out of this creepy place," snarled the Cockney.
"Take it easy, you two!" said Nick Sloan. "With a fortune here for the taking, we're not
letting a few difficulties rob us of it."
Shan Kar interrupted. "There's one quick way to overcome that difficulty and that's to
capture Kree and Nsharra! That would dismay the Brotherhood and remove our own
people's lingering doubts."
"Capture them?" asked Van Voss, his colorless, expressionless eyes on the Humanite.
"Why not just kill them?"
"That's out!" snapped Nelson. "We're not murderers."
"And killing them would so infuriate the Brotherhood that they'd never surrender," added
Shan Kar.
Sloan nodded. "Besides, you said the old Guardian and his daughter know the safe way
into that cavern where the platinum is. No, we don't want to kill them."
Shan Kar continued rapidly, "A few of us, only a handful, could penetrate Vruun secretly
by night and
DARING PLAN
57
seize Kree and Nsharra. We could make Tark himself lead us secretly and safely into
the city!"
"You mean that the wolf will do that if we threaten to kill him?" Li Kin asked, his
spectacled eyes wondering.
Shan Kar laughed mirthlessly. "The Hairy One isn't afraid of death. But he doesn't want [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]