Spawn of the Winds Read online

  “Whitey’s right,” I agreed, “I’m sure of it. It all goes back to the monster’s ultimate purpose, that of freeing his hellish kith and kin. Think about it; there’s only one Ithaqua, one Wind-Walker, and his ambition is to turn all of his alien, hideous cousins loose from their many prisons. Cthulhu from sunken R’lyeh, Hastur from the Lake of Hali, Yog-Sothoth from some dark dimension—oh, all of them.

  “But if there were two such as Ithaqua, two ‘Things that Walk on the Winds,’ why, then the task would be that much easier. And if there were three—four?

  “The mercy is that he is not invincible. There are weapons which work against him. We have such weapons in the star-stones from forgotten Mnar.” I looked at my hand, at the large blisters that covered my palm, and I laughed ruefully. “True, only Tracy can handle the things, but that’s a lot better than—”

  “Hank!” Whitey called. I looked at him in time to see his eyebrows shoot up, then lower again quickly as he squinted down the sights of his machine gun. “Reinforcements,” he grunted.

  I jerked the binoculars up to my eyes and scanned the white plain in the direction of the pyramid altar.

  Reinforcements, yes! Led by the Russian priest they came, gathering out of the ice-shrouded bases of the plain’s weird hummocks. For those relics of Ithaqua’s visits to Earth over eon-embracing ages were nothing less than the artificial wigwams and igloos of these Children of the Winds, provided for them by their Lord and Master, Ithaqua of the Snows. Wolf-warriors in their hundreds, and in their midst a large sledge, and upon that sledge—

  “What do you make of that, Jimmy?” I asked.

  “I would say it was a totem,” he answered. “A heavy pole, lashed to the sledge and carved with faces and figures.”

  “Yes,” Whitey snorted derisively, “it would need to be a heavy pole. It has to be.” He looked at me and his eyebrows drooped ominously. “It’s a battering-ram!”

  V

  Ships of the Snow

  (Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)

  As the great sledge bearing the battering-ram totem drew closer, the wolf-warriors formed a circle round our crippled airplane as before, only now they were three and four ranks deep. There must have been twelve hundred men and beasts surrounding us, and I doubted that we had enough ammunition to fire more than one shot at each of them. Even then, if every single round we fired found its target, we would still be swamped, inundated by sheer numbers.

  The battering-ram was all of fifty feet long. Drawn by a dozen massive wolves in harness, with the leading pair bearing riders, it bumped roughly over the snow, jerking at the lashings that held it to the straining sledge. Cut from some giant pine the thing must have been, though as yet I had seen no tree growing on Borea, carved in designs of gods and devils, its head shaped into a blunt likeness of Ithaqua. That heavy head now pointed toward the plane, and as the wolf-warriors gave way to let the totem through their ranks its purpose suddenly became obvious. The nose of our craft was mainly of laminated glass and comparatively thin metal frames; the ram was directed straight at that fragile bubble.

  “Whitey,” I said, knowing that the battle must break at any moment, “whatever else you do, try to bring down those wolves pulling the totem. Same goes for you, Jimmy. Tracy, you give Jimmy cover: I’ll cover Whitey from the door. Make all your shots count.”

  Now, as the circle of wolf-warriors tightened and beasts and riders drew closer to the plane, a contingent of them gathered around the totem-bearing sledge, making the animals that pulled it much more difficult targets. Closer the sea of faces came—flat faces and copper faces, slant-eyed and straight, Eskimo, Indian and white—faces and pointed muzzles.

  “If we don’t cut loose soon,” Whitey breathed, “we’ll never thin them down.”

  Even as he spoke the closing ranks began to move faster, human heels digging into animal flanks in a concerted spurring. From behind the wolf-warriors an eerie cry rang out in the frozen air: the wailing of the Priests of Ithaqua, begging the Wind-Walker to look favorably upon his warriors in battle.

  “Here they come,” I yelled. “Now … let them have it!”

  The words were hardly out of my mouth before they were drowned by the stuttering rattle of the machine gun and the rapidly repeating crack of the rifle. Down went a dozen of the warriors escorting the battering-ram, one of them vanishing with a scream beneath the runners of the great sledge, and Whitey’s roaring battle cry rang out triumphant—only to turn to a yelp of surprise as the first of the mounted Eskimos and Indians reached the plane.

  A mass of white fur flashed by the jammed door; simultaneously a squat figure hurtled into the plane over the top of Whitey’s deadly arc of fire. My single shot, striking the Eskimo in the chest, threw him sideways, dead before he hit the floor. Down he crashed, his fur-clad feet flopping across the barrel of the machine gun. The gun’s chattering stilled at once and shapes swiftly gathered at the door. I fired point-blank into dark and light faces and slavering, snarling muzzles alike until my pistol was empty—but by that time Whitey had freed the gun.

  Now he traversed the weapon, triggering it back into deadly life. But though the gun was alive its harshly uttered message was death. Death flew out through the open door in an arc, slicing into the wolf-warriors milling on the bloody snow. Whitey’s attention, however, had been successfully drawn from the battering-ram; in the next instant we knew that the first stroke of that wolf-drawn totem was a telling one.

  Still firing rapidly, Jimmy Franklin gave a sudden yell of warning as there came a tremendous crash from the nose of the plane. In the same second, caught unawares and in the act of reloading, I was thrown off my feet as the entire aircraft jerked violently. Whitey, firing the machine gun with one hand, somehow managed to hang on until the rocking of the plane subsided. Then the firing-pin of the machine gun fell on an empty chamber; the ammunition belt was exhausted.

  I grabbed up another belt and threw it toward Whitey, kicking as I did so at a flat, oval-eyed face that appeared suddenly over the lower sill of the door. Then I was sent hurtling backward, knocked off my feet by a huge furry shape that shot in through the door with outstretched paws and bared fangs. Sprawling on my back I threw up my pistol against the pony-sized wolf crouching over me. I looked straight into the eyes of death as the beast’s hideous muzzle descended. Then my bullet went in through his dripping jaws to blow out the back of his skull, lifting him from me with the shock of its impact. I rolled out of the way as the toppling, shuddering carcass collapsed with a crash where I had lain.

  Through all of this it dawned on me that I had not heard the crack of Jimmy Franklin’s rifle since the jarring crash when the totem struck the plane. Similarly the spitting sounds of Tracy’s pistol had been absent. Now, as I leaped to my feet, the machine gun began to snarl once more to the accompaniment of Whitey’s whooping. Mercifully, when the great wolf had leaped at me, it had done little more than pass over Whitey’s head, causing him to duck down and momentarily lose control of his weapon.

  I saw this and barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before a gasp from Tracy swung me in her direction. She was spreadeagled against the curving wall of the plane, moving slowly away from the shattered nose section, staring back hypnotized at a squat white figure that moved after her with outstretched arms. She pointed her empty pistol at the Eskimo warrior, repeatedly, uselessly pulling at the trigger. Over and over she gasped my name.

  At Tracy’s stumbling feet, stretched on his back with a great bruise shining on his forehead, Jimmy Franklin lay, his rifle inches from hands that were limp and motionless. Faster the Eskimo moved after Tracy, black eyes glittering as he grabbed at her. In that same moment the head and shoulders of a second wolf-warrior appeared at the gaping hole where half the plane’s nose had been caved in.

  I aimed my pistol as carefully as my shaking hand would allow, pulled the trigger, aimed and fired again. My first shot went high, but was nonetheless effective for that. It seemed that
the face of Tracy’s attacker had barely flown apart, his corpse slamming backward into the nose section like a felled tree, before the second Eskimo was flying out through the gaping hole in the nose of the plane. As he went his arms flapped loosely, nervelessly, while the white furs on his upper body turned red in a sudden spouting.

  I dropped to one knee beside Jimmy, snatched up his rifle and pumped off one quick shot into the wreckage of the nose section where I thought I saw a movement beyond the shattered windows. Then I slapped the downed man’s face until he opened his eyes. Groggily he lifted his head from the floor and tried to get up; he was not seriously hurt.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You got a knock on the head,” I told him. “Here, take your rifle.”

  As I began to busy myself, swiftly reloading magazines for Tracy’s and my own weapon, suddenly the lunatic chatter of the machine gun died. There came an abrupt, unbelievable silence: then, filling that silence, springing up all around the aircraft, came the moaning of vast winds.

  Listening to that wind I felt the hair of my neck rise. I knew that it was unnatural, this wind, but I was equally sure that its source was not Ithaqua. This wind was—different. I felt no chill in my heart, my soul, listening to the blowing of this wind—only a sense of awe, of wonder.

  “Whitey, what is it?” I cried. “Why have you stopped firing?”

  “Gun jammed,” he hoarsely answered, his hands tearing ineffectually at the breech-block mechanism of his weapon. “Can’t be fixed this side of—of Earth!”

  “But what’s happening?” Jimmy Franklin asked, staggering to a window.

  Whitey’s eyes went wide and his black eyebrows lifted. He peered out through the door and across the white wastes. The moaning of the wind grew louder, intermingled now with strange low cries of—fear?—from the horde outside. Snow blew into the shattered nose section, whirling along the inside of the plane and settling on our parkas. The wind howled more mournfully yet.

  I went to the door, stood there beside Whitey and gazed out onto the plains of Borea. The wolf-warriors were lining up, reforming their ranks parallel to our battered aircraft, but their faces were turned away from the plane and they gazed as one toward the enigmatic plateau. Though the bodies of hundreds of their erstwhile fellows littered the snow, they had momentarily forgotten us and their attention was centered upon something else.

  Then, from the direction of the pyramid altar, two more sledges rushed forward toward the lines of warriors. They were hauled by howling wolves that answered to the crack of Eskimo whips, and they were laden with weapons; large, tomahawk-like axes, harpoons and spears.

  “I wondered where all their weaponry was,” Jimmy Franklin said. “It looked for a while as though we were supposed to be taken alive. But now—now it looks like we’re really in for it!”

  Whitey studied the scene out on the snows a moment longer and his eyebrows knitted as his frown deepened. “No, no. Those weapons are not intended for use on us.”

  “What do you mean?” I questioned.

  He grinned in answer, then pulled me over to the opposite window. Louder and louder howled the eerie wind, blowing now quite perceptibly from the direction of the plateau, bringing with it the sound of—slapping sails and creaking rigging!

  “It’s my hunch we’re about to be rescued,” Whitey grinned again. “Look, here comes the cavalry!”

  I looked, and at first could not believe my eyes.

  Down the gradual slope from the plateau they sailed, majestic and awesome on huge skis, with billowing triangular sails reaching high into whistling air—platforms with shallow hulls, upon whose decks crouched half-naked warriors amid what at first appeared to be great heaps of furs—ships, a dozen of them, sailing the snows! I snatched my binoculars up to my eyes incredulously, cursed the flurries of snow blown up by the phantom wind to obscure my vision, then finally managed to focus on one of the snow-ships.

  Triple skis each perhaps forty feet long and six wide, one fore and two aft, supported the structure of the snow-ship’s deck; the high mast was secured fore and aft, port and starboard with heavy lines. Crouching behind narrow gunwales were the warriors, wiry white bodies and squat brown ones together, gleaming with oils, eyes eager and staring straight ahead. And those piles of furs I had seen—now I could make them out more clearly. Piles of fur they were indeed, but more fearsome furs a man never saw.

  Suddenly one of them stood up, a great white mass that pawed the air and stretched itself, dwarfing its human master. Then the warrior jumped up to throw an arm about the animal’s neck and push it down again to the deck. But I had seen it, and could only gape in amazement.

  A bear! They were all bears, those vast furry heaps, huge white Polar bears almost twice as big as any I ever saw in the zoos of Earth.

  “The—the cavalry.” I lamely echoed Whitey’s words.

  “Right,” he nodded, turning to step back to the door, “and just look at those so-called ‘priests’ run!”

  The two sledges were flying back across the snows now, back toward the pyramid altar. Emptied of their weapon loads, now they carried the priests of Ithaqua three to a sledge. Like rats from a sinking ship. “No fighters, those priests,” Whitey muttered.

  “Jimmy,” I swung about, an idea forming in my mind. “How do you feel?”

  “I think I’m all right,” he answered, gingerly fingering his bruise. “An almighty headache, that’s all.”

  “And you, Tracy?”

  “Fine, Hank,” her voice began to tremble, then steadied. “But what’s on your mind?”

  “Whitey reckons that these ships and their crews are here to dig us out of this mess we’re in. I say let’s make their job a bit easier. We can perhaps leave the plane and fight our way over to the men of the ships. If they are here to pull us out of the fire, they’ll be able to disengage that much earlier and take us back to the plateau. Who’s for it?”

  All three nodded as one person; then Whitey reminded, “We have only three guns among us.”

  “We’ll keep Tracy in the middle,” I answered. “Form a triangle around her. Jimmy keeps his rifle; you and I, Whitey, have the pistols.”

  “And all these supplies of ours, that we planned to take with us?” Jimmy asked.

  “They may still come in handy,” I told him. “We’ll take them.”

  The three of us tugged and wrestled at the door while Tracy urged us on. Finally we forced it from bent hinges, letting it fall onto the reddened snow outside. We quickly threw down our belongings and equipment, then jumped down ourselves. Tracy came last, dropping into Jimmy’s arms.

  Now we could clearly hear the swish of the great skis and the crack of snapping sails. Hurrying around under the tail of our crippled aircraft, loaded down with equipment and hauling a sledge heaped high with bundles, we caught our first glimpse of the two factions as they faced up to one another.

  The snow-ships were still now, twelve of them in a line, sails already half-furled and decks half-cleared; and the gleaming warriors who had crowded those decks were mounting massive bears on the plain and moving their mounts into a tight formation. Men and bears; a fearful army, a fantastic sight!

  In their right hands the fighting men of the ships carried lances, and swinging from their leather waist-belts were picklike weapons, polished bright. The bears, of course, required neither arms nor armor; their furs were thick and their hides tough, and their terrible claws were the most lethal weapons for hand-to-hand fighting that I had ever seen. The two armies of warriors, both double-ranked now, moved toward each other. Fur-clad Eskimo, Indian and white man, spurring on their huge wolves; face to face with men of similar origins but different ideals and creeds, mounted on massive Polar bears. The armies moved closer, seemed to poise for an instant of time on the white plains of Borea, then rushed together in the clash and roar of terrible battle!

  In a moment the double line of wolf-warriors broke and the bears surged through the gap, tearing all apart that
stood in their way. But for all their giant strength and determined ferocity, not all of them won through. I saw one bear go down, hamstrung by the slashing claws of a great wolf; but even as the Eskimo rider of the bear fell, so he hurled his weapon at a mounted, copper-colored wolf-warrior. Such was the force of the Eskimo’s hurled lance that even striking its target a glancing blow it lifted the Indian from his wolf’s back. In another second the two unseated men were hand-to-hand, and in the next the squat man of the snow-ships had driven his bright picklike weapon through the proud hawk face of the redskin wolf-warrior. Then the battle surged over that gory, heroic scene and it was lost to me.

  We ran as best we could toward the break in the ranks of the Children of the Winds, hauling our sledge behind us, keeping close together and forming a knot around Tracy. As we went we fired our weapons at the closest of the wolf-warriors and their mounts. We had been spotted as we left the plane and this closest group of our previous attackers was already fighting its way desperately toward us; the wolf-warriors did not intend to let us go so easily. Then additional orders were given by someone behind us, from the direction of the distant pyramid.

  A strange, drawn-out ululation sounded, and it caused a greater contingent of the fighting wolf-warriors to wheel about face and come racing back toward us!

  Cursing the utterer of that cry out loud, glancing back as I urged the other three on to the spitting song of the pistols and the cracking tune of Jimmy Franklin’s rifle, I saw a sleek sledge knifing over the plain. The crusty snow flew in a white sleeting as bright runners cut through it, crushed it, hurled it aside. Six massive wolves hauled the sledge at a loping run, laboring under the whip of an Eskimo driver, and holding to the skimming vehicle’s chariotlike prow crouched a half-dozen of the fiercest, largest men I have ever seen. Giants all, only three of these prime warriors were Eskimo; two others were copper-skinned Indians, the last a white man.