“They would not thank you for holding them back, Hank.”
“And will I thank myself for sending them out to die?”
“That has always been the lot of generals, and of warlords.”
I nodded grimly, then took the binoculars back and put them to my eyes once more. Now Northan’s army was a quarter of the way to the plateau, and already one or two stragglers could be seen stretching out to the rear. Northan’s ship still rode slightly to the fore, and that must be the traitor himself in the prow, surrounded by his lieutenants. There were wolves aboard that ship too, massive white beasts that strained at their chains. An idea—a suspicion—came to me.
“Do you think it’s possible,” I asked, “that Northan intends to crash one of the gates with his ship, then release those great wolves to ravage along the tunnels? There are about three dozen of the beasts aboard, but I can see damn few handlers.”
“Wolves? Without handlers?” He took back the binoculars and a moment later said, “You could well be right. They will be lean and hungry animals, those wolves.”
I turned to one of my runners. “Go tell the crews of the snowships to be ready. The keep gates are to be opened. All are then to wait for new orders.”
As the runner hurried off I turned again to Charlie. “It seems we’ll have to deal with the ship of Northan first,” I said. “But just in case he should manage to break into one of the keeps with those wolves of his—” I clapped the next boy in line on the shoulder. “Go to Kota’na. I want twenty of his biggest, most powerful bears positioned in each of the keeps. The rest of them he is to use to their best advantage as soon as the fighting starts.”
Now Ithaqua’s army had covered more than half the distance to the plateau and the tension was rapidly heightening. I began to pace the floor, then forced myself to sit down when I noticed the eyes of my runners upon me. Charlie opened his mouth to say something, and at that precise moment there came a swelling cry from the central snowship keep somewhere below and to the left of my position, a cry that was echoed almost immediately from the flanking keeps.
“Sil-ber-hut-te! Sil-ber-hut-te!”
Obviously the runner had passed on my message to the men of the snow-ships, and now they signaled their whole-hearted approval. Something swelled up inside me as once more, in unison, the men of the snow-ships roared out their new battle cry. “Sil-ber-hut-te! Sil-ber-hut-te!”
The swelling thing inside me burst in a flood of resolution. I stood up and said to my Indian friend, “You keep the binoculars, Charlie. You’ll need them if you’re to command the battle. Those men out there are calling my name. They’re not going to fight without me.”
“No!” came Armandra’s almost hysterical, mental denial in my head. “You shall not, for if you do—then I swear I will walk out now on the winds to fight my father. Aye, even knowing that he will snatch me up and take me away with him to alien worlds. Without you, man of the Motherworld, there would be nothing for me here on Borea. Do you hear me, Hank? You shall not give your life away!”
“But they call my name, and—”
“They draw upon your name for its strength. They invoke your passions, your power. Why should you go out to fight, Hank, when every man of the plateau will fight with your great strength and fervor? They know you are worthy of them, now let them prove that they are worthy of you. And remember, husband, we made a bargain. If you fight, then so do I.”
“They are closer, Hank.” Charlie’s voice snatched me back to the task at hand. “What are you going to do?”
Still torn two ways but realizing there was nothing I could do about it, I said, “Armandra leaves me no choice. I can’t let her do battle with her father, so I must stay here and command from this position of safety. You stay with me, Charlie. Two heads are better than one.”
Out on the plain, less than two miles now from the foot of the plateau, the wolf-warrior army swept toward us, its arrowhead formation slightly less pronounced. Northan had lined up his vessel on the central snow-ship keep. I slapped my next runner on his back. “Go tell the crews of the snowships to move out and position their craft along the front of the plateau.” I took up my pistol. There was one bullet left in its magazine. “When they hear a loud report from this cave, they’ll go straight out and cut through the advancing wolf-warriors. The two central ships will engage Northan’s vessel and try to wreck it.”
“Armandra,” I continued telepathically, “we will need a wind …”
“You shall have one. With luck it will take my father by surprise.”
“This is it, Hank.” Charlie said breathlessly. “Only a few seconds now.”
He had the binoculars to his eyes. “You were right about those wolves on Northan’s ship. They are huge, lean, ferocious animals. They look half-wild, barely trained and certainly starved.”
I spoke to yet another runner. “Every man of the plateau should now be in position. I want the swinging weapons set in motion and the keep gates closed as soon as the ships are out. More of our bears are to be stationed just within the gates.”
As he raced away down one of the steep shafts I stepped over to the lip of the cave and looked down to where the snow-ships would soon be lining up. After only a minute or so they began to appear from the keeps, dragged by teams of men and bears. There were eleven of them, and as they lined up the eyes of all crew members turned up to me.
Now Northan’s army was little more than a half-mile away and gaining speed. The sails of the traitor’s ship belled out in front, drawing the vessel straight for the gates of the central keep. The rumble of that army swept up to me as I turned to look at Charlie Tacomah. I nodded my head and he grimly nodded back. Then I pointed my weapon out over the white wastes and pulled the trigger for the last time. I said to the Woman of the Winds, “Now we need that wind, Armandra.”
“You have it,” she answered.
Flurries of ice particles swirled up all around the snowships and their great sails filled. They lurched forward, masts straining as the force of the wind Armandra had sent rapidly increased. And once more that massed cry came up to me as if from one vast throat: “Sil-ber-hut-te! Sil-ber-hut-te!”
Down the shallow decline the ships sailed, their skis throwing up a silver spray, and now the wolf-warrior army also felt the wind sent by Armandra. Northan’s ship visibly slowed and its sails seemed to slacken as the plateau’s two central vessels bore down upon it. I had ordered that those ships engage Northan’s craft; now I saw that they intended to ram him!
But if that fact was plain to me, it was equally obvious to the wolf-warriors. A battle sledge was hurriedly thrown into the path of the starboard vessel, and as its skis cut great swaths through wolves and men, so they ran into the bulky obstacle. A snapping of timbers as two of the skis were ripped away; then the screams of men and animals as the snow-ship toppled, crushing down upon the milling ranks of those around it, flinging its crew to the frozen ground where, miraculously unhurt, they quickly formed themselves and their bears into a savage fighting unit.
The other ship fared somewhat better. Its bird’s-beak prow struck Northan’s vessel a glancing blow that threw both ships a little starboard. As their decks passed each other, scraping together, men of the plateau leaped the gunwales to engage hand-to-hand with Northan’s crew. Then I saw that indeed Charlie had been right about those wolves on Northan’s ship; these were not wolves bred to be ridden as mounts, nor were they bulky for the hauling of heavy loads. They were lean and rangy killers!
And three or four of them had hurdled the rails between the passing ships and were now ravaging among the crew of the plateau’s vessel, while their snarling brothers tore to pieces that brave raiding party aboard the ship of Northan. Ah, but in a few moments more the bears of the plateau’s ship had turned on the attacking wolves to throw their mangled bodies from the swaying deck. The ship sailed on, leaving in its wake a crushed and bloody swath.
There were ten such swaths, red on the white plain as those her
oic vessels ploughed through the wolf-warrior ranks; ten one instant, but in the next only seven as three more of the great ships were wrecked upon battle-sledge reefs. And as I watched, two more, steering wildly from their courses to pick up survivors, were flung onto their sides; in a moment only five ships remained and the plain was a tumult of fighting men and animals.
But no! Those brave men of the surviving snow-ships could not see their brothers go down alone against such odds. As their vessels slowed and stopped, brought to a halt by the sheer weight of shattered flesh-and-bone that clogged their massive skis, so their crews lowered the gangplanks and rushed down them onto the plain.
At last the snow-ships stood empty, while on the plain about them the Children of the Winds turned inwards on the now desperately battling, stranded crews. I turned my eyes away as that wolf-warrior tide washed over them, drowned them as a wave covers pebbles on a beach, then seethed forward again in triumph.
Gone, all those brave men gone. They had sailed out to their deaths with my name on their lips. But their lives were not wasted, for the snow was red beneath that surging tide of wolf-warriors, red with the blood of hundreds of men and wolves crushed beneath the skis, and certainly in the hand-to-hand fighting the plateau’s braves had not given their lives cheaply.
Meanwhile Northan’s ship, thrown off course by the glancing collision, had come about in a tight circle. Now, heedless of the scrambling men and beasts too slow to clear a path for him, the traitor returned his vessel to its previous course. Straight for the central keep gates its beaked prow was aimed, the breath of Ithaqua in its sails, and the sea of men and wolves before it parted in frantic haste as it sped to its target.
Would Northan see the star-stone where Tracy had nailed it to the center of the great gate? Would it deter him? I had had concentric red circles painted around all such protective stars, to draw the eyes of the attacking army and fill them with dread. Surely Northan would see the star-stone. I took my binoculars back from Charlie and, with hands I could scarcely control, refocused upon Northan’s ship.
There stood the ex-warlord upon the raised deck of the prow, eyes slitted and staring straight ahead, lips drawn back in a snarl. He would breach that gate if it was the last act he ever performed, and to hell with whatever awaited him on the other side!
Below me where I stood at the very lip of the cave, the forward part of the central keep and its gates were just visible. In that moment I looked down at a steep angle upon the ship of Northan. And at the same time, with something less than twice the length of his ship between him and the gates, finally Northan spotted the star-stone within its painted circles. He saw it and knew it to be genuine. I still had him in my binoculars when that happened, and the effect upon him was dramatic!
The snarl slid like butter from his face. He gabbled frenzied orders, motioned wildly with spastic arms, then hung on tight to the rail of the prow. Two of his lieutenants standing with him threw up their arms before their faces as they, too, spotted the star-stones. Then the ship slewed crazily as its crew finally interpreted and acted upon Northan’s orders. Chunks of ice flew up from the skis of his ship as they bit into the frozen surface.
Roadside, the traitor’s vessel slammed splinteringly into the gate.
II
Battle for the Plateau
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
As Northan’s snow-ship came to a shuddering halt at the splintered gates of the central keep, a clattering and shouting reached me from the almost vertical shafts. From closer at hand there came a savage howl as, turning, I barely found time to throw myself to one side. A hurled spear flashed past me and out through the open mouth of the cave.
Intent upon Northan’s activities, I had given little thought to what was happening with the rest of the plateau. I had seen the wolf-warrior tide surging about the foot of our massive refuge; now it was made perfectly plain to me that one or more of the lesser tunnels had been breached. An Eskimo warrior, wearing on his back, shoulders and head the pelt and snarling visage of a wolf, stood astride the broken body of a youthful runner at the head of one of the steep shafts. Pulling out a long knife from his belt he stepped menacingly into the cave.
Just inside the cave, hidden from the Eskimo by a wall-like bulge of rock, Charlie Tacomah had seen the flight of the spear. He remained silent and as the Eskimo came forward swung his handaxe full in the intruder’s face. The spine of that hideous weapon drove to its hilt in the fatally surprised Eskimo’s forehead, splitting his skull open like a ripe melon and sending him toppling back and out of sight down the vertiginous steps. He gave a single gurgling shriek as he went.
Before I could thank Charlie, a guardsman wearing Armandra’s royal insignia appeared from that same shaft. How he had avoided being knocked from the steps by the Eskimo’s falling body I was unable to think. Covered with blood—which clearly was not his own—the man bowed as he pantingly entered. Quickly he addressed me in his own tongue, which Charlie roughly translated:
“Three of the tunnels have been entered and a number of men and wolves are loose within the plateau. The rear parties and guardsmen are tracking them down. One of them has already surrendered himself and has volunteered important information. He was one of Northan’s men originally and fled the plateau only under extreme pressure from the warlord. Northan’s intention is to wreck the plateau and carry off both Tracy and Armandra. Even if he cannot take the plateau, he must not return without the women. Ithaqua will not allow Northan to fail him.”
A terrible foreboding suddenly gripped me. “Charlie, take over.” I tossed him the binoculars as I ran past the bloodied guardsman and swerved into a shaft that led into the plateau’s labyrinths. “I have to get to Tracy. She’s with Jimmy Franklin, and if the wolf-warriors have managed to get men this far into the plateau so quickly I’m taking no chances!”
I need not have worried. As I arrived at the head of a flight of stairs that reached down to the lower levels and the open cave where Jimmy had set up his catapult, he and my sister were just appearing from below. They were accompanied by four massive Eskimo guardsmen. Tracy was dishevelled and Jimmy had bruises and a few cuts, but aside from a superficial roughing-up neither of them seemed seriously hurt.
Relief flooded my being at the sight of Tracy’s shaky but reassuring smile. “I must be crazy,” I told Jimmy, “to let you set up that sling of yours so close to the foot of the plateau. What happened?”
“No one’s fault, Hank,” he answered. “I guess we just underestimated the enemy’s penetration power. A pair of wolf-warriors made it up to our cave.” He looked grim as he added, “They weren’t so hard, though—not after they saw Tracy’s pile of star-stones. And I know just how they felt. I was pretty terrified of those stones myself.”
Excitement suddenly filled his voice. “You should have seen it, Hank. When we started hurling the stones at Ithaqua’s army—what a frenzy and a scattering! Anyway, during the scrabble the catapult was wrecked, then I got one of the intruders with his own spear. But by Cod—spears and tomahawks are no match for star-stones! While I was occupied with my man the other one tried to get behind me. Tracy managed to hit him with a stone. It seemed to stick in him and burn there. His side seemed to roast away!”
“Oh, Jimmy, don’t!” Tracy cried, the tremulous smile dropping instantly from her face. She looked suddenly very small, pale and frightened. Only her tremendous courage was keeping her going.
“A couple of seconds after that.” Jimmy finished off, “these fellows arrived—just too late to give us a hand. They told us it wouldn’t be safe for a while in the lower levels. There are about a hundred enemy warriors loose down there, not to mention some two dozen wolves.”
“That many!” I gasped. “Look, you’d better follow me to Armandra. Two of the guardsmen will stay with you, in case you come up against trouble along the way. The other two can go and help Charlie Tacomah. He’s running the show now. I have to get a move on. And look after Tracy
, Jimmy. I happen to know that Northan has plans to kidnap her. He’s after Armandra, too. I’ll see you both later.”
No sooner had I left them, climbing in a spiral toward the uppermost levels, then I sensed Armandra’s mental presence. I opened my mind and she said, “Hank, what is happening?”
“There are wolf-warriors in the plateau, I don’t know how many. The guardsmen and rear parties are hunting them down but you may be in danger, Armandra. Northan means to take you back to Ithaqua, and Tracy with you. Tracy is safe enough for now, but what about you?”
“There are eight guardsmen within hailing distance, plus Kasna’ chi and Gosan-ha. All are sworn to protect me with their lives.”
“You should have ten,” I told her.
She answered, “I sent two of them away with their bears. I ordered them to the snow-ship keeps, to the side of Kota’na, Oontawa’s, man.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m sure there’s, a lot more of your mother’s nature in you than you suspect, Armandra. Anyway, I’m on my way to you. I’ve left Charlie Tacomah in command; he will make a better job of it than I could. Right now I’m wondering what tricks Northan and Ithaqua have up their sleeves.”
With that thought another occurred to me; the plateau had a couple of tricks of its own. By now the wolf-warriors should be attacking in a frustrated crush all along the face of the plateau. I hoped the holes they had already found in our defenses had by now been blocked. All being well, Charlie Tacomah should have ordered the pouring of the burning oil down upon the heads of the invaders. The plateau’s mineral oil reserves had provided a defensive device of hideous potency.
Armandra plucked the thought out of my head.
“Yes, I have been to the balcony. The foot of the plateau is a sea of fire. The Children of the Winds are dying by the hundreds.” No trace of pleasure showed in her thoughts. Alien though her anger might be, her compassion was warm and human.