“Three of my men, dead?”
“They died to stop this man and his brothers reaching youâand they almost died in vain.”
“I sent the others away,” she admitted, leading me over to the bars of the balcony. “They wanted to join in the fighting and I felt capable of fending for myâ”
“Oh, did you?” I cut her off. “And if I had not come along when I did?”
“But you
did
come, Hank. Now come, we have no time for quarreling. Look down there. What do you make of that?”
I took hold of the bars and looked out. The wolf-warrior army had pulled back to a distance of about one hundred and fifty yards from the foot of the plateau. There against the white of the plain they formed a deep dark band that stretched away and around the curving protective walls of rock to both sides. Between them and the fortified tunnels and keeps an ocean of fire, its warmth reaching up to me even at this height, blazed and roared. At first I could not see what was causing Armandra's concern, then I saw that the wolf-warriors were opening up to leave clear paths through their ranks from the rear to the front. They were making way for something. But what?
“My father's so-called âpriests,' see?” Armandra said, pointing. “There, at the rear of the army. And now I know what they are about.”
“Yes, I've seen them cavorting like that before,” I agreed. “Then they were calling up those tornadoes of theirs, working their devilish magic through your father.”
“That is exactly what they are doing now,” she said. “See? And once they have called up their snow-devils they will throw them into the fire and smother it. And thenâ”
“Then?”
She turned to look at me with wide, unflinching eyes. “Then they will hurl those whirligigs at the tunnel entrances, the keep gates. They will drive them deep into the plateau and the wolf-warriors will follow behind!”
“Armandra, Iâ”
“I have promised not to fight my father, Hank, but thoseâ
creatures
of his, his âpriests'âthey must be stopped!”
“If you interfere, it may draw Ithaqua into the battle.”
“And if I don't, the plateau is lost anyway.”
Down below six spinning tops had appeared, each with its own capering master behind it, urging it on. Six alien whirlwinds that grew up rapidly out of the frozen plain and moved threateningly forward, roaring along the paths cleared by the wolf-warriors, entering and obscuring in clouds of steam and smoke the field of blazing oil fires.
Armandra was right and I knew it. In another moment Ithaqua's priests would hurl those spinning pillars directly at the keeps and major tunnel entrances. They would wipe the tunnels clean of men and
bears in seconds. The swinging engines that carried the star-stones might be safe enough, Ithaqua's familiar winds and powers were restricted by his own limitations. But not all of the tunnels were so well protected, and only the actual gates of the keeps carried those symbols of Eld. To simply allow these priests of the Wind-Walker to use their tools of an alien science as they desired would be suicidal.
“Armandra,” I told her, “do whatever must be done.”
From beside me, so close that I felt her breath fanning my cheek as she spoke, and in a tone that called up visions of unknown star-voids, she said, “It is already begun!”
I glanced at her and felt the hair of my neck prickle at the sight of that strange pink flush that spread outward from the closed eyes to fill her pale face. I stepped quickly back as her hair began to rise up in undulating coils above her head and the white fur smock she wore stirred with weird life.
Gone again was the woman I loved, gone in a matter of seconds to make way for this child of Ithaqua, whose arms now reached up to beckon to the suddenly agitated sky. High above, gray clouds turned black, then blue, boiling in an instant and flashing with trapped energies. A continuous rumbling filled the pregnant air.
The fine bones of Armandra's head and neck showed redly through luminous flesh, a grinning skull of death. Her eyes opened; beams of blinding ruby radiance shot forth to the pulsating sky; she made stabbing motions with her hands, which were curved downward now like the heads of swans.
And then I was sent staggering back from the bars, away from the vicious rain of red lightnings that lashed down in staccato precision from the sky to the plain below! I did not see those deadly white funnels destroyedâsaw nothing of the carnage among the massed ranks of the wolf-warriors when, finished with the sundered tornadoes, Armandra simply rained her devastating energies down upon flesh and blood. I was told of it later, and then I was glad I had not seen it.
No, I saw nothing; nor, deafened from the first hellish salvo, did I hear anything, for which I am also grateful. And even when it was done, several minutes elapsed before I was able to perceive anything but the scarlet blaze burning on my retinas and the pounding of blood in my nearly ruptured eardrums.
Armandra lay huddled beside the bars, sobbing and momentarily
spent. Again her terrific anger had vented itself uncontrollable, and again the human side of her nature was betrayed. I went dazedly forward to comfort her but then, as my eyes inadvertently looked down upon the plain, I froze in awed disbelief. Where an army had massed in premature triumph, a demoralized rabble now moved in blind, crippled agony.
Great black smoking craters littered the plain all along the front of the plateau, as if a squadron of bombers had unloaded their bomb bays there. Where the priests had capered to the rear, now a gutted trench lay straight as the furrow of a giant's plow in the icy ground. And in the wake of Armandra's inferno of lunatic lightning, at last there sprang up a mournful wind that caught up the billowing smoke and steam to lay it like a veil across the whole scene, as if to hide the horror there.
Now, cradling the Woman of the Winds in my arms and rocking her, I heard drifting up to me a thousand amazed cries of utter disbelief and nameless horror from the survivors of that destroyed army. And rising above those cries came the lustful, reverberating battle cry of the plateau's fighting men:
“Sil-her-
hut-te!
Sil-ber-
hut-te!
”
For a moment I cursed aloud, wildly and blasphemously. God, no! I would not have my name as a seal upon
that
âupon the carnage Armandra's blind fury had wrought. But then I was amazed to see that even now the remaining wolf-warriors, who still far outnumbered the men of the plateau, were rallying to the sort of battle they could understand.
And once more I felt my heart surge within me as out from the base of the plateau, from its tunnels and keeps, rushed the authors of that concerted battle cry, unleashed at last by Charlie Tacomah to earn their honor on a field of bloodied snow and ice!
War of the Winds
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
Â
No sooner was
the battle joined than my attention was distracted from it by footfalls sounding in the perimeter tunnel. One of the
guardsmen I had left with Jimmy and Tracy hurried into view. He gave a cry of relief when he found us unharmed; he had passed the bodies of his colleagues at the entrance to the tunnel.
Now he composed himself, bowed first to Armandra and then turned to me. “Lord, your sister, and your friend have gone to the roof of the plateau to view the fighting. They bade me come and tell you.”
I nodded. “And your partnerâdid he go with them?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Then you had better follow them. Stay with them until this is all over.”
He bowed again to me and again to Armandra, then hurried back the way he had come.
“If they wish to view the fighting,” Armandra said when he had gone, “there are few better places from which to do so than here.”
“Perhaps they were seeking Whitey. The three of them have grown very close.”
“Whitey,” she mused, “whose powers have deserted him. Is it a dark omen, I wonder?”
“It's a disadvantage, certainly, but I wouldn't consider it a dark omen. On the contrary, things are going very well. See, despite the odds your people are fighting an inspired battle. They are making a shambles of Ithaqua's army.”
“They are our people, Hank, yours and mine. And they will be victorious because my father's wolf-warriors are demoralized. I have crippled them.” She stared for a few seconds at the milling scene below, then lifted her eyes to the distant pyramid altar of ice and heterogeneous “trophies.” I followed her gaze as her eyes widenedâand then we gasped in unison.
The Wind-Walker was raging, swelling out; his arms were lifted in a threatening attitude; his carmine eyes were blazing in his bloating face. In another moment he had stepped from his altar to stride aloft, and he was coming straight for the plateau!
“They have failed him,” Armandra gasped. “The Children of the Winds have failed him yet again. Now he will seek vengeance upon the plateauâand upon his own men!”
“But how can he strike us?” I protested. “The plateau is safeguarded by the star-stones.”
“Those star-stones of the Elder Gods!” she passionately cried. “I
loathe and abhor the things and the gloom they cast over the plateau and its people.”
“They are a symbol of benign power in the plateau,” I argued, “and without them all would long ago have been lost.”
“A benign symbol, yes,” she answered, “like the crucifix in the Motherworld. Don't you see, Hank, that all great symbols of power are horrific in their way?”
At the time I didn't give it a lot of thought, but now that I've thought about it I can see what she meant. Certainly the star-stone is benign to anyone not contaminated by Ithaqua or his hideous brothers of the Cthulhu Cycle. Of course the crucifix is a symbol of goodness, despite the fact that it is a model of a most terrible torture machine. The swastika too was an emblem of life, luck and power long before it became the outline of horror. What more innocuous than the hammer and sickle; tools of everyday life and labor?
“But look,” she said, “perhaps you are right that my father is helpless to harm us. See, he hesitates.”
High above his totem temple the Wind-Walker hung motionless in the sky, his evil eyes glaring at the plateau. I knew that he sawâor feltâthe power of the star-stones, those same stones which had held him so long impotent, and I knew that they repulsed him as surely as like magnetic poles repel each other.
“What is he doing?” I asked, as he commenced upward sweeping motions with monstrously bloated arms.
“He calls a wind,” she answered, frowning. “But to what purpose, for surely no energies of his devising may strike us now?”
“Look!” I exclaimed. “Those dots on the plain, black dots rising into the air, what are they?”
Rapidly the things I referred to climbed into the sky and were blown forward ahead of the Wind-Walker as he recommenced his striding toward the plateau, and a moment later I believed I knew what they were.
“Kites!” Armandra cried, confirming my own opinion. “Kites shaped like bats that fly on my father's breath. And they carry men.”
“Man-carrying kites,” I gasped. “But that must mean that he intends to land themâ”
“On the roof,” she finished for me.
Then her eyes went very wide. “Hank, I think it would have been
better if Tracy and Jimmy had come here to us instead of going to the roof!”
“Oh my God!” I whispered, instinctively turning from her, heading for the perimeter tunnel.
She called out after me, “Hank, wait!”
I came to a hesitant halt, half turned. “I have to get them off the roof, out of harm's way.”
“If you go up there,” she said breathlessly, “you will have to fight. See, already my father's man-kites approach. And if you fight ⦠.” She shook her head wildly, as if shaking off the dark shapes of nightmare. “I must not lose you now, man of Earth.”
“My sister and my friends, Armandra,” I quickly answered. “I have no choice. I could never live with myself.” Then, wasting no more time, I ran from the balcony.
In my mind, before I could shut her out, she cried after me:
“Hank! Hank! Our bargain!”
I knew that from the gallery at the far end of the perimeter corridor a long flight of steps wound their way up to the roof; it should take me no more than two or three minutes to get up there. I raced along the corridor, started up the winding steps, taking them in threes, and as I went I gave credit to the evil intelligence that was Ithaqua.
He had known the weakest spot in the plateau's defenses all along; the roof, where only a handful of men, few of them warriors, kept wary watch over the white wastes. Well, I was sure of one thing at least. No matter how many of his kites Ithaqua hurled at the plateau, no matter how heavy the odds, those watchers on the roof would stand and fight to the end.
Only four passageways in all led up to the flat, ruggedly stark roof, four orifices opening into the gray light of Borea. All four were spaced out across the roof's surface, the only accesses. What if Tracy and the others had been cut off from them? These and similar thoughts ran circles in my mind as I flew up the last few steps. In fact I must have taken well under the three minutes I had allowed myself, but it seemed as though half an hour had elapsed before finally I stood panting out in the open air, where the wind rushed over the slippery stone in furious blasts.
I paused briefly to assess the situation and get my breath back. Apart from the presence of a number of kite-men, there was something
very wrong with the sight that now met my evesâsomething which was soon to become plain to me.
I picked out the figures of Tracy, Jimmy and Whitey almost immediately; they were fighting with those of Ithaqua's raiders who had already effected landings. With them were about a dozen watchmen, also caught unaware by the aerial attack.
They were not together in a group. Tracy was the most distant from me; about eighty yards separated us. She held up one of her star-stones before her, a threat to any of the Wind-Walker's men who might attempt to get too close. She had found this stone still on its chain where Northan's dupe had left it. The other one was lost, gone forever in some dark crevice in the forbidden tunnel. Tracy had not yet seen me. She appeared to be trying to make her way to Jimmy. I called out to her but my shout was lost in a frenzy of winds.
Jimmy was at the forward edge of the plateau, where waist-high battlements faced out across the white waste. As I saw him he was in the act of spearing one of the raiders who was just attempting a landing. Having killed his man with a single thrust, Jimmy toppled him from the roof along with his kite.
Whitey was the closest to me. Flanked by two of the watchmen, who fought equally furiously, he was battling like a madman to hold off a handful of the invaders. There were fifteen of us in all, against about the same number of kite-men, but more of the latter were landing all the time. One thing was heartening at least; for the moment Ithaqua stood away.
Dark and bloated against the gray skies, ten times taller than a tall man, the monster trod the air half a mile from the plateau's roof almost as a swimmer treads water. With his eyes blazing avidly and his arms half reaching forward, he formed the most fantastic part of the whole scene. I knew that he noted every detail of the situation, but that as eager as he was to destroy the plateau and steal back his daughterâand take Tracy, too, for his monstrous purposesâstill the star-stones held him at bay.
The star-stones! Now I knew what had bothered me about the scene on the roof. Ithaqua's raiders were not trying to break into the plateau, they were there simply to clear the way for their master. He had sent them to destroy the great protective star that my sister had traced with star-stones on the plateau's roof! With that out of the way.
Ithaqua would be able to completely command the roof and land as many of his aerial warriors upon it as he could muster.
And now, out there on the wings of the wind, I could see that there were
hundreds
of the kites. The brilliance of the Wind-Walker's stratagem was obvious. Ninety-five percent of the plateau's soldiery were engaged in the battle down below, and the rest of the able-bodied men were at their posts deep down in the rocky labyrinths. Reinforcements would doubtless come, but would they be in time?
But no, my reasoning was way offâI must be wrong! The Children of the Winds couldn't possibly have been sent to get rid of the star-stones. They were as helpless against them as Ithaqua himself!
All of these things rushed through my mind as I surveyed the roof. Then I started to run toward Tracy, slowing for a second to snatch up a tomahawk from beside a dead kite man. As I went I called her name again, and this time she heard me. That was a wonder, for above the howling of the wind, at precisely the same time that I called her. there came a shrieking like none I had ever heard before. It was the sound of a soul in torment, a banshee howling that froze my unnaturally chilled blood even further, causing me to seek, wide-eyed for its source.
And when I found that source I knew that I had been right after all, and that the fear Ithaqua inspired in his “children” was absolute.
One of the kite-men was tearing at a star-stone where it was fastened to the battlements. The flesh was visibly blackening on his hands as he scrabbled frenziedly to tear the stone loose. His screams did not stop for a single moment but grew shriller still as his fingers began to fall off. Finally he tore the stone free and clutched it to his chest, then gave the most hideous scream of all as black smoke poured out from him. He tottered for a moment, then, as the stench of his burning reached me on the rushing wind, crumbled like rotting wood and fell from the battlements.
Suddenly the wind increased, blowing especially from that region of the roof now unprotected by the stone sigil of Eld, and at the same time I noted shrieks of mortal terror and horror springing up from four other distinct points all around the rim of the plateau. Heedless of their fatal tormentâwhich must have been the ultimate in physical and psychic agony Ithaqua's aerial suicide squadron was proceeding with its task of clearing the roof. And as the star-stones were removed
one by one, the Wind-Walker himself came closer, suspended in the sky.
I had not quite reached Tracy when two kite-men, freshly free of the harnesses of their aircraft, sprang at her. Their weapons were still in their belts and it was plain that their task was to render her helpless and somehow bear her away. I threw my weapon just as one of them went to strike her with his clenched fist. As she ducked his blow and swung her star-stone on its chain full in his face, my tomahawk bit into his side. It is possible that he didn't even feel the bite of my weapon for the agony of Tracy's. His face caved in, black and ruined, and he went down as though a truck had hit him. The second man turned toward me but was thrown down by the force of my rush. As he started to rise I kicked him in the throat as hard as I could. Tracy freed her star-stone from the mess of the first man's face, and as I backed hastily away she began to be sick.
Looking about me I saw that almost all of the invaders had been dealt with, killed and swept from the roof as they had gone about their task of clearing its surface of star-stones. Nevertheless, they seemed to have successfully completed that task. There came a weird, shrill whistling, emanating from the hundreds of batlike shapes that still hung in the sky between the plateau's roof and the swollen figure of the Snow-Thing. The kites were soaring forward, the wind whistling its demon song in their frames of poles and stretched hides. Now Ithaqua could take possession of the roof, land the rest of his airborne forces and invade the plateau.
“Tracy!” I yelled in her ear. “Get below. I want everyone off the roof. We'll be outnumbered in no time at all and Ithaqua himself may even make a landing here.” I pointed her in the direction of the tunnel I had used and gave her a gentle push. She started to slip and stumble away from me, barely keeping her feet as the wind's strength rapidly increased.