by Brian Lumley
Tracy! But if this was my sister, why should I feel the fear radiating from her? Why should my stomach twist and writhe with every step she took toward me?
I backed away, noting through waves of terror how the inky figure kept well away from the sputtering flame as it edged around the still burning torch where it flared upon the floor. With every step the figure advanced I had to retreat, pushed back by the fear.
“Tracy.” I somehow managed to force words from my parched throat. “Is it really you? What’s happened to you?”
“Of course it’s me, Hank,” the figure replied, and certainly it spoke with Tracy’s voice. “Yes, it’s me. I’m covered in oil, that’s all.”
“But Tracy,” I pressed her, still backing away, “why—why am I afraid of you?”
“What?” she stopped moving toward me and I the growing concern and disbelief in her voice. A moment later she laughed and I knew at last that it really was Tracy. “Oh, it must be the star-stones!” she said in sudden relief. “I came down here to look for two of them—and I found hundreds! Down at the other end of the tunnel there’s a huge cavern, with star-shaped symbols on the walls and all over the ceiling, and the floor is literally covered with the stones. I’m carrying dozens of them with me right now, and they’re heavy! It must be the stones you can sense; you’re frightened of them, not me.”
She was right, of course she was. “And this cavern,” I questioned, still retreating before her. “Is it—empty?”
“Yes, apart from the star-stones and the oil. At one place the cavern wall is cracked and oil is seeping in, I guess from the place where the plateau’s people draw off their fuel. I left my torch stuck in the floor while I was gathering up some of the stones. Then I slipped and fell in the oil. That’s why I had to leave the torch behind and come back in the dark. Are you all right, Hank?”
Now it was my turn to laugh, weakly, almost hysterically.
“Oh, yes, I’m all right—but you’d better let me warn the others or they’re likely to make a pincushion of you as you come out.”
“Yes, yes do!” she cried. “Oh, go on, Hank, get out of here. You sound dreadful. Please hurry on ahead. And don’t worry. There’s absolutely nothing down here to hurt you. Oh. except the star-stones, of course.”
Of course. Nothing but the star-stones!
I turned then and ran, or rather I staggered, back along the way I had come. And all the way the fear snapped at my heels, right behind me. Only now I knew exactly what I was afraid of—what everyone in the plateau had feared—and though the knowledge made no difference and I was still desperately afraid, I was also jubilant!
“Let them come,” my spirit cried inside me, “and Ithaqua with them. At least the odds are balanced a lot more in our favor now!”
And that brings us up to five days ago, Juanita. I’ve probably missed things, I know, but nothing that I think is of any real importance. Let’s see now, how long have we been in touch? With time off for a few breaks and a couple of hours sleep, I reckon it must have been all of thirty-six hours. Is that a record for telepathic contact between worlds—or rather, between “spheres?” I suppose it must be. You say Peaslee has given you a team of stenographers, typists, tape recorders? Methodical as ever. He doesn’t miss a trick.
With you right now? Yes, I see in your mind that he is. He says to quit the casual chatter and get on with it, does he? Well, you can tell him from me that the Wilmarth Foundation doesn’t carry much weight way out here on Borea! He’s right, though, so I suppose we’d better get on with it. Not that there’s a lot left to tell.
We’re simply waiting now, there’s nothing else to do. Armandra has been resting for two days, seeing no one, not even me. She says she’ll need all her strength for the coming fight, and try as I might I can’t convince her that she won’t have any part of it. The trouble is, I know that if she wanted to join in there’s not much I could do to stop her; she would only be fighting for her people after all. And for her freedom.
It can’t be far off now, the fight, for Northan has quit exercising his army and holds it in readiness. And Ithaqua is hack. The Wind-Walker perches atop his pyramid as always, except that he no longer stares out and away over the white wastes. Now he faces squarely in the direction of the plateau.
Tracy has been busier than anyone else since she found the star-stones in the cave at the end of the forbidden tunnel, those same star-stones that once held the Wind-Walker imprisoned deep in the guts of the plateau. That’s why the horror has always held the plateau in great respect, why he himself has not yet seen fit directly to attack the place.
But to get back to Tracy: she must have walked miles, poor kid, before she let Kota’na talk her into riding one of his bears. Since then she’s been getting about much faster. And her work is probably the most important of all, for Tracy has been putting the finishing touches to the plateau’s defenses.
I suppose I could say that the idea was a group effort of Charlie Tacomah, Tracy and myself—but the truth is that Tracy’s had the lion’s share of the work. I had a rough idea how I wanted the star-stones used; Charlie worked out the mechanical details; Tracy is still working to finish it off, but it’s just about done now.
Roughly the idea was this: that the stones be used as a secondary defense behind the new tunnel barriers, to deny entry into the plateau should the barriers be breached. Charlie designed heavy wooden frames, had them built and suspended from the ceilings of the outer tunnels. Fixed to the fronts of these frames are spears set in two rows. The bottom row consists of conventional spears fixed about two feet apart, and these are meant to impale the giant wolves. The upper rows are less conventional; in fact they’re not spears at all but simply stout poles, like slender battering rams. Only nailed to the end of each pole is a star-stone—and these are not meant for wolves …
Tracy’s hands are a mass of blisters. Because she’s the only one able to handle the star-stones, by now she must have nailed up almost two hundred of the things.
Anyway, Charlie’s devices work like this: swinging from the ceilings of the tunnels and operated by teams of men hauling on ropes from the rear, they should form impassable barriers. The spears are not barbed: that is, they will impale men and wolves alike, but their victims will not pile up on the shafts. By the time a wall of bodies has built up in front of one of these fearsome devices, well, the passage will be impassable by then anyway. And when they are not in use the spear-frames can be hauled up to the tunnel ceilings to allow my warriors passage beneath them.
There have been one or two minor accidents when Tracy’s assistants have come into momentary contact with her stones, but once burned means twice shy. Those who suffer make sure they don’t get burned a second time! I imagine that when these terrible weapons are in action, nothing Ithaqua can send against them will stand a chance.
And that is only one of the uses to which the star-stones have been put. They’ve also been fixed on the massive gates that guard the snow-ship keeps, and they form a five-pointed design in the battlements of the plateau’s roof. All in all, I believe we’ve used them to their best advantage. Time alone will tell, and I think there’s precious little time left.
Speaking for myself, I would prefer to hold back when the battle starts, let the Children of the Winds come to me and make them fight on my terms, but my generals tell me that to do so would be to severely demoralize the warriors of the plateau. To many of the young braves this seems their golden opportunity to distinguish themselves in bloody battle. I daren’t deny them that which is their right according to the plateau’s ancient codes and customs. That’s why. before Ithaqua returned, I had the snow-ships out exercising and maneuvering all about the foot of the plateau, while Armandra sent fair winds to fill their sails.
Thus, when the time comes, they will go out to attack the wolf-warriors and their battle-sledges. At the same time, foot soldiers and mounted bears will protect the tunnel entrances and keeps, while the fortified positions will be manned
by strong but older men who are past their prime. Then, if things go badly, survivors of the fighting will fall back with the wounded and take over the plateau’s defensive positions. They will be replaced in the field of battle by reserves, while the wounded will be passed back along the tunnels to first-aid and hospital centers. The crews of the snow-ships will simply have to fend for themselves if their vessels are wrecked, getting back to the safety of the plateau as best they can.
But I need not go on. All of this is prearranged. The plan in its entirety is complicated and would be meaningless to you, Juanita, unless you knew the plateau as I now know it; which is why I have only given you the basic outline. Now we wait.
Jimmy has just been to see me, excited about a device he’s had built and positioned in the mouth of a small cave fifty feet above ground level. It’s a powerful catapult on a swiveling base. He and Tracy have been practicing with pebbles and they can now accurately land a stone—a star-stone when the time comes—almost anywhere inside a two hundred-and-fifty-yard radius. Jimmy will aim and release the “shells,” Tracy will load for him. Now she’s gone off yet again to the forbidden tunnel to replenish her stock of stones.
Meanwhile, I’ve managed to convince Armandra that she must stay out of the fight. She promises not to join the battle unless Ithaqua himself takes a strong hand. I can’t really picture him trying to do that once he sees what we have waiting for his wolf-warriors. Of course, there was a condition to Armandra’s agreement to stay out of things; I have to keep out of it too, despite the fact that I’ve a personal score to settle with Northan. It was the only way I could make Armandra see sense.
So here I am right now where I’ve positioned myself in an observation cave a third of the way up the face of the plateau, surrounded by a gang of runners who will take my commands below to the fighting men once the battle begins. It’s a pretty basic system of communication, but the best I can do.
And that’s our present position. Jimmy and his catapult, along with a couple of runners and assistants of his own, are below me on the face of the plateau and about one hundred yards to my right, where Tracy should soon be joining them. Whitey should be up on the roof, still desperately trying to get a peek into the future and keeping a keen eye on the now very much increased activity out across the white waste. Armandra is high above in her rooms, no doubt still nervously fretting. The warriors and their bears are resting up in temporary quarters and barracks down below, and the crews of the snow-ships are ready to man their vessels at a moment’s notice, though I can’t see them doing a great deal if Ithaqua decides to blow in the wrong direction. That’s the trouble with this situation; nothing is certain, everything is a big if—everything except the one really definite fact that Ithaqua will send the Children of the Winds against us.
Now I’m going to stop sending, Juanita. There are a few last details I have to see to. I’ll contact you again when I can, or when there’s something to report.
NOTE: Following this last telepathic transmission from Hank Silberhutte, which ended at 10 a.m., June 5, nothing further was heard from him until 2 p.m. the next day. Then, from across unknown gulfs of space and time, Juanita Alvarez again began to receive his thoughts. The following, final recordings, forming as they do the last part of this document, were commenced at that time.
Part Four
I
The Assault Begins
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
Whitey is dead, crushed and destroyed as if he had never been, removed as he gave all he had, his very life, to save Armandra from her dreadful father and the alien star-voids he eternally wanders. Armandra is hurt, perhaps crippled, I don’t know yet. The physicians are with her now.
Tracy and Jimmy are safe, and I’m thankful for that, but Paul White … poor Whitey. No wonder he could see no more tomorrows, no futures; for him there was no future.
This last day has been completely hideous! Even now that it’s all over, my nerves jump and my scalp prickles at the very thought of it. I can still hear the screams of dying men and beasts, the shrill whistling of Ithaqua’s man-carrying kites as they soared down upon the plateau out of raging skies, the blasts of the thunderbolts that turned the plateau’s roof to an incredible inferno; and I can still smell the ozone reek of alien energies, the stench of living fear, the sordid stink of death. But let me tell you Ithaqua did not have it all his own way. And for all the plateau’s losses the Wind-Walker strides by no means triumphant in Borea’s skies this day. He licks an awful wound, and his warriors are scattered far and wide.
But I can’t get Whitey out of my mind, poor Whitey, who will have no grave for there is nothing to bury. But, by God!—we shall raise to him a memorial where he died, a tower of stone on the very roof of the plateau, to overlook this whole demon-damned world forever.
And I’m sorry, Juanita; as yet you know nothing of all this, and here I rave like a man demented. Well, perhaps you will understand when I am finished.
It started within an hour of my last contact with you …
One minute the strangely hummocked white expanse, with all its frozen loot of the Motherworld of men, seemed empty of life, except about the totem ring and its central altar, where tents and shelters had been set up to house the army that Northan had gathered and disciplined for the Wind-Walker. The next moment the whole plain turned black! Shedding the white furs which until then had kept them hidden, the massed might of the Children of the Winds was repeated.
To think that a few moments earlier I had been wondering where all of Ithaqua’s warriors had gone! Having watched them gathering for days, from far and wide, I had noticed that paradoxically there never seemed to be more than a few thousand of them visible at any one time. Now at last they showed themselves. Ten ranks deep, only a shoulder’s width between them, forming a straight line that stretched for at least five miles across the wastes, I calculated that they numbered close to two hundred thousand. And these were only the foot soldiers!
Behind them, three deep and stretching in a line all of two miles long, in the next moment appeared the wolf-warriors. They too threw down their robes to reveal their great numbers, a move calculated to unnerve us. And certainly Ithaqua’s army was an unnerving sight. Oh, the Wind-Walker was not playing games this time, neither him nor his new warlord, Northan.
Northan! My lips drew back from my teeth involuntarily as I thought of the treacherous hound, and almost as if I had once more thrown a challenge in his face, so the sails of the plateau’s once-flagship filled out as it slipped anchor near the pyramid altar. My nails bit into the metal of my binoculars as I focused them on the ship of Northan, though at that distance the figures crowding her decks were tinier than ants and I could never have said for certain which one was he.
The ship rode out to the forefront of the army, gathering speed as it took up a central position, and now the army itself began to move, forming an arrowhead behind the ship. I could see the wolf-warriors spurring their huge mounts to advance through the ranks of the foot soldiers. As the wolves came, so the men on foot jumped up to cling to their great sides and be carried forward.
Bringing up the rear came great battle-sledges hauled by teams of lesser wolves, and these picked up the remaining foot soldiers. I kept my binoculars upon these battle-sledges and after a few seconds managed to obtain a better view of them. They were mounted with stout, pointed battering-rams.
Finally, behind all the others, Ithaqua’s priests rode in their own sledges. Forming a backdrop to that awesome army of men and beasts, the Wind-Walker himself stood atop his frozen altar with massive arms folded and terrible eyes hooded as in deep, dark thoughts.
I put down my binoculars. The V-shaped formation could mean only one thing: a direct assault upon the plateau, concentrated upon a narrow front. And the battering-rams told me that the attack must come at the gates of the snowship keeps, which were all positioned along an uneven half-mile of the plateau’s front.
Once through those
heavy gates the wolf-warriors might well manage to breach one or more of the larger tunnels that led directly into the plateau’s bowels, doubly fortified as they now were. I was sure that this was what Northan intended to do, and so issued my first orders. All of the runners were fluent in English, and no sooner had the first of my messengers darted away down the steep flights of stone steps with my instructions than the next was there, eager to receive my next command. I told all of them to sit down and try to relax; orders would be issued as they were required.
That was when Charlie Tacomah entered from one of the two horizontal shafts that led back into the plateau. I appreciated his company and repeated for his benefit the orders I had given a few seconds earlier. He borrowed my binoculars, studied the advancing army and nodded.
“I think I would have done the same thing,” he said. “It’s a pity we had no time to build sufficient of our swinging weapons to completely block off the larger tunnels that enter from the keeps. They form our weakest points. Yes, I too would have sent more men there.” He paused, and at length added, “And what of our elite corps?”
“The snow-ships? I want to hold them back until Northan and his army are closer, then release them all at once. As I see it, Ithaqua is filling the sails of Northan’s ship with just sufficient wind to blow him to the plateau along with the rest of the army. From here we are looking at them down a very slight slope, and in that we have an advantage. If we keep the snow-ships back until the last moment, then get Armandra to give them a push, they ought at least to be able to punch a couple of holes through that V-formation. After that—” I shook my head, frowning. “If I had my way I wouldn’t let them sail at all. Not only does it mean bringing Armandra into it, albeit indirectly, and not in any real sort of confrontation with the Wind-Walker—but I’m sure that it will be certain death for many of the lads who man the snowships.”