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.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 armour; 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-coloured 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, labouring 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.Ah, yes.And behind them crouched the utterer of that ululant alarm: Boris Zchakow, the fanatic, wind-maddened Russian.Ithaqua's number one priest.Behind Zchakow's sledge sped two others recently fled, returning again with their complement of lesser priests; and bringing up the very rear, at a distance of about a mile, as many wolf-warriors again as I had yet seen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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